Rewarded with dinosaur stickers

This morning, I was collecting online journal articles for the chapter I'm putting together.  This chapter builds a lot on research that I did for my MA thesis, which got me wondering where I put the journal articles I photocopied for that. 

And then I got reading Lifehacker's "End-All Guide for Getting Out From Under Your Office Crap," which got me realising that the closet in my office was filled with file boxes full of papers that haven't been purged ever.  Since I started saving papers in file boxes in 2003.  I had one box for all the papers associated with my MA, one box for everything from my PhD (mostly from coursework), and one box marked "Misc", which I hadn't opened since we moved here five years ago. 

Huh. This might be a problem. 

And so I got sorting.  I started with the newest box, and found that I could put most of the articles and handouts from my coursework into the recycling. At this point, I can recognise what will be useful for teaching and what I need for my research, and was able to get rid of the rest. I collected all of my assignments into a single file folder and marked it clearly.  I purged most of the paperwork associated with past TA work, keeping syllabi and anything else that looked useful for future teaching work, and kept that in a single folder. 

And then I got looking through my MA file box.  It turns out that half of the box was filled with drafts of my MA thesis, and other paperwork that I couldn't bear to throw out five years ago.  I found the useful journal articles, collected the syllabi and other helpful teaching resources, and by that point the recycling pile looked like this:

It was good for me to go through that box.  I found a file that held my favourite papers that I wrote during my undergrad.  I found all of my acceptance and award letters and remembered that I have received many letters that began with "Congratulations" rather than "We regret".  And, as I found my old research notes and teaching work, I remembered my old enthusiasm and idealism.

And then I tackled the "Misc" box, and found that it was mostly filled with junk and office supplies.  I got through that box quickly, wondering why I was always too intimidated to open that one.  And I'm glad that I didn't go through it too quickly, because I found a stack of cards that I received when I finished my BA in 2003, and one of those cards had a $20 bill in it.  (Good thing it wasn't a cheque.) I also found dinosaur stickers! 

I needed that. I went back through my past and was able to let go of everything that doesn't matter anymore and keep everything that was good.  I'm not done yet (my office looks worse than when I started), but I feel like I'm in a better place to deal with my dissertation now. And with the future. 

Far from lonely

I've been home alone for the last half of this week, as Chris is the teacher chaperon for the high school seniors' camping trip.  When I first found out that I'd be here by myself from Wednesday until Sunday, I thought I was going to get lonely: I've been such a home body/hermit these days that usually Chris is the only person I see all day.  And so I made a few plans with people.

It's now so funny that I thought I was going to be lonely: I've been more social this week than I've been in a long time.  The non-stop people started as soon as I left the house on Wednesday morning: when I went to the chiropractor, I ran into three different friends (two of whom where the only other two people at the chiropractor's office).  Then, when I got hom, my Mom's cousin Cheryl called me (she's in town for the week) and I ended up spending the afternoon with her.  Then yesterday, the women from church and I had a Girls' Night (someone else's husband is away this week, and we thought that it would be nice to take this as an opportunity to get together) and I stayed out way too late.  Tonight, Cheryl's coming to stay here and then tomorrow we're going to do some sight-seeing, after which Ky and I are going to have a sleep-over (to celebrate the fact that she passed her quals!!, because she's going to Ukraine next week, and because I need a ride to church on Sunday).  In the midst of that all, I've been spending all my time trying to finish That Chapter That Won't Die (tm Styleygeek).

In short, today was the first time I had a chance to wash any dishes since Monday or Tuesday.  I've been so busy.  And, because I didn't have to go anywhere today (even though I had to get the spare room ready for Cheryl, and wash that pile of I Didn't Know We Owned That Many Dishes) I worked all day on That Chapter, starting as soon as I woke up this morning.  I made crazy amounts of progress today, but also managed to take care of myself and get housework done.  I even did some research outside in the sun and took a break to make lemonade from scratch! 

I think Chris is going to be surprised when he comes home on Sunday and finds that the house is clean and I'm all peopled-out.  He'll be especially amazed if I have this chapter close to done by the time he gets back. 

Good idea of the day

I've been moving a little slowly this week, because I've been getting back into a routine of waking up at the same time as Chris and then going for an early-morning walk. We decided to take this morning off from the walking, because I was such a zombie yesterday, and because I woke up this morning with a headache. I let myself sleep until I woke up, but then I found myself even more dopey than usual, because I didn't have any structure to my day. My morning was a bit of a waste.

