Milo, this morning: Mom I have to tell you thank you for not farting.

Uh...you're welcome?

From the dept. of random: If I have never met you, then I'm not going to go to your wedding shower or your baby shower. Maybe that makes me a cold hearted asshole, but come on. We've never even met. Also? We do things fairly in my house. That means that if you know my husband, or are family with my husband, then my husband is the one who is in charge of getting your gift. Not me.

Today I was so impressed with the kids' swimming. They both swim underwater a little bit; they can propel themselves the couple of feet from their instructor's arms to the steps on their own. Nora does this better than Milo. However, their swim school is not moving them to the next level class next year, because they haven't made enough improvements to be ready. It's like they got an F in swim class! Ack! They're being held back! However, I don't think it matters because they're both learning more and more each week. I felt sad for them and a little defensive, but of course haven't told them anything and am just letting them enjoy swimming and make progress on their own timeline.

Feeling gross from too much indulgence last week when my friends were in town, I'm trying to do something active 6 days out of 7 for the next few weeks. That's either going to the gym, running, biking, or, if I'm not up for those, at least taking a nice little 4-mile walk. However, today is my day home with the kids so I can't do anything until Jake gets home at 5. So will I be able to take a 4-mile walk this afternoon in triple digit temps, and sacrifice making dinner to do it? Sometimes it still feels like a puzzle with no answer when I try to fit in everything I need to do. Inevitably something needs to be sacrificed to something else, and then I just end up doing nothing at all to the fullest.

Here are the kids after swimming today:

This is Nora's drawing of a library in the sky, and two planes approaching the library. Also there are two suns. She's starting the science fiction theme early.

She also enjoys practicing her name.

They Said

Nora: I'll be back in a minute, Mom. I have to go deal with Milo.

Milo (to Jake): Hey, those books were in my room old man!

Retreats, Reunions, and Friends

It was such a privilege to have my 5 colleagues and friends in town last week to write together. I got to know all of them better, and in one case, I got to know somebody for the very first time! We have a lot of connections in our research but somehow had never met before now. Now, after 3 days together, I feel like I know her, and she is lovely. They are all lovely and I was especially grateful to be able to spend a whole week with my friend who was here since last Sunday and have her spend time with Jake and the kids.

Another one of the women who was here is somebody I've known since grad school. I first met her when she was hugely pregnant with her twins, who are now 12. It was so fun to have her meet my kids and interact with them. She has a third child who is 4, like Nora and Milo, and she remarked a few times that she sort of feels sad and sorry for her third child because she is not a twin.

We ended the week with loose but enthusiastic plans to repeat our writing retreat next year. One of my colleagues has already volunteered to host us in her city, which is centrally located. It'd be so great to make this an annual event!

Just as exciting, in less than 2 weeks I get to go spend the weekend in the bay area! My old teacher friends are having our reunion, which we have most years, or at least every other year. There are 7 of us and one of us just had a baby last month, so we are traveling to her (she lives in San Francisco). I can't wait to meet her little baby, and to see everybody! I am also looking forward to returning to the bay area - I haven't been in a couple of years, and always enjoy going back.

W^3

We are smack dab in the middle of our writing week. I am so glad we decided to do it! For one thing, it's been productive. I totally haven't been doing the thing I thought I'd be doing, so far. But instead, I finished one paper, then decided to turn it into a conference proposal, which I wrote and submitted in a day. Then I worked on another joint conference proposal, and now I'm working on a third conference proposal (different conference).

But more important than that, in many ways, has been the opportunity to build camaraderie, collaboration, support and friendship. That has been so wonderful. Our first two colleagues who were here left this afternoon/evening, and the second set of two colleagues arrived this afternoon.

One thing I hadn't thought a lot about ahead of time was how much this opportunity meant to our newest (in the field) colleague. We have a range of people here, from somebody just 2 years out of grad school to an associate professor several years ahead of me. It meant a lot to the newest colleague to be included with some more senior people. I am so glad we included her, and love the idea of continuing to do things like this to support people at different stages in their career development.

Writing Retreat

So this coming week we're going to have a week-long writing retreat! Maybe we should give it a name? Anyway, my friend is coming out on Sunday morning and we get to hang out and check out the town and spend some time with the family. (Unfortunately it's still supposed to be hot and dry here, which is a drag.) Sunday night and Monday night she's staying with me, and we'll write on Monday. Then we'll write on Tuesday, and on Tuesday afternoon two additional colleagues are coming to join us. They're all going to stay at a hotel halfway between my house and campus, and we'll all write together on Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday, our first two colleagues leave, and two more colleagues come into town. We'll keep writing on Friday and Saturday, and the second set of colleagues fly out on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. And my original friend is staying until Monday afternoon, so we can do more fun stuff together on Sunday!

It's crazy the number of meetings I've had to cancel or say no to for next week. I'm only keeping one meeting on Monday afternoon because it's relevant to the paper I'm going to be writing, but other than that, it'll be only writing. This has already shown me how much every day is interrupted by non-writing events. For me this is hard because in order to get any significant work done, I really need big uninterrupted chunks. Preferably an entire day, or at least half a day. I'm not the kind of person who does well writing in 1 or 2 hour blocks interspersed with other activities. It's too hard to get back into it after an interruption. This week, for instance, I have had at least 2 meetings every single day, which really makes it hard to keep up writing momentum. And it's summer! Why am I meeting so much? (It's mostly students who need help as they work on their prelims / proposals / masters theses / dissertations).

I have been working hard to try to finish up summer paper #1 these last couple of weeks so that I can have that off my plate and do something new for the writing week. I've gotten a bit behind due to getting sick last week, but I'm almost done with it. Next week, my goal is to write summer paper #2 from start to finish and have a draft by the end of the week. That might be completely unrealistic, so we'll see how it works out, but it's nice to have a goal. I won't be starting from scratch, because I do have a conference version of the paper to work from, but I'll be expanding it greatly (from 14 pages to 40+ pages). Meanwhile, my post doc is working on summer paper #3, and my grad students are prepping new transcripts to do the analysis for summer paper #4 (which realistically will be fall paper #1). At any rate, if we can get the first three summer papers out the door by the end of the summer I'll feel pretty good.

I'm excited about writing, but even more I'm excited about getting to spend time with my friends and colleagues. I'm looking forward to being able to talk, hang out, go out to dinner, share our writing issues, and basically just spend time with five other awesome women in my field!

Dirt Clods and Fish Heads

Yesterday evening we went to a party for our friend who had a birthday. It was held at a park adjacent to the lake, and there was a pavilion with a band (our friend plays the harmonica), and there was a playground nearby as well. With a giant field of dirt. Everything is dusty because we're in a drought and it's been super hot for a month, so all of the grass around here has died and turned brown. It looks like California. This is the first time I've ever seen this here. The corn is not doing well. Our plants are in terrible shape. Everybody's garden is in terrible shape. Usually our town is super green all through the summer, but this year has been a little odd.

So anyway, we end up at the playground with all the other parents of little kids but Milo spends 90% of his time playing in the dirt field. Like, literally picking up giant clods of dirt and throwing them. Or kicking them like balls. Just making a giant mess of himself, having a blast running around in the dirt with a couple of other little boys. I mean, his whole face is covered in dirt, his clothes are filthy, his shoes are filthy. This one lady had a child who looked younger, about three, who also wanted to go play in the dirt field with Milo and a couple of other boys. She wouldn't let him. He said, "Why not? Why do those other kids get to play there?" She said, "Their parents think it's okay." Then she looked at me.

I was like, come on. It's summer. They're kids. It's just dirt. We'll pop him in the bath when we get home. Who cares?

