Nora's View

I think Nora's pictures are starting to get more intentional. One thing that is very striking to me as I look through them is that her vantage point is just totally different from an adult's. I mean, duh, of course it is, but seriously, she is so short. So mostly she sees the ground and people from the waist down. Things up at our level seem so high.

A lot of Nora's photographs from this latest batch were of the floor. A lot. Maybe her major childhood memories will be images of our dirty floors?

Caspian:

Grandmom Lee:

I think this is my favorite picture. Here's Nora's foot next to a doll's feet.

Milo:

Sammy:

A pair of socks on the floor:

Jake. It reminds me how important it is for us to get down to the kids' level. When we do, this is what Nora sees. When we don't, she sees our legs.

Here's what the kitchen window looks like from her perspective. It looks impossibly high to me!

A view out the window:

Milo again:

Papa Greg. I think she was standing on a stool to take this:

Yet again the floor. There are about 10 other floor pictures I'm not including here.

Me:

Okay, Nora didn't take this one. This is me and Nora.

Hmmm

High today in my town: 47. Currently my computer tells me it's 41 and raining there.

Here, where Jake and I are visiting: I don't know, but it's sunny, there's not a cloud in the sky, and it's warm.

Last night my biggest intellectual hero in the field gave me a ride in his Viper and taught Jake how to drink scotch. We ate outside in a gorgeous courtyard with a fountain and fire pits. We drank two bottles of wine and looked at the blooming cacti.

I gotta say, it's pretty gorgeous here and it also makes me re-think how we do OUR faculty candidate visits, in February with 2 feet of snow on the ground...

Tenure, tenure, tenure, tenure, tenure

A colleague of mine got tenure yesterday. This is a good thing, for sure. It was also interesting to me to observe because she has been very outspoken against our chancellor and other authorities on campus on political issues. The committee that granted her tenure probably doesn't know about it. The chancellor will have to rubber stamp her tenure, but since the committee's vote was positive there's pretty much no way the chancellor can go back on it.

My colleague came in the same year I did. She also had 2 kids.

So, one, I am feeling lame again. Like that slow-tracked 5th year senior. She had 2 kids on the tenure track but still managed to go up this year, unlike me. But it's okay. I've mostly dealt with that. She works 7 days a week, and I only work 5. She deserves it.

I have been looking at the cases over the past 3 years that have been smooth cases - unanimous or nearly unanimous. I've been comparing those to the failed cases and the troubled cases (the ones that got through, but just barely). The smooth ones have been, bar none, quantitative researchers. The troubled ones have been, bar none, qualitative or non-empirical researchers.

So...where does this put me? I think it puts me in between A and B. I am in a grant-getting field and have gotten grants. That helps. On the other hand, my research is qualitative. That doesn't help. On the third hand, my research is mathy. That helps. On the 4th hand, my Ns have been small and some of my work isn't designed with generalizability in mind. That doesn't help.

My guess is, just following the trend, that hopefully my tenure will be granted, but it won't be a slam dunk. Of course, in the end, you don't need a unanimous vote. All you need is a majority.

Conversation

Me: Nora I'd like to know why you were so upset this morning.
Nora: Because I wanted you to stay and to hold me. (pause) Is there anything else you want to know about today Mommy?
Me: Uh, I'd like to know why you had a big temper tantrum before we went to school.
Nora: (Thinks for a while). Because you weren't listening to me Mommy. And I was sad that you were angry. Is there anything ELSE you would like to know Mommy?
Me: Uh, no, that about covers it I think.

(It's true, I was angry. I was sick and not giving Nora the attention she wanted, which made her very whiny, which gave me little patience, and then she just lost her shit entirely. Makes me glad that this isn't a more normal part of our lives.)

Now as I think about it, it would have been a nice opportunity for me to ask Nora if there was anything that SHE would like to know. But I didn't think of it at the time.

Deja vu

Now it's my turn for the stomach flu. Didn't we already do this only a couple of weeks ago? Please let it be a 24 hour thing...

Our House

Recently on FB I shared something that cracked me up at the time -- Jake was talking about what type of house we could buy in the town with the university that's trying to recruit me, and he said, "For what we paid for this house, we could buy --" and his mother interrupted and jumped in with, "A NICE house?" It was all I could do not to crack up. I know how his mom feels about our house. She has shared her opinion a number of times and doesn't seem likely to stop any time soon. I think she maybe thinks that if she keeps pointing out all of the ways in which our house sucks, in her opinion, then eventually we'll give in and move?

I remember one time when she was staying with us, Jake's mother had her friend come down for the weekend for a visit. The friend walked into our house and then stopped, surprised, and said involuntarily, "Oh, wait, this house isn't -- it's nice!" Then she blushed, because we were standing right there, and she had basically revealed how Jake's mom had disparaged our house to her, leading her to expect it to be a dump. Other friends and family members have remarked on this too, because she apparently talks a lot about our crappy house.

