Neti Pot?

I am getting sick, a party I have planned for graduation is being overtaken by my in-laws' demands (now with extra houseguests, including Great Grandpa in the upstairs office), and the flight I have to book to Arkansas in a couple of weeks takes off at 6:35. In the A.M., people. I really need to start saying no to stuff.

And every time I return from a trip the kids' behavior goes straight to hell. I am getting tired of people in this house thinking they can start crying and carrying on every time a simple request is denied. And the phrase "But I want it" or "But I need it" is not something I need to hear repeated 80 thousand times at the level of a shriek. Just saying. I'm tired.

I am in a bad mood. But anyway, getting sick has me thinking about the neti pot. A lot of people have sworn by it so now I am thinking, I should probably go get a neti pot. It seems kind of disgusting but on the other hand, I suddenly remembered tonight that I basically used to do the exact same thing in a less controlled manner during my childhood summers.

We used to go stay with our grandparents in Pennsylvania, and I had allergies there. I couldn't breathe and it made it hard to sleep, so my grandmother would prepare a bowl of warm salt water. Then she would tell me to snort the water up one nostril, and then the other. It was uncomfortable, but it worked. She always knew how to make things better.

Trip

Huh. What a great trip!

Good session, interesting comments and insights that helped me think through a couple of issues with the paper I'm revising.

Fun times with people I haven't seen in a long time. Decent food, good wine, laughing so hard I cried.

I talked on the phone with Nora today and I wonder if maybe it was a mistake to call. She chatted on and on happily about all kinds of things that I couldn't tell you, because I was outside and there was traffic noise and I couldn't really hear her well enough to understand anything, other than the fact that she apparently climbed the stairs while talking to me. But when it was time to say good bye she got very upset and started crying, and I felt bad for her and for Jake because I introduced chaos into the house that he now had to deal with.

I have had so much fun at conferences this spring. Each one has been great. But I feel so guilty for traveling so much!

My Weekend Ends a Day Early

Nora's hair has been kind of a disaster as it's grown out; it's still thin in that toddler way, different parts are growing at different rates, and she's suffered under my hack job attempts to trim her bangs and hair. So today I finally took her to get an actual professional hair cut in an actual salon to try to neaten up all of the weirdness her hair has suffered. I didn't know how she would handle this, but I took her to a place that specializes in kids' hair cuts figuring that if she cried, at least they'd be used it it.

And she was a trouper! Nora got to sit in a seat shaped like a car for her haircut; it was a yellow taxicab. There were also cartoons on but she ignored them and instead spent the entire time driving the car and, unbeknownst to us, slowly unscrewing the bolt that held the steering wheel on, so it fell off and clattered to the ground halfway through her haircut. But it was all fine, and although Nora was basically silent throughout (a true rarity), she didn't get scared or cry, and her hair looks better now. It's still kind of wild, halfway in between wavy and curly, but at least it's out of her eyes.

Buddy came to work with a cold last week, and now the kids are sick. Milo had a 103 temperature today, and his cheeks were bright pink. In the afternoon Jake took Nora outside and in an unprecedented move, Milo didn't want to go out. He just wanted to sit on the sofa and read books with me, so that is what we did.

I go to Denver tomorrow. At least it's a direct flight. The weather isn't even supposed to be nice, which is kind of a bummer, but I'm looking forward to seeing people.

And now I have to travel again in 2 weeks down to Arkansas, which is weird. It'll be a short, 2-day trip. I have to go down there to get filmed providing some expert commentary on something. I am not super concerned about what I'll say, but I'm worried about the important things, of course; what should I wear? I kind of remember that solid colors are better than patterns. I suddenly feel like I need a light blue fitted collared shirt, why of all things do I need that? I don't know. I totally lack the appropriate professorial accoutrements for providing this kind of commentary (i.e. pipe, elbow patches, beard...). Also, all of my jackets are either too dated (from interviewing or early professor times), too edgy (cute but not good for looking authoritative), or otherwise flawed in some way. I feel like if I were the kind of person who had it more together, I'd have a better collection of hip-but-not-too-hip jackets for occasions such as these.

Outing

This morning the twin whisperer came by and we took the kids to the capitol building. They like to run around on the lawns, make music on the big bell with their coins, and ride the elevator (Milo) or walk up and down the marble stairs (Nora).

There were about 200 elementary school kids from around the state visiting the capitol today.

It's always good to run around and let off some steam before lunch:

Toddlers are Strange

Today I talked to Nora on the phone briefly before I came home from work. After she told me about how she ate blueberries and was going to go outside, it was time to say good bye. I said, "Bye sweetie, I love you!" and she said, "I love you Mommy! I'm hugging the phone!" That last part was said to Jake to explain her weird behavior.

Tonight at dinner Milo said "Hard shovel!" and I was all, "Uh, hard shovel?" Jake clarified "Milo worked hard shoveling today" and Milo chimed in, "I'm a hard-working man!" As I was laughing at that, he said, "Actually I'm a wild thing!"

I didn't exactly have children just to provide endless amusement, but, I kind of did. So far it's working out.

Meetings That Give Me Heartburn

I know that this was a blog that started out being about the kids and now it is about the tenure process. But that is my life right now.

My tenure meeting was today. In years past this meeting always lasted about 5 minutes. People would look at my stuff and say "looks good, keep on keepin' on", and then we'd all go home. Today it lasted an hour, because it's shifted from "looks good" to "here are all of the things we need to start doing now to begin building your case." These are logistical things like who to solicit for letters, how to begin assembling data on the journals I publish in, etc., etc. We are gearing up to write the case and I'm not even going up for another year and a half!

One of the members of my 3-person tenure committee is currently on the divisional committee, which is extremely helpful. She knows what makes a good case and has all kinds of specific advice. We are also going to add a 4th person to my committee who is currently the chair of divisional, as he has been helpful to me so far. So I feel like I have very savvy and knowledgeable people on my side in this process.

One of my committee members started off the meeting by saying "As far as I'm concerned you could go up in the fall. You're ready." I am not going to revisit that decision, I'm taking all the time I can get and will not go up next year, but it felt nice to hear. My committee thinks I have a strong case and I trust their judgment. So that's good.

It will be important, as I approach this process, to separate my body of work from the tenure process itself. I think my body of work is strong. But it is also true that the tenure process is unpredictable and always changing, and that means there is no way to have confidence that it will be a success for me. It should be, but due to the nature of the process, I know that it might not be. I need to remember that that's about the process, not about me or my work.

Kids: Tonight at dinner, Milo told me he'd like his peanut butter toast (what can I say -- Jake made dinner before I got home). Then he took a closer look at his plate and said "It's peanut butter bagel, actually."

After dinner Jake picked up Nora while I was busy doing dishes. She hugged him and said "I love you Daddy!" (Awwww!) Then she demanded, "TAKE ME OVER TO MOMMY!"

Too Tired for Coherence or a Theme

Posts detailing lists of things people have to do are deeply boring (sort of like writing about your dreams), so I will refrain, but suffice it to say that the list of stuff I have to do in the next couple of months dramatically outweighs the amount of time in which I have to do it, and this is anxiety provoking.

I took on too much, and it was a mistake. Now I have to figure out how to dig out of the hole.

Meanwhile, this week is sandwiched in between two trips and involves us hosting two post-doc candidates, which means meetings, talks, and hardest of all, dinners out.

We had rain all weekend. You know what rain all weekend means, when there are no story hours or toddler gyms and the children's museum is closed until August? It means two antsy kids.

Some guy exposed himself on the bike path to a female jogger near our house. Same route I took this morning on my run. I am angry about these creepy bike path incidents and refuse to start being too afraid to use the path.

While I was gone, Milo slammed the door on Nora's fingers so Jake had to take her to urgent care today. She seems to be okay (they aren't broken, apparently). It was pretty bad, though.

