Category: life

I need help with red-eye reduction.

You know how most photo editing applications now come with a tool to reduce red eye? I’m afraid that won’t help me. My own red-eye problem is not due to a flash.

I noticed a smallish bright red spot on my eye some time this morning, and didn’t think anything more of it until this evening when Phoebe looked at me an exclaimed: “Your eye is really red!”

“Oh, right, I noticed that this morning,” I answered calmly, and we continued with other things.

Half an hour later or so, I walked into the bathroom to get Theo started on his bath. I glanced in the mirror, and holy crap was my eye red! This was no longer a little spot. Red was covering most of the visible white of my left eye.

Dr. Google informs me that I most likely have a subconjunctival hemorrhage¹, a largely benign condition involving a broken blood vessel in front of the white of the eye. (And yes, I am considering calling my real-life physician in the morning to see if I should get a second opinion.) The good news is that it will go away on its own, and doesn’t need treatment. Less good is that it will take at least a week. Possibly more like 2 weeks. Possibly longer.

I’m not usually one to spend a lot of time worrying about my looks, but I am also used to not looking like an extra from a horror movie. (At least most days.) My eye really is quite startling to look at, and I am quite likely going to freak a few people out over the next few days…(weeks?). After all, people are very squeamish about eyes. (Myself included.) According to TV Tropes, “Eye trauma is one of the easiest ways to gross people out.” (Yeah! I got that.)

Also, it happens that I am going to a wedding this Saturday, where I will possibly be meeting dozens of people for the first time. People in my field, no less, as the friend who is getting married is also a linguist.

So, I’m trying to figure out ways to gracefully avoid freaking/grossing people out at the wedding. Here are some options I have considered:

  1. Wink a lot, especially for photos.
  2. Wear sunglasses.
  3. Pretend to be a vampire from an Anne Rice novel, crying blood tears.²
  4. Wear an eyepatch, and decorate it to match my dress.
  5. Wear an eyepatch and a pirate costume, and say I thought it was a costume wedding.

Another friend who is going to the wedding has now seen a photo of my eye³, and suggested zombie might be a better costume. But I don’t know, pirates just seem classier than zombies for weddings. Plus, I can have the excuse to loot.

If anyone has any other suggestions to make, please do so.

—-

¹ I see subconjunctival, and I can’t help but read subjunctive. If only it were simply a matter of subjunctive misuse.
² I went through an Anne Rice phase.
³ I was considering posting said photo, but John talked me out of it. I believe he used the word “oversharing.” You have been spared.⁴
⁴ Unless you are likely to see me in person in the next couple of weeks. Then there is no escaping.

The summer puzzle

School’s out for summer! Except when you are a grad student, or otherwise an academic researcher. For me, summer mostly means easier parking for lab meetings, and a shortage of subjects for experiments. If anything, I’m supposed to get more of my research done.

The yawning gulf of Phoebe’s summer vacation has been menacing me for months. “Sort out Phoebe’s summer plans” stubbornly stayed unchecked on my to-do list, day after day, week after week. Theo’s schedule seemed pretty uncomplicated; he’d just go to the same home daycare he’d been attending since he was an infant. This was also an option for Phoebe, as this was where she went after school and also a place she’d been going since she was an infant herself. However, she’d be the only school-aged kid there with just a couple of 3-year-olds. Plus Phoebe had expressed an interest in going back to the place where she’d gone for pre-K. They have a summer program, and she had some friends going.

I didn’t look forward to those double drop-offs and pick-ups. Even though both places were pretty close, with the time spent settling and collecting each child, the two-location solution gave even work-at-home days effectively an hour-plus commute, twice a day.

Then there were all the other enticing summer options. We’d already signed up Phoebe for karate camp at her dojo for the first full week of her vacation, and there was the option of a 2nd week at the end of August. Elsewhere were art camps (Phoebe loves art). Swimming lessons (Phoebe should learn to swim). Spanish camp (an appealing option). Camps for horseback-riding and gymnastics (Phoebe has been asking to do both of these activities).The number of options was dizzying, as was the thought of trying to get her to so many places. Not to mention that all these options were either expensive, and/or had really awkward hours. Plus it seemed like Phoebe should have some time just to enjoy the summer in an unstructured way. She loves to make projects for herself, and to play outside and look for rocks and bugs.

After weeks of hemming and hawing, trying to work this out in the blur surrounding my trip to China, I was considering just having Phoebe join Theo at the home daycare. Thus reducing the expense and the hassle, if making summer potentially less exciting (and social) for Phoebe.