Later we wandered down to the lake. I'm looking out over the water, enjoying the scenery, and then Milo says "Hey Mom, look at this!" And I look over and he's holding in his bare hand a fish head. Not, like, a new fish head, but a fish head that is so old that it's mostly a fish head skeleton, a fish skull I guess you would say, but still with some of the rotting fish flesh on it. The rotting flesh fish skull was huge, almost as big as Milo's head. Oh my god, how disgusting. Jake said, "Go wash your hands off in the water!" So he plunges in there, with his dirty sneakers, and thrusts his hand into the hot lake water, steaming with milfoil weeds.

Look, between rotting fish skulls and dirt clods, I'll take the dirt any day.

Merit Pay

For the last 6 years we've had no cost of living raises, no merit raises, and then we had furloughs (temporary pay cuts) and then starting last year a permanent pay cut. But, every year we do a yearly merit exercise where we have to report on our productivity (how much we've published, the talks we gave, the service we did, what our teaching evaluation scores were, etc.) It's a time-consuming exercise for the 7-person committee who ranks every individual faculty member in the department. They read through our reports, they read some sample publications for each person, and then they rank each of us on a scale of 1-5, except it's really a scale of 1-10 because they'll do stuff like give you a 4.5.

So anyway, in the past few years people have been grumbling about doing this exercise, which is also time consuming for each of us to put our reports together, when there hasn't been any money for merit raises anyway. The justification for continuing to do the exercise is that they use a formula that combines your score for your current year with your average score for the past couple of years, to even out the natural ebbs and flows in productivity. So I guess the idea was that we'd need that historical merit data should money ever come back for merit raises.

This year, however, there is money for a small (I think 2-3%) merit raise! The legislators released this money with the stipulation that it is to go to at most 1/3 of the people on campus. So 2/3 won't get any raise at all. Which is kind of interesting to me, actually, because there's a new human resources proposal out now which has as a recommendation a total doing away with cost-of-living raises, which have admittedly been theoretical rather than actual in the past 6 years, and a complete reliance on merit pay alone to get raises. But if it only ever goes to the top 1/3 (however you measure that), I guess it'd kind of suck to be a decent professor, better than 60% of your peers, but never get any raise year to year, not even for a cost of living increase.

(This is why new assistant professors come in making a lot more money than people who have been around 5-10 years. Those people's salaries have stagnated while the budget for new salaries goes up each year so that we can successfully recruit new faculty.)

Anyway, Mentor was curious what'll happen to this merit money. How will it be allocated? Will the chair just use the formula we've established based on our merit exercise and use that to determine the top-scoring 1/3 faculty? He asked our chair, who cryptically responded "I have a list of people in mind." What does that mean? Meanwhile, there is a recommendation that people who have received market adjustments in the past couple of years (like me) not be first for consideration.

Which is fine, because I did get that raise, plus I am getting my tenure raise now, so I'm in good shape. However, if this is the only year for a while that the money will come for merit raises, it's bad timing on my part. For the past several years I've gotten a perfect 5 out of 5 on my merit rating, but that probably won't last. It made sense that I did that in the years leading up to tenure, but it's a pace that probably isn't sustainable forever. Too bad that I'm probably not going to be eligible this time around since my scores put me on the top, but easy come, easy go.

I have no idea why people are against cost of living increases. Isn't that, like, kind of normal in most industries? Like, you get more pay over time the longer you've been there? Maybe people don't like it for professors because they're worried about that mythical tenured deadwood I hear about sometimes. In our department there is one guy who isn't really research active. He's close to retirement and his salary is lower than an assistant professor's salary. It's less than half of what our strongest full professors make. So I guess you can coast on your research after you have tenure, just putting your time in on teaching and service, but your salary will suck.

Review: Extra Firm Tofu

 I took the photos off the camera Nora uses today. There were a number of interesting ones (and one disturbing one in which I look like a real-life giant). I've noticed that Nora has a self-portrait series featuring her feet:

Meanwhile, I decided to try giving cooking with tofu a try. I have never liked tofu and usually when I order a dish at a Thai restaurant (the kind you can get with chicken, pork, shrimp, beef, or tofu), I'll order it with tofu and then ask them to hold the tofu. I've only cooked with tofu once or twice in my life and thought it was gross.

I decided to give it another chance in the form of spicy basil tofu. This looked like a simple dish featuring everything I like (except the actual tofu): basil, bell peppers, red chili peppers, garlic. I chose extra-firm tofu and really squeezed the heck out of it onto the paper towels to get out as much moisture as possible. Then I squeezed it some more, and then some more. I cut it before squeezing it to maximize the moisture removal. 

Then when it was time to stir-fry the tofu I fried it in a tablespoon of peanut oil with the chilis and garlic on very high heat. I let it sear the tofu on both sides and get a little brown, which really firmed it up. Add in some bell peppers and some summer peas (my addition), basil, and a light sauce and it actually turned out to be awesome.

Conclusion: Tofu is good if cooked properly in the right kind of dish. I enjoyed this dish a lot, rather than just tolerating it. The peppers and peas were so fresh and crisp - they only need about 2 minutes to become perfect and bright. We threw the tofu dish together with some rice and that and a fruit salad made for a perfect vegan summer meal. Milo liked the tofu as well, eating several pieces. I'll definitely make this again, with just one modification next time: I'll let it sear just a little bit longer to make it even more brown and firm on all sides.

We Are Idiots, Part 134

Just a hint to any parents out there who might possibly be as dumb as us, although it's hard to imagine any such people even exist: If dad gets a tick on him, don't mention that at dinner. Don't ruminate out loud about how we'll have to check the kids over for ticks, piquing their interest about what ticks are and how they suck blood. Don't explain to them about how some insects drink blood for their food. Especially don't mention anything about how ticks burrow into skin.

Unless, of course, you want a freaked out kid up all night worried about how there are ticks inside of her.

Sometimes I think that the hardest thing about being a parent is when you're sick but you still have to take care of the kids.

Hot

It's like 104 degrees right now as I write this, and humid. People are freaking out. We get some hot weather in the summer, like in the 90s, but for most of our summers we have weather in the 80s usually. So this weather is pretty unusual for my part of the country. This is more like D.C. weather, or southeastern weather...or St. Louis weather.

And you know what, it is totally fine. I have been biking to work instead of walking. I feel like I need to do that because I get so sweaty outside walking that it'd be rude to show up to work drenched in sweat. It's a short (7 minute) bike ride, mostly coasting on the way to work, so it's not too bad. But otherwise, my work is air conditioned. My house is air conditioned. My car is air conditioned. We are lucky, lucky, lucky.

On the 4th of July the power went out. We were actually out in the park with our friends, and then I came home to find that I couldn't open the garage. I thought there was something wrong with the garage door but it was just a power outage. Our friends were worrying about the power outage lasting a long time and told us we could sleep at their house, but I knew we'd be fine in the basement, which stays cool naturally. Anyway, the power was only out for 20 minutes. We have amazingly good power consistency here, knock on wood. This is only the third time, I think, that we've lost power in the 8 years I've lived here and it's never been for more than an hour. What a contrast to people back east who have been without power for days!

The hardest part about living in extreme heat and humidity without air conditioning has always been sleeping, for me. When I was in college, we lived in a 3rd floor walk up without any air conditioning. It was probably a few degrees hotter inside the apartment, if that was even possible. The weather I'm experiencing now as an unusual heat wave was just what we called "summer". It was hard to sleep when it was so hot. I used to have a spray bottle with ice water by the bed, and I'd periodically spray myself with it to cool down. At some point, fans stop helping. It just feels like you've got a giant hair dryer blowing on you.