I have solid meetings tomorrow 9:30 - 4:30! Including, at the end of the day, my tenure committee meeting. We'll see how that goes.

The hardest thing for me about parenthood is the never-ending exhaustion. Every single morning I drag myself out of bed with my brain and body kicking and screaming. Exhaustion is like a second skin I wear all the time. If I took my sleep issues seriously enough to change careers because of it, you'd think I would have thought twice about how children would mess with that. Kids are not night owls (at least mine aren't).

One of the best things is how weird and funny kids are. Especially mine. They're awesomely entertaining.

Postscript

Before bed tonight I had this conversation with Nora:

Jake: Did you miss Mommy when she was gone in California?

Nora: Yeah!

Me: I missed you too, sweetie!

Nora: I was sad!

Me: You were sad, and I was gone in California, but then I came back home, didn't I? It's so nice to be home with you now!

Nora: I'm happy now!

They're Growing Up

I was only gone for 4 days but it feels like I left a couple of toddlers and came back to a couple of kids! The kids are talking so much now, and say new things all the time. There have been noticeable changes even in this week when I've been gone!

For instance, Milo, our very boyish little boy, now wipes off any kiss we give him.

Nora has glommed onto the phrase "I love", so this morning she told me, "I love down by the station!" (a book). This afternoon she was sitting on the potty and she told me, "I love this potty!" Then she hugged me, while on the potty.

Also, it's hard to describe, but just the nature of their talking feels like kid talking now, especially with Milo. He was chattering away all afternoon telling me things like "I caught several ladybugs today", and "I want to make Lucas go on the garbage truck! Lucas will climb on the garbage truck and put the garbage away!" Lucas is a stuffed moose that Milo has taken a liking to, which is also new as of this week. I don't know why he named the moose Lucas.

And Nora, she's greeting people like she's the town butterfly now. This evening at the park our neighbors approached and she said "Hi, Millie! Hi, Sue! How are you?"

The changes are coming fast and furious.

Conference Life

Oh, it has been SUCH a good conference. So many ideas! And connections! So many compelling talks! I love it when the talks I attend get me totally fired up to make a connection in my own research, or try something new. Some of the speakers are doing things strongly related to what I've been doing, so we shared notes and found out that we have much to discuss and connect, and that is so invigorating.

I had a working meeting with a couple of co-authors for another book we're going to write for NCTM. The first book just came out, and now I'm slated to do two more with different people, and one of them is so nebulous and ill defined and kind of out of my area of expertise anyway that I sort of wonder why I'm writing it. But I have some ideas, and so do my co-authors, and it looks like we're going to get together in late May for a couple of days to try to hammer out an outline. The only problem is that they both live far away so this means travel, again...I don't even want to think about telling Jake. I'm trying to convince my co-authors to fly to my town instead. Since they're very nice people they seem pretty open to that.

The panel that I gave with a couple of other people about how to publish in a particular journal went so well that it looks like we're going to try to write it up into a little article, which is a great idea. I'm psyched about that.

A more senior professor at a different institution chatted with me for a while and started praising my work a lot...this matters only because now I can put him into the category of letter writers. Phew! It looks like this guy will be a good person to get a letter from. Every time somebody says something good about my work I get this feeling like "Oh! Wow, so you don't think I totally suck? Holy cow! I'm going to mentally file you away as a potential letter writer now! This is great!"

My mentor saw another senior person chatting me up and immediately thought of this guy in terms of letter writers too. He was on the same page as me: "Maybe we should have [famous guy] write a letter...but I'm not sure. Do you think he likes your work?" "I don't know," I said, "I'll need to send him a draft first and feel him out. I'm wary." My mentor replied, "Yeah, so am I. Be careful."

Speaking of my mentor, here is the best thing of all. One night we went to a reception for my old grad school institution. So anyway we went and talked to everybody and so forth, and there was this one lady there who had an iPad. So we were playing with it and admiring it, and my mentor, who had had a couple of beers by then, suddenly said "You know, I just got notice that I have $1500 from the secondary project fund that I have to spend by the end of May, and I can't spend it on salary, it has to be equipment. So how about I get us a couple of iPads with that money?" And I said "Uh, YES, that sounds like a GREAT idea!" and then started jumping up and down. How cool would that be?

Later we went to dinner with some other colleagues and one of my old grad school friends, who has 10-year old twins and she kept talking to me about how much better and better and better it gets, which was super awesome to hear. Seriously.

It has taken a decade of attending conferences but now I finally feel like I'm at a point where I feel like I belong. It's kind of hard to explain.

On another night I got to catch up with one of my very best friends from grad school, who still lives in San Diego, as well as my sister, who is the sweetest person ever. So much fun. Even typing this, that I had fun doing these things, leaves me a little guilty because I feel so guilty for being out of town. Jake says that Nora has been asking for me constantly. Being away is such a huge luxury but the pull to get back home is always very strong, like I'm doing something bad by being gone. And so off I go, now, to get on that plane.

Moments

There were some nice moments this weekend.

Jake and I took some time off Friday night and watched a few episodes of Mad Men. Man, is that show amazing. It felt great to goof around and not work.

My knee has been injured this week, so instead of running on the bike path today, I strapped on my ankle weights and took a 4-mile hike along the lake. It was sunny and beautiful.

Today we spent the whole afternoon at the park by the lake, which is about a 5-minute walk from our house. The kids played in the playground and then we walked to the dock to look for ducks. There were no ducks, but two dogs were playing in the water. Nora and Milo ran through the giant grassy field. Back at the playground, Milo spent a good 20 minutes using small shovels to pour pea gravel into a bucket. The shovels belonged to another kid, Aiden. Later Aiden and his dad, Hiro, pushed Milo around on a trike.

There was a family nearby picnicking on the lawn. That seemed like a nice idea that we should do soon.

Milo gave me many hugs and kisses this weekend.

Yesterday, I thought I heard Nora say "I want to wrestle like a moose!" I said, "You want to wrestle like a moose?!?" She replied, kind of exasperated, "I want to wrestle with a moose!" Like get with the picture, Mom, nobody wants to wrestle like a moose. That'd be crazy!

This afternoon Nora said "I don't like summer. I want summer to go away. I don't want summer to watch me." I said, "Who's summer?" Nora thought for a moment, and then said "This wipe is all dried out!"

Toddlers. You never get a straight answer out of them.

Tomorrow I have to travel, but it'll be okay. There are moments I'm looking forward to.

Like seeing one of my best grad school friends, and the inevitable late night of drinks and confessions that will follow.

And freshly made tortillas, and tamales, and ripe avocados.

And the evening wine hour at my hotel.

I'm looking forward to the slate of interesting talks, and to the feeling of relaxation and looseness that will come the moment that my own talk is over.

And the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners arranged with people I'm excited to see.

I'm also looking forward to the night of margaritas that my mentors have promised me, designed to soothe the savage tenure beast that threatens to destroy my very existence.

Okay, that was way over the top, but there's nothing like an out-of-town night on the town to decompress together after what has been a pretty hellish couple of weeks for everybody.

I See Me

We have some books that we store up high because they're kind of fragile. Tonight Milo and Nora asked to look at them, so I started reading one of the books to Milo while Nora started paging through the other one. Nora kept saying something over and over again and I finally tuned in. She was pointing to something on the front page (the copyright page, not part of the actual book) and saying "This spells, 'I see me'."

Which it did. It was the logo at the bottom of the copyright page.

I asked her "how did you know that?", which is a crazy thing to ask a 2-year old. Of course I didn't get anything out of that, so I asked "Who showed you that?" She said "Daddy."

I asked Jake and he said "I never told her that. We haven't read that book in weeks or months." My guess is that he or somebody else did, a long time ago, and we creaky old grown ups have forgotten, what with our fuzzy memories.

Kids have amazing memories.

