Tenure (also not about the kids)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is not About the Kids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Little Things

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

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

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

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

Polite

After Nora correctly distinguished between a hexagon and an octagon,

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

Nora: Thank you!

My Little Fashionista

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

Don't Look at my Poop!

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

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

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

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

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

Guilt

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

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

Fortunate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revise and Resubmit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend

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

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

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

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

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

Sweet Milo

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

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

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

Why Can't I Get Better?

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

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

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

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

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

Homecoming

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting on the Ritz

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

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

Here's pretty Nora the morning I left:

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

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

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

So here is my old school room:

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

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

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

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

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

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

This and That

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

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

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

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

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

Language

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

Nora: Mommy's watering the frickin' plants!

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

Buddy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I bet the fish had a bad cough

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

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

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

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

They don't make it like they used to

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

Failure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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