None of this bothers me too much because I've long ago become accustomed to the rudeness, and I don't take it personally because our tastes are completely different. If she liked something about my house or decor, I'd take that as a bad sign. But I think it's more uncomfortable for Jake, because of course you want your own parents to approve of you and your life and, I suppose, your house.

This is a picture I took of our house the day I looked at it when I was house hunting:

I thought it was adorable! Don't get me wrong, our house has a lot of problems and annoyances. It is not big, and never will be. The kitchen in particular is way too small and also so poorly organized that it's very hard to cook in there and impossible for 2 people to cook in there without driving each other crazy. This is especially annoying because I love to cook so much. The side door opens onto a teeny tiny little landing that is fine for one person living alone, but doesn't work for a family of four, especially in the winter when we're all crowded together in this cramped space trying to get our wet boots off.

But, partly for aesthetic reasons and partly for sentimental reasons, I love our house. I met Jake because of this house. He was the one who showed it to me, and he was the one who did my loan when I bought it. Here he is, showing me the house -- this was the 2nd day I'd ever met him. I met him on a Monday, in his office, and the very next day we went and looked at that house. And that afternoon, Tuesday afternoon, I wrote an offer, and it was accepted that night.

See that tree in the above picture? It is now more than twice as tall.

I think one thing that really drew me to the house was its location. It's on a park, on a pretty street, but it's within walking distance to my office, two grocery stores, and countless shops and restaurants. Here's our street in early spring:

Here's the park in early spring. I think I took this photo from my front porch:

Here's the bike path, which is a block from my house, and on which I commute by foot every day to go to work. Jake also commutes on this path by bike every day:

I like old houses, and I like old neighborhoods. I could never be happy in a new subdivision with no big trees. Something that matters to me a lot is having lots of green leafy trees around. It just makes me happy. Here's our front yard:

And our front porch:

Of course, nothing's perfect. For many months, our yard looks more like this:

But then spring comes, and it looks like this:

And this:

I have become much more tuned in to gardening as a result of buying this house. There are a lot of plants and a lot of weeds to deal with. When I first moved in, I was totally clueless about what I was doing so I would send pictures like this to my gardening friend to get advice:

It's definitely a lot of work to deal with the yard, but on the other hand, it's just so pretty, especially in the summer:

Here is what my living room looked like when I first moved in. Back then I had time to do things like, oh, have plants, light candles, and clean. This is taken from the stairs looking towards the sunroom:

Now we have a lot fewer plants but we did paint the walls and re-plaster the ceiling, which was old and cracked in the living room. When I moved in the walls were mostly beige, but now our living room is a sage green and our dining/kitchen area is blue. You can see this in this picture that Nora took:

Nice ceiling, eh? Once upon a time our non-working fireplace held candles. Now it holds children's books. One day I would like to convert it into a working gas fireplace.

This is what the stairwell looked like shortly after I moved in. The previous owners had painted it orange, which I actually liked, but after a few years I got tired of it so we painted it a different color.

Here's the new color. It's brown but what I had originally thought I'd do was a deep, dark brown. But then I chickened out because I thought it'd make it too dark, and as a result our stairwell is the color of silly putty. I am not a fan of the color, so eventually we'll re-paint it. But not right away, since it's not exactly offensive or anything.

Here's what the kitchen looked like in the first year, before I repainted. This is looking in from the doorway separating the living room and the dining area. See that black bar? I loved that bar. I loved the idea of sitting at the bar, or having friends sit there while I cooked. Jake and I ate many, many meals at the bar. See how unadorned with giant piles of crap it was? Those were the days.

Now the kids sit at the bar in their special seats, which soon they'll outgrow and we'll be able to use our barstools again. We painted the rooms blue, and we got a new dining room pendant light, and we switched out the curtains -- the sliding glass door behind the curtains leads to our tiny deck out back. But otherwise, we haven't done much to the kitchen because our plan, if we stay, is to totally remodel it, like probably tear down whats' there and start from scratch.

The color actually ended up being too blue for my tastes, so that's something else I'll repaint in the future. What I'd had in mind was more of a greyish, silver blue.

Here's our little deck. During the colder months, it's a little desolate, like in this picture. But during the summer months, we put out our deck chairs and plants and it's lovely.

One year we even put the pool out there! We also have a patio out back with a table, hanging plants, rocking chairs, and a fire pit. Part of it is brick, and part of it is concrete. One long-term plan I have is to totally re-do our patio and our fences. But for now, it's a nice place to spend a summer evening.

In the winter it's covered in snow, and in the fall and the early spring it's desolate. Here it is before we brought in plants and got it ready for summer:

Here it is in the summer:

One of the things I like best is the huge tree back there. It shades everything and I like looking at the leaves.