Questions

Why do thunderstorms almost always seem to happen at night? I'm sure there is an explanation for this. We get rain in the daytime, but the thunder and lightening almost always waits for night, particularly after midnight.

What is Nora plotting here?

Why is Milo trying to walk down the slide? It had something to do with a ladybug, but it wasn't clear to me.

What on earth is going on here? Yoga? Is Nora praying that I won't make her go to bed?

Today at the park Milo embarrassed me by being a toddleresque jerk. He and Nora were on the merry go round, and another little boy got on with them. This kid was half a year younger than M&N. Milo said, "I don't like that girl." I said, "That's a boy, honey" and Milo said "I don't like that boy." Fortunately the kid was too out of it to have any idea what he was saying, but his PARENTS were right there. I told Milo that it's not polite to say you don't like people, and the kid could be on the merry go round if he wanted, but it seemed like a completely insufficient response to his mean remark. Huh. Come to think of it, I probably should have made Milo apologize after saying that. It didn't occur to me at the time. I was so embarrassed that my mind turned into a complete blank.

Usually Milo is so sweet with the other kids, so I don't know what he had against this random kid.

Today Jake was tickling Nora and she said "Stop harassing me!" Then a bit later Milo tried to give Nora a hug and she said "Let me be!" This kid does not welcome too much touching, that's for sure.

Last night we were eating pasta and Milo said "My pasta is red!" Then he thought for a moment, and said "Actually, it's orange!" Somehow his use of actually just cracks me up.

I have to travel again next week. I leave on Monday and return Thursday night. Poor Jake. Then I'm home for a week and then I have to travel again. After that, no more travel for 6 weeks.

US News & World Report came out today. Our dept. is #1. You'd think that if we were as great as we supposedly are, then we wouldn't be the worst paid group of faculty in the big 10. But we are. So, hmmm. Why is that? And why do I have to go on the market and get another job offer if I ever want to get a raise?

Speaking of which, why is my grad student, who just got hired at a nice state university in a hot deserty state, getting a salary of exactly 10k more that I currently make? It's called compression. I am genuinely glad for him, but ticked off on my own behalf.

In other news, we have this guy on campus whose job it is to communicate our research, awards, contributions, etc. to the public. So he called to see what additional venues he could use to advertise my recent NSF grant, where to get it written up, etc. And the only thing I could think of was, can you get me a spread in my alumni magazine? Because then all the jerks who dumped my ass in college can see how great I am now! Mwah hah hah. Okay, not really. They would probably see it and think "Wow, what a nerd, and boy does she look old, and her front teeth didn't get any smaller in the meantime either, and what's up with that hair?" So maybe it's best to stay away from any alumni news write-ups!

Tenure Vignettes

In the office yesterday:

Me: You know, I'm going to be your first case and I don't really like that.
Mentor: Well --
Newer Colleague: Yeah, I'm glad you're going up before me. You can be the test case for him to prove that he is capable of writing a successful case.
Mentor: Hah!
Me: Well, I don't like the idea of being a test case. What if you're no good at it?
Newer Colleague: Then you'd be screwed!
Me: This sucks. You'd better be good!
Mentor, with authority: I am good.

He better be.

Miscellaneous Bits from a Spring Weekend

I am so demoralized and am tired of waking up at 3 a.m. and breaking into a cold sweat of tenure-related fear, but I tried to enjoy normal life this weekend. I started to realize that putting everything in my life off until tenure is going to be a really bad strategy if I don't get tenure. So maybe I should stop thinking that way and should just enjoy what I have now, come what may.

The department was a grim place on Friday, but the neighborhood was a cheerful place this weekend. It got warmer and warmer through the weekend and culminated in a gorgeous 70 degree afternoon today. I got most of my plants planted, the kids went to the zoo and rode on the carousel, and we spent a lot of time outdoors.

I have ordered my cap & gown for escorting my grad students across the stage next month. It is very exciting. Jake is also graduating and his parents are coming to that, and he is thinking about having a party. Today Jake called up his brother to see if he would come out here for the graduation and the party. Predictably (in my mind), his brother said no, because he's not the kind of guy who likes to do things for other people or adhere to other people's agendas. Instead, he's the kind of guy who decides when he wants to do something or go somewhere, and then he tells Jake to do it, and Jake always goes along. Wanting to please everybody. Jake was sad and disappointed that his brother doesn't want to come to town (he lives about a 4-hour drive away). I feel so bad for him. Jake always does what his family wants, and his family pretty much never does what he wants, and I see how hurtful that is to him.

Jake is always so concerned about pleasing other people that I think it kind of surprises him when other people aren't like that.

I am remembering my own Ph.D. graduation (I didn't bother walking in my master's graduation), and a ton of my family and friends came. Like, actually flew on airplanes to attend, which was so great. I felt very lucky and supported and loved. Graduation coincided with my dissertation defense so it was a giant weekend. Meanwhile, this year I have two Ph.D. students graduating, but they're not defending until June, so there will be quite a separation between the two for them. But they're basically done (all but crossing the t's and dotting the i's), so it's all good.

Today Nora tried an actual real carrot. Didn't like it, but she did eat it. Milo didn't try it, which is a bit of a switch. Milo has developed a bizarrely annoying habit of yelling at the cats, and then cracking up at his own cruelty. By yelling, I mean he'll just excitedly run around going "Aaaaaaaaaaaa!! Ah hah ha ha ha ha ha!"

Nora's latest activity is reading on the potty. Tonight she read an alphabet book for about 15 minutes, identifying all of the letters and the pictures. No luck on the potty front, though.

Here are pictures of Nora, taken when Milo was still napping. Milo naps at least a solid hour longer than Nora every single day. In the video below, my guess is that Nora uses gibberish to explain what the book says because she can't make any sense of it, unlike her own books that have pictures and familiar stories. So this grown-up book is like something in a foreign language to her. Interestingly, Nora really enjoys paging through grown-up books, pretending to read like we do.

Oh My God

I probably shouldn't talk about this. So I won't share the details. Somebody who should have did not get tenure.

I am going on the job market next year.

Phones

I have the dumbest, most ridiculous problem. Our house phone finally bit the dust. I was thinking, maybe we should just ditch the landline and use our cells, but the problem is, neither of us has a cell phone that works in the house. Our nanny's phone doesn't work in the house. My friends' phones don't work in our house. Cell phones don't work in our house. And when it's January and -10 out, I don't want to have to conduct all of my conversations outside. So I am very reluctant to buy a nice cell phone that I may not ever be able to use at home.

So I bought a new landline phone, which we got yesterday, but it turns out we need some sort of DSL filter (not included) to make this phone usable, as right now the static is so crazy you can't hear anything.

So tonight my friend called me on the house phone. She was calling about our other friend, whose tenure decision was today. I haven't heard from my other friend even though she said she would let us know, so I've been wondering. So when my first friend called, I thought, she has news! But I couldn't hear her through the static on my phone! So I said, I'll call you back on the cell. Well, Jake's phone had no bars and no reception. And no battery, so I couldn't use it outside because it needed to be plugged in. So I tried my phone, which is a cheap pay-as-you-go phone, and it had 4 bars outside but I couldn't make any calls because it said "service unavailable"! WTF, phone! I swear, why is it so impossible for me to have a usable phone???

3 different phones, no way to actually talk to somebody on the phone. I ended up pulling our old dying phone out of the garbage and plugging it in and calling my friend that way (thank goodness her number didn't include an 8, since that phone can't dial an 8). And after all that, I only found out that she hasn't heard anything either, and she was just calling to check if I had the news.

So the end result is, if you want to talk to me, call me at the office! Argh!

Crazy spring

It's April 8 and we woke up to snow! And then it proceeded to snow throughout the morning. It's currently 34 degrees with an expected high of 45.

