Shopping Trip

Yesterday I went to Santa Rosa to run a ton of errands. Here's how it went down:

1. Dropped Eddie off at the bus at 7:15 am.
2. Ate breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, and pulled out of Gualala at 7:45 am.
3. Pulled into Lowe's at 9:15 am to pick up a new, super-discounted, super-efficient washing machine. Dave calculated that it will pay for itself in only 3 years in water alone over continuing to use the old top loader we currently have in the Coast House.
4. Nearby shopping center for all the stocking stuffers and some Christmas gifts.  The Dollar Tree and grocery section of Wal-Mart were both out of smoked oysters so Edward will be purchasing those for our stockings this year. I got a hazelnut iced coffee at the McDonald's inside Wal-Mart and it tasted like pure sugar. 
5. Taco Bell for some nachos, which I ate in the car with the windows down, enjoying the sunshine and listening to NPR. It was a nice break from the shopping madness. I was ready to stop shopping at this point--but I knew I needed to finish my list of to-do's to make that 4 hour round trip worth it (not to mention the day off of school work!).
6. Costco for a carpet steam cleaner and the usual bulk groceries. Among many other things, I bought a fresh 50 pound sack of whole wheat flour since I discovered that our supply had gone rancid in the hot Davis garage this past summer.  I also bought a double pack of bread...for half the cost of the sack of flour. I've GOT to get back into the homemade bread habit because it's so much cheaper.
7. Spent 20 minutes packing the car--remember there was already a washing machine box in there and I needed to fit in a steam cleaner box AND a cart full of things for me and my MIL. And knowing I had other errands and it was a warm-ish day, I needed to arrange all the cold items together to keep them cool for the rest of the day.
8. Got a phone call from my MIL that she wanted cotton yarn from a nearby fabric store. When I got there, I called to find out what color(s) she wanted. She said "one of each except black." I told her that there were 30+ colors and she still wanted one of each color. So...I loaded up a cart with 40 skeins of yarn for her!
9. Old Navy to get a supply of pants for Eddie. Until we had that week of sub-freezing temperatures, he had refused to wear anything but shorts because pants make him run less fast. He had exactly 4 pairs of pants in his dresser, two of which were 4" floods on him. And that's really a lot considering he's only 43" tall in the first place.  A couple of months ago I paid for our new garage door installation with my Old Navy credit card so I had TONS of rewards to use for my purchases that day.  I got him 4 pairs of jeans, exchanged a pair for myself, and got a few things from the clearance for myself. 
10. Haircut at the mall...just the split ends trimmed off.  FINALLY.  This was on my to-do list (whether in Gualala or anywhere else) since October.
11. Picked up dinner at Chipotle, never mind the fact that I knew I wouldn't get home until way after dinnertime.  Normally I get a fatty burrito,but this time I got a salad with the lettuce on the side (to prevent it getting soggy on the drive). 
12. Got myself a grande no water soy chai at Starbucks.
13. Drove home, arriving at 7:30 pm, just as the boys were exiting the shower. I sang along to Crawdad Republic and listened to the beginning of a Radio Lab podcast during that dark drive.  The podcast was amazing even though it begs more questions for me than it answers...I might have to look up the prof and email him. Eddie and I talk about dinosaur extinction theories all the time so I'll have him listen to it or watch the video soon.  The music is upbeat and complex and sorrowful all at the same time. Edward and I went to high school with the band members, which makes it even better to me. I downloaded the album when we moved to the coast and I listen to some of it nearly every day when I drive to get Eddie from daycare. It's become the soundtrack to my new life as a coastal, motherless person.
14. I unloaded the van all by myself (minus the washer, a monumental task with all those purchases) because I didn't want Dave or Eddie seeing their gifts. 
15. Put Eddie to bed.
16. Watched an episode of White Collar and drooled over Matt Bomer while I ate my super spicy Chipotle salad.  I think Dave was even drooling a little--he agrees that the guy is "very handsome."  
17. Fell asleep at 9:45 pm. Errand days are looooooooooooong.

And because no post is worth looking at with out a cute picture, here are two that Dave took last weekend. Eddie asked him to take his picture with sister.  These two bicker, fight over toys, and make too much noise for my delicate ears most of the time...and then sometimes they're sweet. And seeing them be sweet together is crazy cute! Aw, melt my heart!

Cute Eddie and my beautiful baby girl. Isn't she a gorgeous dog?  I love love love her expressive brown eyebrows.

Dave asked her to smile and she did!

Oh, Davis

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I will (or will not?) miss living in Davis.

Things I anticipate missing:

1. Our relatively kid-safe cul-de-sac where Eddie can play without much worry of being hit by a car
2. The neighbor kids and the countless hours Eddie spends playing with them outside
3. The variety of grocery stores within walking/biking distance (the International market, stocked with Indian items; the Asian market; the food co-op; Trader Joe's with it's healthy convenience food; regular run-of-the-mill stores)
4. Biking commuting to daycare and work/school
5. Limitless internet bandwidth (at least seemingly limitless)
6. Long growing season and fertile soil
7. Antenna TV
8. The tank top wearing weather
9. Sidewalks
10. (Relatively) short drive to my folks' house
11. Seeing my friends and coworkers every day
12. Not having to set aside time to exercise
13. The park next door
14. Talking about soils, chemistry, ag, and stats every day
15. Cassie and Miss Amanda
16. Lack of immediate judgement from random people who learn that my last name is Bower
17. Being the only adult in the house (there's soooooooooo much to do and I could really use some help with all the chores and child rearing)
18. Stores open past 8 pm
19. Sushi
20. Going to the movies (which, admittedly, we don't do often but knowing that we can go on a whim will be missed)
21. Relatively plentiful college age baby sitters
22. Unpaved, horizontal land right outside my door
23. Home Depot, Costco, and Target being only 10 minutes away
24. Constant cell phone service
25. Twenty four hour medical care (ain't no urgent care or ER in Gualala)
26. Chatting with random people who pass our house 

Things I anticipate not missing:

