Reader

SHEEP ON A SHIP

MY BIG BOY

A BIG DOG

MY BIG BIRD

Just a few of the many sentences Nora read this morning! Seems like it's all starting to suddenly come together for her!

19

That's the number of emails I have received from fucktard mathematician douchebags over the past 24 hours about a ridiculous issue they just can't be logical about. With each passing email, the fetid, puss-laden excrement pile grows higher and higher. Listen, asshats, stop swinging your dicks around trying to intimidate me because it's not going to fucking work!

Quiet

I am working from home today, with the windows open to feel the warm cross breeze. The weather in September reminds me of bay area weather; sunny and warm in the afternoons, cooler in the evenings and mornings. Little humidity. This signifies the onset of autumn.

I enjoy being in my office at work and talking with people, but I like being home too, taking advantage of having fresh air and lots of light and total quiet. I am trying to arrange it so that I can have at least one regular work day at home each week. This is harder than I'd anticipated, thanks to 3 weekly project meetings, monthly faculty / secondary ed / IRB / special committee meetings, individual student meetings, and twice monthly brown bags with my advisees (something new I'm instituting this year).

My favorite months of the year are anything that's not January - March.

Milo has glommed on to any muttered cuss that any grownup around him (okay...usually me...) might have uttered in, oh, the last two years. Which means that this morning I heard the kids having an angry argument upstairs, and then I heard Milo tell Nora, "Nora, close the god damn door!"

This morning I was walking down the hall of the kids' school after dropping them off in their classroom and a new art teacher passed me, and stopped and said, "Are you Nora's mom?" When I said yes she said I look exactly like her. How weird!

Milestones

One thing I really love about my gym class is that we talk about epistemology, politics, social justice, and philosophy, and the people who I'm talking to are super progressive. My trainer, J, gets so worked up about some of these ideas that his voice will rise louder and louder, not in anger, just in excitement and conviction. We agree on most things, but our current disagreement is that he thinks he'd be a happier person if he were ridiculously wealthy -- even though he's already an obviously happy person. Studies suggest, though, that after a certain threshold, you don't actually get any happier with more money.

One thing I dislike about gym class is swinging the kettleball. That is pretty much my least favorite thing to do. My hands get sweaty and it is so heavy and the momentum is so great that I always fear that it's going to fly out of my hand and kill somebody.

I have now been taking that gym class for 1 year! It has also been 2 years since I have stepped on a scale. I have no idea how much I weigh. I couldn't tell you that number, and I don't think the number matters or says anything important about who I am. What I do know is that my mile time is now 40 seconds faster than it used to be. I know that I can easily hold a plank for over a minute without breaking a sweat. I know that I can curl 20 pounds and swing a 30 pound kettleball and do pull ups, when a year ago I could do none of those things.

What would it be like if women focused on being strong and powerful instead of being small and skinny? If a woman's dress size didn't matter, but her biceps did? What would it be like if we taught young girls that their strength, grit, and discipline was what mattered, not how pretty they could make themselves look? What if it being being sexy meant being smart and competent instead of looking good in a tight skirt? What if women believed that they deserved the space they took up in the world? What would that be like?

Away From My Mail

(Or, Why Work Keeps Me Laughing)

From: Me
To: Brusque Content Professor
cc: Awkward Content Professor, On the Spectrum Content Professor, Mentor
Subject: Re: Facilitating Class Observations

Dear BCP,

This is just an update to let you know that I met with x, y, and z about having x observe y and z's classes. x is willing to do so, and y and z are looking forward to the observations and the ensuing discussions.

Best,
Amy


*********

From: Brusque Content Professor
To: Me
Subject: Away From My Mail

Professor Brusque will not be using this account and this email will not be read.

*********

From: Me
To: Mentor
Subject: Fwd: Away From My Mail

Talk about an away message!

Begin forwarded message:

>From: Brusque Content Professor
>To: Me
>Subject: Away From My Mail
>
>Professor Brusque will not be using this account and this email will not be read.

**********

From: Mentor
To: Me
Subject: Away From My Mail

Professor Mentor is no longer interested in reading your emails.

Foiled!

Walking upstairs to go to their nap, Nora says, "We want to go up without you coming with us." I say, "No, I'm coming with you to make sure you go to the bathroom and get into bed." Then Milo whispers in this easily-heard loud whisper to Nora, "Our plan is not working." Dude. Nice try.