But then I noticed how nice it was outside. The sun is shining and the temperature has gone over 11C (about 52F) at my house. And I ate a quick lunch, grabbed my lawn chair and my laptop, and got set up to work in the backyard. I'm sure I look crazy out here: I refused to wear a jacket, but I'm wearing the knitted hat that Ky made me (because my hair is wet), and I have my big sweater wrapped around me. (Okay, I'm starting to get a little cold, now that I've been out here for more than an hour.)

And it worked. I've just finished editing and formatting some writing to send to my supervisor. Nothing like getting some fresh air and sitting in a sunbeam to knock the cobwebs out of my head.

Transitions

I have this delusion that I'm the sort of person who adapts well to new situations. I don't know where I got this idea. I ended up discussing this yesterday first with my counselor and then with my group that I call "Yoga for Depressed People," because somehow the theme of everything today was "Transitions and How Maryanne Struggles With Them." Okay, my yoga instructor missed that last six words when she announced the theme for the day.

On the small scale, I've struggled with the transition from working at the university on microfilm to working at home on my computer. I thought it would be an easy transition, because it's a return to my old routine. However, I guess it doesn't work like that when I've adjusted to another routine for so long. It's not an automatic thing where I fall back into the old patterns. I need to figure out what works and treat it like I'm setting up a new routine entirely, using the methods that worked well last time, instead of expecting that this is going to be an automatic thing.

On the larger scale, I feel like I'm entering into an entire phase of transition in my life. On Tuesday I turn 29, that year of transition between my twenties and my thirties. It's really hitting me how much I have to embrace the approach of my 30s, rather than stare in the mirror and wonder who that unfamiliar person is. (In my head, I'm 23. It's still confusing to me to find clothes that fit and look right on me, because I used to be able to grab them off the rack without trying them on.)

At the same time, as I get deeper into my dissertation, I start to face the fact that I'm working my way toward being finished being a student, after twelve years of university. Regardless of how long it takes for me to finish, this dissertation is the last thing before I graduate and have to enter Grown Up Life, where I earn money, (hopefully) don't live in a basement suite, and don't sleep in all the time. The further I get through this dissertation, the closer I get to the next part, where we move away from here and start a family.

And this is the funny thing: I look forward to my 30s. I look forward to being finished, and not paying tuition, and moving closer to home, and everything else that Being Finally Finished and Growing Up entails. But change always scares me a little, as does the realisation that I'm entering into a phase where I'm preparing for all that change. In yoga yesterday, we worked on paying attention to that space between breaths, on the transition from one physical position to the other, working on doing those things well and mindfully. And that's what I need to do with my life: instead of dragging my feet about the next phase, I need to stop and appreciate where I am now, and prepare myself for what comes next.

We have a plan

After we each have collected 10 gold stars (for each day of running), we get to buy a box of ice cream sandwiches. And can't buy any until we've each gone running 10 times. (That's the hard part.)

Now we just have to come up with bigger prizes, for when we've kept up running for a longer time. And the place where we keep our gold stars has to be portable, so that we can take it with us to Saskatchewan for the summer.

Trying to live up to my name a little less

Late last week, in the middle of Funding Application Madness '09, I went to see one of the University counselors for the first time. Ky's been on my case to do this for a while now, and Chris had started suggesting that it might help me as well, but I finally got my act together and made an appointment. I don't know what I was so scared about; I don't know if somehow I suspected that I'd end up being assigned some crazy person, or that she'd convince me that everything that I held to be normal was completely wrong, or that somehow my life would turn upside down as a result of this. Actually, I don't know what I expected.

But I got an entirely reasonable woman named June, who sat down with me and discussed stress management and methods of structuring my life so that I could motivate myself to get work done and minimise distractions. She suggested that what I needed most was to pick a place where I get my best work done, and dedicate that spot for work. We established that my desk in the office was that spot, since it's the same desk where I wrote my MA thesis, and it's not that spot on the couch where I keep trying to work, but the TV is right there tempting me. This way, when I walk into the office, my brain will already be beginning to think "I'm going to work now." She also suggested that I restart some of my other strategies I instituted when I was writing my MA thesis, such as setting office hours at home, during which time I shut off the phone and maybe the internet too.