1. The 100 F weather in the summer
2. The hot, dry wind
3. The dusty air
4. Flies
5. Having to keep the dogs on leash 
6. Cleaning up dog poop
7. Having to find appropriate places on our property where Eddie can dig in the dirt and make HUGE MESSES of mud and plant debris without making our suburban house look gross and unkempt
8. Lack of trees for tire swings, tree houses, elaborate forts, etc.
9. Buying fruit
10. Single-handedly juggling Eddie, school, the dogs, and the house
11. Gross, disgusting tap water (even after going through a Brita filter)
12. Hauling fruit 3 hours by car to process it (apples, plums, cherries, tomatoes, blackberries, huckleberries, mushrooms)
13. Being the only adult in the house (I want the chores and child rearing to be done my way, darnit!  And I want some privacy!)
14. Being too hot while sleeping (hello cold sea breeze!)
15. Cooking for two--it's so much harder than cooking for a larger group
16. Having to close the curtains so passersby and neighbors can't see in our windows--at the Coast House this will not be a problem since there are no passersby and none/few of the neighbor's windows face our house
17. Limited communication with Dave--Eddie and I sometimes only speak to him once a week via video chat, depending on his work/meeting schedule
18. The nervousness I feel every time Dave is commuting on the curvy roads, which is always at night)
19. High cost of childcare
20. Not seeing Dave every day
21. Having to count off the days until we next see Dadda to Eddie every.single.day

Things that go through my head on a daily basis:

1. Holy crap...are we really moving?
2. Yay!  We're moving!
3. HOW AM I NOT DONE WITH MY DEGREE YET?!
4. OMG we will NEVER be able to move out of this house in time!  We have soooooo much stuff and moving is going soooooooo slowly!
5. I'm so proud of how much progress we've made moving using only the minivan and a small trailer so far!  Two rooms done in only...wait, 6 weeks?  Ug.
6. Are we making a mistake by moving to the boonies?  Will Eddie suffer from the relative isolation? Would it be better for us as a family to force Dave to find a job near Davis so Eddie can grow up here? But then what job would I have to find in order to stay in suburbia, too?  If us parents are happier and more fulfilled, won't that translate into a happier childhood for Eddie?  Or won't it?
7. I can't wait to move to where the air is dust free, where I'll never have to use AC again, and where it rains more than 10 times a year!!!!
8. I don't want to move to a place where there's fog all summer and rain all winter, where it's too cold to wear tank tops or shorts, where I have to drive so much.  
9. I can't believe I agreed to live in that monstrous, outdated, ridiculous Coast House...which I swore I would never, ever do.
10. Eddie's gonna love it!  All the space to explore, dig, build, and camp! 
11. Eddie's gonna hate it!  No neighbors next door to play with, all the driving on the coast roads,  living in a new house.
12. We'll get to see Dave every.single.day. Every single day!  Multiple times a day!

Things I am thankful exist, because they will ease the feeling of isolation:

1. The internet
2. Amazon Prime
3. NPR

********************

Dave and I were engaged during my last semester of college.  I remember sitting in my environmental econ class, waiting for the professor to begin lecturing and I glanced down at my (horrendous) emerald engagement ring on my hand. It was left to Dave by his late grandmother "Tutu" and was such an old lady ring.  I mean it: it even had a hinge to enlarge the band diameter to fit over an arthritic knuckle.  While I love(d) Dave, I didn't like the ring because it wasn't me or mine. It was a hand-me-down and we didn't have the money to replace or restyle it to something that reflected me.  As I contemplated the ring I thought, "What if being married to Dave is boring like this ring and nothing interesting happens for us?"  OH BOY.  Isn't that funny?  How boring my life was back then.  If only I knew what was in store for us. 

Busy Busy Bowers

Oh my goodness, we've been busy.  But happily busy so it's okay.

Things are getting 'real' regarding our move away from Davis.  The only thing I've actually moved to the Coast House so far are some potted plants but the list-making and preparations here in Davis are starting up.  Dave's tasks are starting and completing projects while mine center more around all the paperwork and logistics of moving and renting a house (writing a lease, posting the rent ad, hiring a landscape company to blow leaves/clean gutters/fix irrigation a couple times a month).  It's a good thing I like lists!

I have a whiteboard in my home office that I update every few days with my tasks.  The top is my dissertation chapter list, the bottom left is today's list (yeah right am I getting all that done!), and the bottom right is the two-month-plan list.  

Dave made a sketch of the back wall of the soon-to-be downstairs Coast House kitchen to ask me where I wanted electrical outlets and light switches.  

On the other side of the card he made a loooooooooooong list of all the plumbing/electrical stuff he'd need.  It took him 3.5 hours at Home Depot to get everything. Can  you imagine how long it'd have taken if I were there asking questions or if Eddie were there with us?  OY VEY.

Meanwhile, he made major progress with the hall bathroom here at home.  He replaced the window and we hauled the old tub out of the house on Monday before I left for school.  The new tub is in a box in the living room, currently acting as a play structure for Eddie.

Bye bye sheetrock and tub.

 As busy as we are, there's been plenty of time for fun, too.  On Sunday Eddie and I went to Renee's third birthday party.  It was rainbow theme and Kelly did an AMAZING job making sure every last detail of the party was as rainbowed-out as possible.  The kids got to play in some dyed rice she made, which was a huge hit.  And the kids surprised us by keeping 98% of the rice in the tub.  Yay!

Eddie's in the blue party hat.  There were rainbow wood cut outs to play with, along with little Waldorf people toys, egg cups, wooden eggs, tools, and little mushrooms.  Super fun!

Since I'm not adding anymore stuff to our compost pile, I've started feeding all our kitchen scraps exclusively to the worm bin (before it was about half and half).  Now that the temperatures are increasing and I'm feeding them more, they're going through their shredded paper bedding a lot faster.  Eddie and I spent some time shredding some old office paper on Sunday.

