Category: life

Home Alone

Home Alone 5¹
Synopsis: A 40-year-old mother of two is left behind when the kids’ father takes the family to the grandparents’ house for the weekend. Mayhem and hilarity ensue.

That’s right, I have the house to myself this weekend. John took the kids down to his parents’ last night, and I stayed home. (Except that I wasn’t home, I was at a conference hosted by my program in Boston. Minor details. I still came home. And was alone.) John’s brother is visiting my in-laws, and leaving tomorrow, so John wanted to get down there while he was still in town. I, however, had committed to being in Boston for the conference. The miraculous result is that I have a whole weekend free of parenting responsibilities.³

Can you guess what it is that I most fantasize about doing?

Not setting the alarm.

I didn’t get to do that this morning, my first morning home alone. I had to leave the house by 7:30 to get back to the conference, as I was scheduled to chair the morning session. But tomorrow… tomorrow, I have not committed to going in. In fact, I have committed to not going in. I have committed to sleeping in.

I realize that there is a strong possibility that my sleep binge fantasy will not be realized. I can envision any or all of the following happening:

  1. I will wake up early with a cough or cold
  2. I will wake up early with a headache or a stomachache
  3. I will wake up early with leprosy or rabies
  4. I will dream that the house is on fire and wake early in a panic
  5. The power will go out, causing the smoke detector to beep, which will make me wake early in a panic
  6. I will dream that I am back in high school and it’s finals day and I haven’t been to a class all semester and I don’t even know what room it’s in and wake early in a panic
  7. The kids will figure out how to use the phone and call me at 6:30 in the morning
  8. I will get a wrong number phone call from India at 5:30 in the morning
  9. Bumbling burglars will attempt to break in at 4:30 in the morning
  10. Aliens will come and abduct me at 3:30 in the morning

I can only hope that if it’s aliens, they put me in a quiet cell and let me sleep some more.

Beyond the goal of sleeping in, I also plan to work up some data, review some journal articles for a paper I need to write, read up on logistic regression and maybe mixed models, as well as clean out the refrigerator, bake some muffins and do some laundry. Hilarity and mayhem will ensue.

¹ Can you believe that there have been 4 Home Alone movies? I haven’t actually seen any of them.²
² Can you believe that Macauley Culkin is over 30 years old now? Holy crap.
³ I suppose I will have to parent again when they come home tomorrow evening. But I’ll have most of the day, right?

a little crabby

The trouble with committing to doing something like writing a blog post every day is that you feel this irritating compulsion to write a blog post every day. Even when you are tired and crabby and should really get to bed. And then you find yourself trying to work up any of the dozen or so blog post ideas that you have recently had, but find yourself too tired to follow through. You find some drafts that are half-written, but you don’t have the energy to half-write the other half. So you putter through your photos again and again looking for something quick to post. But you just posted cute photos of your kids last night when you were tired, so you want to vary the subject matter a bit more. And then you have all this work to do, which you’d probably do better if you got a decent night’s sleep, which you didn’t last night, probably due largely to an unfortunate binge of Halloween candy. So you putter around on your laptop some more, not doing your work, and just getting more and more tired and crabby.

This is all purely hypothetical, of course. You know, the generic you. Not YOU you. And certainly not at all me. I am only imagining these things, and not in any way speaking from personal experience. I am cheerful and perky. Why, right this very moment I am totally not slumping into the dents of my couch cushions and scowling at my laptop, but dancing around the house making everything sparkle. With bluebirds singing and everything. I’m like the love child of Donna Reed and Mary Tyler Moore.

Oh, but I did remember these photos. I took these during my hike with YTSL during my trip to Hong Kong. See the cute little crabs?


These first two were in a stream that we crossed over.


I think this one looks like it’s wearing boxing gloves.


This third one was a land crab. (Land crab makes me think of Land Shark.)

making excuses

For the first time in my life, I am finding myself in the position of needing to write a bona fide excuse note for someone else. Phoebe has had a fever the last couple of days, and we kept her home today.¹ Now that she’s in kindergarten, we have to go along with The System. I must play the role of the Responsible Adult.

Anyhow, I need to write an excuse note. And I have this urge to…make something up.

  • Dear Ms. X,

    Please excuse Phoebe’s absence from school yesterday. She came down with a mild case of leprosy, slight hydrophobia and severe anthracnose. She’s all better now, though.

    Sincerely,
    Phoebe’s mother

  • Dear Ms. X,

    Please excuse Phoebe’s absence from school yesterday. We had misunderstood the upcoming “Fall back” time change, and set our clocks back 3 months. We thought it was late summer and spent the day at the beach. Please accept this envelope full of sand in lieu of any schoolwork that Phoebe may have missed.

    Sincerely,
    The woman on the couch

  • Dear Ms. X,

    Please excuse Phoebe’s absence from school yesterday. She was abducted by a roving band of barracuda rabbits, who forced her to peel carrots and sing “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” all day. She was returned safely upon our payment of a ransom of 12 sock monkeys and a bag of potato chips.

    Sincerely,
    Phoebe’s mother, who is clearly not insane

  • Dear Ms. X,

    Please excuse Phoebe’s absence from school yesterday. She was sick in bed with a hangnail.

    Dispasssionately yours,
    Phoebe’s mother

  • Dear Ms. X,

    Phoebe wasn’t at school. I’m tired of making excuses.

    A

    • As for me, I have my own set of excuses for why I haven’t posted here in over a week. I’ve been busy with, believe it or not, work. My own research, even. Also, I have a hangnail.

    —
    ¹ Well, not actually home for all of the day, but out of school. The school rules ask that you not send your child to school with a fever, but they don’t specify where you should put her. She ended up spending some of the day at John’s office.

