With my poster sent off to the printer for the conference I’m attending next week, I felt a bit of the pressure ease up. I figured I’d put something up here. When I haven’t been posting regularly, though, I often wonder where to start back in. There are just too many possibilities, with all that’s going on in my life and in my head. Often, I resort to looking back through my photos to see what I’ve been saving. The trouble is, there again are just too many possibilities. I like like to have some sort of rhyme or reason when I post, and of course what I like best is some sort of theme.¹
Happily, the title of my previous post provided, because I came across this photo from a January trip to the Boston Museum of Science. Here are Phoebe and Theo, standing in front of a display demonstrating normal distribution.² (I learned tonight that this type of set-up is called a bean machine, which is a cool thing to be called. Not that I’m saying I want to be called a bean machine.) Anyhow, I couldn’t refrain from making “normal” jokes. I asked Phoebe and Theo to try to look normal as they posed in front of the normal curve.
My two children, acting normal in front of the normal distribution.
—
¹ I can spend far more time thinking about posting than actually posting.
² I realized that this is a lovely spontaneous usage of a sentence with attachment ambiguity.³ One could read this as “Phoebe and Theo demonstrating normal distribution, in front of a display” which would be high attachment. In case it wasn’t clear, I intended the low attachment reading, with the display doing the demonstrating. If Phoebe and Theo were to try to demonstrate a distribution in front of a display, I expect they’d have an easier time trying to do something bimodal.
³ It’s totally normal to reflect on attachment ambiguities.
I hardly know what to say about the past week. It was a crazy week of craziness, the likes of which were not conducive to getting over jet-lag or recovering from food poisoning. Here are just some of the features of this week (not necessarily in chronological order):
lab meeting
patch-ironing
violin lesson
travel plans
abstract submission
research presentation
cell phone malfunction
snow storm
snow delays
snowman
large mice on ice
Chilean stew
unexpected rabbit costume assembly
low-flying helicopters, SWAT teams & K9 units
town-wide panic and rumors
4 dozen rainbow/unicorn cupcakes
(Please don’t think that the rainbow/unicorn cupcakes were the source of the town-wide panic and rumors.)
I would write more about some of these things, as well as some other things that are on my mind, but I can’t seem to find the words right now. So, here are some pictures:
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks, and I hardly know where to begin to catch up. We just had a lovely visit in California with my family (mother, sister, brother-in-law, and the two most adorablest nephews in the world), taking advantage of Phoebe’s school vacation, and now are back at home and trying to get back into the swing of things. My own swing of things was rather hampered by a bout of likely food poisoning, leaving me feeling like I’d been run over by a steam-roller most of yesterday. On the bright side, the illness led to my inability to stay up much past 10 yesterday evening (in spite of sleeping late and sitting around like a lump all day), and seems to have bounced me back to the East Coast time zone faster than anticipated. So, um, yay!
I hope to be able to catch up more here (I have loads of photos and lots on my mind I want to share), but another hectic stretch lies in front of me. So I’m going to bed.
As for me, I haven’t made any valentines yet this year, and certainly nothing to top last year’s paper heart. I do feel I deserve credit, though, for overseeing and assisting Phoebe with the production of over 40 valentines. (Over twice as many as last year.) This year we started with some pre-made blank cards, and had a bit of assistance from from stamps and stickers (thanks to the resourcefulness of a neighbor/friend), which greatly sped up the process. (Especially after Phoebe spent several hours on the first 10 or so cards, and realized that she had to make at least a couple dozen more. She already complains about not having enough hours in the day.) I feel especially pleased with myself that I was able to rein in my control freak tendencies, and let Phoebe do her thing with minimal interference, such that she had (mostly) complete control over the art direction.
And if you don’t mind stale candy hearts, please revisit my Valentine’s Day treats from previous years: (Click the images to see the posts.)
So much for my series of dragons…Life and work got hectic over the past week, and I never quite managed to find enough time and energy to get another post together. But I’ve been productive, so that’s good. In the last week I’ve gotten 2 conference acceptances (1 talk and 1 poster), helped to wrap up one project for work, jump started another project with a group of undergrads, had a trip to visit the in-laws’, and dealt with dozens of minor obligations and other miscellaneous activities. Including selling Girl Scout cookies. And going iceskating for the first time in my adult life. I was also called an asshole by a total stranger (in an incident relating neither to the iceskating nor to the cookies, but it would be fun to come up with a story involving both).