For the last two years, I've told my spring quarter students to give me all their final exam notes (it's open note) if they don't want them and that I'd use them in the worm bin.  And see?  I actually am!   As my dad always says, "paper is cheap but answers are expensive."  I got a lot of eye rolls from the students about making them have hardcopy notes instead of using their computers but I didn't want them to Google all the answers (getting yourself organized with your class notes is a skill they should learn).

Eddie was pretty excited to help with the shredder since this was the first time I ever let him use it.  

I'm done with my chai milk tea break so I'll hop back on the grading wagon.

Today's Happenings

...well, after a positively splendid two weeks of holiday vacationing and family time, our small Bower Clan is preparing for getting back to the ol' grind stone.  It begins tomorrow.

Since the course I'll be TAing for is on Monday nights (4-8 pm) Dave will now be home Mondays instead of Fridays.  Lucky for us, Cassie can accommodate this change to Eddie's daycare schedule.  So while Dave gets to remain home with Eddie tomorrow, I will be returning to school/work.

But for today, we are doing what we often do on Sundays: cleaning, cooking, working on some house projects, etc. Well, the adults are.  Eddie's busy outside with his friends, which is perfect because we can get much more done that way.

My to-do list for the day.

Dave has begun painting the interior doors. We've not had doors on any room except Eddie's for about 2 weeks.  And let me tell you, nothing ruins a nice hot bath than having your kid come in to poop while you soak.  I miss our doors.  A lot.

Eddie and the neighbors are playing outside. I think Mary Jane was busy planting an old fennel bulb she found in her fridge. You can see the kids adopted an old salad spinner from my "donate" bin (the spinner lid broke and Dave could not fix it).

I was successful with my second attempt at making homemade yogurt. I used 2 quarts 2% milk mixed with 1 quart of heavy whipping cream--both of which had barely passed their 'best by' date. I used 6 tablespoons of Straus European style yogurt for starter.  The jars sat inside a foam cooler with a heating pad set to medium overnight.  It's sooooooooo good and nice and thick.  But what wouldn't be with that much fat in it?

Downtown Abbey's third season begins tonight so as much as I'd like to write up some posts (Christmas, New Year's, visiting Gualala and assessing the Coast House for moving in, and Hawaii)...it's definitely not gonna happen tonight.

2012 Resolutions

Remember my resolutions from last year?  I'm sad to report that I have only accomplished part of one of them.  I did collect nearly all my data for my dissertation (just not the plant extractions, which will happen in early January). The good news is that knitting and selling stuff on ebay doesn't actually contribute anything substantial to my life.  But dang, I wish I'd finished collecting data earlier in the year so I could have prepared those two manuscripts.  It was a lofty goal in the first place, though. I guess I'll just have to bump up the number of completed manuscripts from 2 to 5 for this coming year.

Last year I didn't even send out Christmas cards because things got so dang busy that I never had time. 

I remember standing at my back patio door last year after Thanksgiving, watching the leaves fall from the trees.  Tired and nervous that I would royally screw up my big research project (on which the entire dissertation hinged), I sighed and thought to myself, "Well, at least we got Thanksgiving and Christmas out of the way so I can just concentrate on my research."  And then I realized we hadn't even come close to December 25th yet. Yikes.

This year is a bit different, with the big project behind me. Now I have loads and loads and loads of data to massage into a story...and then I can write about it.

I'm writing this with my arms perched on a huge stack of Christmas letters that are stamped, addressed, and sealed.  We'll pop them through the slot at the post office on our way to a friend's birthday party this afternoon.  Woo!  I feel super accomplished, even for such a trite thing as mail.

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.

Windy Weekend

Oh boy, was it windy this weekend!  We didn't have anything planned for this weekend (thank goodness), so I decided to have a "cleaning party" on Saturday complete with a Gmail Calendar Event and all--my way of making sure Dave knows what's going on.  =)  The house was dusty, which makes me feel icky all over.  I miss those 5 glorious months last year when we had a cleaning service.  Phooey that we couldn't justify the expense after the madness of examing/experimenting/logging was over.

Our to do list was:

Dust all surfaces in: living room, dining room, bedrooms, dining room (furniture, chairs, picture frames, etc.)

Wipe down all kitchen cabinets with orange wood oil

Wipe down all baseboards in house with damp cloth

Paint baseboard near kitchen garbage can area

Wash inside/outside of all windows

Clean bathrooms (showers/sinks/mop floors/mirrors/dishwash all sink things: toothbrush holders, soap dish, etc/refill soap containers/replace towels)

Wash all small carpets (bathrooms, front door, kitchen, dining room)
Sweep and mop dining room/living room/kitchen/hallway

Fold and put away all laundry

Outside: 

Refill fly traps
Hang bamboo shades over bedroom windows

Disassemble and throw away sand bin and crap next to it

Find (and implement) a solution to that sprinkler that keeps breaking near frog statue

Put Eddie's scattered outdoor toys into a bucket/bin/milk crate

Plant beans where tomato seeds haven't sprouted yet

Sweep driveway (yes, sweep) to get all the gravel and soil back to where it belongs

Install front door moulding (finally)

To get ourselves pumped up for cleaning we got donuts on Saturday morning.

After a full day of cleaning (YAY!), we took Eddie to his very first movie in a theater that night.  We saw Pirates: Band of Misfits.  We didn't expect much from him since he's not known for having a particularly long attention span, so we were impressed that he lasted 1.5 hours.  It helped that he got to eat loads of popcorn and too many chocolates from my purse.  Sitting in front of a handrail helped, too, since it gave him something to climb on.

Check out our soda...Eddie could bathe in there if needed!
We definitely got our fill of refined sugar that night.

We made a quick stop at the store to buy some Pull-Ups.  Eddie picked out the pink fairy princess ones and we were about to leave when....we happened to walk past a giant display of big lollipops with every flavor imaginable.  Of course he wanted to get one, so I let him, on the condition that he get to have it the next day after nap IF he was a good listener all morning.  Well.  WELL.  That damn lollipop became a thorn in my side the next day.  He was falling apart into fits of tears and whining all morning (not out of character of late, unfortunately.  He and his two little boy friends at school are all going through an overly sensitive/always hungry/rambunctious phase.  Fun, fun.).  I kept using the pop as a way to remind him that he needed to be a good listener.  It didn't really work. At one point I said to Dave, "If we just give him the stupid pop then it'll be done and he won't keep asking for it."  Parenting sucks sometimes. He did eventually get the pop.  This is why I prefer to shop on Amazon.com instead of taking that kid into stores.  Fewer impulse buys and no whiny kids running off down the aisles.