You know what's funny, though, is that it somehow feels warmer than a day exactly like this would have felt two months ago. We had days like this in February, but the difference was that we still had about 2 feet of snow sitting around waiting to melt, and all of the trees were bare. Today it's cold but the grass everywhere is still a vibrant shade of green, and the buds are showing on the trees, and there are daffodils and tulips blooming. Somehow it just seems better, easier, to endure a cold day in April than in February.

I'm still jealous of my NYC friends who have had summer weather this week, though!

Little Things

Today the kids had story time at the library. There is a lady there who runs it whose name is Karen, and Nora seems to love Karen because she talks about her all the time. There is also a guy who helps out called Gorilla Ben. Is he in a gorilla suit? I assume so. Buddy takes them, so I've never been. Today I asked Nora if she could sing a song for me that she learned at story time. She thought for a moment and then started singing "duh duh duh duh...give a little clap!" (Claps hands) "duh duh duh...stomp your feet!" (Stomps feet). She then seemed to get sort of stuck, and declared, "I need to have my shoes on to do it!"

As we were going upstairs to go to bed I was standing in the middle of the gate, inadvertently blocking Milo's way. He waited patiently for a moment, and then he said "EXCUSE ME, Mommy!" That's the first time I've heard him use that phrase to indicate that somebody was blocking his way. Such a polite little guy!

Today for lunch Nora actually ate some rice and chicken (this was an Indian curry dish I'd made). I couldn't believe it. She is really making progress. She has also taken to eating meatballs recently, which is another development. Every step towards eating "real" food is great progress. I still haven't gotten Nora to eat any vegetables that aren't in pureed baby food form, but she did try a tomato, which was something. Baby steps. A while back we were really reaching crisis mode with the kids and meals, so much so that they would cry every time dinner arrived, and it would be a horrible stressful situation. At some point I just deliberately stopped caring about what and whether they ate, and now things are much better. I don't spend much time coaxing either of them to eat stuff. If they don't want to, fine. Dinner is no longer the nightly disaster that it used to be, and of course ironically now that I invest much less into their eating, they both eat better. There are some nights when they basically don't eat. And you know what, I think it's okay. They just eat more the next day at breakfast. Now some nights one or both kids will be so ready for dinner that they'll climb into their seats themselves and demand that the meal starts. What a change!

Easter

First we dyed eggs, the night before.

Easter morning, the kids got up and opened a couple of presents from their various grandparents while I made french toast. I wanted to get some real food into them before the Easter baskets and candy hit. They got some trucks from Grandmom Lee and love them, even though it is no substitute for the real thing! (For instance -- once the kids were happily eating breakfast and Jake was downstairs, I used that opportunity to go upstairs and go to the bathroom and get dressed. And...yup. Only about 1 or 2 minutes in, I could hear them crying and screaming downstairs. Now that Grandmom is gone, I can once again no longer go to the bathroom without all hell breaking loose. It's so...tiring.)

Then the kids played with their Easter baskets and searched for eggs, both real and plastic, in the sunroom. They didn't really get the point of finding eggs, and Nora didn't want to put them in her basket, instead attempting to hoard them all under her chin. By the way, both kids were very excited to eat a hard boiled egg for breakfast, after having dyed them the night before. The verdict, however, wasn't positive: "I don't like egg!"

I did let the kids eat some chocolate candy from their basket and mini egg hunt, and it was wild. Nora had chocolate all over her mouth and was practically frothing in joy. Milo ate slowly and steadily. Both were just amazed at all of the chocolate they were eating. It wasn't exactly a lot, but to have it actually in their hands, in their control, was something pretty exciting to them.

At 11 a.m. we had a big neighborhood egg hunt in the park. Fortunately the kids got to go by age, so the 1- and 2-year olds were able to hunt for eggs first and each kid got 12 eggs. They were not hard to find, since there were hundreds of eggs lying everywhere, but it was still pretty funny how hard it is for Milo & Nora to spot and pick up an egg.

Here Milo found one!

Milo shows off his stash:

Nora displays her egg. The eggs had little toys or candies in them.

Here Nora is a little peeved that she has to stop hoarding eggs (limit was 12 per kid).

And THEN the most exciting thing happened -- the Easter bunny came! Here he is giving Nora some candy.

Nora couldn't believe it. This thing kept giving her candy! She had absolutely no shyness with him, once she realized chocolate was involved. If I didn't stop her she would have hounded him over and over again for more and more chocolate.

This is Milo looking up at the Easter bunny. He had this incredible look of joy and amazement on his face. He was so blown away by the Easter bunny.

Here the Easter bunny is hopping around and the kids are following him. They had a blast.

And then it was time for the Easter bunny to hop away. It was a funny sight, once the Easter bunny got to the road and crossed it, to see half a dozen parents racing for their kids to make sure everybody didn't run into the road to follow him.

See Milo kind of hanging back there? He stopped and watched the Easter bunny hop away, and then Milo just started bawling. I mean, seriously crying his heart out. It was so sad, he didn't want the Easter bunny to go away. Which is what he kept saying.

The Easter bunny really was magic to Milo and Nora. Other than the trauma of having him go away, the kids had a nice day. They did have an argument that night at dinner over Grandmom Lee's departure:

Milo: She went on a jet plane!

Me: That's right!

Milo: She went on a helicopter!

Nora: No, a jet plane!

Milo: No, a helicopter!

Nora: No, a JET PLANE!

Milo: A HELICOPTER!

You can imagine how it continued from there.

Tenure (also not about the kids)

The last few nights I've been waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. and then having a hard time going back to sleep because of tenure worries. Worries that have me literally breaking out into a cold sweat. Suddenly I'm worried that I won't have enough publications. At this point I'm writing what I'm writing, and I've got a game plan for what to put out when, and there isn't really time to make big adjustments to that plan. In other words, if my strategy all along has been flawed, it's getting to be a little too late in the game to correct it. All I can do is carry it out.

A word about my strategy. I have been writing big papers and publishing them in big outlets. By big I mean that my papers are literally long (lots of pages), and they reflect an enormous amount of data analysis. Sometimes a year or more of analysis. So it takes a long time to write papers. I have not been getting out "least publishable units", i.e. chopping up my studies into smaller papers to get more publications (but smaller ones) out the door. Instead, my strategy has been to try to publish good work in well-known outlets that will garner a fair amount of attention. There are strengths to this approach in a couple of ways. First, the quality of the work is strong. And second, the quality of the journals is high, which means you can make an argument for being a prominent person in the field.

There are drawbacks to this approach as well. The most obvious drawback is that the number of publications is lower than it might be under a different strategy. And so that number issue is what has started keeping me up at night. When you look at my CV, it looks like I've done a fair amount of stuff but then when I take a more critical eye to it, many of those things fall off the radar and cease to "count" towards tenure. For instance, book chapters don't really count. Books for practitioners don't count. Articles for practitioners don't count. And then the stuff that "counts" suddenly seems kinda small.

I know why I'm freaking out right now, it's because a colleague gave her "keep your job talk" last week to our department (we have to do this before we go up for tenure), and then had her publications up, and she has about a gazillion of them.

My mentor spent part of the morning talking me off the ledge. I can't even have a conversation about it without literally shaking, my hand trembling, the way I used to when I was in 8th grade and had to give a presentation to the class. He kept telling me that I have nothing to worry about. "I should make this into a podcast, and then when you wake up in the middle of the night you can just turn it on and hear, 'it's going to be okay, you're going to get tenure' over and over again," he said.

