Statements of Intent

There's a post, which I've been occasionally writing, and then saving as draft, and then deleting, for the past few months. It's a post about the small compromises which I've made, and how they've made my life as a parent livable. It's about comparing the ideals I had before I procreated, to the realities of parenting. It's also about having to put away all the parenting books that seemed full of guilt messages, and just doing what worked for us.

And I've deleted that post over and over, because it turns out that I'm terrified discussing parenting choices on the internet. I've been around too long, and know that every small choice has become ridiculously controversial in certain circles.

This is more of a reminder for myself, and a statement of intent for my blog: while I have opinions, which I sometimes voice a little too strongly in personal conversations, I'm going to stay out of it. We're all getting by as well as we can, making sure that our kids are sleeping, eating and learning as well as they can.

While I'm making statements of intent: I'm also staying off the parenting boards, and I'm trying to lay off the books (outside of Mayo Clinic guides to development and stuff like that). I'm also making a valiant attempt to avoid googling my child's symptoms, because I'm enough of a hypochondriac about myself that nobody needs for me to start focusing my crazy on the next generation as well.

And now I'm going to make popcorn and watch a bunch of Arrested Development on Netflix, because in spite of the fact that I now have a kid, I'm still the reigning Queen of the Nation of West Procrasti.

I'll admit I've been keeping my cards close to my chest lately

Well, I didn't intend to disappear for such a long time! At first, right after I wrote that last post, I got very sick (as part of a series of stress-related illnesses), and stayed sick until the New Year. (Also, I got to try all kinds of powerful antibiotics, and may have experienced some rheumatic fever! Fun times at Christmas.) (As another aside, I am your perfect sick party guest: hobbling around, whining about "my rheumatiz." You guys missed a magical time.)

After I got home from that second trip home, my life was divided between the Bloggable But Stressful (Get the crazy chapter under control and come up with a workable plan for finishing soon!) and the Very Unbloggable Thanks To IRL People Reading This Blog (Let's apply for work closer to home! What if we start a family now?). Some days, it felt like every decision we were facing were some of the biggest decisions we'd ever made in our lives. And somehow they seemed so much scarier than the Big Decisions we made before (or maybe we were younger and more flippant than we are now.) Get married? Sounds like a wonderful plan! Move across the country for grad school? Hey, why not? Sounds fun. (Oh, to be 24 years old again.)

But now, we've made some decisions, finalized plans, and have even announced them on Facebook (you know, after I told people in person first, because I'm not a monster). We're moving home, and I'm pregnant!

Dear goodness, those words are simultaneously exciting and terrifying.

I seriously can't believe this is all happening. And I know that "I'm pregnant and we're moving home to the prairies" sounds like the beginning of a novel about giving up on your dreams, but both of these really feel like the fulfillment of life-long dreams for us. We got Chris a good job in our hometown, in the same city as our entire families. And, barring something major happening, we're staying there. I'm insanely determined to get this dissertation finished, and then I'll figure out what I'm doing. It's been years since I realised that I wasn't cut out for the tenure-track life, but I'll carve my own path. I love working with students, and I'd love to do something university- or research-adjacent. There will be something for me (and it's not urgent for me to find it: the top priority is finishing the dissertation and having this baby; Chris will be making enough to support us until I find something).

There's this part of me that fears some people will think I'm crazy for having a baby right now (well, at the end of December), or that I'm somehow wasting all this education by not aggressively pursuing a tenure-track position. Or that I'm crazy for having a baby at a point when I don't qualify for EI maternity pay. (But do you know how long it would be until I would qualify? And seriously: we'll be financially fine.)

Okay. Enough (heading-towards-an-outie) navel-gazing. I'll save the crazy medical details (How I've Spent The Past Month In Doctor's Waiting Rooms, and Why I Keep Baffling Medical Professionals*) for another post.

In honour of the move back to the homeland, let's finish off with an old school Question Time!

Time? 1:39pm

Surroundings? I'm in my office, surrounded by dirty dishes, kleenex boxes, and scraps of printed off translation material. (By the way, I have a cold, and the inability to take cold medicine: pure torture.)