First Day of 4K

Today was the first day of 4K, with the kids in a new room with new teachers. Milo said that he's ready for the blue room (the name of their new classroom). Nora said she is not and she didn't want to go to school.

Nora has been saying lately that the kids don't play with her. I am not sure this is really true. All along Nora hasn't been as interested in playing with other kids as Milo has. She has preferred to do things herself. She takes after Jake this way. I found some memorabilia from his own preschool days, including a preschool assessment his teacher sent home. One of the notes on the assessment said "prefers self play". (He also needed to work on tying his shoes).

It might be the case that now Nora is getting more interested in playing with other kids, but she is still shy, and the kids have become accustomed to playing with Milo and not Nora because Nora hasn't ever engaged with them much. So this morning she felt very uncomfortable because her closest bond has always been with her two wonderful teachers, and she doesn't have them anymore.

Milo said that he would play with Nora. He also said that if Nora needed him, he would come running to her. And if Jonah (another little boy who likes to pretend fight with everybody) tries to fight with her, he'll just push Jonah away. Okay, maybe a bit misplaced, but his heart is in the right place. I emphasized that they are lucky to be in the same classroom and can look out for each other. They walked into the classroom holding hands.

Of their two teachers, one of them is old and seems strict and a little cranky. The other one seems more kind and sweet. The second teacher is somebody my colleague has worked with in the context of a research study, and she loves this teacher. This morning, the kids were immediately busy doing assigned tasks - writing their names on their notebooks, choosing a daily job - and then they went to the other side of the room to play while I filled out paperwork. So there was no opportunity for any tears upon leaving or anything like that. I hope they have a good day.

I can't control who their teachers will be in their lives or make sure that they never get a cranky teacher, although I wish I could. So I just need to equip them with the tools to handle those situations and build up some resilience.

Time Keeps On Slipping

We had a great trip out west to my folks' place. Traveling with 4-year olds is way better than traveling with 2-year olds. Jake said we should do it every year. That might get a bit steep, but it was definitely fun!

Today was our 7th anniversary. Here is an outtake. Do you know how hard it is to get 4-year olds to cooperate for a photograph? The twin whisperer took this photograph and then some others until we got a decent one, and then she watched the kids while we went out to eat. We walked down to one of our favorites in the neighborhood.

Seven years has just flown by! I can't believe how quickly it goes. Fortunately for me Jake gets more awesome each year.

I've been spending some time this weekend working on my sabbatical application, and dreaming about what it might be like to be on sabbatical next year. Waiting to greet the kids as they get off the bus from kindergarten every day. It'll be a different pace of life.

Transitions

I had a boring nightmare last night that involved trying to catch public transportation to get somewhere and not being able to do so. This is part of the travel nightmare genre that is common in my dream world; things going wrong at the airport, or on the plane, missing my flight or ride, etc. Maybe it is about travel anxiety because we have a big travel day coming up soon, or maybe it is about more generalized transition anxiety.

Today is the kids' last day in the snowflake room at their preschool. Once we get back from vacation, they'll start the new year in a different room, in a 4-K program that is part of the district. They'll be in the same school, though, just a different room.

Nora and Milo have been with their teachers for the entire two years they've been at preschool. Not only that, but their two teachers started the same time Nora and Milo started, so this two-year cohort of kids is the first they've had at this school. Now the teachers return to the younger crowd, starting over with two year olds, and the four year olds move up into a new room with new teachers. Nora and Milo seem mostly ready for this and I probably have more trepidation about it than they do.

Dropoff this morning involved tears, on the part of the parents and teachers, not the kids. The thing is, their two teachers have been amazing. Like, pretty much the best you could ever hope for in a preschool teacher. They are both so skilled in understanding the kids and empathizing with them, they're so warm and loving, and so accepting of Milo and Nora's natures. They celebrate Milo and Nora. How many teachers do that?

I don't want it to end.

There are a lot of transitions in childhood, aren't there.

Service Update

I declined the district IRB committee, but offered to serve on another additional committee or committees in order to compensate. But then I also listed all of my committees and university-related service I'm currently doing, just so he saw everything for the record. I figured it'd be pretty ballsy of him to ask me to do something else after seeing the list, but he might anyway, which I was mostly okay with.

Happily, my chair responded nicely and didn't ask me to do anything additional, so hooray!