However, now? This afternoon? I am feeling sooooooo good right now. This is due to a little conversation I had today with the chair of the divisional committee (this is the committee that basically decides on our tenure once we make it past the dept. If they say yes on tenure, it's basically a done deal). Anyway, when he found out about my grant (which is called the NSF early career award), he stopped right away and he said "Whoa. When you have a career award, well, let's just say, it is impossible for the committee to ignore that." I said, "What does that mean, exactly?" and he said, "I mean, say there are some holes in a case. Not that there will be with yours necessarily, but say somebody fewer publications than we'd like to see, or maybe the teaching isn't so great, or whatever. If that person has a career award, then that's it. The other holes matter much less because it would be very hard to deny a person who has won a career award." So I'm all, "Holy crap, really?!?" and he says, "This is true across divisions. Physical sciences, biological sciences, it doesn't matter, if you have an early career award, that is huge. It will be much harder to not get tenure with a career award."

My mentor said, "See, now do you believe me? Coming from somebody like so-and-so, whose opinion has the weight of being chair of that committee? You must feel better now," and I had to admit, yes, today, I feel better.

This is not About the Kids

I just found a card from my 21st birthday. It's a homemade card with cartoon bunnies on it and it says, in English, "You are sexy girl. Let's play tennis." Then a bunch of stuff in Japanese which I can no longer read because pretty much the only kanji I remember at this point are the characters for "Japan" and the characters for 1-4. Which is pretty bad considering how many I used to know, once upon a time. But then I recall that once upon a time was, like, 18 years ago.

Anyway, this card reminded me of my 21st birthday, which I celebrated in Japan. I totally remember who gave it to me, too, it was one of the friends of one of my host sisters. This host sister was named Tomoko and for some crazy reason I kept thinking she was the older of the two sisters who I stayed with, even though she was the younger one. They were 19 and 21 and so sweet. They took me along with them on all sorts of adventures, we talked about as many things as we could considering my limited Japanese, and they taught me how to cook. And I taught them how to cook American food, which at the time was basically restricted to spaghetti with meat sauce.

On my 21st birthday they threw a big party for me and another exchange student, Sigal, whose birthday was the day before mine. This party had pink champagne, I mean, it was literally pink, which is something I've never seen before or since. There were also dainty miniature finger sandwiches with things like cucumbers in them, like what you might expect at an English tea, as well as Japanese foods and those desserts that look delicious but then actually taste like bean curd when you bite into them. The wild crazy drinking-legally-for-the-first-time aspect of 21 wasn't present because in Japan the drinking age is earlier than 21, and plus there are vending machines all over the place that sell beer.

It was hot and humid and as dusk turned to darkness I heard the clang of the guy walking around the neighborhood banging on the wood block. (I just googled this phrase: "Japan guy who bangs the wood block to remind you not to leave the stove on", and surprisingly did not receive a single relevant hit! I'm pretty sure that's why he went around banging that block every night, at least that's what I remember my host family telling me, something about preventing fires, but google has failed to provide a more satisfactory explanation). Anyway, it was a beautiful night, aesthetically, in the way that you can only have in Japan, in Kyoto, in the summer. Even the pile of little presents for me and Sigal was artfully arranged just so. (Of course there were presents. There are always presents for any event, big or small. I couldn't sneeze without getting a little present (omiyage, see, I remember something) from somebody).

Speaking of words I remember, here is another one: gokiburi. That is the Japanese word for cockroach. Not just any cockroach, though, these creatures were the size of mice (no, rats!) and they flew. Also, they were...meaty. Big and meaty and round. I seriously just gave myself a nasty shiver down my spine remembering these gokiburi. Whenever I saw one, I would just quickly walk the other way and pretend that our encounter hadn't occurred, as if I had just run into an ex-boyfriend and the breakup had not been amicable.

The summer I was in Japan, it was so humid that mold grew on my sandals during one rainy weekend. After that happened I set them out on my window ledge every day to bake in the sun. I studied hard (come to think of it, why?), I stayed up late, and occasionally I rode the Shinkansen to Yokohama to visit my old friend who would subsequently escort me to the beach at 2 a.m. so that we could sit on the dunes, look at the rolling waves, and talk about the future. Senior year. Graduation. Real life. Jobs. Careers. Stuff I didn't want to think about too much unless it was 2 in the morning and I could hear the waves crashing on the sand.

Living in Japan was exhausting to me, in the way it can be when you have to speak in a foreign language 24 hours a day. Or the way you have to concentrate really hard to make sure you're reading the signs correctly so that you get off at the right train stop. Most things generally flew over my head, and I never quite got the hang of the public toilets, and I grew tired of people in Kyoto getting up and moving whenever I sat down near them on the train. I couldn't understand why it was rude to blow your nose in public but acceptable to sit there and loudly hork up snot for half an hour straight. But then I would come home and watch my host sister take her cat by the head, pull his ears back so that he looked like he was traveling at great speeds, and say, "Do you want to ride the bullet train? Are you riding the bullet train?" Which was exactly what my dad used to do with our cat, substituting rocket for bullet train. That familiar action reminded me, we're all the same, everywhere.

The Little Things

Milo's question of the day: "Do worms kiss?"

(My question of the day: Do worms even have lips?)

Nora's tattle of the day: "Mommy, Milo's annoying me!"

(Get used to it for the next couple of decades, honey.)

Polite

After Nora correctly distinguished between a hexagon and an octagon,

Buddy: You're so smart, Nora! You're going to be talented and gifted!

Nora: Thank you!

My Little Fashionista

Leaving for work this morning, Milo noticed my jacket, which has two large buttons at the top. He said "Those are cute buttons, Mommy!"

Don't Look at my Poop!

Milo has grown shy about Nora seeing something of his, but it's not the something you might think. Milo doesn't like Nora to see his poop. Yes, his poop. His naked bottom is fine to display to one and all, but he is shy about Nora looking at his poop when I change his diaper. So now, when I change a poopy diaper, Milo says "Nora look away!" and then Nora dutifully turns around and faces the opposite direction, as if she were formally shunning him.

This morning I took the kids to a gym type place for little kids and I do believe that Milo would make a good gymnast. He is coordinated, for instance he can walk on a balance beam all by himself. But more noticeably he lacks fear. He will jump off a high platform onto a giant foam mat when kids twice his age hesitate. You need to have a certain daredevil attitude to enjoy gymnastics.

Meanwhile I was busy climbing up the rope to the ceiling, just to prove that I've still got it, middle aged body, cough, cracked rib and all...which is really not all that smart. Come to think of it.

Today was a beautiful day but it was somewhat marred by Nora's crankiness, which has been plaguing her since the time change. She can't seem to make herself go to sleep before 9 p.m. but she's still waking up at the same time. Also, it was marred by my FB post about the weather and an irritating know-it-all comment I got on that. I need some love, not obnoxiousness. I would defriend this person because she's consistently annoying, but she's my neighbor and I just can't do stuff like that in this stepfordy neighborhood. We're already the suspect family who doesn't always attend the 4th-of-July parade and barbecue.

It's 8 p.m. and Nora is still chattering. I think I'm going to put her in the pack and play in our room and see if that helps. Pretty soon she'll be too big for that thing, and then we'll really be in trouble!

Guilt

I can only hear "Mommy, don't go to work! Don't go to work, Mommy! Mommy stay home with me!" so many times before I start to feel lower than a grasshopper.

(For the record, they also beg Jake to not go to school.)

Fortunate

Tonight at dinner, Nora said "It's Tuesday. It IS Tuesday! I'll make it Saturday. I'll push the button and make it Saturday. Bing! (Makes a big flourish with her hands). I pushed the button! Now it's Saturday!" Holy cow, toddlers are trippy.

Milo just said "Mommy?" Yes Milo? "Mommy, hold you."

Also, today I saw flowers blooming. Crocuses and other little ones. In mid March! It's unheard of here! And it was 60 degrees out! And coming home from work I had to take off my coat and roll up my sleeves! Holy amazing early spring, Batman.

So in addition to my recent Career grant, I have also received another grant in collaboration with 5 other professors at my university. It's a postdoc training grant, so what this means is that we have received money to fund some postdocs for the next few years. This is great if we can get them (it is not always easy to hire postdocs in our field). Each postdoc will have a primary and secondary mentor, and will work on a number of different projects.