Tea? Murchies Library Tea. (Why no, I haven't completely cut out caffeine. Why yes, I do know about the risks, but I also have read a terrifying number of medical journal articles and stay well under the safe limit.)

Wearing? Pyjamas, rubber-soled slippers, TARDIS bathrobe, hair that is standing straight on end. (It might be time to bathe soon.) (Uh, you guys, I just found out how much my sister spent on my new bathrobe...)

Stuck in my head? "A Hundred and One Pounds of Fun" from South Pacific. Because I forced Chris to watched the movie with me this weekend, and this is what I get in return. Mitzi Gaynor's voice in my head for the rest of my life.

What am I most thankful for? My Christopher. He's been phenomenal lately, doing all the cooking and cleaning (in addition to dealing with the madness of the end of the school year), since I've been so sick, sore and tired for the past couple of months. He's a good'un.


* Working title.

What do you think?

For the first time in the five and a half years since I started blogging, I've given in to the temptation to change the template. I thought I'd stick with something reminiscent of the original.  And so, what do you think? I don't love having a dark background and light print, but I may keep playing with the colours. 

And now for something completely different: pictures from my weekend, with a few stories.

On Friday night we went to see all the navy ships that were in the Esquimalt Lagoon for the International Fleet Review.  (8000 sailors from all over the world took over downtown for the week, which made this city even more interesting than usual.)  On Friday night there were fireworks, and Fisgard Lighthouse had a lantern festival in honour of its 150th anniversary.

And then on Saturday we went to Lee and Andrea's wedding, which was held in one of the historical gardens in town:

It was gorgeous.  It was a sunny day, and we gathered under huge trees in a garden planted by the former crown prince of Georgia and his British wife.  There were thirty-four people at the wedding, including the bride and groom, the vast majority of whom were from our department.  (That's what happens when kids from far away meet and get married during grad school.)  It was neat being at an event like this with profs and most of our PhD candidates and recent graduates.  When guests started arriving, Chris looked around and asked if anyone would be presenting papers at this event.  (As it was, Lee began his speech at the reception by pretending to give a lecture about Confederation, and then he and Andrea got into a historiographical debate.  Those kind of jokes kill in a room full of historians.) Chris said that it reminded him of the wedding in Rachel Getting Married, except that instead of professional musicians, everyone in the room was a historian.* 

The whole thing was funny and sweet, and it was a good reminder about why I like this history department so much.  People care about each other here. 

And now I'm sitting at my kitchen table, while Chris snores in the other room. (He's been having migraines this week.)  I'm sitting by the flowers I brought home from the wedding (they asked that people take home the centerpieces, which reminded me very much of my own wedding), and I'm drinking tea. 

Other than Chris's migraine, this is not so bad of a weekend.

* You know, and without the recovering drug addict or all the white people in saris.  

Five Whole Years as Your Queen

Five years ago today, I started up a blog so that I could leave comments on Derek's and Ariann's blogs.

I was in a funny place in my life: I was desperately trying to make that transition from research to writing (my MA thesis), trying to get anything written, but sabotaging myself with procrastination. I was settled into my living situation but looking forward to a time in which all that would change (and I was particularly starting to look towards a big move across the country sometime in my future). The only times I seemed to leave the house were for church, yoga class, and allergy shots. And I spent my life wandering the apartment in rubber-soled slippers.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

It's not all the same as before. I'm in my fifth year of my PhD now, four-and-a-half years married, and for four-and-a-half years I've lived on the West Coast. I'm thirty pounds heavier, don't dye my hair anymore, and have finally stopped wearing that same pair of glasses. I cook from scratch a lot more, stand up for myself a little bit more, and I talk to my parents much more frequently than I did when we lived in the same city.

This blog has been such a blessing. I've made friends through it, and have possibly learned more about academia through the people I've met through blogging than I have in grad school. I've kept in contact with people back home through it, and have received support through the harder times.

Thanks everyone for reading, and let's see where I'm at by the tenth blogaversary.