Saying no is uncomfortable. Every advice-to-women-professors column always has a lot about the importance of saying no, sometimes supplying different strategies for how to say no, so this must not be a problem unique to me. I don't like saying no because I don't want to be perceived as a diva or somebody who isn't a team player. At the same time, I know I'll get taken advantage of if I don't start learning how to say no sometimes, so it's a good skill to develop.

*******

I feel myself starting to shut down when it comes to politics. I just can't take it anymore. The Akin rape stuff was what put me over the edge. I don't even want to be engaged anymore because we're just so fucked as a country. It feels pointless; we're just too fundamentally screwed at this point. All I want to do is to try to equip Nora with the tools she'll need to fight her way through life in a culture that doesn't even view her as an actual human being.

Our Weekend

Jake has been out of town playing with his brother and his parents on the lake.

We had a nice weekend. I kept the kids busy. Saturday, we did some grocery shopping and then we went and looked at the small red door. The kids spent the rest of the day contemplating the secrets of the red door. Maybe it is magic. Maybe it only opens at night. Maybe they need to find the key that will make it open. We drew some pictures of the red door and what it might look like inside the door.

Then we went to the park, then we had the neighbor kids over for a couple of hours while their mom and I hung out. Her husband was out of town too. After nap we went to a new park adjacent to a lake, and then went for a walk along the lakeshore. Then we came back home and had dinner, and after dinner we took the 5-minute walk down to the local frozen custard place. (Kids and cones - bad combination. We concluded the evening with showers.)

Sunday morning we went to the plant store and got some mums for the front porch. Then our next door neighbor girl, who is 14, came over and babysat the kids for an hour while I went for a run. (Best $5 spent ever.) This was her first time watching the kids and I thought a quick little hour-long experience would be a good way to try it out. They played games and went to the park and it seemed to go well. 

In the afternoon the twin whisperer came over and watched the kids for a bit while I went to a small party to welcome several of our new faculty members. It was soooooooooo awesome. We are welcoming 6, I think, new faculty into the department and 4 of them were there tonight and every single one of them is fabulous! I am so psyched! Also, one of them has bought a farmette in a small rural town about 45 minutes away from here. He and his partner have 7 goats, 5 dogs, and 3 horses. He studies early childhood (focusing on preschoolers) and invited me to take the kids down for a visit because one of the goats is still being bottle fed for the next couple of weeks. How cool is that?!?

Words cannot adequately describe how psyched I am about the infusion of new blood into the department. These folks actually do empirical work. They get grants. This is huge...they are not Theorists who write about Foucault and never step foot within a mile of an actual kid. What I'm trying to say is that their inclusion in the department will aid in a slow shift in culture and values over time. I am hopeful that we can ultimately shift to a culture that acknowledges the value of empirical research rather than dismissing it as trivial. But not only that, they are personally awesome as well, so hooray!

Update

Okay, my chair emailed me back and basically said that he "tries very hard to balance the work load." So, basically, he's saying trust him, he's being fair. Then at the end he says he would share a list of who is on who if I really want it (but he didn't share it in this email).

So now I don't know what to do or how to respond. If I have him give it to me and I disagree that the workload is fairly distributed, then I'm just being a jerk by disagreeing with his self assessment that he is fairly balancing the work load.

Tenure Gives Me...

...a voice.

Predictably, service requirements have ramped up post tenure. In addition to all of my advisees and student committee duties, I am on a content liaison committee tied to implementing a particular program, I am on the departmental graduate programs committee, I am on the secondary ed committee, and I am on the school-wide IRB committee. This year our chair asked me to continue all of those committees as well as also join an ad hoc tenure requirements committee and be the university representative to the school district's version of their IRB committee. In a department of 40 where we can spread the service around to our many members, this is a lot of committees.

I responded that I would enthusiastically join the ad hoc tenure committee, because I want to be active in changing how we do tenure. But regarding the school district committee, I thought about it and then wrote this:

"Is there a list of all of the committees each of the associate and full faculty members are on that also accounts for their relative time requirements? (For instance, being on grad programs committee is a low time commitment, whereas being on IRB is a high time commitment). The reason I am interested in this is in relationship to research showing that women professors typically take on extra service duties compared to men, are worse at saying no to service requests, and therefore end up devoting less time to research than their counterparts and consequently suffer the loss of increased salary, research productivity, outside opportunities, status, etc. This is also relevant because the former member of the school district committee was xyz, another female professor. If there is evidence that can be made public (to me) showing that service distributions across the department for post-tenure faculty are fairly distributed across gender, then I'll happily take on whatever you ask to make sure that I too am carrying my fair weight."