So anyway I was recently at a conference with a bunch of people from a bunch of other universities and I was describing the grant. One thing to note is that out of the six of us on this grant, I am the only assistant professor. All of the other professors are full professors. In addition, they're all well known. So at this conference, the folks from other universities kept noting in astonishment how lucky I am to be able to have this grant with the full professors, and how unusual it is that they would let me in on it.

And they're right, actually. In many other places, the postdocs go to the big famous people and the newer lesser known people can't get postdocs in their labs. Big famous people can often be territorial and not necessarily helpful to newer faculty. In addition, many of the people on this grant are from a related but different field from mine, and these two fields are known for not always getting along. So the other folks were also noting in astonishment that I can actually collaborate with these people from the related field, and that it's okay to do that.

Well anyway, this is one thing that is very wonderful about my job. We are an extremely collegial group. Ever since I got here I have been surrounded by talented, more senior people who have been so generous with me. They have invited me to collaborate professionally on different projects and have just generally been open, supportive, and helpful to me. It is actually quite rare, I think, this type of cross-disciplinary collaboration that we have. Sometimes I have to be around people from other universities to be reminded of how great I really have it.

I hope that once I am more senior myself, I'll do a good job of continuing the tradition of mentorship and collaboration with the newer faculty who join us over time.

Revise and Resubmit

We need two "signature pieces" for a tenure case. These are articles that every person on the divisional committee reads. They are also the articles that go out to external reviewers who write letters for our case. There are all sorts of unofficial rules about these pieces: they can't be from our dissertation, they shouldn't really be co-authored (unless perhaps the co-author is our student who didn't do much of the work), they can't be book chapters. They should ideally be solo authored journal articles in strong journals, and should make a significant contribution to the field.

I have been writing my signature pieces this year and last. I'm in the middle of writing my second one. I sent my first one out in September to our field's top journal. It is hard to get into this journal; the acceptance rate often hovers between 5% and 10%. So sending something out to this journal is a risky venture, but the payoffs are big, because publications in this journal are widely read and well respected, generally.

Anyway I finally got a decision back today, 6 months later. The decision is R&R which means "revise and resubmit". This lives sort of halfway in between an accept and a reject. It means that the reviewers had major concerns or things to fix, but they (or the editor) thought it was a good enough paper that if those things could be fixed, then the paper should eventually get published. So you are invited to revise the article to fix the problems, and then resubmit it, and the editor will have it reviewed by a subset of the original set of reviewers and usually a few new ones as well. The chances of getting a paper accepted after this process are higher than for initial submissions.

In graduate school I got the impression that an R&R is a very, very bad thing. So when I got my first R&R, I too was very upset. I was conditioned to see an R&R as a big failure.

However, I have gotten a number of R&R's since then. And what I've learned is that a) they're common, b) they mean you have a decent chance of eventually getting the paper published. I remember one time I got an R&R and I mentioned it to a colleague and she said "Wow, congratulations!" And I was like, huh? It's a good thing? It's funny how expectations can shape how you react to something.

Most of the papers I've published have been published after getting an R&R the first time. The revision process is good because reviewers' comments will help make the paper better and stronger. I believe in this process, but of course it's also daunting to start out the revision. Each time I do it, I look at the list of things to fix and it seems huge and daunting. In this case it will certainly require a serious revision. But I think it is doable. Interestingly, out of the 4 reviews, 2 of them recommended accept, 1 recommended reject, and 1 recommended R&R. My papers usually review this way -- the reviews typically span the gamut. The editor has the final decision.

The main frustrating thing about an R&R is the timeline. It took 6 months for this paper to get reviewed. Say I am incredibly fast and can resubmit it in, oh, 1 month. (That would be unrealistically fast, I think). Say it takes another 6 months. Even if it gets accepted in that case, that's 13 months between the initial submission and the acceptance. Then it is several more months before it is actually published. The incredibly slow timeline of these papers can be difficult and risky when you need publications for tenure. Especially at this stage in the game, for me.

Anyway, realistically, I was expecting an R&R. I was hoping for an outright accept, but to get that on the first try with this journal would be amazing. It's only happened to me once. I didn't really think lightening was going to strike twice. I was hoping it wouldn't get rejected. So this is generally a good outcome, if I'm patient. I think my strategy will be to revise this paper as quickly as I can and resubmit as soon as possible, then return to my other signature piece to get it written and submitted, hopefully sometime this summer. After those two extremely-high-priority tasks are done, then I can turn more attention to other stuff that needs to simultaneously happen, like a co-authored book chapter we're writing right now, and the two additional books I agreed to co-author for the NCTM series.

I think that all I need to do is a bunch of hard work, which is doable. I can handle work. It seems maybe possible to get it all done. We'll see. I'll probably start working on the revision tomorrow.

Weekend

Yesterday was uneventful. Grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, chilling with the kids.

Today was gorgeous. Living as far north as we do, spring comes late. I fully expect at least one more snowstorm to come our way, but today felt like real spring. It was 50, sunny, and a lot of the snow is completely gone now. We spent the morning outside in the muddy park, and this afternoon we went to a Pi day party and ate a bunch of pie.

I need to start using the video camera more (i.e. my little digital camera) because it is impossible to describe Milo's charm. He has these adorable expressions, and huge eyes, and he is so endearing that everybody just falls for him completely. He's the kind of kid people stop on the street to coo over. Nora's easier to write about in some ways because many of the interesting thing she does are verbal, so I can relay what she says. Milo says interesting things too, but a big part of his charm is just his real-life charisma, which is very hard to convey in writing.

The time change has, of course, messed them (and by extension us) up. But at least it's in the right direction as far as sleeping in is concerned. Nora was up talking to herself until 9 and only fell asleep when I removed her from the nursery and put her in our room. Maybe it's the time change, or maybe it's the metric ton of berries she ate after dinner. Hmmm....

It was a nice catch-up weekend. Our house is still messy, but at least we have clean sheets, groceries, and a homemade creamy mushroom soup in the fridge. Onwards and upwards.

Sweet Milo

We have a book about a duck who likes to dance. One day her baby brother takes her tutu and she rips it out of his hands, and then he cries. There is a picture of the baby duck crying.

Milo kept looking at the picture and then he said "He's sad. What's he worried about?" I told him, "I don't know, what do you think he's worried about?" Milo said, "He's worried about the owl."

Milo will often say that he hears and owl and is scared, or sometimes he'll wake up and say he had a bad dream about an owl. Sometimes he reassures himself that he is inside, so the owl won't get him. We do get owls around here so it wouldn't surprise me that he hears them and gets scared by that. I guess he's working it out with the duck book. Milo's such a sweet little guy.

Why Can't I Get Better?

Awake at 3 a.m. because the cough that had been slowly, torturously getting better throughout the week is now suddenly getting worse again. It's hard to understand why this keeps happening...moving from starting to recover back to relapsing, over and over again. My doctor gave me a prescription for a broad antibiotic with the advice to wait a few days to fill it. She didn't think what I had was bacterial and so she only wanted me to fill it if I wasn't getting better. That was a couple of weeks ago. I didn't fill it because I felt like I was getting a little better each day, even if it was at a very slow pace. (And because antibiotics are such a drag). But I guess I'll fill it tomorrow and give it a try.

I feel like I've been beat up by a gang of thugs. Specifically, a bunch of thugs who kicked me over and over again in the ribs and the back. What's worse than a never ending cough, it turns out, is a cough that conjures up a sharp punch to the ribs with every inhale. A punch delivered by Mike Tyson wearing a metal glove.

And as long as I'm bitching and moaning endlessly here, I'm also going to complain about the fact that I haven't been able to run or do any meaningful exercise in ages, which is hell on my mood, my weight management efforts, and my self esteem. I know. I'm a giant baby with this stupid cough!