This was my homework for the next two weeks: work from my desk, between 9:00am and 2:30pm, with a half-hour lunch break, during which time my phone is shut off, and then stop working at 2:30 and let myself do whatever I want. (I'm also, as of tomorrow morning, going to start running before Chris leaves for school again, so that I leave the house once before I start to work.)

The theory is that I'll put off the blogging, the housework and the phonecalls until after 2:30, rather than spend the entire day in that muddy middle ground of procrastinating and trying to work, where I don't really enjoy the distractions because they make me feel guilty. Now they're rewards. (Not that housework is a reward. But I can put it off for a few hours, knowing that I'll get to it after I've researched for a while.)

So, I started following the schedule today. (I couldn't start on Friday, because that was my Day of Haunting the History Department Until Everyone Gave Me Their Letters of Recommendation, After Which I Could Send Off the Application. I fully expected to spend my Friday like that, and that I was going to purposely take the whole long weekend off, and so I didn't even plan on starting my office hours until today.) Okay, I didn't shut off the phone until the afternoon, because I had an appointment this morning. And, even though I only got two hours of work done this afternoon, I stopped work at exactly 2:30 anyway. Baby steps, people. But it was good practice, getting a few hours of concentrated work done and then putting it away, being satisfied that I've done enough for today. And I did get good work done during those two hours.

Now let's see if I can keep this up.

They are a-changing

Early yesterday morning (on the first day of my fourth year as a PhD student), I drove my friend Christina and her rabbit named Basil to the airport and they moved home to Ontario. Christina was one of my first friends in this department; she started her MA at the same time as I started my PhD. Now that she's gone, the only ones left of my cohort are the handful of us PhD candidates that haven't quit or gone on leave. And most of them are away researching right now.

Academically speaking, I'm going through so much transition right now. I remember how hard it was, three years ago, when I had to start back into coursework. I hated it, because I was used to the solitary life of thesis-writing. Coursework forced me to focus away from my own research! I had to meet new people! I had to talk all day!

And now it's hard transitioning back. My dissertation has stood off in the distance for so long that it's intimidating to approach it at last. And this intimidation has made it hard for me to put my thoughts into words (which is a big reason for the significant blog silence over the summer).

But now I'm finding ways to get to work. It helps that Ky's here: she and I worked together through our undergrad degrees, and she acted as a sounding board when I wrote my MA thesis (and I did the same for her). I'm on my way over to work with her for a while today; she's going through that same back-to-coursework transition that I went through three years ago and so maybe I can help her through that transition a bit. It's nice having some familiarity around. I even have some other familiar faces from my undergrad years kicking around the city now, and somehow that helps me feel more grounded.

Fourth-year PhD candidate. That sounds daunting to me.

Not living up to my name very well

It's going to shock you when I tell you that I haven't been posting because I've been too busy doing actual work. Like, making actual progress on things that I've put off for a long time. (This post runs long, but it's full of news, and so those who know me might want to hang on and keep reading.)

I know: it's stunning. I'll give you a moment to collect yourselves.

I was getting really stressed out because I had planned on applying for a Big Fancy Travel Fellowship by the end of June, which meant that by the end of June I would have had to:
a.) have found a Doktorvater (essentially a supervisor) in Germany
b.) have become fluent in German, or some good-enough equivalent.

Unfortunately, I had made these plans when I thought I'd be done my comps by the end of January. And all of these plans hinged on me being able to go to Germany by next January, which gave me a single semester (plus whatever I could get done while in Saskatchewan this summer) to do, uh, all of my dissertation research. Absolutely everything, so that I could go to Germany and plug whatever holes were left by my secondary sources and cultural sources (my novels, movies, artworks...).

So, for the month of May I mistakenly thought that the reason why I felt so freaked out and frozen by my plans was because I had problems with anxiety. Finally this week I sat down and tried to plan everything out and realised: I'm not frozen by anxiety problems; I'm anxious because I've given myself an impossible task.

And so I started re-adjusting my plans. First, I found out that I really ought to be applying to Big Fancy Travel Fellowship in November instead of this summer (the foundation added a bunch of new deadlines for short-term travel fellowships since the last time I'd checked their site). If I applied now, I'd have to use the funding by next winter. If I wait to apply in November, I could wait until the following autumn to go to Germany.

It's official: my big trip has now been postponed from January to September 2009.