Then our daycare provider broke the news to us that she would be closing her business. In two weeks. There had been a decline in enrollment, and it was looking like our kids would be the only ones left come the fall. What’s more, I’d already told her that I was looking to start Theo in a pre-K program in the fall, so he’d be going down to part-time. It wasn’t feasible for her to stay open, and she found a new full-time job.

In some ways this change made things a bit less complicated, if not exactly easier. We wouldn’t have to consider how our childcare choices would affect her income, or her feelings. (She’s been our main childcare provider for almost 6 years, and she’s been like family to us, given that our families live so far away.) She put us in touch with a couple of her friends with home daycares with openings, both of whom we’ve met and like, and who have interacted with our kids on things like joint daycare field trips and other meet-ups.

In the end, though, I thought it would be easier to just let Phoebe go to the place Phoebe wanted to go, and have Theo start pre-K earlier, thus having them both go to the same place. In deference to summer, I opted to have them in childcare only 3 days a week, giving us more time for things like seeing friends and summery fun. I picked Tuesday through Thursday at the center, leaving more options for long-weekend trips. I managed to get my lab meetings shifted to Wednesdays from the planned summer schedule of Fridays. I was going to start the kids in the summer program on Tuesday, July 10th, after the planned to my in-laws’ the week of the 4th of July.

I had solved the big puzzle. I’d made it all fit.

Then I remembered that I’d left out some pieces.

Like meetings with an undergrad for a summer project. Due to her other job schedule, we’d talked about meeting either Mondays or Fridays, starting in July. And that one lab meeting on Tuesday this week, the last meeting of the month with all 3 of the professors I work with. (John ended up taking both kids into his office.) Plus having the kids in childcare only 3 days a week leaves me only about 20 hours of week-day work time, even fewer on the weeks when I have to commute into Boston. And then there have already been sick days (Phoebe’s and mine) and business travel (John’s) and other unscheduled schedule conflicts.

Summer is great big jigsaw puzzle, but I’m pretty sure that the pieces aren’t all from the same box. Not all of the pieces fit together, not all of the gaps can be filled, and I’m still trying to figure out what the end picture will look like.

I think I’ll only have that figured out come fall.

Not coming soon to a chocolatier near you. Hopefully.

Last night I discovered that there had been an unfortunate incident in my refrigerator involving my emergency stash of dark chocolate. What, you don’t have an emergency stash? Well, it wasn’t really that I planned it that way. I bought a big stash to give away, and then ate most of it over a period of many months. 2 bars remained, often forgotten. Last night, I remembered them. I eagerly pulled out the plastic bag that wrapped up the 2 bars, and was surprised to find the bag looking wet. I pulled out the chocolate, and the wrappers looked wet, too. Not a good sign. I realized that they were oily. I peered back into the dimly lit recesses of my refrigerator, a scary thing to do even on better days. It did not take long to discover a little tub of pesto, laying on its side, its lid clearly not tightly sealed. The smell confirmed it was the culprit. Ever the optimist, I carefully removed the foil-lined wrapper from the bar of orange-infused 70% cacao fair trade organic dark chocolate, dropping it into a clean container without letting the outside of the wrapper or my oily fingers touch the chocolate surface. I washed my hands, and took an optimistic nibble. A second less optimistic nibble confirmed: the chocolate had been pestoed. Fatally so.

Because you know what is not a winning flavor combination? Dark chocolate with orange, basil, garlic, parmesan, and olive oil. Just in case anyone out there was considering experimenting.

Also, it is very hard to wash the smell of pesto off one’s hands. I keep washing them, but it won’t go away. I’m like Lady MacBeth, but with pesto. (Yet who would have thought the little tub to have had so much oily pesto in it?)

hump day

Things have been crazy busy, mostly in a good way. There have been lots of year-end events for Phoebe’s school, and I found myself spending many hours last week cooking and baking for a couple of them. (My diet has such complicated restrictions that if I don’t bring food to such events, I will not be guaranteed to find anything that I can eat. Also, I am slightly insane.) Yesterday was the kindergarten field trip to the zoo. I went as a chaperone. For Phoebe’s class, there ended up being a high chaperone-to-kid ratio, but that turned out well. I had charge of Phoebe plus one other kid. It’s actually rather challenging to take charge of a 6-year-old you don’t really know at a public place full of lots of other small children you don’t know at all. I’m quite pleased to say that I did not lose any children. I am also pleased to say that I refrained from volunteering at one final school event, as I really need to spend some quality time with my work. In the 2+ weeks that I’ve been back from China, I have really only had a couple of days that have not been packed with meetings, childcare or other commitments. (I guess that may be why I’m rather tired today. On the bright side, I think I am squarely over my jetlag! This tiredness can be attributed to fatigue from overactivity.)

