Racing toward four!

Portraits of the young man as a baby... sigh.

So the fouring of Sweeter Peter continues - we spent the weekend in Minnesota where he was properly feted by not just grandparents, but also great-grandparents, and a good time was had by all. The big day is officially tomorrow, and he's so delighted to be a bigger boy that my own nostalgia for the wee little sweetheart that we brought home from the hospital is tempered a bit.

The Mama Death March of April kicked off with a conference paper on Saturday, which was so ridiculously well-received that it made the seven hours of driving each way to deliver a 20 minute paper well worth it. For reasons of modesty I won't repeat the feedback verbatim, but rest assured that it was all ego-inflating and happy-making and totally justified the cute Ann Taylor jacket I bought (on sale, but still) to wear to the conference. Once every now and then it's *nice* to have a well-crafted argument received by exactly the right audience, which is really not what it is like to teach undergraduate business majors, although they do keep things lively for me. Anyway, every death march should start with a cheery send-off!

We are spring breaking!

Edited to add pictures - I noticed that it's sometimes less the actual animals than the many representations of animals that catch the kids' attention at the zoo. So we have the cool little plastic animals made at the vending machines; we climb on every possible statue; we practice howling like the wolves and romping in the wolf den exhibit; we ride the animal-shaped figures on the carousel, and we somewhat incidentally look at all the actual, living animals.






It is Day Three of the kids' Official Spring Break (none of that Easter stuff - this is the real deal.) So far, this has meant one day where Mom worked on Conference Paper A and then took the kids to Dad's office while she had a meeting [which meeting went well, fwiw], and one day where we took a trip to Target, swung by Jo-Ann Fabric, and then back home so Mom and a friend could work on Conference Paper B all afternoon. Today will hopefully be our Zoo Day, but Peter has adopted the frat boy sleeping style [assumption on my part, since I have zero personal or emperical knowledge of this phenomenon] of staying up really really late and then sleeping in. Yesterday he dodged his nap and was *still* awake past 10:30. So we haven't made an official decision about the zoo, although Grace is willing and the weather looks like it might cooperate (sunny and 31, but allegededly suppposed to get warmer as the day progresses.)

So presuming we go - pictures later!

Easter eggs

We dyed eggs this year with an idea that Nana Montana gave us - skip the store-bought dye and instead use food coloring, plus leaves collected from the yard held next to the eggs with cut-up pieces of nylon stocking and rubber band. It was fun on so many levels - we got to race around the yard finding leaves (and we noticed some very insulted daffodils - like the humiliated grapes in the movie Benny and Joon? - all covered in snow); we got to put our hands in dye and turn them lots of colors, we got to wrangle with rubber bands and nylons and regular stuff in the house, and we got to dye those eggs which didn't roll off the table and become candidates for egg salad. Mike didn't participate because he "hates dying Easter eggs" because of "the smell" and "the mess" and the fact that "you get dye on your face" (no, Mama didn't grow green freckles.)

Grace finished up the project by drawing signs directing the Easter Bunny to the eggs, for ease of hiding. It hasn't yet occured to her that the Easter Bunny relies on lots of child labor to enact the whole Easter-morning egg scenario. Peter was mostly taken with the term "dye" and we had a lot of conversation about how we're "coloring" eggs and there isn't any actual death involved. We did have a conversation recently where he asked, "Do ALL people die?" and when I told him yes, he said, "Even ME?" and I said yes, when you're very very old. He thought a moment and then offered an alternative: he will never get old. A nice loophole, if you can get it, but it's both a sad and profound moment when your kid expresses some inkling of his own mortality.

On the docket for tonight: Hot Cross Buns, since their ridiculously long rising time makes them tricky for making in the morning. They're like scones, only a zillion times more complicated, and we're having a nice brunch with quiche and juice and fruit and buns, which for my money is the best kind of breakfast of all, the hearty brunchy kind. We did Saturday evening church, so Sunday morning is all about looking for eggs and drinking coffee and using the Easter dishes and eating up the chocolate bunnies.