Here Be Dragons will return

Watch this space, because Chris is going to get back to updating his blog! Tomorrow, our house is going to be covered in a Kinematics experiment that involves 16m of ramps and many marbles. We're also finally getting the new camera, and so those two elements will combine to help re-launch his blog.

Chris had been procrastinating from dealing with his blog, because the template was all messed up and he thought he'd have to spend hours dealing with it. And so I went (with his permission) and gave him a basic (temporary) template, so that he'd just update his blog without worrying about the details. (Bronwyn? Could you possibly think of a clever banner for Chris?)

So, we'll deal with all that tomorrow. Right now, our beloved football team is down by eight points with three minutes left in the game. (Update: and now it's tied with 41 seconds left in the game! Chris is dancing around like crazy.)

Breakfast with jo(e)

All the bloggers (and the rest of the conference-goers) have either left town or are in the process of leaving town right now. jo(e) and I made plans to go out for breakfast just before she left, after which I would take her to her ferry. The plans were nice and simple: Fisherman's Wharf to (hopefully) see the seals and the cool old boats and houseboats, and then breakfast at one of the quirkiest breakfast places downtown. I figured that, this way, she'd get a chance to see some of the other charming parts of the city that you wouldn't see at the university, and there would be lots of places to photograph.

It went really nicely. I always love going to Fisherman's Wharf with good photographers, because they always see everything that I miss. jo(e) was no exception: she explored parts of the marina where I'd never been before, and she had so many questions about the old boats. It was particularly fun showing her the houseboats: after seeing the eccentric older ladies getting leaving a houseboat with their small dogs, she started scheming that maybe becoming an eccentric woman in a houseboat was the best retirement plan.

So, I had a good morning. It's nice going for breakfast with someone where the waiter keeps having to come back because we've been talking so much that we've forgotten to look at the menu.

I said I should get a shot of the back of jo(e)'s head for my blog, and she said "I'll stand here like I'm taking a picture... oh, wait this is a really good angle to get a shot!" And so it went from "jo(e) poses like she's taking a picture" to "jo(e) really takes a picture."

My first blogger meet-up

And I've now met a ton of them, thanks to the conference happening at my university right now. The "Friendly Green Conference," as jo(e) calls it, is here at UVic this year, and this afternoon I was able to put a bunch of faces to pseudonyms. I've been trying to piece together the day I've had, and it's late and so I don't expect to put together anything eloquent right now.

I'm glad that I studied the pictures of jo(e) and the Dandelion Diva on Facebook before I went to the university. jo(e) had told me that I should drop in and have lunch with them one day, and that she was arranging to have all the bloggers meet up at the reception this afternoon. I don't think I'd processed the fact that there would be hundreds of people milling around campus, carrying the conference cloth bag and wearing name tags. I became That Person who is peering at everyone's name tags (and is clearly not wearing a name tag herself). The positive result of this was that I ended up acting as a tour guide to several conference-goers, shepherding them to their buildings.

But as soon as I saw jo(e) I knew it was her. I recognised her hair first, since I've been seeing the back of her head for years now. And she was exactly as you'd expect jo(e) to be: lively, brilliant, friends with everyone in the room, at the centre of every scheme. She asked the Dandelion Diva and I if she was anything like we expected and we both said "Yes" without hesitating.

So, I ran into jo(e) as she was walking to the cafeteria with two conference friends (one of who is the husband of another blogger), and they invited me to have lunch with them. I'm sure glad that everyone was so kind and friendly, because it took some work for me not to be as shy and awkward as I sometimes felt. I had so much fun that it was a lot less scary crashing their reception later that afternoon, where I got to meet up with the rest of the bloggers.

I had barely gotten in to the reception when I recognised the faces of Keri the Dandelion Diva and her partner (I'm really glad that I was studying Facebook photos that day). It's funny to say this because I was just meeting them, but it was a relief to see some familiar faces in that hot, noisy room. It really did feel like I'd known Keri for years (which I guess I have now, looking back and seeing that I was reading her old blog three years ago). After that, we managed to track down jo(e) again, and then Rana, Kathryn of Adventures With Ari,* and Julie Meloni.