Why hasn't my body been able to effectively fight this thing off? I feel like it's not working very well these days. This probably has to do with things like sleep, and rest, and the impossibility of achieving either of these objectives ever. For instance, being wide awake at 3:23 a.m. and knowing I have to get up at 7. Or never taking a day off from work. Or traveling. But as I look forward, the weekend is filled with early mornings and laundry and grocery trips and toddler herding, and the week is filled with work and more of the same, and the months stretch out without any realistic opportunity to just fucking sleep in, ever. Jake more than pulls his weight but even when he gets up with the kids, he cannot manage to get them up, dressed, and downstairs without several bouts of high-pitched screaming. Earplugs only get you so far.

I know. It always seems worse in the middle of the night. It'll seem better tomorrow. I just don't want to start another 2-week cycle of exhausting, constant, painful, sleep-disrupting coughing. It is depressing me. I am always a terrible patient -- a total wimp. I would make the worst Victorian-era malingering heroine ever.

Homecoming

Here is an excerpt from Buddy's notes for the day. They went to the story time at a book store and had to go to the bathroom. "Nora did a play by play of everything that all of the ladies were doing in the bathroom. She is quite the character in the bathroom!" I can only imagine trying to go to the bathroom and hearing a little 2-year old's piercing voice saying "That lady is peeing on the potty!"

Yesterday the twin whisperer came and watched the kids because Jake had a class and I was out of town. She reported that Milo is quite the back seat driver. He said "You are driving too fast!" and "Slow down, please!"

There were some rain delays and other delays with my flights today so I got home just in time to read the very last story before bedtime. When the kids saw me, Nora said "Mommy came out of Washington, D.C.!"

Nora has an amazing memory. She remembers every little thing, so I have to keep that in mind and not promise too much. For instance, I have been thinking about a tentative trip out to WA after school is out and before Jake's job starts up at the end of June. So when I was preparing the kids for my plane trip this week, Nora said she wanted to go on the plane with me. I said that maybe this summer, when it is hot, we might all go on a plane together to Washington. Yesterday Nora mentioned this to the twin whisperer! She said "We are going to go on an airplane in the summer!" The twin whisperer asked where, and Nora said "To Washington!" I guess I need to realize that this stuff is sticking now, and the concept of "maybe" is not something that the kids understand yet.

Milo is the little social butterfly. At the library on Wednesday he went up to other people who were reading books to their children and just sort of joined in, and made friends with other kids.

It was so good to get home tonight and see my little ones. I always get neurotic and weird when I travel. I start worrying about all the bad things that could happen to them. Last night I had a nightmare that they were caught in a fire. I don't feel right until I am back and can see them again. I told them, I'm so happy to be home again with you! They both kept smiling these huge smiles and snuggling up to me. It feels great to be back where I belong, and I'm glad I don't have to go anywhere for another 6 weeks.

Putting on the Ritz

Here's Milo the morning that I left to go to a conference in Washington:

He's still into hugging the cat. Too much. Sometimes I wish our cat, Caspian, were just a little less sweet than he is. Caspian will never defend himself against a human, even if he's being actively hurt. If he would give Milo a little swat every now and then when he is being too rough, Milo would get the picture. He never tackles our other cat, Sam. Caspian sort of likes it, though. Jake and I have to go around and monitor how rough Milo is being and constantly remind him to be gentle with the cat.

Here's pretty Nora the morning I left:

We had fog in our town that delayed and cancelled many flights, but we lucked out and our flight to Washington was only a couple of hours late. It was a direct flight, so it was no big deal. I say "we" because there were actually 5 people besides me from my university on the same flight to this conference (and it is a small conference!), and a 6th person, my dept. chair as a matter of fact, flying to the metro area to give a talk.

This conference is being held in the Ritz Carlton, and I thought, oooo, fancy! It's right outside of the metro stop, so that's convenient. By the way, it's super warm here. Like 60 and sunny. It's awesome. As we were descending into the city I thought, what looks so strange to me right now? What am I seeing that's out of place? Oh...it's the water! The water is...water. It's not ice! Back home all of our lakes are still frozen solid. Out here, the water is water, and that feels like spring to me.

Anyway, the Ritz. I thought it was funny that we were staying at the Ritz. It is old school fancy. Not fancy like the modern, uber-chic boutiquey hotels I sometimes frequent at conferences, but fancy in the sense that there is a lot of marble around. And chandeliers. There is even a chandelier in the elevator.

So here is my old school room:

It's nice. Very comfortable bed. Here is the bathroom (more marble!):

Here is the luggage rack that is, I think, the exact same luggage rack that my mother owns. At least, I think so. It sure did look familiar. That is the sole reason why I took a photo of it. (Forgive these grainy pictures taken with my old point-and-shoot camera):

Last night we went out for dinner at a Lebanese place. It was very crowded and so we got drinks and waited and waited and waited for our table to become available. We were a larger group so it took ages, so we just kept drinking, and by the time dinner arrived we were both semi-drunk and starving. So then we ate a ton of food, rapid style, and by the time I made it back to my room I collapsed onto my bed feeling like an over-indulged, beached whale.

Today I had to give a talk and I thought it was kinda...meh. I don't think it was so great. Part of the problem is that I had to report on extremely early results that aren't all that exciting yet unless you place them within the larger context of the overall research project, which is hard to do in just 14 minutes. So I tried to do that justice, but probably ended up just communicating our not-too-exciting results. But that's okay, because today I also got official confirmation that my big grant, source of so much work and worry, has been awarded. Hoooooray! So I was all, whatever, I have my grant now!

Here is me after learning of the grant. That's a fist pump of victory right there.

Well, I'm off now to a celebratory dinner -- it's Vietnamese tonight. Sounds like fun!

This and That

Today was a misty, rainy, jump in puddles kind of day. The kids were busy dragging sticks through the muck and mud of the puddles when the local high school track team ran by -- half of them without shirts. (It was 42 degrees out. Not that warm.) Nora yelled, "Good job running, guys!"

Yesterday Buddy took the kids to the pet store, which they loved. Milo in particular really enjoyed the ferrets. He got to pet them. Today he has been talking about ferrets all day long. I'm just glad that they're not yet old enough to start begging us for a ferret.

Yesterday was a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. work day. We had an advisory panel meeting and we had to take them out for dinner afterwards. We went to the very first authentic Chinese food that this town has seen. We were a big group (10) and ordered all kinds of things like crispy pork intestines and fish with the heads still on, and everything was covered in hot peppers. It was great and for some reason the spicy food really calmed my cough.

I somehow managed to bruise or crack a rib from coughing. Now every time I cough it is ridiculously painful. It also hurts to yawn, breathe deeply, and lift things, like toddlers, or suitcases. And I'm traveling to D.C. tomorrow. Maybe I will have a chance to rest on the plane!

Above: Nora's stylin'. And Milo actually has some hair! Here's a bonus video on manners:

Language

Milo, calling to me from the dining room: What are you doing, Mommy?

Nora: Mommy's watering the frickin' plants!

Oh well. At least we've trained them out of saying "oh shit" and "oh damn it", and I watch my language a lot more than I used to.

Buddy

The kids like to tell us about their day at the dinner table. It's awesome. Jake and I are talking about the district budget cuts and in the middle of that Nora pipes up "Did you play basketball with Buddy?" (That's her way of saying, "ask me if I played basketball with Buddy.") Oh, did you? "Yeah!" she chirps. Milo pipes in "I did slam dunks!"