I have had so many things to share, a head full of thoughts and a hard drive full of photos. Sometimes, when there is too much, I have trouble posting much of anything at all. So this post is meant to help push me over that hump. (I thought about doing a Wordless Wednesday post, but who am I kidding? I like words.)

a delegate situation

Tomorrow I head to Springfield for the day.¹

You see, a funny thing happened to me a few months ago. I went to our town’s Democratic Party caucus,² and was elected as an alternate delegate for our town to go to the Massachusetts Democratic Party State Convention.

The way things work is something like this: each town ward gets to send delegates to vote at the State Convention.(Our town is small, so we have one ward, and we get to send 2 delegates, 1 male and 1 female. I don’t know how things work in bigger towns.) The delegates are elected at the town caucus. There can also be up to three alternate delegates elected. The committee chair also goes to the convention, but possibly does not have a vote.

I went to the caucus, and I happily said I’d put my name in as an alternate delegate, and I was duly elected. Unanimously. (Perhaps I should mention here that there were only 4 of us at the caucus.) A few weeks later, I heard from the woman who was elected as the official female delegate, and she asked if I wanted to go to the convention in her stead. She would actually prefer not to go. So, I’m being called in as alternate delegate.

I have now skimmed through the official materials sent to me (and you can see them, too, if you like, as they have a pdf version online), and while I have a somewhat better sense of what will happen, I still don’t really know. I suspect that there will me much time spent checking in. And much more time listening to some number of people speechifying. There will be some sort of vote, for which I am led to believe that my vote will count (or at least be counted). I suspect there will be vast quantities of campaign materials distributed.

So, tomorrow I will be hitching a ride to the convention with the other delegate and the town committee chair, and I will learn more about what all of this means.³

¹ Okay, not that Springfield. At least I don’t think so. My geography is a bit fuzzy.
² I’d thought it was the town’s first Democratic caucus, but it turns out that it was the first one organized by these particular committee members. So when they said at various times things like “this is our first time doing this,” I interpreted that incorrectly. I’m not sure how many previous caucuses there have been in my town.
³ Does this mean I will have increased conventional wisdom? You see, I can’t help it. I have this irrepressible urge to make convention puns. Would they be conventional puns? I like to think of myself as more unconventional.

(This post was edited 6/3/12 to adjust various things which I’d gotten wrong.)

image: Springfield from the Simpsons, found here.

Worth at least 2 million words

If I had to describe my trip to China in one word, that word would have to be ohmygoditwasabsolutelyamazingholycrapthatwasanamazingtripdidimentionitwasama-zingbutdamndoihavejetlagnowandistillhavetoomuchtodoleftfrombeforemytrip. Or something like that. Let me check the thesaurus, and I’ll get back to you.

As you might imagine, I have lots of photos. Well over 2000 of them, in fact. Some of them are basically duplicates, as I had my camera set to produce both raw format and jpg for the Great Wall visit, but I still have to sort through them to decide which to keep and post-process. I have spent a little time looking through them, and so far have selected a conservative 200 or so to share. Sometime.

I also have plenty of tales to tell. (You might, for example, enjoy the story of how I killed my iPod. Or how I won an award, which was not for the most creative murder of an iPod. Or about how I seemingly got a small group of us kicked out of a restaurant, which turned out to be a good thing.)

But remember that staggering to-do list I posted before my trip? Unfortunately, I do. And there are things left that still haven’t been done, and still need to be done. So I need to do some of them (the work-related ones) soon. Also, I really really really need a nap. (I fell asleep last night around 9 while trying to post this, but then woke up at two in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m not quite adjusted to this time zone.)

Since I don’t know where to start in on my photos, here is one I took from the plane during my flight back. Once again, my choice of window seat paid off. I happened to glance out the window about an hour or two into the flight, and saw a rather dramatic looking mountain peeking through the clouds. I grabbed for my camera, and managed to snap a few shots before the mountain left my view. I probably would have gotten a clearer shot with my telephoto lens, but fortunately I correctly assessed that I wouldn’t have had time to dig it out from my bag and change lenses in time. Once the mountain was behind me, I looked at the live flight map on the individual monitor to see where we were: roughly over Tokyo. Further investigations once I got home confirmed my suspicions: this was Mount Fuji.

Things jostling for space in my head.