And that's how I ended up at a supper table full of brilliant "prof bloggers" (as I've always found myself referring to them), in the University residence's cafeteria, much earlier than anyone else was thinking about supper (certain others in the group are still on Eastern Standard Time), constantly realising that we'd just said the word "take a naked picture" a little too loudly for this public place.

On Saturday I'll be attending a round table session with all of them, in which they'll discuss blogging and academia. This is all very cool, and now I'm going to spend some time looking over everyone's blogs again, adjusting the way that I read them to accomodate the voices and the faces that I know now. (It's kind of like meeting book characters in real life.)


* Note to Bronwyn: you need to check out this blog. It's framed around the walks she takes with her dog Ari, and she has a book about it, with the same name. I got to talk about dogs with her and it was delightful.

Missed another blogiversary

As I sat in this pile of books and popcorn, the procrastinatory part of my brain suddenly asked, "Didn't you start blogging sometime in mid-January?" I checked the archives, and there it was: my blogiversary was last Thursday! I've now been blogging for four years.

(It seems a little to apt that I wrote a post about my underwear on my actual blogiversary.)

And so I'll celebrate it a little less than a week late. Would you expect any less from your Procrastination Queen (West)?

It's been four years and 1275 posts. When I began, I was a second-year MA student, sitting at this desk and trying to make myself write anything. Now I'm a fourth-year PhD student, sitting at this same desk, still trying to get myself to write. Since then, I've finished an MA thesis, gotten married, moved out here, gotten through coursework and comps, and have laid down some roots out here on this crazy island. I'm still trying to learn German, I'm still drinking tea, and I'm still wandering the house in this same pair of rubber-soled slippers. And yet sometimes I hardly recognise the person I was four years ago.

You know, this blog has been a real blessing for me. You all have kept me going through these isolated years of grad school. I've met so many interesting people who are going through exactly what I am going through, and who have taught me how to stay sane and get some work done.

I shouldn't write too much more right now; I'd better make supper and try to make some sense of this article sitting beside me.

In other news: it's about time that I started taking part in Schmutzie's Grace in Small Things challenge (Tagline: "Wage a battle against embitterment"). (Some of you may be familiar with this challenge thanks to Bronwyn's posts.) For the next 365 days, I'm going to try to find a reason to be thankful every day. I think this will really help me keep perspective through what might be a stressful year. (If all goes according to plan, I should be finishing up just around when I'm finishing my research trip to Germany.) I'll start this in the next post.

After the VanderVisit

I started this post yesterday, but then I discovered that I was too sleepy and sick to be coherent, and so I'm editing and re-writing as I go. (Yes, I caught the Camp Cold.) Expect this report to be disjointed and cold-medicine-addled.

On our way home from camp yesterday (uh, two days ago now), we made a detour over to Prince Albert and got to visit with Dixie, Marc and the whole VanderFamily! I hadn't seen Marc and Dixie since they moved away from Regina, before Madeline was born. And it was so good to see them and their hilarious kids. Dixie even cooked for us, and made her Mom's world-famous French Apple Pie! (I was pretty off-kilter because I'd caught my annual Camp Head Cold and had just tried out Dristan Nasal Mist for the first time. I was oddly relieved to find that Dixie had a cold too, because then I didn't feel like Typhoid Nellie bringing illness into their home. However, now they're dealing with Luke's ear infection and apparently he threw up red candy the day after we left, and so now I'm less relieved that they were sick as well. Poor Vandersluyses.)

Chris was hilarious about the trip. On the way there, he was pretty nervous; he hardly remembered them from when they lived in Regina, and was a little intimidated by the idea of spending an afternoon with such a clever couple. By the time we left, after he'd flown kites in the park with Marc, Madeline and Luke, and after he'd sat down with Dixie and helped to plan their vacation to Southern Saskatchewan, he was sad that we don't live near them. He declared that he wished Marc and Dixie were our neighbours, because they're the sorts of people with whom he'd like to spend all his time.