At night I would pick out my clothes for the next day and then put them in the freezer. The next morning, I'd take them right out of the freezer and put them on. It was a refreshing 30 seconds or so.

It was uncomfortable, but you got used to it. I think it's harder to get used to this weather now because we're so used to air conditioning.

Birthday pictures

There was a parade at school.

And red, white, and blue popsicles.

It's fucken hot here!

I got a haircut today! Also, I am trying to show off my huuuuuge muscles. Look out! It's like I'm the hulk! I will crush you! Arrrrrr...

All I Want for my Birthday is a Healthy Tooth

When I am nervous about something, even subconsciously, I get stomach problems. In fact I might think that I'm coming down with something only to realize oh, no it's just that I have to give a talk. Things that create stomach trouble:

-- Giving talks
-- First day of any new class
-- The dentist

I really hate the dentist. Now I have to get a root canal and a crown. That is three separate long appointments spread out over the summer. I'm sure it'll be completely terrible. Also, it's not covered by my insurance anymore, so it's going to cost $1200. Thanks, evil governor, for making our insurance simultaneously more expensive and lousier!

(Silver lining - at least I got my wisdom tooth out last year before the insurance changes kicked in. That probably would have cost a crapload of money if I'd waited until this year.)

Great Day

Today was a great day. Jake was all freaked out because it was supposed to be 100 today (although my computer only said 94), and I said, why not go to the pool?

We woke up, and the kids played in the park with Jake while I took a morning run before it got too ghastly hot. I recently downloaded the free app Map My Run (works for walks too) and was pretty psyched to discover that my pace is the same as what my average pace was back in San Diego 9 years ago. Not blisteringly fast, not even fast or medium fast, but definitely faster than, like, a year ago! Between walking and running I do 12-16 miles a week which is, I know, basically nothing. But I also have my gym class twice a week on top of that, and it's pretty much what I can manage right now what with working and the kids, and it feels nice.

Then I took Milo to the grocery store and he was completely delightful, like he always is at the store.

Then after the kids' nap we packed up our stuff and went to the pool, which was super fun. It was in the mid nineties and the pool was like bathwater, not at all cold, and I've got the only two kids on the planet who still start shivering and shaking after 10 minutes. They'd both be literally shivering all over, with blue lips, but insist they were fine and wanted to stay in. I made them get out every so often and warm up in the sun. Our friends joined us with their baby and everybody had a great time. Thanks to swimming lessons both kids really enjoy being in the water now, even though neither of them is even close to swimming. Nora was great about putting her face under water and taking risks and trying to swim a little bit. She has perfect form, floating on her back, but she still sinks like a rock. Milo does too. I think the fact that neither of them has any protective fat means they sink and get cold, but they still have a blast.

We had so much fun that we stayed through dinner time, eating apples and peanut butter and cherries, plums, and homemade granola bars, and only left when it was bedtime. Driving home at 7:15 it was still 91 degrees out.

Milo: Summer is my favorite season. And winter. Summer and winter. And fall.

Me too, Milo - but especially that part about summer.

Deja Vu

CSN&Y reminds me of college. So does 98 degree humidity...but also CSN&Y. I know, we were total retro ironic hippies. Especially my first college roommate. She was some sort of genius who graduated high school at 16 and wore her hair long and never drank, preferring to smoke pot. Now she's a SAH mom who homeschools her kids and raises chickens and has a gluten free recipes blog.

My roommate had a project with her dad when she was in high school. Together they found a non-functioning Morris Mini, and they bought it and then repaired it and got it into working condition. She took this car to college with her, even though freshmen couldn't have cars, so she parked it on the street and had to move it every night between 2 and 3 a.m. (This was not a problem given our lifestyle).

This thing was little.

The driver's side was on the right. When October came, we got fall break, which was basically a Friday off. My roommate was from Chicago so we decided to drive from St. Louis to Chicago with another friend of ours in that Morris Mini over fall break. It was a 6-hour drive. It was a lot of fun. It was very exciting for me and the other friend, Chad, to be going on a road trip on our own. It was less exciting for my roommate, who had had basically enormous amounts of freedom and autonomy for a number of years already, to a degree that impressed my teenaged self. Somehow we ended up with only one cassette tape in the car, which was Deja Vu by CSN&Y. And we listened to that same tape over and over and over and over again on the trip.

Nowadays the idea of driving from St. Louis to Chicago in a 25-year old Morris Mini is not my idea of the best time, but for an 18 year old, it was truly outstanding.

(Not off Deja Vu, but still a good one):

0. The kids got haircuts!

Before:

After:

1. My chair told me he got a letter confirming my tenure from the board of regents, after I asked him about it about 18 times. (I never got any official notification at any stage of the process). So now it is official! Hooray!

Yes, at other institutions professors are usually notified (usually at every stage of the process). Of course, at other institutions it's also not unusual to publish some sort of standards for tenure, and some information about the process, instead of everything always being super secret the way it is on our campus.

2. Last night Milo and Nora were playing in the park with their next door neighbors, two girls 5 and 8, who they love playing with. Milo had his iron man mask on. They were being super heros. It was time for the girls to go, and the younger girl chased Milo to hug him goodbye. He ran away. She pursued. He tripped and fell, prone on the grass, with his iron man mask over his head, defenseless as she caught up to him and hugged him. Yes, it was as cute as it sounds.

Milo is being kind of weird these days. He cries really easily, much more so than is typical for him. At the same time, he's a total dick to Nora. I'm kind of at my wit's end with all the fighting and bickering. Even today with all of my interventions there has been kicking from each kid, privileges lost, a door slammed on somebody's foot...it never ends. Seriously, save me from the fighting.

Remember when they were all cute and innocent? *sigh*

3. There have been some news stories about how U.S. kids are super spoiled. I think this is kind of true and kind of not true. Kids are loaded up with more and more stuff than ever before. Toys, sports equipment, phones, computers, clothes. Kids have also become accustomed to having adults at their beck and call, instead of the other way around. Middle class or upper class kids may not be doing the kinds of chores they were doing a generation or two ago, because those chores may be outsourced now (people hire house cleaners, gardeners to mow their lawns, etc.)

At the same time, kids now have about three times as much homework to deal with as we had when my generation was in school. They're expected to be in a lot more sports and other activities. They're busier, always being shuttled from one activity to the next, staying up late to complete their homework. My kids aren't even in elementary school yet but I'm totally against this homework arms race. I don't think it helps kids at all.

So, Milo and Nora are 4 and a half. At this age we make them clean up their toys, admittedly in a pretty haphazard way. They also have to make their beds every morning, put their clothes in the laundry basket, and they clear their places after each meal. Before meals I have them put their placemats out. Is that enough chores for their age? I have no idea. Maybe they should be doing more, but it's not clear to me what the more would involve. They both help us when we clean the house, because they're still at the stage where they think that's fun. They don't get an allowance. I was thinking of maybe instating an allowance when they're 5, to the tune of perhaps a dollar a week. Or maybe 50 cents a week?

It's funny to see how they each deal with their little tasks. Nora is better at remembering to bring her plate to the sink after a meal. Milo has to be reminded more often. Milo is fastidious about making his bed every morning. I never have to tell him. I have to tell Nora every morning, and she balks at it, complaining that it's a big job. I'm hoping that her pissing and moaning reaction about this now, and learning that she has to do it anyway, will teach her some discipline so that we won't be dealing with teenage levels of pissing and moaning at every unenjoyable task when they're older. But that's probably wishful thinking.