A week from tomorrow,¹ I need to set the alarm for 3:00 a.m. when I go to bed. Historically, I’ve been more likely to see 3 am from the other side of the clock. What on earth could possess me to get up so damn early? I have to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Newark. What on earth would possess me to fly to Newark at 7 a.m.? My 10:50 a.m. flight to Shanghai. Because I am going to Shanghai.

And also briefly to Beijing so that I can see the Great Wall. (Not that Shanghai and Beijing are all that close together. But closer than Boston and Beijing.)

I can hardly contain my excitement.

However, my excitement must share mental space with my soberingly intimidating to-do list, which keeps rudely poking its elbows into my excitement.

Here are some of the tasks weighing on my mind:

Work & School stuff:

  • finish a 12 to 15 page book review (because it’s already several years late)
  • prepare and practice a 15-minute talk at the conference (because that’s why I’m going to Shanghai)
  • read a large number of articles related to my conference presentation, especially given that the authors of those articles may be at the conference
  • rework images for a journal article by my research group

Trip prep stuff:

  • figure out transportation to and from airport on this end
  • Sort out as many details as I can for home and schedule in my absence (to minimize the hassle for John’s solo parenting. Yet another 11 days for him.)
  • find my multi-country travel adaptor doohickey I got for Hong Kong
  • dig out the unlocked cell phone I got in Hong Kong
  • (Happily, I already have my passport and visa squared away, and hotels, flights, and conference registration…)

Home stuff:

  • Finish dealing with thank you notes for Phoebe’s birthday party, which was now over a month ago. Gah!
  • Pack up a pile of books to donate for the town library’s book sale.
  • (Screw all the other household stuff that’s been clogging my to-do list for months. It will all be waiting for me whe I get back.)

Stuff I want to do before my trip.:

  • Plan out and read reviews for places to go and things to do and eat (this sort of thing is what distracts me the most when I’m supposed to be focussing on work)
  • In addition, I’d really like to finish writing about, and sharing photos from, my Hong Kong trip of last August. (I’d love to get these write-ups written up before I leave, because clearly I’m going to have a lot more to share very shortly.) I owe write-ups of:
    • Day 5, part 2 of my guided tour and harbour cruise from hell (I posted part 1 in November.)
    • Day 6 my fantastic outing/hike with YTSL (YTSL posted about it herself back in August!)
    • Day 7: last day of the conference and conference banquet (actually, there’s not too much to say here, so that should be quick)
    • Day 8: excursion to Macau (This was a big day, and full of minor (mis)adventures. I have a lot to say.)

All of my plans are being further irritated by a new cold or spate of allergies, which is leaving me wanting to sleep. A lot. Or curl up in a ball and groan. (You’ll note that curling up in a ball and groaning is not on my to-do list.) And other typical daily things like laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, kid shuttling as well as other family and social obligations, plus occasional attempts at personal hygiene, are also vying for my time and mental energy. (What, I have to brush my hair again? And find another pair of clean socks?)


Yes, I am seriously flying back to Asia less than a year after my trip to Hong Kong last August. I was hoping this conference wouldn’t end up in Shanghai, because I didn’t imagine that I’d be able to swing two trips of this magnitude in less than a year. But end up in Shanghai the conference did. Seriously, if the deadline for the conference submissions had been even in October, I would have said “no way.” But by the end of November, I was already thinking, “well, maybe I can do it.” And then my paper got accepted for a talk, and then I thought, “Hell yeah, I’m going.”

¹ I don’t remember when I started this post, but I’m pretty sure that this once said “in just over 2 weeks,” then various shrinking amounts of time since then. Here’s hoping that I manage to post this before I have to say “a few weeks ago…”

spring fever

Spring has definitely arrived here. Possibly with a vengeance.

I’m not generally prone to seasonal allergies, but there have been a few times in my life when I have wondered if I’ve been beset. This being one of them.

This week is Phoebe’s school vacation. On Tuesday morning, we had Phoebe’s annual check-up scheduled. (Almost 2 months after her birthday. We’d had to reschedule a couple of times.) I was going to take the kids to the dentist in the afternoon (way to vacation!), but the hygienist had to reschedule, so we had an unexpected free afternoon. It was a beautiful hot, sunny day, and I thought we should spend some time outside in the window between lunch and Phoebe’s karate class. A trip to the town playground was in order!

We got ourselves together and over to the park remarkably quickly, given my reduced ability to nag. (And I totally felt like a responsible adult when I remembered that we should wear sunscreen. I have to pat myself on the back for these rare moments.)