I guess this was the first time I've met bloggy people in person, and yet these two are people I knew "in real life" first, even though it had been six years since we'd seen each other and our primary interaction for a couple of years has been online. It had been so long that it was jarring to put voices to faces. It felt like I already knew their kids, from their pictures and both of their amazingly accurate descriptions of Madeline, Luke and Olivia (of course, the kids didn't feel like they knew us, and yet did a good job of making us feel welcome -- even by the end Olivia would let me play with her by myself).

You know, it was refreshing to go see the VanderFamily. Marc and Dixie are really as funny and frank as you would expect them to be, and their children as hilarious as you would expect. I like when that happens.

Question

You see that "Rate this blog" thing under each of my posts? Where did it come from and how can I make it go away? It just appeared this afternoon, no one else seems to have this problem, and I can't make it go away.

Update: Solved! It looks like a whole hoard of people were asking the question at about the same time (my guess is that the widget was added to Blogger at about...3:15pm today? 3:20?). If you notice that box under your posts and want them to go away, you go to "Edit Layout," and then hit "Edit" on the "Blog Posts" box. Then you unclick the "Ratings" option.

Update 2: Do you know what else is weird? As soon as I unclicked the "Ratings" option and saved it, that option disappeared altogether. I think I just hit some kind of Blogger experimental glitch, by publishing at the exact moment they were trying something out. Weird.

My Papa = Cute

He went and got himself a blog. He's been threatening to do so for years, every time one of us tells a story about him on our blogs. "Well, what if I went and got a blog! Then I could tell stories about you!"

But then he got thinking about how it would actually be nice to write on a blog. He told me that it would be both silly and serious (just like him), and that he could write about the Bible verses he's thinking of sharing in church. In his first installment, he responds to my sister and my tendency of calling him a "piece of work" using both Shakespeare and the book of Ephesians.

(I love that he refers to himself as "Oxygen Enhanced" in his tagline, and that even his blog name refers to the fact that he's an electrical engineer.)

Milestones lost in the rush

Last night, as Chris and I were falling asleep, we were sleepily making plans for how we could celebrate Valentine's Day. At some point, I realised that it was actually this week. And then realised it was February.

"That means that on Friday it'll be four years since we got engaged! Wait a minute: that means that I forgot about our dating anniversary last month! We've been a couple for six years!"

Chris was unsurprised by any of this. He had noticed these milestones but had just assumed that we had stopped celebrating all of these other milestones, now that we have a wedding anniversary to poorly celebrate. (He didn't mind that I'd forgotten about all these dates. I remember the important ones, like his birthday.)

Then, this morning, I realised that I've missed another milestone by almost a month: my third blogiversary was on January 15th! I just checked my archives to see what I even blogged that day, and I didn't blog at all, because I was laid so low by that awful cold I had in January. I spent the day using my neti pot, watching reruns of So You Think You Can Dance?, and finally making spectacular progress on my comps reading. I then got over my cold enough to go and spend far too much time with Meg and Karl. Maybe I haven't changed that much.

So, little blog with your 1110 posts (as of this one), I'm sorry that I'm nearly a month late, but happy birthday.

Important Update

Chris and I are re-starting his blog!

It started when we were discussing some fun plans for his Robot Club at school. I asked him if I could start telling his stories on my blog, since he's not updating his.

"No!" he said. "I want it on my blog!"

"Then are you going to start updating your blog?"

"But I don't have time!"

I asked him to add me as a contributor to his blog, so that I could get things started. He'll give me the pictures, videos and stories, and I'll compile them for him. And I know what will happen: I'll won't tell something right or he'll want to tell things in his own words, and he'll start writing again. That's my scheme. I know that what's been keeping him from writing is actually the fact that he feels like there's so much work to be done on the template and on his website; it has nothing to do with the actual time it takes to write. And so this will help get things going.

So long that the Kindergarten to grade 3 branch of Robot Club actually does meet at lunch today, I'll be getting the first post up later today.

