Overworked, Underpaid

This blog has been neglected because I've been working like crazy.  I'll do a proper update later, but here's what's happened over the last couple of weeks:

1. Two weeks ago I sent Eddie up to Gualala with Dave so I could work super long hours and get DONE with my isotope experiment. While I didn't get completely done (that's happening today), I did get loads done.

2. The following weekend the dogs and I fled 105F Davis for a few days in Gualala with the boys. We stayed in a small apartment of a rental house to lower the stress level on my MIL.  It was a nice retreat.

3. I learned that organizing/packing up a child to stay in a different house for a week with his Dadda is a lot of freaking work.  And unpacking them when they get back home is also a lot of work.  Especially when there was no laundry facility at the apartment so you have to pack up TONS of clothes and then wash it all afterward. Plus, I had to plan all their meals and pack all the required food.  Like, whoa.

4. Eddie turned THREE on the 13th. WHOA.  I can't believe I have a kid.  Especially a kid who is ranked at 9th percentile for BMI and gained only 3.6 pounds since last year. He seems to have inherited his Uncle Edward's body type (which is good news!).  We were in Gualala that day, so we got to celebrate with his Grammy and Papa and we dined on wild Gualala salmon and blue cake.

I put the fish head is in my freezer to make soup later.

Enjoying his third birthday cake in the same kitchen where his daddy and uncle celebrated theirs.

5. Due poor communication between Cassie and me, I didn't have childcare for Eddie on Friday so he came to work with me.  Between his desire to color/climb up and down the stairs/play in the fountains at the CoffeeHouse/visit with my labmates instead of letting me run samples, I was only able to run 1/3 of the samples I needed to. So around noon I gave up on doing real work that day and we went home. We had a great afternoon playing with the neighbors, making lots of zucchini bread, etc.  Oh, and I gave us pedicures.

6. We went to the Yolo County Fair last night, the last night for the year. We ate crappy food and went on some lame rides. But then we bumped into some friends and some of the lameness of the fair lifted a bit.

Super slide!

8. What used to be my favorite season of the year (summer) is now my least favorite. I hate that Dave has to work more than usual, cutting down on our family time. He's so tired after logging all day that we often don't text, gchat, or talk on the phone.

9. I'm only 1/3 of the way through my stint wearing a heart monitor 24/7. I already hate it--largely because it makes me look sick and I get all these sympathetic looks when I go out. (Thankfully, no one at work looks at me or treats me any differently.)  I also dislike it because it dictates what I can wear--only pants or shorts or skirts with rigid waistbands since it clips onto the waistband like a giant pager. So I haven't been able to wear sundresses or anything fun.  Plus, it makes it hard to sleep.

8. Two of my closest grad school friends are in the midst of writing their manuscripts/chapters for their dissertations. Their stress is rubbing off on me...I've started having dreams about the awful work that writing MY dissertation will be. Weight gain, weight loss, lack of sleep, grumpy moods, no time off for family time...all of these things are in my future and I'm soooooooooooo not looking forward to it.  There are no two ways about it: graduate school is hard. Working on something so detailed, so specific, on a self-regulated timeline is hard. The worst part of grad school is realizing that YOU brought all this work on YOURSELF so there's no one to blame but YOURSELF.  Ug.  But like a really difficult backpacking trip, the view from the top can never be beat and at the end you can say "yep, I did that all on my own." And with a PhD, you also get to stay "I added to the knowledge base of the world." And that's pretty cool.

And now I'm back to work...running samples, figuring out how to cut/integrate data in R, reprocessing my isotope data with the newly-acquired correct delta value. Eddie's birthday party is coming up and I have lots of preparing to do for it--food, goodie bags, decorating the cupcakes, etc.