However, last night I decided to publicly (in front of Nora) talk to Milo about how proud I am of him for making his bed every morning without me asking. And lo and behold, for the first time ever, Nora came down this morning informing me that she had already made her bed! She was very pleased with herself.

Last night Milo tore his Spiderman sticker. This is a sticker he got at the audiologist's a few weeks ago. He was so, so upset about this. He cried for about half an hour about this sticker. We did lots of cuddling and hugging to make him feel better, but it didn't 100% do the trick. After he went to bed Jake said maybe he'd try to find Milo another Spiderman sticker the next day. I thought, that sounded like a good idea. Then I thought, maybe after swimming I'd take the kids to the store and see if we could find a Spiderman sticker.

Then I slept on it, and woke up, and realized oh no, that's actually a terrible idea. As much as I want to make Milo feel better about his sticker tearing, I don't think that us fixing the problem for him the very next day would be good for him. It's better for Milo to experience the sadness of tearing his sticker, no matter how much that stinks, and then get over it on his own without his parents making it all better right away. I think I read that somewhere in a parenting book. That parents make the mistake of fixing their kids' problems, so that kids never experience the little heartbreaks that are a natural part of life, and then you end up with bigger kids and adolescents and adults who are completely unequipped to handle any hardship whatsoever. So if your kid is being careless and drops his ice cream cone, parents might be tempted to just get them another one right away instead of letting the kid experience the disappointment of losing his ice cream. So on reflection I decided to not get Milo another Spiderman sticker, and let him just get over it. We comforted him with hugs and cuddling, but we didn't make the problem go away by replacing his sticker.

Anyway, he hasn't forgotten about it today, but he seems more or less over it.

Summer Sunday

Oh, hey, you know what happens when you go over to your friend's house on a Friday night and let your kids run around wild with their kids all night, and they end up staying up until 11:30 p.m. because all the parents were having too much fun drinking wine and beer? We get one totally unaffected child, and one complete mess of a child. Nora was fine on Saturday and even skipped her nap. Milo was a disaster - anything less than his daily 14 hours of sleep and he falls apart completely!

Funny phrase that Milo has learned that he uses in a totally inappropriate way: "Doubt it." So, like, I'll say, "Nora, what'd you do in school today?" She'll say, "I made a painting." And Milo will say, "DOUBT IT."

Tonight Jake grilled some black bean burgers on the grill and then we ate dinner outside on the patio table, which the kids thought was the most fun ever. I do enjoy listening to the cicadas just getting started and looking around at the sky and the trees while eating dinner.

I had a very interesting conversation with my friend, my friend who is super powerful and impressive in a way I'll never, ever be. (She's on leave from our department to do a stint in the white house - she's on the President's advisory panel.) Anyway, she and her husband are kind of ticked off at the lousy treatment my area is getting from our department, and her take on it was that I have a choice. Choice one, I can continue to eschew the political bureaucrat's lifestyle and just hunker down and do my stuff and, at best, cultivate a culture of personality where I'll have my own cohort of grad students every year but not much more. Choice two, I can be all political and shit, having strategy meetings with key members of the department, meeting with them one on one and sucking up to them before important votes to make sure I've got the votes on my side, and focus on building not just my career, but a program. In other words, thinking programatically instead of individually. Because in our department, that's how you have to operate in order to make any real progress at all. This includes things like going to certain public meetings and lectures when the dean will be there, sucking up to her and provosts and other administrators, and basically building up a cache of goodwill over time.

The reality is that as the senior member of my area, this should be Mentor's job, but he's not going to do it. So I can either choose to do it, and think big, or choose not to do it, and accept that I'll probably keep running into the same roadblocks year after year after year.

So...do I want to build a career, or do I want to build a program? Do I want to build and maintain an individual lab, or do I want to build and maintain a system?

I have been reflecting on the past year or so that I need a different kind of mentor now. Not a research mentor, but more like a mid-career mentor who can teach me how to deal with bad deans and frustrating bureaucracies. My friend's year and counting at the white house has taught her all of this stuff, and now I am getting this advice that is probably true and valuable advice. Of course, it's not at all what I want to hear.

Personal Solutions to a Policy-Based Problem

Even though this article wasn't perfect I still really loved it. Not surprisingly everybody around here is talking about it in the halls. The title the editors assigned to the article is a bad one; it'd be better to have a title about how it's difficult to have a high-powered career and a family at the same time, or something like that. It's hard for men, too, if they want to actually see their families. But the article itself avoided the most typical, almost universal mistake that pretty much every publication on this topic makes: That of blaming women for the choices they make. (As if those choices were made in a vacuum.) Instead, Professor Slaughter recognizes that we're in a situation in which particular societal norms and institutional rules (or lack thereof) make a high-powered career and a humane life outside that career fundamentally incompatible. Women are responding to those pressures. That type of response (which can include stepping back or dropping out of the career stream) is rational, not selfish.

She argues for some concrete changes, things like redefining the timeline of what constitutes a successful career, making work hours and school hours more compatible with one another, enlisting buy in from men in charge, changing face time culture. I'd also argue for national policy changes that would bring us in line with the rest of the developed world: policies such as universal parental leave and state support for high-quality child care.

Here's the thing. There are two conflicting (for me) issues going on here, and I can see how they're in natural conflict. One issue that is very important to me is to respect the choices that individual women make for their lives, careers, and families. Sometimes that means not having kids and putting everything towards their careers. Sometimes that means having kids and choosing to stay home with their kids because their careers aren't compatible with their family needs. I think it's important to recognize that women make those decisions not in a vacuum, but in the context of a national set of policies and business cultures that fundamentally discourage high-powered careers for those with families. What needs to change is these policies and cultures - when that changes, more women -- and men who want to be active fathers -- will have the freedom and opportunity to lean into their careers more.

However, the conflict comes from this inescapable truth: nothing is going to change unless women (or more broadly, feminists, women and men) force those changes to come about. And the only way people can force those changes is to reach positions of leadership in business, academia, medicine, and government. So the tension comes from the fact that unfortunately, somebody's got to do this job, the job of sacrificing to make it big in their careers, so that they can get enough power to enact real change. To make it better for the people who come after us. So I simultaneously respect and understand the choices that people make now to not partake in a system that's stacked against anybody with a family, while also acknowledging that it's important to fight against that, to strive for ambitious careers so that we can reach the levels necessary to have enough power to change things for the better.

Because let's face it. Most of the folks who are currently in the top positions in business, academics, and government are straight, white males. They are the very people who already benefit from our current system. They have people at home taking care of their household needs and families for them (my dad once referred to this as his "procurement officer", by which he meant, his wife). They are the wealthy, they are the ones in power, and people in power will not enact policies that will reduce their hold on that power and wealth.

We need feminists, by which I mean people concerned with the values of social justice for all people, to achieve career success and leadership positions. We need those people to enact policies that promote the values of social justice over the values of short-term profits. A more humane work setting may not necessarily be at odds, at all times, with long-term profitability. (See the article I linked above for a brief discussion on some research studies suggesting that company cultures that support work/life balance and flexible schedules can actually do better in the mid to long term). If we keep opting out, then who is going to do this? Not the people we've got in charge now.

So it's difficult, because I find myself giving advice to individual young women that relies on specific, individual solutions / workarounds, while simultaneously recognizing that it shouldn't be that way. That it's not fair that it's that way. But unfortunately, that's the way it is right now, and sometimes you gotta live with the way it is.

************* Wavy Memory Lines*************

I was recently at a conference in Savannah and a young grad student there wanted to know all about my decision to have kids on the tenure track at an R1 university. A group of about 12 of us were walking around the town, and we stopped at an ice cream shop to eat ice cream cones and chat. She is a very bright and articulate student. Given where and what she's studying, I can tell that she'll be poised to take a high-profile job, should she choose to do so. But she was already talking about maybe taking a non-R1 job so that she could have a family. She asked me how I did it.