In any case, I’m feeling a wee bit tired. And I’m definitely draggin’ a little. But I wasn’t too tired to drag out and photograph this little dragon left over from Phoebe’s birthday party favors last year. A little dragon.
The past few weeks have been a crazy whirlwind of activity and productivity. Sunday night was an abstract deadline, and my research group got one in shortly before midnight. (It was nearly ready to submit the day before, but when finishing involves emails among 4 people, the process can be slow. Especially on weekends. Also, one generally will take as much time as one is given to put on the final touches. There is generally a process of hacking away at the text to make it all fit the space constraints, with adverbs getting mercilessly excised, and then at the end, an attempt to re-elegantize it.) In the weeks leading up to this, I spent every free moment working on processing the data, which consisted of several thousand tokens of elicited productions of speech of specific characteristics. Somehow I managed to fit all of this in with time spent with family and friends, including a week-long trip to my in-laws and several gatherings, as well as Christmas-related activities.
I have been busy.
I thought I had been managing to still get enough sleep along the way, as I had been making efforts to get to bed by midnight. I glibly wrote in an email I sent less than an hour after the abstract submission was complete that I believed myself not to be sleep-deprived. However, yesterday, I found that the tiredness kicked in. I had a day with the kids, taking advantage of Phoebe’s day off from school to visit some friends we don’t see often enough. By afternoon, I could barely keep my eyes open (which is not great, given that I was driving). Then we still had the violin lesson. Last night I imagined myself posting something here, but I found myself tied up in my words. (I was trying to write something intelligent and meaningful, attempting to mark Martin Luther King day in an intelligent and meaningful way. It proved to be beyond me.)
Today I was unable to focus, and unable to figure out what to tackle next. (Because, naturally, there are many things I have had to put off in my mad rush of productivity.) So I puttered about online. I puttered about in my photo library. I puttered about the kitchen. Then I took a two hour nap. I guess I needed to unwind.
Hopefully I will be able to regain my productivity again tomorrow. I have lots I’d love to write about here. (Yes, including wrapping up the recaps of my Hong Kong trip!) Then there are the next steps in my own research projects.
Plus at some point, we’ll probably need to take down the Christmas tree.
And do something with the pumpkins on the porch.
These photos are of a giant spool that appeared in the hallway outside the lab where I sometimes work at MIT. I’m particularly amused by the little “acoustic level” sign that sits above the spool in the top photo. (As I got together this set of photos to post, I had a sense of déja-vu. In fact, I had vu this déja just over 2 years ago, when I had started a draft post with the post title “unwound” in December of 2009.)
I seem to be all about feast or famine with the blogging frequency. Or flood and drought. November was a deluge. December slowed to a trickle. And then things looked to be drying up entirely. Well¹, I’m here to briefly rehydrate the blog. I’ll just give a spritz or two for now, and hopefully I’ll be able to open the valves shortly. Things will be downright soggy. Or at least somewhat damp.
For now, though, my time is being eaten up (drunk up?) by work. I have committed to getting a lot of data coded by Monday, and I’m so focused on that, I can’t even think of another water-related joke to round out the post.
Guitars reflected in a silver ball at the music store.
A few nights ago, John had a company party to go to, so the kids and I started in on the evening routine without him. Inspired by having sampled some delicious latkes at Phoebe’s class holiday party on Monday (which included both Christmas and Hanukkah treats and activities), and having just bought a big bag of potatoes, I decided I would try my hand at making latkes. (Wow, that was a really long sentence.) Anyhow, I made latkes, in honor of Hanukkah. I consulted the great oracle of Google, and got down to business peeling and grating. I have to say, I made some pretty tasty latkes.
The whole process also took probably longer than I’d intended, and it was after 6 by the time the kids and I sat down to eat our meal of latkes, fried eggs, latkes, steamed broccoli, and more latkes. (Phoebe declared the meal so delicious that she high-fived me.) I may have eaten far, far too many latkes. (From what I understand, that is also a Hanukkah tradition.)