After I made that decision, I realised that if I didn't start preparing for the Big Fellowship right now, summer would disappear and it would be September and I'd be freaking out saying, "I only have a month to learn German and find a Doktorvater!" (Again.) I had to be proactive this time. This meant that I needed to find something that would force me to immerse myself in German learning right now (and I don't have time to take a German course by November, since I'll be in Saskatchewan in July and August). And so I bought a 12-month subscription to Rosetta Stone. That way, it was cheaper than buying the CD-ROM collection, and would force me to get to work right away, so that I could get my money's worth.

Seriously? Rosetta Stone is the best thing ever. I love it so much. It works like my brain does, which means that I want to work on my German every day. I finished an entire unit this week, because I was having so much fun. I remember words and grammar without trying to memorize them. And, since it has speech recognition, I get feedback that tells me when I'm saying things wrong.

So, that's where I've been this week: feverishly working away at everything that I've been avoiding for a month. Suddenly, I'm making progress on my language learning, and I have a solid plan for how I can get my dissertation done in a timely fashion. And I'm actually enjoying myself.

What? First I start running and now I'm not procrastinating?

Learning Balance

This may come as no surprise to anyone, but I'm not very good at maintaining a steady workload. Instead, I have these bursts of energy, and these lulls of inactivity. I try to make myself work, and I procrastinate, and then I finally get some work done, build up momentum, work too hard, wear myself out, and then have trouble getting to work. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, now that the exams are looming, it's a little easier to force myself to work. It's not like I have to work hard to motivate myself. In fact, sometimes I'll be trying to fall asleep and there's a part of my brain that's trying to convince me that I'm not really that sleepy, and in fact there's so much work to do that maybe I should just get up and work a little more.

I've been in a bit of a fog for the past few days. I've been constantly staring at words, constantly staring at my computer screen. But not getting effective work done. And then it occurred to me that I was not actually working well. I wasn't letting myself move around, or leave the house. And so I was getting frustrated at how I could hardly focus on words and wondering why I had a headache.

And so I tried to fix things today. Even though I dawdled a bit in the morning, I made sure that I got started properly: showered, got dressed and ate breakfast first, so that I didn't suddenly find myself in my pyjamas and starving in the middle of the afternoon. I started off reading on the exercise ball, because it helps me concentrate and because I needed to stretch a bit. I used the SAD lamp for a little longer than usual to see if that would help get rid of the mental fog. I ate lots of fruits and vegetables. When Chris came home, we went for a walk. I had a bit of caffeine today, but not too much. I worked in the evening (mostly because of the dawdling in the morning), but did so while Chris was working. And with a movie playing in the background.

So, now? It's midnight and my head is clearer than it's been in days. But I also think I'll be able to sleep. I got effective work done, but it didn't kill me, because I also walked, changed my position a lot, ate properly, and even played the piano. And now there's this little part of my brain that feels like, since the momentum is going, I could keep on working, but I'm going to switch that off now. I'm going to bed so that I can work again tomorrow.

(When I get writing my dissertation, can someone remind me about all these things again? Because I swear that I'm re-inventing the wheel on a daily basis here.)

Letting go

I've lit every candle in the living room and dining room. (It turns out we have a lot of candles.) I've drunk a pot of tea, a mixture of Prairie Berry loose leaf herbal and jasmine. I ordered pizza for supper. I've shut off the TV now.

Chris is out of town. And apparently this is how I'm doing "Home Alone."

I used to love being alone. When Mom and Dad used to go out of town and leave me in charge of the house, the first thing I would do was put my Neil Diamond record on the record player and dance around to "Forever in Blue Jeans." (...I confess.) When Meg and I lived together, I would do essentially the same thing when she'd go out of town, except with ABBA. But somewhere after I moved out here, I stopped being able to be alone. Even though I am usually at home alone during the day, while Chris is at work. But I spend that time procrastinating on the internet (reading blogs feels like you're not alone) and talking on the phone. But I'm trying to re-learn that love of having some space to myself once in a while.

You know, I'd forgotten how lovely it is to spend an evening in complete silence, watching candles flicker.

[Veering further into the introspective. This is what happens when one blogs by candlelight.] This has been a hectic semester already. I think the hardest part of it has been my anxiety about it. It has seemed bigger than I can bear, and most of the time my heart has been beating out of my chest. Sometimes I felt like someone knocked the wind out of me.