The kids had lots of fun. Phoebe dug up a worm and picked dandelions. Theo climbed and jumped off rocks.They slid on slides and swung on swings. Both kids ran around and interacted with other kids.

But I was zonked. I think we were there for a little more than an hour, but it felt like an eternity. I tried to occupy myself by taking some photos, something that can usually keep me quite content for long stretches of time, but I barely had the will to focus, what with all the coughing and the sneezing and the blowing of the nose. I fantasized about being at home, curled up on the couch, box of tissues at my side. Happily, Theo started to get overheated! Yes! I suggested we could go home and watch an episode of Scooby Doo. This was effective at luring Phoebe away from her enjoyment of the great outdoors as well.

So we went home to sit inside and watch some TV.¹

Brought to you by Great Moments in Parenting.

—
¹ For the record, I did decline to give them bowls of candy and potato chips to munch on. And I hardly let them have any beer or crack.

a dweam within a dweam

I admit that I have some mixed feelings on marriage. Having seen some marriages that were less than ideal, I grew up thinking that I probably wouldn’t get married. Marriage wasn’t really a goal of mine. I’m a firm believer that a person can be happy and whole without being married.

When I first met John, I certainly didn’t entertain ideas of marrying him. It wasn’t love at first sight. In fact, we were each dating other people when we met. (If you must know, I was dating his roommate.)

But I think I can pinpoint the moment I fell for John. It was over a year after I first met him, and some time after both of our earlier relationships had ended. The moment I fell for John was was, remarkably, right after I fell on my butt.

It was the winter break of my Junior year of college, late December. I had just returned to the US from a semester abroad in Brazil. I went over to my by-that-point-ex-boyfriend’s house to catch up. John was still one of his housemates, and hearing that he was home, I went up to his room say hello. His door was open, and I poked my head in to say hi. Then I glanced at the papers he had taped up on his door, a long vertical banner of dot-matrix printouts. (Did I mention this was 1991?) First was a set of Dan Quayle quotes. Below that was a bunch of quotes taken from insurance claims. I started reading. I snickered. I laughed some more. I read some more. I bent down to read the pages lower down on the door, eventually squatting to read those at knee-level. I read: “I saw a slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car.” I tried to read it out loud, but was laughing so hard I couldn’t. I laughed so hard I lost my balance, squatting there on my heels. I fell right onto my butt.

You might think that this would be somewhat of an embarrassing turn of events for a reunion with an acquaintance. And perhaps it would have been, except that John, seeing me laughing so hard at things that he had found funny enough to print out and hang on his door, was laughing along with me. And while he may well have been laughing at me for falling on my ass in his doorway, I didn’t mind. I was laughing too hard. And when our eyes met, both of us laughing at the quotes and my clumsiness, I’m pretty sure that was the moment that I knew I had found someone I wanted to know better.

We didn’t get married that night. But we did start seeing more of each other. Then we moved in together. Got engaged. Bought a house. We made some attempts to plan a wedding, but were foiled by various scheduling conflicts with key family members.

We ended up getting married by a Justice of the Peace eight years into our relationship, and shortly before I planned to quit my job. (Die-hard romantic that I was, I wanted to have health insurance.) We’d had a long engagement, and what with living together and owning a house together, even, I felt that we were largely as committed as we needed to be. What with my luke-warm views on the institution of marriage, I didn’t see how being married would change our relationship. I remember commenting to an acquaintance, a married woman a few years older than me, something to that effect. She replied: “Marriage does change things. It gets better.”

I have to say that she was right. It was a subtle shift, but having our commitment be officially recognized made things a bit more settled, and a bit more comfortable. And when we had our party (several years later), the wedding ceremony to celebrate our marriage surrounded by our friends and family, it got even better.

Sometimes, when you are lucky enough to find someone who shares your sense of humor and your worldview, someone you love passionately and who loves you right back, someone who lets you feel at home with yourself, that conventionalized connection marriage gives you makes you feel just a little bit more together and a little bit more at home. It’s a declaration to the world that you know who’s going to be there to help you up when you fall on your butt.

—

This post is dedicated to Flutter, a remarkably strong, strikingly beautiful woman with a great sense of humor, to share in her joy at getting married. Flutter, I wish you and Clay many happy years full of love, health, comfort and humor. May you laugh your asses off together with abandon. (Emily has invited those who know Flutter to join in on the celebration. To see more of the well-wishing, go see her post “Mawigge is what brings us together today.”)

This post is also dedicated to John, love of my life, who has been there for me, on more occasions than I can count, when I have fallen on my butt (either literally or figuratively) over these past 20+ years.