I wish I could have told her that I did it because my university had a great parental leave policy (it has none) and high-quality subsidized childcare (it has none) and a department chair that strongly supported a flexible work-life balance (hah). But what did I have that helped me out? Individual privileges, some which are pure luck, some which maybe you can try to engineer a little bit. One privilege was having an area chair who is a super involved dad, who regularly leaves early to pick his son up from school, and who therefore set a culture in our area where prioritizing family needs is accepted. I also have a departmental culture that doesn't care at all about face time, but cares only about productivity. That's something she could investigate when she's on the market. A department that allows flexibility (but still demands high productivity) can enable you to work odd hours, hours at night, during your kids' naps, during the weekend. I worked a lot of hours on the tenure track, but they were at a lot of odd times, which helped me spend time with my kids.

But the biggest thing that made a difference, and Professor Slaughter mentioned this too, was who I married. Again, this shouldn't be what matters for a young woman interested in building a career, but given our current situation, it really does.


One time, before I was with Jake, I was with somebody else who wanted to get married and have kids, like, yesterday. His job was his life, and he routinely sacrificed everything, including his own health, for the job. It was clear that I came a distant second, but I had my own career to focus on too, so it was okay. But when we talked about having kids, he'd say stuff like, "I don't want my kids in daycare." And I'd be all, uh, are you planning to quit work then? Oh, absolutely not. Of course not. I'd say, are you asking me to stop my career then? "Oh no," he'd say, "I value your career." Okay, I'd ask him, then how are we going to take care of these hypothetical kids? He had no answer. 


I knew that if I went down that road with him, I'd be the one responsible for everything. Doctor's appointments, bedtime routines. He'd come home at 11 p.m. and I'd get more and more resentful. The idea of him moving somewhere if I got a good job in another state wouldn't have been an option. Sure, he'd take out the garbage, mow the lawn, and fix the toilet -- he'd pull his weight, but subtly, his career would be the priority. And that's not the way you get tenure. You can't have kids, be at an R1, and get tenure when your partner's career takes precedence over everything. Something would have to give.


Anyhoo, I ended up marrying Jake and from the first day I met him, it was clear that he liked the fact that I was a professor and admired what I did for a living. Jake grew up with a mother who worked, and who was also a very strong voice in the family, and he had an inherent respect for the authority and autonomy of women. In his eyes, my career was the most important thing. That is tied up in the fact that he didn't want to have to move, and he knew that if I didn't get tenure, we could kiss our house/neighborhood/town goodbye.

Having twins was also a lucky happening because when you have two infants, there is no primary parent. Both parents have to be a primary parent. This set Jake up in that role from pretty much the day our kids were born. And I know without a doubt that I wouldn't have gotten tenure if Jake's attitude had been different. I got tenure because he really stepped up to the plate. He never complained about the trips I took. He never complained when I had to work late. He handled it, and he did it willingly because getting tenure was our goal as a family. And so I explained those things when I advised this grad student to be careful about who she married. Marrying a feminist can make all the difference if you want to both have a family and try to succeed in your career.

Now that I have tenure, I feel like it is time to shift the balance again, to make sure that he is getting what he needs in his career too. That is part of the reason why I turned down 2 jobs last year, both which would have been better for my career than my current job. But it wouldn't have been better for our family as a whole. Jake, meanwhile, continues to keep our family in mind when he makes decisions. He still struggles with whether his current job is the best one for him, but one thing that keeps him in it is that it allows him to spend more time with the kids. He knows that some of the alternate jobs out there would take him away from the family for more time each day than he feels is acceptable.

And no this is not fair. What about single parents? What about lots of other situations where people don't exactly have a choice? It's a privilege. The fact that I had Jake on my side was an unearned privilege helping me out. That's why I don't think advice like "marry the right person" should stand in for what should REALLY happen, which is change our policies and practices as a nation. Then who you marry would matter a lot less, and that's the way it should be. So it's sort of annoying advice to give, because it's basically saying "set yourself up to be as privileged a person as possible" -- but right now, it's all we've got. And frankly, I want this grad student to do that, because I want her to take the highest-reaching job she can get. And I want her to become a dean, and to take a government stint, and to then shape policy in a way that'll make it more humane for everybody else.

************* End Wavy Memory Lines **************

I don't think these tensions are just about women who have children. I think it affects almost all of us. A lot of men these days, especially in my generation and younger, also want to be a part of their kids' lives growing up. A lot of people who don't have kids still have other important commitments outside of work. Their needs are important too, and we could all benefit from changing the work culture to one that values a humane work week and flexible solutions.

And me? I'm not in some high-powered career, I don't have a stint at the white house, I'm not in administration. I'm just an associate professor humming along doing my stuff. But I do feel like a lot of us can do at least something even if we're not as high powered as the author of the article, me included. So now that I have tenure, I have decided to tackle one concrete thing on campus, which is a policy change. I am joining a committee to try to enact a policy that would grant everybody paid family leave on campus. I will work to accomplish that one little thing, and after that, set my sights on the next thing. I gotta use all of this privilege I've got for something, to try to make it better for everybody who comes next.

Good Things

Good Thing #1: Final proofs of our book have been completed and reviewed and now the manuscript is off to the publisher! So it is officially done and the next time I see it, it'll be an actual book. I have co-authored three books now for this particular series but this is the first one for which I'm the first author. I'm pretty psyched.

Good Thing #2: Telling my grad student who led the charge on a particular analysis that her analysis is what our intellectual mentor in this area of work liked best about my talk last week. My grad student was so pleased and excited to get that kind of recognition. (It was well deserved - she's totally awesome.) Later, I got four requests from different researchers for a copy of our presentation and the best part about that was taking the time to stop and thank my team of grad students (and one new professor who has been continuing with the project via skype). Their work has been really outstanding, and it feels great to reflect on that, and to make sure they know it and know how much I appreciate them. I am so lucky to have these amazing, amazing students.

Good Thing #3: Summer foods. Anything with the herbs I've got growing in my garden - lots of basil. Lots of cilantro. Today it's roasted peppers with garlic, red wine vinegar, olive oil, flat parsley, fresh ball mozzarella, and capers. Soooo good.

Good Thing #4: The heat wave has broken. Pleasant low 80s temps instead of weirdly hot mid-nineties temps.

Kids: Nora seems to have recovered from whatever strange affliction was plaguing her. She's resumed her equilibrium just in time for Milo to start having a rough time. I wonder if he is getting sick; he's been very teary today over very small things (like losing a rubber band).

It's 8:45 p.m., an hour after their bedtime, and I can still hear Nora marching around upstairs in her room and singing songs to herself.

Last night we had a storm. I woke up from the storm. Then I heard our door open. Nora crept into our room. She started to settle down at my feet, like a dog, and I said, "Why don't you come up here with us?" So she slept between us. This reminds me of how far we've come. A few years ago a storm like that would have meant two crying babies, us up and out of our room, comforting them in their room. Exhausting. Now, I don't even have to get out of bed - they come to us. So nice! And to top it off, Milo slept through the whole thing. Even better.

Wow!

That grant that our PO told us we almost certainly weren't going to get? Well, today we talked to her, and she's sending us questions. (That's a VERY good sign indicating the likelihood of getting the grant after all). !!! This is very exciting! The down side is that it's for a much reduced budget - in fact, only 1/3 of our original budget. However, 1/3 of our original budget will still yield a 3-year grant that has a larger budget than my current 5-year CAREER award, so it's not anything to sneeze at!