But then this week I started making changes. I started acting deliberately, for once. My first step was deciding not to submit an application for a DAAD research fellowship next week. Nothing was coming into place in time, and I was having panic attacks about having my German language (lack of) proficiency tested next week. And, if (on the slim chance) I won, I would have to be ready to do my primary source research in Germany in a year, and I was really doubting that I would be ready. And so I decided to hold off on applying until August.

Somehow, allowing myself to let go of my biggest source of anxiety made all the difference. I sat down and finished my 19th century Europe reading list. I also have been e-mailing back and forth with my supervisor, figuring out my timeline for my comprehensive exams and my research. Not only am I no longer hiding from my supervisor, but we're on the same page and excited about my progress. The funny thing is that I now am excited about putting together my DAAD application for August. I think I'll have a decent shot at it. And I'm anxious to get myself to Germany and do the research I've planned.

And I'm allowing myself to be a competent and confident historian. Today I had my final meeting with my 19th century professor (which I knocked out of the park), in which my professor admitted that working with me has changed the way he does history. I then spent the rest of the afternoon starting my twentieth century list, instead of being overwhelmed by the new list and over-thinking it. And then tonight I allowed myself the evening off. I don't remember when I last did that. A whole evening without guilt.

It feels fantastic.

Play time

(I had two separate thoughts, and so you're getting them in two posts.)

Today, I spent my late afternoon playing Settlers of Catan with a department secretary and several of our Master's students. Why did it not occur to us before that we should periodically stop and play board games? Because that was pretty much the best ever. (It doesn't hurt that I won. By a lot.)

The funny thing is that my brain was sharper and more ready to handle my workload after an hour of board games than it had been after two hours of the half-reading/half-procrastination that I was doing before that. Seriously, sometimes it feels like my brain doesn't work anymore. But then I have an afternoon like that, and I realise that I do have a sharp mind. I just don't allow myself enough times where I immerse myself in either play or work. I just constantly wallow in this half-way point, feeling guilty about both.

And now we're ready

It's funny looking back at what we expected for our life here in Victoria, when we were moving here. We expected that Chris would have a teaching job right away. We expected that I would be involved in the campus Christian groups in the same way that I was involved in IVCF back home. We expected, essentially, our lives back home, but translated into Victoria.

But that's not what happened when we moved here. Chris didn't get a teaching job. I was so overwhelmed by everything that had happened so quickly (getting married, moving, Mike dying, starting a new program, etc.) that I couldn't really handle meeting too many new people. I met our little church group, and I slowly started to meet people in my program, but that was it. We spent a lot of time at home.

But it was really good for us. Chris and I learned how to become each other's best friends. We also learned how to become really close to people outside of our age group, like the wonderful seniors at our church. We also spent a lot of time growing closer to our family.

The odd thing is that now, out of the blue, things that I expected two years ago are now falling into place. First Chris got that teaching job. I've finally gotten in contact with a friend from home, who has lived here in the city for this whole time and yet I've never gotten things together enough to touch base with her. And then, all of a sudden, I found myself gathering up the courage to walk up to the Navigator's table and introduce myself. And I found myself invited to their grad and alumni monthly potluck dinner, which happened this evening.

Bizarrely, in the past few weeks I've had this same conversation so many times: "No, we aren't new to Victoria. Actually, I'm starting my third year at the University. It's just that [Chris didn't find a teaching job until now/I was too busy to get involved in anything else until now]." We being treated like newcomers in a city where we've lived for more than two years.

And yet there are ways that we are new here. For the first time we're making ourselves at home in this city. We've hung up the hammock chair. We've gotten Chris a job. We're finally in the place to deliberately seek out friends. My head's finally in the place where I'm ready to have a normal life here, and let my heart establish some connections.

And that's indescribably fantastic.

I'll just take a tiny little break and post something

Chris just left to pick up an old man from church from the bus depot. As a result of a complicated mix of circumstances, we have an elderly man staying in our spare room tonight and then we're taking him to church. I have supper in the oven already (meatloaf), but there's still a bunch of cleaning to do before our house is old-man-ready .