We change the china again

A fond farewell to the birthday china, and a rousing hello to the Easter china, which is the china that started the whole... thing with the china. I bought the first four settings when I was pregnant with Peter, and his first Easter (when he was all of ten days old) was also the debut of the Easter china. Since then, I've aquired another ten plates, the beautiful bowls that are very hard to come by, and more sherbets and teacups than are represented here... there's a box somewhere in the attic, lurking, with additional china. (Which, should we ever be called upon to host Easter for a dozen, will come in *very* handy.)



Finally, a birthday-at-school video of Peter. He expressed thanks, in the opening prayer, for "da teachers and da whole Sunflower Room," which is about as cute as it gets.

Edited to add: crushingly for those whose days are made bearable only by pictures of my darling offspring - I can't get the video to load properly. It is to weep, I know.

Inaugural bike ride.

We had our first bike-to-school of the season, which coincided with Grace's first day of spring break. Peter had school, so Grace and I bopped around during those couple of hours and then got out the bikes and bike trailer to go fetch him. Three points worth noting: one, it is chilly out, and although *Grace* wore gloves and long sleeves, I did not and my hands got really, really cold. Two, all the exercise biking in the world, sadly, does not prepare you for schlepping your kid around in the bike trailer. Despite my semi-frequent running and fairly regular indoor biking this winter, I am not in real-life biking shape. Perhaps I am still in dissertation-writing shape. Finally, Peter was not so happy to be a passenger instead of a rider, and I predict that he'll be really, really excited to get his new big-boy birthday bike.

Day in the life of the dissertation

In case you find yourself wondering how the dissertation writing is *actually* going, I kept a slightly fictionalized log of my writing today, which represents (as far as I have planned) my last full day of writing before I turn in the LAST FREAKING CHAPTER (tomorrow!!) and turn my eye towards revisions of all the previous chapters, which, whimper. Total page count at the moment: somewhere around 285. Yes, that’s with 12-point font.

So here’s a sample work day in the glamorous, exciting life of the late-stage Ph.D. candidate:

Drop children off at school and babysitter, respectively. Get gas; call husband with astonishing news that $66 was required to fill tank. Husband not at desk.

Come home. Sit. Review what needs to be done on current chapter. Sigh. Divide tasks into “morning job” and “afternoon job.” Answer phone call which involves scheduling birthday party of Child the Younger. Sit again. Begin work. Write furiously for ten minutes, realize that particular article by Bultmann essential for current bit of chapter. Search through three well-organized file boxes for article. Come across approximately 500 other interesting things, only some of which serve to distract from the task at hand. Locate article. Sit. Read. Take call from husband, discuss price of gasoline, various gas stations and their merits and deficits, and the recycling.

Write furiously for twelve minutes. Realize that bit of introduction to other piece of writing needs to be shoehorned into first chapter. Mental note will surely get misfiled. Sigh. Make change, then return to current chapter. Write. Read over notes from bit of argument made in Chapter Two, think for a while, then write more. Total pages now approaching 40, the unofficial goal, but not all topics covered. Grit teeth. Write.

Break for lunch. Go outside to pick up paper. Talk to self gently like a small child: no cheese. Yes protein. Settle on peanut butter and bread, with a very unripe pear on the side. Read the funnies and giggle slightly during lunch.

Get newly downloaded version of “Come on, Eileen” stuck in head. Find iPod, flip through songs, try to eradicate earworm by listening to song. End up with eleven more earworms. Side note: the lyrics to “Rent” are really hysterically funny.

Print out a few pages. Realize too late that stuff has been piled (by trolls, obviously) on top of the printer. Swear. Extract crumpled bits of paper, mess with printer for a while, boggle again that children set the language to Cyrillic, so that any possible cries for help from the printer are unintelligible. Finally get it fixed.

Sit. Write. Pull out extensive notes on previous draft to do revisions, by far the easiest part of the whole thing provided revisions are minor and not deeply organizational. Attempt to decipher notes to self: Why in the name of God do I need to rephrase “As I argue in Chapter Two…”? What could possibly be wrong with that? Miss children.

Remember suddenly that former student is presenting paper at upcoming conference the schedule for which just finally became public. Make mental note to attend his session if possible. Revert to earlier concern about delivering paper at one session, where two hours appear to be devoted to panel of only two papers. This means forty minutes per paper of discussion, which seems wildly optimistic. Should paper be longer than standard twenty minutes? Is “panel” vs. “session” some mystery language which everyone else is privy to? Is it worth emailing chair of panel to inquire?