I wrote this because 3 of the 4 top-paid professors in our department who all just got raises are men. I also know that many of our senior male professors, the ones who are the most prominent, do almost no service. They rely on the workhorses in our department to get the service work done. Those workhorses have all their time sucked up in consuming (and usually thankless) service tasks and then don't have time to devote to research. So they end up making less than their peers and have fewer opportunities than their peers. I don't want to end up in that position. If anything, I've learned from the recent raise debacle that I can't count on my department, dean, or university to fairly compensate people. In a different institution with different priorities, people may get appropriate recognition and compensation for service, which I applaud. Service is important, and I think it should be recognized and valued. But that doesn't happen where I am, and the workloads are not fairly distributed.

Our chair hasn't responded. I am probably very irritating to him. I of course would never have said anything like this before tenure. I would have just shut up and agreed to whatever he asked. But now with some security, I feel like I can push back a little bit to try to open up the degree of transparency about things like service distribution across tenured faculty members.

Superheroes

Milo practicing his Spiderman skills:

The kids have a lot of Batman questions that I'm not sure how to answer. For instance, Milo wanted to know, how did Batman get his powers? I said, he was bitten by a radioactive spider but then I realized, oh wait, that's Spiderman. I said he practiced a lot. (?) Nora asked, what happens if Batman is in the middle of a fight and he has to go potty? I suggested that Batman will hold it. Milo asked, what if he can't hold it? They decided that Batman would probably pause the fight, go to the bathroom, and then return to finish the fight.

Jake said, "That's why Batman always goes to the bathroom before he leaves the house." It'd be a pain to get that suit on and off in the middle of a fight.

Puzzles and Doors

It is interesting to watch Nora do puzzles. She doesn't take into account the shape of the piece, so she has to rely completely on the picture. It's harder to put together these-size puzzles based on the picture than on the shape. For a while I'd try to show Nora how the shape matters in simple ways, like, if it's an edge, you have to line up the straight edge on the outside and so on.

That instruction has been completely pointless, though, because Nora can not yet simultaneously coordinate both picture and shape. She can't hold shape in her mind at all because she is focusing on the picture. My guess is that she's not even organizing the shape in the way I am, for instance, she probably hasn't constructed the idea of a straight edge yet. So the words that came out of my mouth about it were meaningless to her. She doesn't have the conceptual structures in place to make sense of them yet.

Nora is pretty good at putting together puzzles based only on the picture, which is hard. If this were the sort of issue that mattered a lot, like a grade schooler understanding fractions or something, I would engage in an intervention to help her construct shape. I'd probably do it by finding or making a puzzle that had no picture at all, forcing her to rely on the shapes, or by having her sort puzzle pieces according to shape categories. However, puzzle skills aren't a big deal, per se, and I know she'll eventually start to attend to shape in her own time, when she's ready.

Look at this cool little door in a tree trunk a few blocks from my house. I showed it to Nora and she said, who lives there? Trying to be whimsical, I said, maybe a leprechaun or a fairy. Nora looked at me skeptically. Are those real?, she asked. I said, "Well, some people think we can't know if they're real or not real." Nora said, "They're not real." Decisively. Like, give me a break, Mom.

You might wonder why I had these interactions with Nora and not with Milo. Milo was sleeping. That's been happening ever since they were babies. Nora would always wake up before Milo, and I'd have all this time with her while he slept. They're still like that now.

Stuff We Can't Always Fix

Sometimes when I take the kids to school in the morning and we walk into the classroom, if a lot of the other kids are already there, when we walk through the door several of the girls will yell, happily, "Milo! Milo's here! Milo!"

I feel terrible when this happens because there are two kids who walked through that door, not just one.

This afternoon Jake and I went together to pick up the kids from school. They were outside on the playground. I looked around for the kids. I saw Milo playing with two girls at the bottom of a hill near some trees. They were playing some elaborate game that I didn't quite understand. Milo was pretending to catch them. Each girl would say, "My turn, Milo! Me next!"

Nora was blowing bubbles by herself.

This makes me worry a little bit. But she doesn't seem to care. So should I?