That night was the best: after Eddie went down, we had Indian food delivered and we watched a movie while eating on the couch.  We never eat in front of the TV anymore because we don't want Eddie learning that bad habit.  So it's always such a treat for us...especially when it involved Indian food.

The original plan for Sunday was to use our Groupon to go to the zoo but with all that wind and poor Dave suffering with his allergies, we decided to do some more indoor stuff.  I gave Eddie and myself mani/pedicures while we watched a show.

Toes!

And then I thought of the perfect place for us to visit: a bead store.  

About a month ago Eddie got to make a pipe cleaner and bead bracelet at Cassie's.  They were learning about patterns and had to place their beads in the same color order she did.  He was so proud of his bracelet that he wore it 24/7...until fell off too many times and the pipe cleaner wire snapped.  He was so sad.  So we took him to the bead store to make a more permanent/real/robust bracelet.  It was pretty awesome.  He was too young to be in there for long (it was a quiet place with annoying elevator music on), but we were the only customers for about 30 minutes, which was nice.  It was super awesome at the end because his other school teacher, Miss Amanda, randomly showed up!  He was so happy to see her.  =)

His bracelet turned out great.  We only helped him a little with his bead choice (mostly because he was choosing ridiculously HUGE beads that would never work on his adorable little wrist.  The lady working there was very patient with us and made sure to size it so it would rotate around but not fall off his hand.

Check out his cool bracelet!

So it was obviously a wonderful weekend: just our little family, a clean house, and a fun new accessory.  The only bad thing was the stupid wind.  Poor Dave was so miserable last night that he stayed home from work because he can hardly breathe.  Avoiding allergens: yet another reason we're looking forward to moving to the coast.

Our chickies like watermelon rind!

Eight Things

1. Jennifer got a job at an advertising agency...something like account associate?  I can't remember but I keep imagining Mad Men and just hope there'll be less infidelity and smoking.
2. Edward and Jennifer got their very own apartment.  This is great for them since they've only ever lived together but with other people (roommates, a grandmother, us, or my parents). I can't wait to see Jennifer's decorating style!
3. Because they are moving into their own place, it means our house will soon be empty of a couch, a bed, some housewares, and linens (we basically absorbed Edward's stuff when he moved back here).
4. Eddie has been sleeping on Edward's queen bed, which has been in his room since June of 2010. So we ordered Eddie a twin bunk bed with a trundle.  It is quite awesome, with a staircase instead of a ladder (that doubles as a dresser with drawers under each step).  Because Eddie is so young, Dave didn't feel comfortable with the ladder and opted for the stairs.  UPS tracking says it'll arrive on Friday and since Dave bought the mattresses at Costco yesterday, we'll be ready to assemble it as soon as Edward hauls his queen bed away.
5.  I ordered a solid colored, king sized bedspread that I plan to cut into two and hem to the exact dimensions of the twin mattresses (as opposed to making them bigger, as most spreads are, so they can hang down over the edge of the bed).  I might even sew one side of the flat sheet to the fitted sheet so it stays in place, too.  I don't want to have to deal with the hassle of making a bunk bed (tucking in the sheets and blankets). I bought a set of "trains, cars, airplanes, and tractors" sheets and a jungle animal set, too.  I think cartoon character bedspreads are tacky so I'm hoping he'll be satisfied with fun sheets and a plain top blanket.
6. My family will be visiting next weekend so we can celebrate my dad's birthday. I've already planned out the meal and I can't wait to eat it.  I won't say what it is here on the blog because I don't want to ruin the surprise for my dad.
7. I love that Dave has today off.  It made for a wonderful weekend that was so jam-packed full of fun and relaxation that it has felt like he's been here a whole week.  Once I've offloaded the pictures of our weekend getaway I'll post about it--the food, wine, hotels, shopping, and childlessness.  It was glorious.
8. There is a "hard freeze" weather advisory in effect for tonight and tomorrow so I just wrapped towels on the above ground irrigation line in the chicken house and plugged in the lights on the lemon tree and threw a sheet over the whole tree.  I should probably bring the chicken waterer inside, too, once it is dark (and they are asleep) and bring it back out in the morning so it won't freeze solid.  It'll be so cold tomorrow that it might take a long time to melt and I don't want them to be thirsty. 

New Year's Resolutions: 2012

I did really well with my resolutions from last year. Number 3 was and always will be tricky...but I'm not perfect.

Accomplishments: Dave and I each accomplished big career milestones this year.  He passed his water distribution exam on September 17 with a 96%. I passed my Ph.D. oral qualifying exam on August 30, getting out 40 minutes early. For him it marks the first step towards being fully certified as a water treatment and distributor for the North Gualala Water Company, something he takes very seriously. For me it means one step closer toward the end of my long, twisted, Ph.D. path.

Challenges: I've continued as a mostly single working mother, upping my time on campus to nearly 40 hours a week most of the year to accommodate being a TA and for my exam prep.

I worked as a teaching assistant for a science and society fusion class in the spring and really had to push myself in that position. I'd never had to teach that many students (100 students, with about 30 per discussion section, all of which I taught), prepare lesson plans from scratch, confront students about cheating, etc. Truth be told, I was pretty nervous about it but it turned out to be a really wonderful experience, one that I'm REALLY looking forward to doing again.

During that quarter I started preparing myself for studying for my big qualifying exam. Arranging Eddie's childcare schedule to accommodate six weeks of intense studying was tough (and super expensive).

Dave has had to deal with not being around for Eddie as much as he'd like. Thankfully, faster/reliable internet has been installed at his parents' house this past year so that we can Skype nearly every night. Usually we get to chat from dinner through to bath time. Some nights I take the laptop into Eddie's room so Dave can listen to bedtime stories with us, too. It isn't perfect, but it works for now.