We've also been spending the weekend reorganising the storage spaces, thanks to the fact that Chris took heaps of teaching resources out of our apartment and now we aren't nearly as tightly-packed as before. We're pulling boxes out from those back corners, where they've sat since we moved in two years ago. Anything that was touching the floor has been sorted through since the flood, but the spare room was untouched by the flood, as were the upper shelves of our bedroom closet. It makes my OCD-tinged heart sing to watch our spare bedroom closet become an orderly place. All those boxes and books in rows. Everything in its place. (The next step will be to find matching baskets to line up on the shelves of our long linen closet, so that everything doesn't feel so jumbled in there. It'll be a while before we tackle that task, but I'm far too excited.*)

I found my childhood journals, during that big reorganisation. I haven't touched them since I packed them to move to Victoria. They were in this big tub that I had taped shut, labelled "Memory Box," and then shoved into a back corner of our closet. But now I guess I'm ready to face myself and do some sorting through of my brain, for the first time since we moved here. I also found that I was finally ready to read my first journal, written between the ages of 14 and 15. I have avoided that book since my later teens, embarrassed by the flowery prose and the italics. Even now, I had only expected that the book would just be good for a laugh at the expense of my teenaged self. But then I started reading between the lines and found that this insight into my fourteen-year-old self was useful for understanding myself now. Even that self that would not write directly about the more serious things going on in my brain and in my life, or would jump away from the serious stuff and retreat right into escapism, especially around the time when Dad went into the hospital for the first time. I'm starting to understand my avoidance tendencies and my procrastination. I'm also starting to accept myself for who I am.

And that's a fantastic thing.

* Chris is confused by the fact that I can completely fail to notice dirty dishes and clutter on the floor, but glory in the painstaking organisation of my bookcase, and idealise about perfecting our closets. I don't pretend to make sense.

How weirdly grown up

I'm sitting here in a science classroom, with test tubes and text books and emergency eye wash stations. And this room belongs to Christopher! And on Tuesday he'll have students!

It's still sinking in that this is really happening. Sometimes I forget; I notice job search sites or pass by a high school and immediately I feel sad about Chris's teaching-jobless state. And then I stop and realise that he does have a teaching position. And it's a good one!

Sometimes you get so used to uncertainty that you don't know how to handle certainty.

Outlet

It's funny how I seem to be constantly reinventing the wheel. If you went through my archives, you'd find that I learn the same lessons over and over. I'm constantly having to learn from myself.

I've been in a funk lately. I've been wandering around in a daze, procrastinating out of a vague feeling of anxiety. I've been feeling like I've been losing time, feeling guilty about wasting time, avoiding everything that makes me feel guilty, and thus wasting even more time. And then the cycle repeats.

While we were eating supper tonight, I hit that point of frustration that I always end up hitting, where I get fed up with the funk and start vocalising what's wrong in my brain. Chris helped me realise exactly why I'm so fed up with comps right now: I have no creative outlet.

Normally, I'm reading for research, meaning that the reading is towards the end goal of writing. I'm processing everything so that I can put my arrange my thoughts creatively into a written work. With the way I'm reading my comps books right now, there's no creative outlet. I'm just passively receiving information quickly, day after day after day. Book after book after book. And that's tiring.

That's when I realised that I need to change the way I'm doing things. First, I need to change the way I'm reading. I need to use those creative little tricks I use when I have writer's block, especially right now while I'm in the reading version of writer's block. (Reader's block?) And so I'm wearing my "psychedelic princess dress,"* with candles lit around me and folk music playing. Using the same tricks I've been using since high school. It's so silly that it cheers me up and gets me working.

Step one: silly up my work environment, to break out of the funk.

Step two: change my free time activities, so that I'm finding more creative outlets. When all I'm doing is watching TV and reading stuff on the internet, I'm just doing more passive receiving, filling my head with more unprocessed information. Chris and I are thinking up different activities for the evenings this week: on Thursday we're making apricot freezer jam. I'm also going to try my hand at making pesto, considering how much fresh basil we now have. There's a part of my brain that's also seriously thinking about making some non-breadmaker bread. I think all that kneading would be good for me.

Apparently, I love to cook. I'm also trying to spend more time playing the keyboard, because playing music helps me a lot. Writing on this blog is also good for me, actually, because it's an opportunity for me to write.

I'm going to look around and start evaluating what makes me feel creative and energised, and what drains my energy. I need to start making this a priority, because I'm getting bogged down by all this reading.

* A neon pink medieval-looking dress that I found at Value Village in the summer before grade 12. I had briefly toyed with wearing it as a grad dress, but then found a fuschia 70s bridesmaid dress to wear instead.