Must. Focus. On. Chapter. Wait, is that the mail truck? Get mail. Open a few pieces. Send related email. Notice that once again someone else has sent email without benefit of distinguishing between “reply” and “reply all,” which is annoying but also sort of funny. Regroup. Sit. Write. Miss children. Realize that book of sermons necessary for next bit, attempt to locate it. Find book. Reflect that problem is not so much lack of organization, but fact that so many books have brown covers.

Write furiously for 45 minutes. Reflect that losing the book “Dynamics of Faith” is more or less a certainty in any given day. The damn thing is orange! How does this happen? Also, getting back to the person who replied to all, if your name is Joy, maybe “peace” isn’t the best all-purpose sign-off for your email. Peace, Joy. It makes a person want to reply, Hope, Faith.

Sit. Write. Make call to Dissertation Office and explain, in very careful language, that you require an appointment that is basically just hand-holding. Use the word “anxiety” a lot. Blush and feel unashamedly grateful when person on the other end of the phone is encouraging and congratulates you a lot and expresses her certainty that you’re really much, much closer to the Idealized Dissertation Office Standards than you think. Write down the appointment on the calendar and spend a few minutes looking at all of the rest of the stuff that’s scheduled. Which is more fun, an eyebrow wax or a parent-teacher conference?

One hour until pickup of children begins. Chapter (after judicious editing) at a tantalizing 39 pages. Sigh. Read amusing trivia online. Listen to “Come on, Eileen” one more time because it’s much more fun when sung by a woman. Consider getting dog and naming it Talluah. [if this makes no sense, look up the lyrics. They’re fun.]

Finish bits of edits. Print 39 pages, with just enough time left in the work day to do one more read through, make some notes, and plan to edit a semi-final version to turn in tomorrow. *On schedule,* even.

Leave house to pick up kids.

Little green nubby signs of spring.

Yesterday I noticed some slim purple tulip sprouts outside the window, and when the kids and I investigated, we found tulips, daffodils, and daylilies coming up. After a whole winter of waiting, spring is like a miracle every year: life! and look, over there, life *again*!





Random baking moment - this morning Peter and I ambitiously tried a new scone recipe that I picked up somewhere, with great success. For background - yesterday we made a recipe involving chicken, 40 cloves of garlic, wine, and a bit of heavy cream, so we had nearly a whole container left this morning, which was perfect for this particular scone recipe. (In fact, there was just enough left at the end to add to my coffee, which is a rare pleasure.) Unfortunately, somewhere in the transcribing of the recipe, a couple of essentials were omitted (having no one else at hand, I blame myself.) For instance - cook them for how long? At what temperature? Peter and I guessed wildly at 400 degrees and ten minutes, which turned to fifteen minutes, which turned to 425, which turned to about eighteen minutes, and rendered perfectly beautiful and very yummy scones.

Beware the Ides of March!

A few assorted Texas photos - there were houses on stilts, presumably to avoid damage from flooding. It was such an odd variation on normal - every house near the water had them, from the old ramshackle places to the fancy new vacation homes. People had different strategies for hiding the stilts - I thought that lattices looked the best, although surely they'd be blown off in hurricane-force winds.




We also snapped a great photo of this dinosaur outside an art museum in Houston which, sadly, we did not actually visit since we were busy buying cowboy boots (which, pictures of those are upcoming.)


Finally, my long-legged girlie took me running this afternoon! She's fast and has great endurance - I was really impressed. We had a very fun time together, and I think we'll try to do it every weekend now that the weather is getting warmer. We went about a mile and a half, which certainly felt like a legitimate workout to me.

Although I tried to pursuade Mike that we should reinact the death of Julius Caesar in the living room in honor of the Ides of March, he was lukewarm. I even offered to let him choose whether he wanted to be JC or Brutus. So barring live theater, I'm a little stumped about how to do the Ides up properly; maybe this should go into the category of Things I'll Do Next Year. One year I did drink wine from a vinyard near the Rubicon, and frankly, that's hard to top; maybe I should start planning now for a November 10th party to celebrate Descartes' famous dream.