And now for the resolutions:

1. To have two publications ready for submission by the end of 2012. My professor wants me to have 3-5 publications before he'll let me graduate. I think 3 is the department sign-off standard, but since I don't have a masters degree and people are hired largely based on publication records, he'd like me to have more than the minimum.

2. I will finish collecting all my essential data by the end of 2012 (DSC-IRMS, C/N, headspace gases, plant component extractions). This is definitely my BHAG for the year. I have an undergraduate intern lined up to help me run my instrument cluster (assuming the stable isotope director will allow me to train someone else to run the IRMS) and process my compost samples. With Eddie's schedule I can only squeeze in about 4 samples a day, but hopefully the intern will be able to do 2-4 additional if she can come in before I arrive (at about 9:15am) and after I leave (at about 5pm). In order to accomplish this, it means I will need to work extra long on Fridays and probably one weekend day, too. But the sooner I can get done, the sooner we can move on to the next step in our lives (living together, in one place like most families do...imagine that!).

3. We will finish our major home improvement projects. These include: replacing the windows in the hall bathroom and living room; deciding and acting on what to do with the dining room (split into two rooms or not?); paint the interior doors; replace all broken/rotting fence posts; install wooden edging around garden beds. This list isn't particularly long, but some items are pretty involved. But we need to prepare the house for eventual renters and these are "must do" items.

4. I will finish the knit monster pants that I started the day after my heart surgery (12/2010). The yarn I used is much thicker than what the pattern called for so the ended up being for a toddler instead of a baby (perfect since I'm STILL not done with them!). I have only about 4" on one leg to finish and some sewing decorations to add.

5. Sell my collection of "see if I can sell this" stuff. It includes some vintage/old wallets and purses, a mostly complete collection of Babysitters Club books, and a few other things. Basically, things that are worth more in college fund money for Eddie and his future siblings than the sentimental value of holding on to them.

Holiday Feasting

I was chatting with Dave online last night about all the food I want to make during the two weeks we will be together for the holidays. Granted, it will mostly just be the three of us Bowers, but I can't help myself...I just love variety. I won't make a lot of each thing, just a little bit of each so we can have our own buffet.

• Buffalo chicken dip
• bbq ribs
• fondue
• paella
• mussels and fries
• eggs benedict (I've never made Hollandaise before)
• bacon jalapeno poppers
• donuts
• steamed buns like you get at dim sum
• roast a whole, big fish (I want to see Eddie's reaction; he likes fish, but I'm not sure he understands that what we eat is the same as what we see)
• something Moroccan using preserved lemons (I made some a couple of months ago and they are ready to be used)

If I can get my hands on some purple ube paste or powder I'll make an ube cake with the mutant coconut I bought on discount in Gualala.

I already promised myself that I can sit down and make the feasting grocery list after I finish my headspace gas measurements in lab tomorrow (it'll be my "treat" with my afternoon coffee). We all know how much I love making lists and cooking so this'll be a treat indeed. Mmmmmmmm.
Since we're talking about lists, here are the things I'd like to do with Eddie and Dave over the holidays: see the Christmas lights at Deacon Dave's in Livermore, ride the train somewhere, go sledding/tubing, go to the zoo, go swimming, and take Eddie to a movie. Hopefully we all stay healthy so we can eat and enjoy to our heart's contents!

Catch Up!

I have a lot of catch up on! Here's a little list for starters. I'll write proper blog posts...soon.

1. I passed my exam! It was a really good experience. More on that later.

2. I missed Eddie so much while studying! He was at daycare more than full time over the last 6 weeks. We skipped our weekly Tuesday afternoons off together in favor of studying. Because I spent weekends in the library, it meant that I really only hung out with him before and after school. And if you know anything about small children, you know that their personalities are different early and late in the day (more fussy, tired). I can't wait to get back into a schedule that lets us--just us--hang out during the daytime.3. So many people supported me throughout this process! Obviously, Dave was there by my side when I needed him to be--he took a week and a half off in order to take care of Eddie and me (I was "done" studying so we did get to hang out a bit, which was soooooooooooooo nice). Edward cleared his schedule in order to stay with me for a week prior to Dave's "term." My mom had her schedule cleared in order to come stay with Eddie after he was in bed, if I needed her to (she didn't end up needing to come). People all over the place were praying for me and sending me nice emails encouraging me and telling me I'd be in their thoughts and prayers. That was SUCH a booster for me!

5. Eddie is a talking MACHINE now. Sheesh, it seems like he can say practically anything. And he DOES--he talks NON STOP.

6. My family orchestrated my dad coming to Davis the day of my exam and surprising me at the restaurant where we were celebrating afterward. Ha! It was awesome! (And it boosted my confidence because he obviously knew in his heart that I would actually pass the exam, otherwise it would have been awkward for him to come all the way up here.)

7. The Schwinds moved the day after my exam. =( I'm so sad about that. John and I are in the same cohort at school (same starting class in our program). I remember him before Jessica moved to California to be with him. And I remember him telling me about his girl friend and how she was going to move here. Then I remember meeting this hot blond lady at one of our seminars--it was Jessica and she'd tagged along with John to school that day. She became a professor at a local university AND started at Davis as a Ph.D. student (she's quite a catch). Then we bonded over our dogs...and eventually over babies. And now they are gone--back to Georgia to live near Jessica's family. We couldn't go to their going away party because we were in Livermore at the time. They came to my exam celebration so I did get to hold each of the babies and say good bye.

8. Eddie turned two years old just two weeks before my exam. He's definitely not a baby anymore. My mom threw him an awesome party at a park we used to frequent at his age. It was really fun.