The kids have a friend down the street named Millie. Buddy is good friends with Millie's nanny, so they get together and do things as a group of 5 all the time. Tomorrow Millie turns 2 so today Nora and Milo went over to Millie's house to bake birthday cookies. Actually first Buddy took them to the store to get some supplies. Buddy writes notes about the day and in her notes, she remarked "Milo wants a ball and a bat, and another ball, and another ball." Then they went to Millie's and baked cookies in the shape of "M" and "2". They also ate birthday cupcakes, and Buddy took some great pictures of the kids with cupcake mouths. (This was a rare treat, but it was, after all, Millie's birthday). Also, Buddy enacted a miracle with Nora and got her to eat (drumroll) mac 'n cheese! This is the first time in her entire life that Nora has actually eaten some pasta. I think eating lunch at Millie's is good for her because of the peer pressure. She sees Milo and Millie eating people food, so maybe she realizes it is a good idea.

Later they came back and played basketball and then read library books. Each week Buddy takes the kids to the library and together they pick out 10 or 20 books. Buddy keeps them at our house in a giant blue bag and we read through them. This is great for me and Jake because it is fun to read different books rather than the same ones over and over again. (We do plenty of that too). The kids also read a book that belongs to Buddy about helicopters. She brought it over because Milo has been talking about helicopters a lot lately.

Our house is also filled with CDs of children's music that Buddy owns. She has a lot of kid stuff up her sleeve. "I have things stashed everywhere throughout your house!" she told me cheerfully. It's true. She has some puppets here, as well as her CDs and books and who knows what else. She's always bringing over little things for the kids. Stickers, or crayons, or chalk.

Every day Buddy takes the kids on a different outing, unless they're sick. They go to the toddler gym, to story time, to the library, or the other library, or to Trader Joe's, or the city gardens, or the children's cafe. This morning, I meant to ask Buddy to give the kids a bath because I hadn't gotten around to it on Thursday like I'd intended to. But I completely forgot to ask her. Tonight when I came home, she mentioned that she had given them a bath because she had observed their towels still hanging in the same spot, so she knew they hadn't had one.

At this point I feel really lucky that we have Buddy. The Twin Whisperer still visits the kids on a weekly basis and often takes them on outings. She doesn't want to be paid for this, she just does it because she misses the kids and likes to see them. The kids still love that and talk about the Twin Whisperer. But now they're talking about Buddy too, and this morning when Buddy came, instead of crying, Nora said "Good morning! How are you?"

When Jake starts his job this summer and we finally have two incomes, we're totally giving Buddy a raise. She's worth every penny and more.

I bet the fish had a bad cough

Today I took the kids to work to visit with the secretaries for a while. They've been bugging me to bring them in. Nora clung to me and buried her face, but after some time she came out of her shell. Milo was happy to walk around and check things out. We have a fishbowl in the main office with a fish, so one of the secretaries said "Let's wake up the fish!" She got a long letter opener and poked what turned out to be the dead fish hanging out at the bottom of the bowl. One of the other secretaries said "That one died too?" A third secretary said "Don't said 'died' or 'dead' in front of the little ones!" The first secretary said, "He's sleeping, let's wake him up!" She poked him and prodded him, dragging the fish to the top of the bowl, at which point it slowly drifted down, down, down to the bottom. Milo and Nora loved this. Then they kept asking, "Can the fish wake up?", and then the secretary would drag it up with her letter opener and we would all watch it swirl back down to the bottom again.

I don't know when the right time to talk about death should be, but I agree it's probably not when we're in the office watching a tiny goldfish drift around in its bowl.

Later, in the afternoon, we hung around outside the house for a while. It was warm. Almost 40 degrees, and sunny. There are still big snowdrifts to crunch around in, but they are steadily melting, and the sidewalks and roads are bare. Dragging the garbage can back in from the street, I had a coughing attack that rendered me unable to breathe. Cough, cough, cough, cough, giant attempt at an inhale that doesn't seem to be working because my lungs are all closed up, cough, cough, cough. Milo and Nora are standing there saying "Don't spit, Mommy! Don't spit in the snow!" because I was spitting and choking and gagging with tears streaming down my face. Nora said "Breathe, Mommy!" as I wheezed through another ill-fated attempt to get some air into my lungs. All this, from a cold? It doesn't seem fair. I blame winter. Even the kids are still coughing.

Now I can hear them snoring over the monitor. One of them, I think Milo, is snoring like a cartoon, with a rumbling inhale and an actual literal whistling exhale, which I thought was only something you saw on Looney Tunes. I bet if I were to go up there right now I'd see a feather above Milo's face, drifting upwards as he whistles out, and floating back down as he snores in.

They don't make it like they used to

My doctor prescribed me some codeine and I took it an hour ago, but I'm still having uncontrollable coughing right this very minute! Plus I don't feel high at all, not even a little bit! What is with this lame, crappy codeine?

Failure

Today I got to work from home all morning. This is just another piece of freedom that I am slowly starting to regain post children, and it is wonderful. I had a lunch meeting close to my house so I stayed at home and worked in my upstairs office while the kids played with Jake downstairs. They are accustomed to Tuesdays being Daddy's day, so they accepted that I was unavailable. Then Jake took them outside and I actually had a quiet house, to myself! What a luxury! I love my little upstairs office. I love sitting at my desk and facing the window, which looks out onto our tree. I love watching the tree change over the seasons, from the full leafy greenness of summer, to the changing colors of autumn, to the bare branches of winter, to the buds and flowers of spring.

(We're still firmly in bare branch territory here).

Anyway, I am thinking about failure because I lost an election recently. I ran for a position in our national organization because my tenure committee chair told me to. He suggested it would be a good idea to get some national service on my record for tenure. I picked this particular office because it is kind of a smaller position, one that younger assistant professors run for (like me). The bigger-known full professors tend to run for the bigger positions. So my committee chair nominated me, and I wrote up my bio, and that was that. Until I found out that the other person running against me was...my advisor! So anyway, she won the election and I lost.

As it turns out, in the meantime I happened to be appointed to a different position for the same national organization that is more high profile anyway, so I think it is okay because I will have this other thing to show on my cv for national service. So in the end it is not a big deal.

But it got me thinking about how failure is something that is such a regular part of this career. Everything we do is a competition. We compete to get our conference proposals accepted. We compete to get our journal articles accepted. We compete for grants. Every part of my job is about being judged by other people. And failures happen regularly. An article might get rejected, or a conference proposal might get rejected, or a grant might get rejected. As the years pass I am getting a little better at dealing with rejection and failure. My work gets better as a result of incorporating the suggestions and critiques of the reviewers. I talk to my senior colleagues, well known people who show me their file drawers full of rejections. Those rejected articles were re-tooled, re-written, submitted elsewhere, and eventually accepted. So it is a natural part of the process, and judging by my successful colleagues, regular failure and rejection is part of the journey on the road to success.

This reminds me of a story about my mentor. He submitted an article to our field's top journal, and it was outright rejected. Not even a revise-and-resubmit, but full on reject. But he believed in his work and thought that the reviewers were wrong and had misinterpreted his data. (By the way, that level of confidence is, to me, a very gendered trait and one that is completely foreign to me. I regularly try to emulate this trait of his). So he rewrote the article, gave it a different title, and submitted it again to the same journal. That time, it came back as revise and resubmit. So he revised it again, resubmitted it, and they finally accepted it. And so it was published in our field's top journal, and now it gets cited by others. Of course anybody who reads this article doesn't know its history. They don't know about the first two rejections. All they see is the final result, which is a published article in this prestigious journal.

So that story tells me that when you are rejected or experience failure, you just have to keep going. You just have to keep trying. So that is what I am doing every day in my career.

Rejection and failure, I imagine, have different flavors pre-tenure than they do post-tenure. Right now, especially at this critical time junction, it is more important than ever for me to get articles accepted and grants awarded. So if I get a rejection now, it's hard to take it into stride because it is tied up in my "OMG this means I'm going to lose my job!" panic. Everything feels so high stakes right now, because I have to get certain things accepted or I know that I am not going to get tenure. But I wonder what it'll be like after tenure.