Reflections on spring

So this was the first legitimately springy? spring-like? springish? day that we've had this year, and we took full advantage. I went for a nice run this afternoon, and had the fun of spotting a. a dog in its house, visible to the street because the door to the house was open with the screen door shut to let the breeze in, chewing happily on what appeared to be a man's dress shoe; and b. a limo pulling up in front of the house of one of Grace's friends. The mom and the younger daughter were playing in the yard, and I took a second as I was running by to yell, "Nice ride, Amy!" to the mom. She laughed, but didn't seem to have any connection to the limo, which I have to say, was legitimately a pretty nice ride.

I also spotted a couple of dead squirrels, one of whom (one of which?) was in our front yard. Which, yuck, and disposal of the one outside is a job that I immediately assigned to the man of the house.

After I picked up the kids from the babysitter and school, respectively (mama having spent the day writing pages 265-270 of That Dissertation), we went to the park for our first park outing of the year. I'd forgotten how delightful it is to sit on a bench in the warm sunshine and read while the kids play happily in the park. To digress only slightly, we're reading lots of fun things here these days - a book called "Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality" (or something like that) (short version: Jesus is much more worried about the poor than about gay sex), something called "God's Profits," which is a critical study of the moderately popular prosperity gospel movement (verdict: it's total crap. The movement, not the book), a biography of the Mitford sisters, cousins of Winston Churchill who were, respectively, a Nazi and friend of Hitler, a facist and friend of Hitler and wife of British facist leader Oswald Mosely, a Communist, an anti-Nazi, and a couple who were fairly apolitical. About half of them seem to have been writers, and they pop up a bit in the detective story I just finished called "Thrones and Dominions," in which Lord Peter and his wife Harriet settle happily into married life and conceive an heir.

We're wrapping up the Day of Nonofficial Spring with grilled chicken and gin and tonics, and Offical Warm Weather Drink.

A few quick Texas coast photos.

Water, sky, shells, water, sky, dead jellyfish...

Assorted things

So we've had a very busy week, but made a few observations, in no particular order: spring is flirting with us, promising all kinds of delightful things later on, but then disappearing behind 20 degree weather. There are some sweet little pussywillows growing in the planter right where you turn to make your order at the drive-through Starbucks. Being on the list of two separate donation-seeking veterans' organizations has its advantages, namely the multiple opportunities to declutter in any given month.

Peter swears he is allergic to confetti. (He says it makes him sneeze.) He claims also to be allergic to fire (damned good thing) and to bubbles, and constructed a rather elaborate scenario in which these three allergens collide. Grace has mastered the art of the knock-knock joke, although most of them tend to be somewhat low-impact, humor-wise. They persist in riding their bikes in all kinds of cold weather, and I've finally trained them to park their bikes in the garage, rather than in the driveway behind the car.

Our fabulous friend Dorothy is so big and expert and grown-up that she hardly seems like the baby we once knew. She and Peter have what we might politely describe as a love-hate relationship, or maybe a love-from-afar relationship. She and Grace adore each other in the way of seven-year-old girls brimming with administrative skill too often rebuffed by their younger brothers and nearly-twos delighted to be taken notice of and cherished.

At long last, it occurred to me that one way to avoid the Endless Mitten Quest which seems to delay so many of our exits from home would be to stash a pair of mittens *in my purse.* This is genius! But it will probably only come into play a few times this season, and I'll forget by next fall. Naturally, another way to avoid the EMQ would be to have an ironclad Place For Mittens (other than on the hands, of course) but that seems out of my grasp at this point.

So hope along with us for spring. We need it. We need our outdoor time unhindered by freezing rain, and wind, and snow, and ice, and general below-zero nastiness. Big ones and little ones need to run. There's a dissertation that's 265 pages, or so, not that anybody's obsessively counting or anything. There are fresh big-boy bikes to be chosen and broken in, there are spring plantings to be plotted, there are herbs to be grown in the security of one's own kitchen until Mother's Day when they can be planted outside. I'm thinking of more and better bee balm, and window boxes carefully filled with plants that will work through as much of the summer as possible (coleus!) A third dance recital is coming up, which is unbelievable, even when you drag out the photos from the first two and notice that the girl is taller and longer-limbed and has lost some teeth and really learned to tap dance. Damn, it really is almost spring.