Blog Organization

I finally got around to organizing my blog a little bit more. In case anyone cares, the post labels, archives, "about" blurb, and additional pictures can now be found on their own separate pages. While I haven't been able to label all 400+ posts yet, I'm getting close.
I know that this blog is mostly read by my close friends and select family members, but I do hope that other folks who stumble upon it will find some of my posts useful or at least entertaining. According to Blogger's stats, my Best Beef Stroganoff Ever recipe is the most common path to my blog via Google searches. (I probably get like 12 hits a day from that recipe alone. It is super good...so if you haven't made it yet, you should! Of course, I should update the recipe using some of the nice comments people have left. But then what would I call the new recipe, if it is, in fact, better than the original? Absolute Best Beef Stroganoff Ever?)

Some day I'll get around to buying a domain name and hosting our family blog somewhere other than Blogger...but that probably means needing to know html so I can create a nice-looking blog. So for now, I'm happy with Blogger since I'm better with GUI than html. =)

Toddlers = Surprises

I just had to document some of the weird things Eddie has been doing lately. He's always cracking me up...unless he's throwing a tantrum.

• He was "helping" me take out the garbage yesterday evening. My routine is to collect the little garbage cans from the bathrooms and bring them into the kitchen so I can dump them all into the one bag. We throw dirty disposables diapers into a small black lidded garbage can that we keep under the sink (to prevent dumpster diving...ew...). I always leave it in the garage for a few hours so it can air out. Well, Eddie decided to play with the main part of the can (not the stinky insert). Hours later, after he was in bed, I went to put it away but couldn't find it. I decided to start a load of laundry in the meantime...and guess what I found inside our front-loader? The garbage can, of course.
  
• He likes to walk around the utility yard with me, pointing out all the piles of dog poop. I follow him with the pooper scooper thing. Whenever he finds one he points and yells, "POOP! Yuh-gee! Yuh-gee!" I LOVE LOVE LOVE the way he says "yucky." I'll have to capture it on video soon before he learns to make the "k" sound in that word.
• Since we brought our baby bantam chickies home, he insists on being held up so he can see them. They are kept inside an opaque Rubbermaid tote on the workshop bench so the dogs can't get to them. He yells, "See! I seeeeee! Yick-yens!" As soon as I pick him up his little feet and legs start kicking out of excitement. He peers over the edge of the container and is silent for a few seconds (truly, a rare state for him). Then he points out where the yick-yens are, where the food is, and where the water is. He's a little farmer-in-training.
• He tries REALLY hard to pronounce the ends of words. I'll say something and then he'll repeat it, then I'll repeat it. Hearing him say "thoughT" and "milK" is adorable.

And just to be complete, here are the non-adorable things:

• Tantrums
  
• Throwing his food or whatever you hand him when you--gasp--mistakenly hand him the wrong thing. It'll be nice when he has better vocabulary so I will actually understand what he's asking for.
• Whining. What bugs me more is that I respond to it! For the last two weeks I've been trying really, really hard to ignore him when he's whining and then flatly state that he needs to use words to tell me what he wants. Usually he can't because he doesn't have the words yet. So I make a suggestion to see if that's what he wants. This is, of course, encouraging him to keep whining to get whatever he needs from me. But I feel like I have no choice because he can't really talk yet. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. This is a short line to walk. Suggestions, anyone?
  

Weekend To Do List

I'm one of those people who has trouble concentrating unless I have a 'to do' list made. With the 80 degree weather right now, I am just itching to go home and work in the garden. I have spent most of today working on TA stuff...so as a treat I'll go water my plants in the greenhouse before lecture starts. On a day like today, a greenhouse isn't as good as being outside--but it sure beats sitting in front of this computer!

• Buy and incorporate compost into garden beds in the garden yard (2 yards minimum).
• Fix irrigation in the front yard.
• Till compost into new garden beds in the utility yard. Eddie and I already bought and spread a yard of compost onto these two new beds yesterday. They used to be lawn, but we decided to get rid of the grass because a) we don't like mowing or watering it, b) our dogs don't poop on the grass enough to justify having to mow and water it--which was the purpose of the turf in the first place, and c) my labmate bought a house and needed a lawn mower (so we gave him ours). (Problem solved! And now we have room to grow more edibles.)
• Have Dave change the old lawn sprinklers into drip irrigation line (I noticed a connector thing to do this at Home Depot last year).
  
• Transfer compost to a new bin to aerate it and bury the fresh stuff that is on top right now (and attracting flies).
• Buy another bale of straw.
  
• Clean out the chicken pen. Put old floor litter into a compost bin and scatter fresh, clean straw on the floor. You can see how dirty the floor is from this picture, which I took yesterday:
• Finish our new chicken tractor (last coat of paint, staple on chicken wire, buy/attach two wheels, install water and food containers).
• Prevent Eddie from climbing up any ladders because it makes his mama a little nervous, even though he's able to climb down safely (so far).
• Go to Costco for milk and batteries.
  
• Replace batteries in all smoke detectors.

Pet Peeves

1. I don't like blogs that have auto-playing music on them. It interferes with my Pandora!
2. fEw ThInGs BoThEr Me MoRe ThAn WhEn PeOpLe TyPe ThIs WaY oN tHeIr BlOgS--It isn't cute, clever, funky, or trendy. It is annoying, hard to read, and trashy. Yep, trashy. Just like skinny jeans: you'll wish you hadn't when you look back at your blog in a few years.
   
3. Number 2 is only slightly more annoying than when People capitalize random Words while Typing. The only excuse is if you are German--those people give special recognition to all nouns, but even that's not random because it is for nouns only. But since most of us aren't German, please just take a little time to proof read before finalizing your text. This goes for blogs, posters, emails, etc. If you're not sure if a word should be capitalized, then it probably shouldn't be. The end.
   

An Evolution of Eddie's Nicknames

In our family, the number of nicknames a person has is directly proportional to how much we love that person. So get ready for a looooooooooooong list.

In order:

• Eddie
• Eddie Pie
• Big E
• Biggest Man
• Biggest Little Man
• Biggesist Man
  
• Lover Lump (since he's smaller than Dave, my Lover)
  
• Edimus (sounds sorta like Oedipus...not that that's a good thing...)
  