Then, this evening, our next door neighbors returned home from a vacation. Milo was in the park with Jake. Nora was with me in front of our house. The girls saw Nora and excitedly ran over to her. The younger one, who is 5, hugged Nora. Nora hesitated, and then hugged her back. It was sweet. I felt better.

When the kids started school at 2.75, their teachers told me that Nora seemed to enjoy relating to the adults better than the other children. She didn't insert herself into social situations. She relied on Milo a lot. Now, Nora is not so shy anymore. She'll pretty much tell anybody anything about herself, as long as that person is an adult. I have noticed that in many of the pictures that come home from school, though, Nora is with Milo. The two of them seem to rely on each other socially. Nora more than Milo.

I hope she'll be okay, and happy in school, and have friends of her own. I wonder if this will be harder if she is in a separate classroom from Milo, or easier. I don't know.

4 in 1

Granty Grant Stuff
I had a couple of scholars out here last week so that we could all plan out a grant together. It was interesting and engaging. One way to deal with feeling intellectually lonely at my institution is to forge intellectual collaborations with people elsewhere, so that's what we're doing. They are smart and creative thinkers, so it's fun. By the end of 2 days working together, we'd hammered out the basics of the grant we'll apply for, one in which I am going to be the PI, so that means the bulk of writing it this fall will be on me. I'm not totally sure how I feel about that. Mostly good, I suppose. Then we celebrated with beers on the terrace.

We are So Predictable
Here is an article about gender variant boys. There's a lot of fuss and muss about boys who want to do girly things. Nobody ever cares about girls who like doing boyish things (thank goodness, since Nora is like that). I guess when a member of the suppressed and (perceived to be) inferior group acts more like a member of the dominant and superior group, people are cool with that. But when it's the reverse, people can't stand it and the thought of a boy in a dress gives everybody the willies.

No Fear
Milo can do the monkey bars all by himself! He's strong and fast. Yesterday we were at the park with a neighbor friend, a kid who is 8. That kid was too afraid to do the monkey bars even though he's twice Milo's size. Milo has no fear. This scares me as a parent but it's probably good for him to be so willing to test his limits.

Even Batman Uses the Bathroom
Nora was super clingy last week; it is just now starting to dissipate. She even wanted to be in the shower with me. If I'm not actively interacting with her at all times she'll complain that I never play with her. It's gotten better this weekend because they've spent most of their time playing with other neighborhood kids.

Last night, Nora was complaining about how she doesn't need to go to the bathroom (ever) and she thinks it's unreasonable that we make her go before nap and before bed. I said, "Well, when you're all grown up, you can go to the bathroom whenever you want. You can do whatever you want then. When you're grown up and have your own job and live in your own house and -- " and Nora interrupted me, irritated: "No! Mom! When I grow up, I'm going to be Batman!" "Fine. When you're Batman, you can go to the bathroom whenever you want." She thought for a second. "Does Batman go to the bathroom before he goes to bed?" I said, "Yes. Even Batman."

In Which We Are Fucked Up

The legislature released money for a raise this year to go to at most 30% of faculty. It is not to be a cost of living raise, and when I read the memo about allocation guidelines, it's not strictly a merit raise either. It's supposed to address compression and retention concerns, and of course merit does factor into that.

As somebody is already getting a tenure bump, I knew I was off the table for a raise, and I'm okay with that. It's time to let others who are salary compressed get an increase to alleviate their compression.

Our dean told us that only 6 faculty (out of our department of roughly 40) could get a raise, so we had to choose those 6 people.

The problem with faculty governance is that if you don't create clear and transparent criteria to guide decisions like this, it can devolve into favoritism and croneyism. We have a committee of 7 people who make decisions about these things. It consists of 6 fulls and a non-voting assistant. The fulls decided that all of the raises should go to fulls. Three who are currently on the committee. So they chose themselves and three of their friends for the raise.

The kicker is that 4 out of the 6 raises went to the four top-paid members of our department. That's right: the four people already making the most money are the ones who are getting raises. The extremely salary compressed people, like Mentor and my assistant professor friend in my area, get nothing. Moreover, none of those 4 top-paid people are flight risks. They're all solidly here for good, and three of them are super close to retirement.

Mid career people are flight risks. They're now bigger flight risks, because they're all really ticked off. Mentor has already called our colleague at a university we both like to see about applying for a position there. Honestly I can't blame him.