One of my MiL's major complaints about our house, in addition to it being old, too small, and not having a bathroom on the main floor, is that we don't have a back yard. Which is true, there is no grassy back yard, just a tiny patio and deck. This is kind of a bummer because it means we'll never be able to expand the square footage of our house. And of course, a back yard would definitely be nice. A place for a vegetable garden would be nice. A patch of grass out back for a sprinkler in the summer would be nice. Maybe a play set. So, it's a drawback. On the other hand, we do have a park right across the street. Plenty big to set up a badmitten game. Or croquet.

When I moved into my house, I was single and it felt like I had way more rooms than I needed. I never knew what to do with my sunroom, for instance. As time passed and I got married, we put the cats' stuff in there, and a giant rubber tree somebody gave me, as well as Jake's drafting table. But it was a weird room. The floors weren't in great shape and one of the walls had wood paneling on it.

Here's our cat Caspian as a kitten in the sunroom.

When the kids were about 6 months old we replaced a rotting window, and we then re-did the whole sunroom. We painted and re-did the floors. My aim was to turn it into a playroom until the kids got old enough so that they could play independently in their own rooms. At that point, I'll convert it into an office. Here's our recently-painted sunroom, empty, waiting to become a playroom. It looks out onto our deck and the patio behind it. Beyond the patio is the bike path.

I put up some shades from IKEA:

And put down a foam mat and a storage thing for all of their toys. Currently the sunroom also has a small table and chairs for the kids, and way too much crap in general.

The kids always enjoy hanging out in there during the warmer months. The sunroom also has our front door and our front porch, which is kind of weird. Once upon a time, I'm pretty sure the sunroom used to be the front porch.

Our basement consists of a nice guest room / Jake's office with an egress window, and a weird extra area that I currently use as my office (but not really, because I seem to do most of my work on the sofa). When I moved in, there was also the unfinished portion of the basement, with a washer, a dryer, and a freaky toilet and sink:

A couple of years ago we finally finished that area and turned it into a proper bathroom / laundry room. This is nice for guests who now have their own bathroom when they stay in the guest room:

That's the same window in both of the above pictures. But we still have more work to do in the basement. For instance, we need to put in a sump pump. If we don't, we'll keep having trouble like this:

That's water seeping up from a late January melt / rainstorm. Hence, the need for a sump pump. If we pay attention, we can catch any water before it floods the basement, but if we don't pay attention, then we have problems. This only started happening to us a couple of years ago.

This is our upstairs bathroom. It pretty much looks the same as it did when I moved in. I like it, but if you see that lovely antique cabinet on the left of the picture holding the sink, well, it's charming but it hasn't held up that well. So we'll need to replace it and do some other minor changes in the bathroom at some point.

The tub is original to the house. It's a Kohler tub produced in the 1920s. It is cast iron and keeps your bath really warm for a long time.

The kids' rooms have gone through the most changes. The room that is now Nora's room used to be my office. Here's Jake sitting in the office on the day of the Ironman, which would have been mid september, which meant I'd been in my house for about 6 weeks:

Here is what it looked like that Christmas. I liked having my desk there because I could look out both windows. I could see our tree in the side yard, and I could see the park. I really loved that office.

After the babies were born, we moved our futon into the office and I changed the location of my desk. Otherwise, things were much the same:

Until it became time for the kids to move into separate rooms. So my office became Nora's room. I haven't re-painted it or, frankly, done a whole lot of decorating (what? It's been a busy year and she doesn't care yet). But it's cheerful and she seems to like it.

One of the things I always loved, back when my office was my office and not Nora's room, was watching the tree outside the window change throughout the seasons. Summer is my favorite:

But autumn is nice too:

And even winter has its own beauty:

(Still, yes, I'll take summer, and the breeze wafting in through the open window). Maybe as Nora grows up she'll like watching the tree outside her window too.

One of the rooms that has changed the most is Milo's room. When I first moved in, I used it as a second guest room, or rather, the primary guest room (and the room in the basement just sat empty). It was very yellow:

Very, very yellow. Quite cheerful.

Then, we turned it into the nursery:

The kids shared the room until they were 2 and 3/4. But now, it's Milo's big boy room. All his:

We have a lot of ideas and plans for our house if we stay here. Remodeling that we'll do, both inside and out. I like taking this house and slowly changing it over time to make it ours. We paint the porch and stain the deck every spring. We do our plantings. We've put in a bathroom and re-plastered a ceiling but there are more ceilings to do and a kitchen to remodel.

I don't know...our house is old which means there is always work to be done, and it's small which means space is always at a premium. But it also means that we have beautiful floors and baseboards, and original oak built ins. And it also means that our family is usually together physically, and that we use every single room in our house on just about a daily basis. Nothing is wasted. I like the way our house feels. I like the sunlight that comes in through every window. I like the views of the park. I like our neighbors. I just like it.

I think that I might be moved by sentimentality as well. I bought this house on my own, which I am proud of, but then so much happened here. I met Jake because of this house. We fell in love here. We decided to get married here. We had our children here. Many good things have happened inside this pretty little house. I definitely think it's "nice".