My somewhat-secret plan for Saturday

On Saturday night I'm going to my department's Beginning of the Year Party. Every other year I've missed it because I've been in Saskatchewan. It's going to be my chance to meet several of the new grad students, the post-docs and the new hires.

And I will play an inward game, as I meet and greet: "Who here is most likely to be a pseudonymous blogger?"

(It will be a variation on a game that my friends and I used to play, entitled "Judge a Book By Its Cover," in which we'd make up stories about the people passing by.)

Of course, I won't ask them. And there's a good chance that I'll be wrong. But what characteristics should I be looking for?

Sister-Queen!

I convinced the Queen of East Procrastination to start blogging! (I hung out with her at a wedding and was raving about the glories of the academic blogosphere. ) She's incredibly clever, and so I'd recommend you check it out.

(I'm not sure if she's as benevolent a ruler as I. I only hear rumours and hearsay about East Procrastination, although we live peacefully as neighbours.)

And the 45,000th visitor* was...

...someone visiting from the Government of Canada in Ottawa, who is still using Windows 2000 and IE6! And just after I posted about StatsCan!

Weird.

Update: Or, apparently, it looks like it was one of my friends who works for the feds! Congratulations, either Meggy or Julia!

*Since I started using Sitemeter in April 2005, and ignoring the few days after I switched over to Blogger Beta and didn't notice that I hadn't reinstalled Sitemeter.

Quickly, because I am already late

I'm in the midst of a frazzled week of non-vacation before I leave for Saskatchewan. I have one more week, and then I'll be on an airplane, and being picked up from the airport at midnight by the crazy mommy, and then going to sleep in my old bedroom.

I'm really not fathoming the fact that I'm going home in a week. I think the problem is the fact that, before I go home, I have to: a.) read a whole stack of books and meet with a professor to discuss them; b.) wrap up my German tutoring before my tutor moves to Montreal; c.) clean my house in anticipation of a houseguest this weekend; d.) have a houseguest this weekend; d.) do the million billion other things that must get done before I can spend three weeks in Saskatchewan. Like book my room at Camp. And take out books to take with me.

My time in Saskatchewan is clearly going to be a working vacation. I have to maintain my book-a-day pace, so that I can finish comps in time. My plan is to establish the morning as my "office hours," and to stay in my room and read every day until lunch. (We'll see how that turns out.)

In other news: I'm way too excited about the fact that jo(e)'s Friendly Green Conference will be hosted at my campus in two years. So many bloggers in my city!

Another April 28th birthday in my extended family

First, it was my Grandma (Mom's mom), then my sister, then my cousin Lisa.

And now, a wee girl named Olivia Kate Vandersluys. (Admittedly, she's like my third cousin, but still!)

So, that takes care of one of the Blogger Births I've been following. I hope, for Anastasia's sake, that her turn is soon. For serious.

Yes, I'm still procrastinating

After realising that I've posted 900 times, I got curious as to when I did the most blog-posting. It turns out the honours for Most Blog Posts belongs to October 2005. (Tail-end of Matt's visit here, Chris gets two different new jobs, one-day strike, first assignments in first courses in years.) That got me reading over old blog posts.

I've come to one conclusion: I'm not as funny as I used to be. It's official. (Some of those posts really made me laugh! "This biscuit-making is an act of solidarity!")

(I should not be surprised by this realisation. Ky and I spend much of our time mourning our former cleverness. We usually claim that our hilarity peaked at age 14.)

*Ahem* Is this thing on? *Tap tap tap*

I am a sheep, and now I'm on Beta, or whatever they're calling it now. Actually, I've been trying to convert to Beta for months now, but it never would let me. I guess mine is a "large" blog, if you would believe that.

Can you tell me if you find any problems? I miss the smoothness of the old template, and I'm incompetent with html, and so if you have any suggestions, suggest away.

The best part is that I now have a new source of procrastination: labels! Because, if any of you know me, you know that nothing brings more joy to this obsessive-compulsive little heart than exercising absolute control over small things. Especially categorising such as this. (This is also why I love packing, and why I'm taking forever to finish this annotated bibligraphy.)