Allowing myself to be human

I just got an e-mail from my grad chair, telling me that she's in the midst of putting together a request for an extension for my comps (as my expected deadline for my exams is August, and I'm not expecting to write until October). She said that this is totally a normal thing, and that Grad Studies will absolutely grant me an extension, but the form requires her to give a reason for my delay. And so...did I have any ideas of what she could put there?

Meaning: So, what happened last semester? And how are you doing?

And so I put together a response for her. An honest one, which she could then filter into an official response. I knew I could do that, because my grad chair is spectacular and is the sort of person who takes her job very seriously and expects us to come to her and talk honestly about how we're really doing. (She frequently reminds us that part of her job is to encourage us to vent to her about any frustrations we're having with our programs.)

While it was good for me to open up to Dr. Grad Chair, it was also difficult, because I had to come to terms with how ridiculously terrible last semester was. Seriously, I can't think of a worse semester that I've had, for bad things happening that would cause me delays. Do you know how hard it was for me to write out essentially, "Well, of course part of the delay was the fact that there were complications with my supervision and my reading lists. But also I was delayed by a chain of three family emergencies that happened within a few weeks of each other: my grandmother died, at about the same time as my father went into Intensive Care, right about the same time as my apartment flooded and we ended up without a home for a couple of weeks. And all of that added up to me losing more than a month."

It's hard to allow myself to be that human, in the academic setting. I'm still getting over my old expectation that I have to be, to use Anastasia's term, "a brain on a stick." It's hard to admit to professors that I have a family, that I have feelings and difficulties and reasons for delays. When I started my MA, I really tried to act like a brain on a stick. If I was scheduling a meeting with a professor, my only valid reasons for not being available at certain times had to be academic. I had the toughest time admitting to Dr. B that, during my final month of thesis revisions, I was nannying the Wee Girlie and therefore could only meet during non-naptime times. The funny thing is that he didn't care, so long as I was still on schedule for finishing.

The circumstances of my life, and all of you, have helped me get past those unrealistic expectations of myself. I'm really getting okay at being a human academic. In fact, I idealise about it, and am always the one advocating that we in academia must show our human sides.

And yet there are those times when it's still difficult. It was hard writing that e-mail today, coming to terms with the fact that I lost a couple of months of productivity due to family emergencies (in addition to more "valid" academic reasons). But I knew that I needed to be honest, and that I have to get used to telling people (beyond my grad student friends) that I'm human and that I'm part of a family.

A lot of work for a table we bought for $10 at a garage sale

Just as a reminder, here's how our table used to look:


That was before Chris spent a fortune on chemical paint strippers, scrapers, scouring pads, and sandpaper (both for our power sander and our landlord's, since our landlord has a super-powerful one, and we have a little one that's good for details). He then proceeded to remove all four layers of gloopy oil paint: gross forest green, pale green, yellow, and pink. Yes, the table's original colour was pink!

He brought it right down to bare wood, using a combination of chemicals, power sanders, and sanding by hand. There was oil-paint-laden sawdust everywhere, including my lungs. (There were a few mornings where I sounded like I'd been smoking for the past 30 years.)

Then went to Home Depot and discovered that, because Chris removed all the paint, we were going to have to prime it. Here's an excerpt of the conversation I had with the Home Depot paint guy, which Chris was away looking at paint chips:

HDG: "Seriously, did he really bring it down to bare wood?"

QoWP: "Bare wood. And you wouldn't believe how many layers of oil paint it used to have."

HDG: "How long would that take?"

QoWP: "Three days."

HDG: "Who would even want to do that?"

QoWP: "My husband's very thorough."

I was so torn by all of your fantastic suggestions, that I just told Chris all the options and let him pick. He ended up deciding on exactly the same colour that Brandy suggested:
"Bitter Chocolate," otherwise known as "in some lights, it looks black, but if you shine a bright light on it you realise that it's brown." We also went all fancy and bought a new drawer pull.

In the end, it would have cost the same to go and buy a new table, but we love it.

(However, when Chris started talking about re-painting the end table that holds our TV -- a process that would involve sanding veneer and somehow adding shelves -- I went to the Sears website and bought a TV stand that has actual shelves and only cost us $30. I've had enough costly DIY for one weekend.)

Hello, lamppost, watcha knowin'?