This is a really amazing and surprising turn of events!

Today is our home day and Milo & Nora had their 2nd swimming lesson of the summer this morning. It went well, they both like it and are putting their heads in the water. Both jumped into the pool on their own without holding the teacher's hand! And they look so cute in their little swim caps and goggles.

CALGONE TAKE ME AWAY

So, Nora has been on an epic morning rage the last two mornings. Four days with her grandparents managed to turn her into a total maniac. Or maybe it's just what she's like now, and I'm searching around looking to place the blame on Jake's parents because it's easy to do. But whatever it is, jeez, I have had it with that kid.

She's just completely defiant. She won't do what she doesn't want to do, she thinks it's acceptable to say no to me (or to scream it), she argues and talks back at every turn, and she just digs her heels in further and further. Honestly, this kid has been pushing me to the brink since she was an infant and she hasn't stopped yet. At times it's even hard not to laugh, because she's trying to use adult ways of arguing in a way she doesn't quite understand yet. I'll tell her I've had enough and I won't tolerate any arguments. "But Mom," she whines, "That's not the point!"

I wasn't laughing, though, when she went nuts at school and hauled off and hit me this morning. She hasn't done anything like that in a year or more.

Mornings are the hardest because I can't defuse the situation by separating us and putting her in her room to cool down. Instead, we are forced together because we must get dressed and out the door and to school. And the problem is, when a punishment is imposed for her hideously bad behavior, that's not the end of it. She'll argue it. And argue it. And argue it and argue it and argue it and argue it. Seriously, if I didn't physically remove myself from her presence, I think she would argue it all day long. Where the hell did this kid come from? And it's not like I argue back or respond or ever change my mind. I don't. I don't acquiesce to her arguments, ever. All the parenting books tell you that you need to be consistent and not back down and they'll learn to respect those boundaries. Those books have never met Nora.

I was never allowed to talk back to my parents. That resulted in things like writing "I will not talk back to my mother" 50 times. But Nora is too young to write lines. And oddly enough, despite me informing her that talking back to her parents is not done, she still seems to think this is acceptable. Where does she get this kind of defiance? Honestly. We are not a spanking family, so all I can think to do is put her in her room until she's willing to drop it. But again, that doesn't work when you're in the car on the way to school.

All I can do is reflect back on how, at least things are better now than they were a year ago. The meltdowns happen, but they last 10 minutes instead of 3 hours. She is capable of internally defusing now, and can change her mood in a few minutes, whereas when she was 2 and 3 she couldn't do that and seemed trapped in a cycle of continuous escalation that would literally last for several hours. (Of hell.)

The thing is, I am not an easygoing, lax parent. We have boundaries and standards and rules and I'd say I'm probably more strict than pretty much any of my peers. Pretty much all of my friends let their kids do stuff that I don't let my kids do. Having two very temperamentally different children has taught me how important temperament is in contrast to parenting behaviors. They both matter, but I never realized how is driven by temperament.

A Complicated Love

As my plane was preparing to land in my town, I looked out the window, as I always do, watching the landscape get larger and larger. Inadvertently, my pupils dilated and my heart swelled as I took in how beautiful everything was. I watched us sail over the rolling farmlands, the woods, the lakes, all the lush greenery that is so abundant this time of year. I can't help it. I feel so betrayed by my state these days, but I continue to love it so much.

When I first moved here 8 years ago, I was coming from southern California. I wouldn't call it an unfriendly part of the country, but it was fairly anonymous. I lived in a big city and didn't know any of my neighbors. Thanksgiving dinners were more about elegance than community. I locked the door to my apartment to go running. Heck, I locked the door to take out the trash.

Then I came here, and found myself frequently surprised by little interactions and events that reminded me how different things were. When I went to the corner store, the man behind the counter chatted with me, welcomed me to the area, and gave me advice. When I passed somebody on the sidewalk, or even in the street in my car, they'd wave. Even if I didn't know them. People had me over for dinner, people I hardly knew. I sat in retired colleague's kitchen as his wife prepared salmon and asparagus, chatting about what the Wednesday noon siren means (preparing for tornados). When I bought my house, the owners apologized at the closing because they didn't have the key to the front door. "We haven't locked it in 9 years, and we couldn't find it to save our lives," they told me. After the closing, I rushed over to my new house. I went into the kitchen. I opened the fridge. There, in the shining, spotlessly clean refrigerator, was a box with a bow on it. Inside the box I found pastries from the local pastry shop, and a note saying, "Enjoy your new home!"

And I met Jake, right away, and he offered to show me around town, right away. "How nice," I thought. "A new friend already! People are so friendly here!"

I was charmed, I was seduced by the culture of this new place. I marveled at things that I hadn't known since childhood, like fireflies in the evening, and cicadas at night. I fell in love with my new surroundings and with Jake at the same time. They became intertwined. As summer wound its way into autumn I marveled at how he and his family and friends all knew the same German drinking songs -- and they sang them, together, loudly, at Oktoberfest. I marveled at how they all knew how to polka, and actually did it. More, I marveled at the close family network I observed, where cousins and aunts and uncles all traveled to get together for people's birthdays and anniversaries.

It was charming that the local NPR station carried not only Talk of the Nation, but also statewide shows on insects and native plants, on home repair, on wildlife. I felt like I had wandered into a scene from A Prairie Home Companion. I still feel that way. And of course, yes, all of this is just a caricature. The state I live in and its people are vastly more complicated than the rosy picture I like to imagine. But I ignorantly allowed myself to live with the oversimplified version, because it suited me.

During my first fall term here, the other new faculty and I formed a cohort and we would go out for drinks and dinner, getting to know one another and our new town. All of us were from either the east coast or the west coast. All of the other faculty complained a lot about our town; its backwardness, its smallness, its provincial ways. And in many ways, it is all of those things. We are a small city of 230,000 people. It feels bigger than it is culturally, because we have both the flagship university and the state capitol here, but it was definitely the smallest city I had lived in. I too had wondered how I would react to it. Would I feel stifled? My fellow faculty members felt stifled, and they complained. Somehow it offended me. I felt protective of my new home state, maybe because it was wrapped up in Jake, a native of the state, with his peculiar mannerisms and regional speech patterns.

What I found was that the pace of life flowed differently, and you had to slow down to notice and appreciate what came up in that flow. The rhythm of the seasons gradually took hold of me. Jake's grandfather brought us brussels sprouts in October. We ate squash and soups in the fall, we ate tomatoes and peppers in the summer. In the winter, we hole up, turning inwards, working more. In the spring, everybody emerges, we become more social. We go out more, we hold parties, we sit outside on cafe patios. We barbecue. We spend winter afternoons making snowmen and ice skating, and we drink hot chocolate. We spend summer weekends at the lake, fishing and swimming, drifting on the pontoon boat as we let our fingers lazily drag across the surface of the water.

How can I not love all of this?

But oversimplified stereotypes cannot endure, and of course there is another side to this state. It's a side I've mostly ignored, which is easy to do in our liberal oasis of a town, but it grew harder and harder to ignore, and became impossible to ignore after the failed recall.

This is the side where friends of friends think it's okay to make racist jokes. It's the side where nobody in the extended family will use my last name. It's the side where my undergraduates, who are always white, aren't interested in learning about ways to better connect to students of color in their own classrooms. It's the side where vegetarian means you still eat fish and shrimp, where a college education is uncommon, and where people describe visitors from the state south of us with words like "bastards".