After dinner, it was time for Phoebe and I to practice the violin. John usually takes Theo upstairs to start his shower while Phoebe and I practice downstairs. Since John wasn’t home yet, I thought Theo could keep us company in the parlor, which is where we always practice. (Really, some people my call it the living room. But when we moved into this house, we declared the “family room” to be our “living room,” and the official “living room” became the parlor. I like the word parlor. I mean, who would remember something like “‘step into my living room,’ said the spider to the fly.” Not that this is how the actual quote from the poem went. It’s just what people remember. I mean, with “parlor,” in place of “living room.” I suppose “den” might have also worked, for the spider, at least. But not for our house. We have a parlor.) The parlor is also where we have our Christmas tree. (I mention this, because this will be relevant shortly.) (Notice my subtle attempt at foreshadowing.)
When Phoebe and I practice her violin exercises together, we both sit on the floor. However, I had just bought myself a book of Christmas songs for the violin, and since Phoebe putters around a lot as she sets up her violin, I sat in a chair so I could set the book in my music stand, and played a bit. Theo was hanging an ornament he had made at daycare on the tree. Phoebe sat on the floor, opened up her violin case, and then suddenly wandered off to look at her gingerbread house. At that moment, Theo stepped back to look at his ornament on tree…and stepped directly onto Phoebe’s violin.
I’m not sure what noise escaped from me as I looked up and saw his foot land on the neck of Phoebe’s little quarter-sized violin (I think it was some sort of squeak), but I remember the exceedingly alarmed look on Theo’s face. I jumped up, and hurriedly set down my own violin. The trouble is, you can’t really hurriedly set down a violin. I basically dropped it. It made a loud crack and thwong noise as a couple of the pegs hit the coffee table and came unwound. I may have made additional noises.
Both children wailed.
In the end, I was able to assess that both violins were pretty much okay, if seriously out of tune. Happily, Theo managed to step on one of the less fragile parts of the instrument, and his weight was probably somewhat taken by the case, since the violin was still in it. He still felt awful. And so did Phoebe, for having left her violin open and on the floor. And so did I, for not having been paying enough attention to the actions of my small children around rather fragile instruments. And for having dropped my violin. Phoebe, though, was much comforted by the fact that we had, all three, made mistakes, which she enumerated repeatedly.
Did I mention I made latkes? They were delicious.
—
In case you didn’t manage to check out of all Neil’s fantastic Christmahanukwanzaakah Concert, which had musical contributions from a variety of different holiday cultural traditions, I wanted to share with you this trio of lovely ukelele productions. These talented women inspired me so much that I looked longingly at the ukeleles at the music store when I went to my violin lesson. (Not that I expect that ukeleles are much sturdier than violins.)
Then there’s Elly of Buggin’ Word, Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree. (Please check out the adorable “shuke” (shirt uke) her son is wearing)
And lest the southern hemisphere feel left out, here’s Juli Ryan with her charming rendition of a New Zealand folk song: “Haere Mai Everything is Ka Pai”
A few days ago, Phoebe lost her second tooth. That very night, the Tooth Fairy came and collected Phoebe’s tooth from under her pillow, leaving Phoebe a dollar, and a case of pneumonia.
It took us a while to catch on to the second gift, as it was more subtle, and not left in the little pouch under Phoebe’s pillow.
She’d had the weird spike of a fever on Tuesday, but by Wednesday she was fever free, and Thursday she was back at school. She’s had a nagging cough, though, which has beenn making it hard for her to sleep. And it’s been going on for a couple of weeks. By Friday night, John convinced me that we should consult the doctor’s office. I called and got us an appointment yesterday morning, but I admit that I was mostly expecting to be told that Phoebe had a cough. The doctor was able to confirm that Phoebe had a cough, but also heard a crackle in Phoebe’s right lung. So, Phoebe gets to be back on antibiotics.
You may be wondering why I blame the Tooth Fairy. All I can say is that around the time Phoebe lost her first tooth, she caught strep. Coincidence? I think not.
Oh, fine. I admit that I may possibly be scapegoating the Tooth Fairy. The real culprit may well be Phoebe herself:
Phoebe, wiggling her first loose tooth.
Phoebe just can’t seem to resist the urge to feel her wiggly teeth. And then the gap once a tooth falls out. And then the new tooth starting to poke up through the gums. The fingers keep ending up in the mouth.
What worries me is that we have a whole lot of baby teeth left to go. And there are a whole lot of diseases out there that Phoebe has yet to experience.
So what will it be next, Tooth Fairy? Small pox? Anthrax? Tuberculosis? If this keeps up, we may have to figure some sort of anti-fairy security system.
(By they way, Phoebe seems totally fine, other than the cough and that one day with fever, and a bit of tiredness.)
collecting tokens 