I think I'm finally learning to take care of myself. (Okay, other than that whole "I ate tortilla chips for supper because Chris was at work" thing.) After the emotionally stressful Wednesday that I had, I structured Thursday after what I needed: I cooked all morning (our best broccoli soup yet), did a whole bunch of work at the University all afternoon, and then walked home from the University, taking a detour through the campus gardens. I meandered home, with my camera out. I took pictures of bunnies and flowers and trees. Then, I cancelled any plans that I had for the evening and read Jane of Lantern Hill.

And today I'm going shopping with some of the girls from the department.

Sigh. This is good. I don't even have to feel guilty about productivity, because I read a whole book and did all my planned library work yesterday!

Jiggety-jig

Yes, I'm home now. We didn't end up moving home until Saturday morning, because we went out for supper with someone from our church and it went late, and so we didn't feel like packing up and moving after that.

Now we're home, and everything's surreal. It's like we're moving in to this same place all over again, with our stuff in boxes and everything feeling so temporary right now. Except that all of our fridge magnets are already up and our dishes are in the high shelves. (The flood guys only emptied out our bottom cabinets, which got wet.)

The construction isn't done yet. They got it to the place where we can live here while they're finishing the work, but it'll still be another half-week before the mudding, painting and nailing is done. We can't bring our shelves and tables back into the living room yet, because that would get in the way of their work.

To fight against the chaotic and temporary feelings, we've gotten ourselves a couple of presents for the house. We bought a pretty new cordless phone, because both of our old phones are on their last legs, and got a bunch of baskets to organise the jumble of our utensil drawers and spice cabinet. Since everything got emptied out, we might as well organise as we put things back. (I'm also in the process of washing everything, because there's nothing like having everything torn up and dust flying everywhere and men trampling around in muddy boots for a week and a half to give your apartment that grimy feeling.) We also bought a bunch of colourful tulips to brighten up the place.

The Island is helping us with our spring cleaning; when we moved home, we discovered that Spring had suddenly arrived. The trees are blooming! And daffodils! And the rhododendron outside! It's still a shock to us (in spite of the fact that the blooming started a couple of weeks later than last year), because it wasn't that long ago that I was in Saskatchewan, braving -40 temperatures.

I don't know when things are going to be back to normal. I was talking about this with Mom. We don't even know what "normal" will look like, after everything that's happened. But I'm starting to handle things, and starting to make things work.

God takes care of me

I should have been asleep an hour ago, but I've been playing around with these Blogger labels and reading through old posts (you know, to figure out how to categorise them). And then I came across this post from the summer. It was a list of all the things that I felt like I needed, and yet didn't have the money to buy, making the point that I had to work on my discontentment issues.

The list looked like this:

1. I'd buy myself some really good walking shoes.
2. I'd replace that laptop of mine, which is getting cracks in the monitor.
3. I'd buy a good electric piano, with full keyboard and weighted, touch-sensitive keys.
4. I'd get a couch exactly the same as the one we're borrowing right now, and never have to return to futon-as-couch living.
5. I'd buy a whole bunch of new clothing.
6. At Christmas, I'd fly to Texas for my friend's wedding.

Well. Let's re-visit that list, shall we?

1. Very shortly after that, I went to Saskatchewan for that conference. While I was there, my Mom took me shopping for an early birthday present: walking shoes. Really nice hikers. She looked at that list and thought, "Well, at least I can take care of the first one."
2. Well, I've adapted. I don't travel with the laptop anymore, and I've mended the major cracks. We can wait until we can afford a new one. (An external hard drive is higher up on the list, because it's a small fraction of the price of a new laptop, and then I don't have to worry about what happens if the laptop dies.)
3. That summer, a family we know gave us a keyboard. I already had it at that point, but the difference was that I started playing it after that. And then I got up the courage to start playing the piano in church. And now I get to play the piano all the time, and our church is no longer lacking an accompanist. (Actually, someone offered us a nice electric organ, and we realised that we don't have space here for anything more than that keyboard we have.)
4. We still have that couch, and we're all happy with this trade situation for right now. As we're currently storing this wonderful leather couch for someone, I couldn't buy a couch even if I could afford it.
5. I have plenty of clothes now. It helps that I got those shoes, a good sweater for Christmas, and I bought a nice pair of dress pants.
6. That wedding ended up happening in Regina, and I went to it!

A few months later, and none of those are issues anymore. Wow.