In the past year there was a This American Life episode about the political upheaval in our state. The general theme of the episode was that people here are so nice, and the upheaval threatens that niceness. They interviewed some people who were campaigning against a local candidate, and they asked those people to discuss the candidate they were trying to oust. The campaigners said, "We don't think she's right for the office. I mean, she's a good mom..." The interviewer noted how remarkable that is, that the strongest thing they could say was that they thought she wasn't quite right, but had to couple that statement with the remark that they thought she was a good mom.

They recorded a contentious meeting that turned nasty, with hecklers, and then you hear one woman in the background call out, "We're NICE in [our state]!"

But what I've witnessed hasn't been nice. Recently we traveled through small towns to attend a wedding. Every other house had a pro governor sign in front of it. There was a giant billboard with the message that our current governor is working for the entire state, not just the "privileged few". That's how teachers are  characterized here now. As the privileged few. That is not nice. In a small town 45 minutes south of us, somebody distributed anonymous flyers attacking teachers in general. That is not nice. None of this is nice.

Intellectually, I understand that of course our state is deeply complex, like any. The farmers who traveled down to the capitol to march on the square come from the same state as their neighbors who thought there was nothing wrong with repealing the equal pay act. The people on my street who shoveled my sidewalk and brought me meals come from the same state as the guy who called in to the local radio program complaining that state workers are spoiled and need to pay their fair share. The family members who gave me treasured clothing and jewelry items belonging to my husband's grandmother -- before Jake and I were even married -- are the same family members who cannot completely hide their racism, their misogyny, and their anti-semitism.

Ours is a community oriented, family oriented culture. I didn't grow up in a culture like that. I have been more welcomed and integrated into Jake's complicated, deeply flawed extended family than I ever was in my own biological family. I grew up in the relative anonymity of the west coast, and then I moved to a town where nobody is anonymous. Everybody knows your story, and that is simultaneously comforting and stifling. I feel so angry, so, so angry at what has happened over the past year and a half. When I reflect on it, I think that I feel much more angry than I would have felt over the outcome of a similar election when I lived in, say, California, because here it feels deeply personal. And I, like many like me who have adopted this place as our own, allowed myself to feel a sense of betrayal. I allowed myself to become seduced by some aspects of this place, without fully understanding everything about the complex, intricate culture and history of the people who live here.

You can't stay in love with a fantasy forever. Eventually, the real parts come out, and the story is messier than whatever rosy picture you concocted. And that's where I am now. Sad, really sad, and still angry as well. But that hasn't made me stop loving.

This weekend I've been all alone because Jake and his parents took the kids up north on Friday afternoon when I was still flying back from DC. And yes, it has been awesome. I saw one friend for coffee but that was it; I wasn't motivated to get together with people because the one thing I don't have any of in my normal life is time alone. I'm pretty much never alone, and I'm a person who likes being alone. So I spent most of the weekend alone, doing some chores and work but also going for a long run, baking and cooking, reading a book (for pleasure, not for work!), and watching original Star Trek episodes.

Jake is a pie person much more than a cake person, so I made some handheld pies for him for Father's Day. I made blueberry, strawberry, and peach bourbon pies:

I also did some weeding and then tried to take some photos of our deck and patio in the event that we ever try to sell our house. It wasn't easy, though.

Maybe I should lay out the outdoor rug on the patio before photographing it, but getting that rug out is more of a 2-person job. (We generally bring it out for parties and stuff.) Also, the giant chicken wire cage around our planter isn't attractive, but there's no way in hell I'm messing with that thing after the effort that went into getting it into place!

I went to an open house Jake wanted me to check out, and another one that was near the one Jake was interested in. Both were a bust. The more time passes the harder it is to try to think about moving. There are so many kids Nora & Milo's age on this block. One thing about our neighborhood with the old houses is that the houses have a lot of character but most of them also have weird flaws. And if we're going to deal with weird flaws, we might as well deal with our own house's weird flaws.

Time is behaving so strangely for me now. As I get older, elapsed time feels like it has condensed so that the 8 years here in my house and in this town (almost exactly 8 years - I moved here near the end of June) feels about as long as the 4 years I spent in grad school. And with the house quiet and empty, it sure does remind me of the very first summer when I first moved into this house, sitting in the same spot I'm sitting now, boxes scattered about the floor. It could almost be then. I was alone a lot then, in my happy little house that felt huge.

Worth It

Conferences are about serendipity. It can be a dud, or it can be great, but usually the ways in which it ends up great are ways that you can't predict ahead of time.

I wasn't super psyched about this conference I just attended but it ended up okay in the end. One thing about conferences is that it usually involves giving one or more talks, and I hate giving talks. I do it all the time, because you have to as an academic, but I don't like it. I still get nervous, no matter how many talks I give. Conferences in which my talk happens on the first day are inevitably more fun than conferences in which my talk happens on the last day.

Anyway, some things that ended up being good about this conference was that I finally got a chance to talk to our program officer and learn more about what the deal is with our grant. I also floated a new idea for another grant I'm working on with some colleagues. She was into it, but really only into half of it, I could tell, so I think this is going to pose some challenges to us moving forward.

One interesting and upsetting thing is that we're struggling to get sufficient funding through these programs for math projects as opposed to science, technology, and engineering projects. Math isn't getting as much money and meanwhile our two math POs are leaving. I asked my PO what happens when she and the other one leave, and she remarked that probably somebody would end up in their roles who is a science person but has some connections to math. "This is very concerning for the future of math funding," she told me. Ugh. In a better funding year our grant would have been funded this time around.

Anyway, talking to the PO made the trip worth it. Another thing that made the trip worth it was my symposium today. I was very nervous about it because the theme of the symposium was for a research area that I'm just starting to get involved in. So I feel like something of a newbie in this area. Meanwhile, 4 of the 5 other presenter groups are super, super experienced in this area of research. Also, I was *extra* nervous because the content area that I was presenting on is the content area that this very well-known researcher, Dr. C, basically created about 20 years ago. I mean, the content area already existed, of course, but her work on the conceptual structures involved in building it still remains the standard to this day. So I'm going to get up and talk about my work in this area, HER area, and she was on the panel too! It's like talking about the Bible in front of God. Which I said, at the beginning of my talk. (Fortunately she laughed).

To add to the nervousness, this researcher has a particular reputation, and it's not a reputation of being all roses. So I was worried that she'd tear me apart.

So anyway I gave my talk with famous Dr. C sitting near me, and she was really nice. She kept making all of these comments to herself as I was talking, and they were encouraging comments so that bolstered my confidence. Then, after the talk, this other famous guy (who also has quite a reputation) asked a public question that was really a disguised attack. It was on all of us but he used me as an example, so it was specific to me. Also, his point was actually one I agree with completely, so I thought his point was valid. We just hadn't addressed that particular point in our talks because that wasn't the focus of those particular talks. Anyway, Dr. C responded and in her response she complimented a particular analysis I had done as addressing this guy's concerns. I also responded, and he pushed back on my remarks very strongly. It was difficult, but I didn't take it personally. (He's just like that.) Afterwards Dr. C told me that my talk had made her trip worth it, and she suggested a small working group where several of us get together to work on these common problems we're all tackling! That was super exciting. If a working group with Dr. C came out of this, it would totally make the whole trip worth it. It was also a relief that she responded well to my work given how worried I'd been about her response in particular. It's nice when people end up being...nice. Instead of jerky. I'm choosing to focus on the niceness of Dr. C rather than the aggressiveness of the other famous guy.

Then in the airport shuttle on the way to the airport, this random person I've never met turned to me as she was getting off and said, "I really liked your talk. I learned a lot, and I'm in SCIENCE!" The whole shuttle laughed, and somebody said "Never the twain shall meet!" (The joke being that math and science never talk to each other.)