• Edimus Pie (our little song was, "Edimus, Edimus, Edimus Pie!")
• Ediwadamus
• Wadamus
• Wada-mee-us
  
• Edi-wada-weirda-mus
• Edi-wada-worda-weirda-mus
• Edi-wada-worda-weirda-walka-runna-talka-mus (we added a piece with each new skill he acquired)
• Edi-moose
• Wada-moose
• Wonder Moose (Uncle Edward came up with this one)
• Wada Dada von Moosen (his fake German name)
• Wonder Moosen (another fake German name, pronounced Vonder Moosen)
  
• Desitin Man (said in a sing-song voice like you would for a super hero flying through the sky: "Dun, dun, dun, DUN....Desitin Maaaaaaaan!")
• WadaSeuss, as in Dr. Seuss. I sent Edward a picture of Eddie in his striped jammies. He showed it to Jennifer, who said Eddie looked like a Dr. Seuss character. She's right!

We regularly call him Wadamus, Eddie, Wonder Moose, Wada-mee-us, and Wada Dada von Moosen. (Okay, okay...to be honest we use most of these names on a daily basis.) It cracks me up that Cassie calls him Wadamus!

Our dogs have zillions of nicknames, too. But Eddie knows them best as "sister" and "brother," although he can say "Ruby" and I heard him say something that vaguely sounded like "Taters." This poor kid will grow up to think that he's a dog or the dogs are people!

Master To Do List: Revisited

A while ago I posted a "big" to do list of major things that need to be done in my life.

Here's my progress so far:

• Get a mortgage modification or refinance to a lower rate
  
• Get a second opinion about my cardiac episode
  
• Reapply for life insurance
  
• Get Dave to go to the dentist
  
• Find a nanny or day care for Eddie before the end of December 2009
  
• Get Eddie a passport (we're going to France in April!)
  
  
• Get Dave to go to the eye doctor
  
• Formalize a hypothesis for my graduate research and come up with a formal plan for finishing said research
  
• Take my qualifying exam
  
• Finish graduate school by the end of winter quarter 2012

I'm starting to feel ready to start thinking about planning my quals...we'll see. My program (or any program I've heard of here at UCD) doesn't require students to do a public defense of their dissertation in order to be awarded the Ph.D. (leading people like my dad to argue that it isn't a "real" Ph.D. in that case...whatever!).

So since the oral qualifying exam is the only tortuous rite of passage for us graduate students, we all dread it. People worry themselves sick and usually end up studying WAY too much. There's a professor in my department that recommends the 6-6-6 rule for preparation: no more than 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 6 weeks before the exam. Any more than that and you'll start to forget everything.

My prof treats the exam as a simple technicality--he doesn't understand why students get so worked up about it. Not having taken it yet (gulp) I can't argue with him. Every time one of our labmates starts freaking out about their exam he says, "it isn't that big a deal." I'm glad to hear him say that because other professors probably think the same thing. To them it is just another meeting and commitment they have to cram into their busy schedules.

Anyway, since no one is pushing me to get it done, I'm not going to worry much about it right now. I'd rather have some data to present at my exam instead of just my proposal.

Other things I need to add to this "big" list are:

• Shop around for a new local bank--I'm not happy with BofA for reasons that are specific to living in Davis, but we want to make sure to get the same "perks" at whatever new bank we go to (free checks and safe deposit box, to name a few). And we're hoping for a $50-100 bonus when we sign up for an account.
• Figure out what to do about my broken wedding ring. We got quotes from the local jeweler for completely remaking the ring (reusing the stones but not the metal) or just reworking the existing ring to suit my needs better. We're not sure how much--if any--money we want to commit to this right now...but since we don't know for sure what our financial situation will be in say, 10 years, we aren't comfortable tossing the ring in the safe deposit box and doing it later. In 10 years we could have more kids and therefore more expenses--health insurance, college savings, preschool and daycare tuition, etc. really add up.
  
• Find a new tenant. Arek moved out and we've had some temporary folks in there since then. I've offered to a new post doc who is coming from Brazil but he's not sure he wants to live with a family (I don't blame him!).
• Go to the eye doctor.
• Make a "real" budget for groceries and other consumables and STICK TO IT.
• Become a Master Food Preserver through the UC Extension system

11 Step Program for Those Thinking of Having Kids

A few of my friends have posted a link to this funny post about having kids (written by someone named Amy Lawrence). I thought I'd post it here for everyone to enjoy. I nearly chocked on my sandwich when I got to numbers 7 and 8.

Enjoy!

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.

2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.

3. Go home.

4. Pick up the paper.

5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.

2. Lack of patience.

3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.

4. Allowing their children to run wild.

5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.

Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

This is all very tongue in cheek; anyone who is parent will say 'it's all worth it!' Share it with your friends, both those who do and don't have kids. I guarantee they'll get a chuckle out of it. Remember, a sense of humor is one of the most important things you'll need when you become a parent!

New Year's Resolutions

Do you think I'll stick to my resolutions if I publicly announce them on my blog? It's worth a shot, right?

Right.

First, this year has been a whirlwind of excitement, travel, home improvement projects, challenges, and a lesson that life never slows down. In fact, I think each passing year speeds up.

Excitement: watching Eddie grow up before our very eyes. It is fun to see each new milestone and bewildering to discover that Dave and I have a lot to learn from our little Eddie.

Travel: Eddie and I went to so many places this year and Dave came along on many of our trips (France, Reno, Iowa, Georgia, Long Beach, I'm sure there were others that I can't remember right now). I love traveling but traveling with a child is SO MUCH WORK. I miss being able to read a book and sip my Starbucks or even sleep on a plane without having to juggle a kid and all his stuff. Even with my mom's help on all those trips it is still a lot of work. Next year I plan on going to the Soils conference alone, without Eddie. It will be in San Antonio and I can't wait.

Home improvement projects: Dave and I get so much joy from our home. And not just from watching movies in our comfy living room or cooking food in our well appointed kitchen. We love fixing, improving, and modifying our home because it allows us to spend quality time together and fix, improve, and modify ourselves and our relationship while doing it. Most projects are done together and it is often the only "us" time we get during the weekends. New to our home this year are a chicken coop (and 4 birds), garden irrigation and raised beds, some windows, indoor panel doors...and probably more.