It is ironic because our department is internationally famous for focusing research on issues of equity, diversity, and social justice. But not when it comes to ourselves. Then these very same scholars who have made their fortune from studying the less fortunate have chosen to line their own pockets, making the rich richer and screwing over everybody else.

Flying Lessons

So my flights back from San Francisco were even worse, which caused me to learn some lessons. They made me check my bag at the gate because I was in the last boarding group. When I got on to the plane, there actually was overhead space so I wish I'd just carried my bag onto the plane anyway. As we taxied onto the runway I dozed off, exhausted. But when I woke up quite a bit later, I was disturbed to notice that we hadn't taken off. And an hour had passed. And I only had an hour and 15 minute layover in Denver.

Turns out, the crew had improperly loaded the luggage onto the plane, and apparently there was too much weight and it wasn't safely distributed, so they had to redistribute things. So we taxied back to the gate, me sitting on hold with United all that time, and when I finally got an agent she could not understand my English very well and took forever to retrieve my record because she couldn't make sense of my confirmation number. Only to find that there were no more flights to be booked on out of Denver that night.

But! We made up a lot of time in the air, and when we landed, there was still 10 minutes before my next plane was to take off. Also, the gates were close, only about 5 gates apart. I was the first off the plane and I ran my little heart out to the next gate, only to see my plane sitting there, not yet having left the gate, but the doors had closed and the gate agents wouldn't let me on no matter how much I pleaded.

It is harder to just miss your connection, knowing that 5 minutes would have made that crucial difference. I couldn't get back home until the next day, and my bag was MIA.

I have a friend in Denver. I've only really gotten to know her this year, but I had her out to my town a couple of weeks ago for the writing retreat, and we've gotten together at conferences. So I called her and ended up staying at her place. She and her husband were so nice, feeding me, giving me wine, staying up talking, providing me with pajamas and a toothbrush. I couldn't have been luckier. It was a silver lining to be able to spend an evening with them.

Lessons learned:

1) Always have my toiletries and a change of clothes in my backpack. I always do this when I check a bag, but I don't do it when I carry a bag on. More and more these days, they'll make us check our bag anyway before getting on the plane, and if that happens, get those glasses into my backpack! I had to sleep with my contacts in.

2) A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush. Get booked on another flight as soon as possible, especially when the issue is crew error rather than weather. Remember that they often lie about delay times.

3) Carry pain meds. I am too old to sit for 13 hours on planes without having problems with my knees and back. (God that's sad.)

4) Carry a crapload of cash. I had a $90 taxi fare that night.

5) Never fly United, and never fly through Chicago. This is a lesson I've already known and I've typically stuck with it, because it never goes well. I made an exception this time and paid the price. Every time in the last 8 years I've done it, I've either lost a bag or missed a connection or both.

6) Friends make everything worth it. Seriously, how lucky am I to have such great people in my life? In the end, the other stuff doesn't matter.

I am going back to the bay area in April, so let's hope that I will remember these lessons!

Wow I have jet lag! Despite staying  up until all hours of the night here I am watching the sun rise over the lemon tree in our courtyard. When I was traveling on Friday I should have kept in mind that any difficulties or delays would be totally inconsequential in comparison to the joy of being back with my friends again.

Quotes I have enjoyed this weekend:

"It's great how much of San Francisco is stereotypically San Francisco."

"Men don't use 'journal' as a verb."

I have a number of lovely friends in my town who I am grateful for but there is also something so satisfying about being with friends who have known you for such a long time. For instance, they all knew my ex-husband S, who once decided and then told me that he would rather divorce me than have a child with me. So when I said to them, "Guess who had a baby a couple of months ago? Just take a guess", they all immediately said, "Oh my God. Fucking S. He fucking went and has a BABY?!?" I knew they would immediately understand how shitty that was! That was something that even Jake didn't really understand. I think you probably would have had to know me when I was going through that part of my life to truly get what it would be like to find out that S decided to have a baby at the age of 40.

It has been an intense weekend but so great as always. As we age I find myself thinking about how things have changed over the years. Throughout our various reunions we've been young and single, we've had reunions that coincided with 4 of our weddings, we've had reunions with some of us pregnant, with some of us bringing our little babies along...babies who are now in middle school. We've had reunions back when we were grad students or law students, when we were just starting out in new jobs, when we were moving or buying houses. There have been times when one of us was going through a tough time (mine was a decade ago when we met up in Seattle). I can only imagine how things will continue to change in future years.

The sun is now completely up.