The final thing that made the trip worth it -- dinner and wine with my friends last night. Lots of hilarity ensued.

Conference notes

I tried to sort of sleep in this morning during my DC visit. As I kept waking up to doors slamming and loud feet stomping, my brain said, there's the kids. Time to get up. Then I'd wake up a little more and realize, oh, no. Not the kids. Just some boorish adults who aren't my problem.

I love the Hyatt over all other chain hotels. They do a lot of things right. I'm not particularly motivated to even leave my room. My room is about 2/3 the size of my 1st California apartment.

I kind of wish I hadn't agreed to go to this PI meeting. It is simultaneously broad and small, which means there are practically no talks that interest me. Also, I'm still smarting from the whole grant thing, and just not feeling it. Already looking forward to returning home tomorrow.

Geez, what a crappy day. Lousy morning with the kids, then I can't find an affordable ticket to SFO in August and am kicking myself for not buying it a long time ago, and worst is that we found out our grant probably won't be funded. It's not 100% yet because our PO is still waiting on final budget numbers, but I think it's like 99% sure that it won't. Moreover it looks like none of Mentor's other two grants will be funded either. Which is hugely disappointing, and also brings up new challenges with how we're going to handle money and funding issues. We have one unfunded student, which happened due to a miscommunication. He told us in his application that he had funding from his government, which is common for people from his country. Many times we receive applications from people who have full funding from their government that pays for their tuition, stipend, etc. We stupidly assumed that was the case with him. We should have checked more carefully, because it turns out that in this student's case, his government funding is actually quite minimal and doesn't even fully cover tuition. So we were anticipating funding him on one of the grants I was totally sure Mentor would get. Now, without this grant coming through, we have no way to fund this student and it is really weighing on me. Tuition + living expenses is hugely expensive and I'm worried about how he is going to handle it.

This is the problem with relying on grants...when the funding to NSF dries up, and it becomes increasingly difficult to secure grant money, then we start running into problems because we have come to depend on grants as part of our structural way of operating.

Weather change

Rough morning. Since when did french toast become such a culinary insult? Reflecting on today's rough morning reminds me of how far we've come. These days, tears happen less often rather than being an inevitable part of the morning. And when they come, they end sooner. Nora began the car ride refusing to get into her seat, but by the time we got to school she was happy and ready to go. What a change from a year ago. 4 year olds are a lot better than 3 year olds.

Moonrise Kingdom

In my own mind, my life is a Wes Anderson film.

Can Milo & Nora Come Out to Play?

Today Milo wanted to impress his 8-year old next door neighbor on the playground, so he did a headstand for her. She did indeed seem quite impressed.

The 8 year old has a 5-year old sister who gave Nora a little bag with pens. You can color the outside of the bag with pens. Nora has been clutching that thing ever since. At night time, she said, "Eva colors on her bed. Can I have this now and color on my bed? Eva's allowed to do it."

So cute. These girls live in the house next door, literally 10 feet from our front door. Now the kids are running back and forth between houses all the time. I'm really unsure about how much freedom to give them. They are too young to be just going off on their own, but I can see the day coming. But I do love watching them spontaneously go over to the houses of their friends up and down the street - it reminds me of how it was when I was a kid.

Love Our Neighborhood

Our neighborhood is a big pull to stay put. We have this listserve and through the spring I've been purging some bigger items, like the kids' outgrown trikes, our double jogging stroller, a bed rail, stuff like that. Over the years I have gotten a lot of nice hand me downs from neighbors - clothes, ice skates, outdoor toys, etc. I put our items up on the listserve and gave them away to neighbors who needed them. It is always good to give back to the group when it is our turn to pass stuff on.

Today I saw an email come in with a picture of a little kid's bike. Free to whoever wants it sitting outside a block from our house. Perfect size for Milo in maybe a month or two, great condition. Jake went out and picked it up, and now we've got Milo's new-to-us bike sitting in our garage for the day when he's ready to graduate from his balance bike.

Jake's parents picked up a tagalong bike at a yard sale, which they're bringing down to our house this week. I haven't seen it so I don't know if it's the right size for a very little kid, but I hope it is. Then we can buy another one for the other kid, and then go biking around as a family. I can just picture it, biking to the Saturday farmer's market for some local vegetables, music, and fun!

When to Stay and When to Go

A lot of things about the job have turned really bad in the last couple of years. Lousy within-department interactions, with a departmental bias held strong against our area and communicated openly in faculty meetings. A horrible dean, truly the worst manager I've ever known. Explicit communication that our area will not be supported or grown, which always surprises everybody because deans at other universities pretty much universally support our area because we bring in so much money. And to top it off we have lousy math dept. interactions. They've been so bad lately that Mentor and I have gotten an email informing us that our knowledge, backgrounds, and experience are insufficient for us to be qualified to do the job of running a particular program we're running.

What is good about my job? The little bubble that is my area. My direct area colleagues and our area grad students are truly awesome. We work well together, we have terrific collaborations, and I enjoy the collaborative research we do. Everybody in my area is a great colleague.

But is that bubble enough to protect from the incursions from our department, our dean, the math department, and the horrible state political situation that is ruining everybody's town/county/educational system? I find myself wishing I'd applied to a job in the northwest where a couple of my colleagues are going.

What keeps me here: Our city, the weather, the friendly culture of the midwest, Jake's job/family situation. What makes me want to leave: Our state, the racist & sexist culture of the midwest, my job. If I were single, I probably would have left already, but it's more complicated when you're talking about uprooting a family.

Nora Has Better Policy Ideas Than Our Governor

It's just so bad that I can't even bring myself to talk about it. So instead I'll relay a brief interview I had with Nora.

(Walker's administration repealed the equal pay act)

A: If there is a law that says that women and men should get paid the same for doing the same work, do you think that’s a good law or a bad law?

N: A good law. 

A: Why?

N: Because if they want the same amount and they don’t get the same coins, they should.

(Walker's administration rolled back environmental protections)

A: Do you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea to let companies put pollutants in the water?

N: What are pollutants?

A: Poisons.

N: No.

A: Why?

N: Because, what if fish eat them?

A: What do you think would happen?

N: They would die.

(Walker's administration cut funding for education)

A: Do you think that teachers should have bigger classes with more kids, or smaller classes with fewer kids?

N: Bigger classes with more kids. 

A: Why?

N: Because if it’s a smaller class and a lot of kids were there, they couldn’t fit.

A: Do you think teachers should have more kids in their classes or fewer kids in their classes?

N: More kids. 

A: Why?

N: Because if they had a few kids, they wouldn’t be able to garden and stuff.

(Walker's administration took tens of thousands of people off badger care) 

A: There is a program that lets poor people have doctors even though they don't have enough money to pay for it. Do you think that's a good program or a bad program?

N: Good. Because they need to fix the person.

A: But it does cost a lot of money. Is that okay?

N: Yes. Because they need it.

(Walker's administration cut state and county services without cutting taxes for ordinary citizens)

A: Do you think we should all have to pay more money to get things like sidewalks, trash pickup, and snow plows, or less money, and get less of those things?

N: Pay more money to get those things. Because if you don’t have enough money, you won’t be able to buy them if you want them. One time we bought a sidewalk. Nah. Someone just put a new sidewalk.

A: Do you think that was a good thing?

N: Uh huh. Because if sidewalks are really old, you need new.

(Walker's administration passed the voter ID law)

A: Do you think that when people go to vote, they should have to show their driver’s license to vote?

N: No.

A: Why?

N: Because then, I think they’ll be faster.

A: What does it mean to vote?

N: It means to get new people that are good instead of the bad ones.