Challenges: In the last 12 months I've had to navigate the overwhelming world of being a working and mostly-single mother. I've also had to learn to care for other people's children in order to earn extra income during the week (and how to give myself a break and let one of the kids go because it just wasn't a good fit). We've learned how to share our home with a tenant and give up a whole room of our house for the year--along with that I've learned to adjust my standards of how my house is organized and maintained. Having a housemate (a male one at that) made me relax my ideals of cleanliness, noise, etc. Above all else, Dave and I continue to deal with the challenges of living apart for work reasons. It is becoming more and more clear that this situation isn't sustainable emotionally--financially it is the only way to go right now. Hopefully something will change soon.

Life never slows down! I keep hoping it will so I can stop to smell the roses, but I know it won't. (I actually DO stop to smell the roses and I'm surprised by how few of them actually smell good. That must be a metaphor for something.)

Okay, now on to my resolutions.

1. To stop using Dave's work situation (him in Gualala, me in Davis) as an excuse to hold me back from moving forward with my degree. I don't mean this in a bad way toward Dave at all. But I think a year of moping is enough--I need to buck up or back down. I'm not much for backing down (especially after this much work) so buck up time is here. I don't think anyone (except maybe my dad and brother...) would hold it against me if I chose to quit school so I could move up with Dave. Our situation puts a lot of pressure and responsibility on me. But since I'm pursuing my Ph. D. only for myself, I'd only be letting myself down. Dave supports me in every way a husband and friend can: emotionally, physically, financially. The synergy of our marriage is intense; even when he's not here he is supporting me and my wants/desires.

We took this picture of ourselves on December 15, 2005...just over five years ago. I'm happy to report that I love him way more today than I did back then.Anyway...back on track: I had a chronological list of things I thought I needed done in order to move forward: have Dave get settled in a job "down here," then have my heart procedure, then study for and take my oral qualifying exam (I was afraid that I'd set off the heart problem again with all the anxiety of that exam), finish my experimental research, and write my dissertation while applying for post doc positions or teaching jobs. Well, the first one hasn't happened and I can't sit around waiting forever so I decided that I just need to move forward with that list. Life's all about adaptation and resourcefulness, right?

We all choose our own paths in life, and for some reason I chose to let my husband be happy by quitting his terrible/awful/shitty corporate job to do something that fulfills him (working for/with his dad in his hometown, doing work that betters his community and will ultimately benefit our entire Bower family)...and since his daily happiness truly makes me happy, then I know I have the personal capacity to do the same for myself. We are all aware that no one else can make us happy, only we can make ourselves happy. I chose the path I'm on so I'd better suck it up and make it work. And I will be happy doing it, goshdarnit.

2. I will wean myself from keeping my hair up in a ponytail all the time. There are two things I ALWAYS had with me up until about six months ago: chapstick and a hairband. Always. Meaning that if I forgot one of those things and was too far from my dorm room or house to go get it, I'd stop at a store and buy one. Eddie is obsessed with my chapstick tubes--he likes to gnaw on the rough plastic on the twist-up end--and since he was always taking them from my pockets and key chain and losing them I was forcibly weaned from using chapstick all the time.

This past week I have been forcing myself to keep my hair down and get used to the way my hair feels on my neck. I usually having a band on my wrist for dangerous situations: cooking over an open flame, dealing with chemicals in the lab, etc.

Why bother? Well, what's the point of having longish hair if I'm only going to keep it up? It looks nicer down.

3. I will make a conscious effort to have fewer "Jane" moments and more "Avis" moments. If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it.

This is my Grandma Avis: I should probably have a resolution about motherhood on here, but numbers 1 and 3 will definitely benefit Eddie for the rest of his life (assuming I follow through).

Today

I wrote a to do list for today while I was pumping at school yesterday.

In no particular order:

1. Transfer money into savings
2. Laundry
3. Fold diapers
4. Go swimming
5. Eddie's urology appointment
6. Buy rolling suitcase--Edward has our big one and our small one is being repaired by Dave but it won't be done by the time we leave for Reno on Amtrak (!) with my parents on Saturday
7. Go to campus for first official melon tasting session in the pomology department (something I'm doing for fun and because it pays $5 in Target gift cards for each session)
8. Pick zucchini from the garden
9. Feed the chickens
10. Be home at 7pm so I can hand over the last specimen samples for the UCD lactation study--I can't believe we're done already! (I'll explain in another post.)

I took the dogs to an off-leash area of Slide Hill park this afternoon before we went swimming. Potatoes, our boy, was walking weird after we were done...like he was going to fall over. Eddie and I sat down on the grass with Ruby and Taters wandered away to pee on a tree. I was watching him and something about his gait made me nervous. I couldn't pinpoint it, but something was wrong. Then as he was walking back to me he sorta stumbled and it totally freaked me out. I firmly called him and he perked up at the sound of my voice like he usually does...and that reassured me that he wasn't having a seizure or anything.

I made the dogs stay put while I loaded Eddie into the car and then watered the dogs once they were in the van. When we got home I gave the dogs treats and a big bowl of water. Since Taters seemed okay and ate the treat like normal I decided to continue on with my plans to go to the pool. The whole time I was sorta worried about him. But he was sitting on the blanket chest looking out the window when we got back and he seems just fine.

Poor pooches, they get so worn out with any exercise I give them since I hardly give them any! I need to make a commitment to take them to play more...it is just hard to find the time and energy to haul me, Eddie and them to the park. Dave and I used to share that responsibility but now it all falls on me. Phooey.

Anyway, so dealing with Taters made me totally forget about going to campus for melon tasting. Grrrr...I hope I don't have the quit the panel because of that!

I still need to do numbers 1 and 2 from my list (and 10 but it isn't 7 yet).

Here's what we had for dinner last night--black bean/zucchini burgers, zucchini/tomato saute with pesto, and cut-from-the-cob grilled corn. And there are leftovers for tonight!