    Hong Kong trip recap: Day 1

    You may have long given up on me actually posting any more about my Hong Kong trip.¹ But I really do have a lot to share, and what’s more, I want to write down at least some of my thoughts while my memory is still relatively clear.⁵ Over the past few weeks, I have spent bits of time here and there sorting through my photos, and making notes on some of my activities. I can’t tell you how many times I started to write about my trip, only to run out of time.⁶

    In the interest of saving time and actually getting this ready to post (along with the many other recap posts I’d like to get to), I won’t go into much detail. But please understand that my first day was in no way moderate. I covered a lot of ground, both in walking and by subway. Along the way, I took a lot of photos, a few of which I am sharing below. I have posted quite a few more from on flickr. Before I get to the photos, here is a list of my major activities and movements that first day:

    Day 1: Monday, August 15, 2011

    • wondered* around near hotel, in the Wan Chai district, in search of breakfast
    • took MTR to Kowloon
    • went to Hong Kong Museum of History
    • walked to vegetarian restaurant for lunch
    • took MTR back to Hong Kong island
    • stopped by hotel room to get telephoto lens and waffle over plans for the rest of the day
    • walked back to MTR station
    • 40-minute MTR ride to Lantau Island
    • cable car to see the Big Buddha
    • took long bus ride back to bottom of island
    • had dinner of pastries from a bakery while sitting out in the square
    • watched movie in movie theater
    • caught MTR back to Kowloon
    • swung by Temple Street night market (but didn’t buy anything)
    • took MTR back to Wan Chai
    • walked back to hotel

    And now some photos:


    At the History Museum. These lanterns were lowered over the audience at the end of a film about Hong Kong peoples and cultural events. (The museum had many small theaters showing short films that focussed on specific time periods or specific aspects of Hong Kong history. In addition to this one, I saw films on local geology, the Opium War, the Japanese occupation in WWII.)


    Walking around after the museum, trying to find a specific restaurant. (I had my camera strap around my head, with my camera hanging near my waist, and was taking photos without looking at the viewer.)


    One of the few photos I have of myself in Hong Kong.


    A fountain at the square outside the Tung Chung MTR stop on Lantau island.


    The cable car ride was really quite dramatic and impressive. The building that the cables are leading to (and from) is not the start of the ride, but a point part way through at which the ride makes a more-or-less 90 degree turn. It’s hard to see in the photo at this resolution, but you can see a couple of cars dangling over the water in the upper right corner of the photo, between the two bridges. You can click here to see a crop of that region.)


    At one point, I passed over a beach that was spotted with people. Most of them were digging clams.


    I’m not sure whether this pair was involved in the clam-digging, but I did appreciate their shadows. (The glass-bottomed cable car let me take a lot of shots straight down.)


    The views of cityscapes (and cloudscapes) were quite impressive.


    The cable cars went up into forested mountainous areas. Again, my glass-bottomed car led to some dramatic views. I felt like I was floating above the treetops.


    It was very impressive when the Big Buddha came into view. As you can see from the way he towers above the tree tops, he is indeed Quite Big.


    I arrived just too late go up the stairs to get a closer view of the Buddha (and to see the building he’s sitting on). The views from below were still beautiful. (I was going to say “impressive” again, but I don’t want to overuse it. But it was impressive.)


    When I finally returned to the square outside the MTR station, I saw that there was a movie theater there. I checked the listings, and was happy to see that Wu Xia was playing, a Hong Kong action movie (and one suggested to me by YTSL, Hong Kong film buff extraordinaire, as an option to fulfill the trip goal of seeing a Hong Kong action movie while in Hong Kong.) The movie theater was large and modern, and I was surprised by two things: 1) I had to select my seat when buying my ticket, much like for an airplane and 2) the popcorn choices were buttered or chocolate. (As I am one who is drawn to novel things, I opted for the chocolate.)

    So there, in a rather large nutshell, was Day 1. Here are a few things I left out of the nutshell:

    • It was super hot and steamy (probably low 90s and 90%+ humidity), even after dark.
    • In spite of the ginormous time difference (12-hours!) and the very long travel day of the day(s) before (~28 hours door-to-door), I only felt tired when I was in my hotel room. When I was out and about, I was so excited to be in Hong Kong that I only felt excited to be in Hong Kong
    • I did get some blisters on my feet, which I also felt (in additioning to feeling excited to be in Hong Kong).

    I really hope I’ll get to post more about my trip soon. (I still really, truly, absolutely owe YTSL at least one post on our excursion and hike together.) Please nag me if I go too long before posting on this again.

    —

    ¹ You may have long given up on me actually posting.²
    ² You may have long given up on me.³
    ³ You may have long given up.⁴
    ⁴ You may have long ___. [I’ll let you fill in the blank]
    ⁵ Um…too late, alejna.
    ⁶ Well, I can tell you the number of times. It was 5.
    * And by “wondered,” I meant “wandered.” But apparently both words fit, so I left my typo. (See comments, below.)

    salut de Montréal

    Did I mention that I was going to be going to Montreal? Maybe not. Anyhow, I’ve just arrived for a conference. Yes, another conference. (Didn’t I just get home?)

    I tried to type up a post earlier today on my iPad, but failed to finish it in time to send it before heading out of my 3G plan territory. So it will have to wait. Or more likely, will just not happen, as I can just summarize here: My passport isn’t feeling neglected. Off to Montreal for a conference. Driving up with the 3 professors I work with. Like a 7-hour lab meeting on wheels. Happily, this is a good thing, seeing as I enjoy our lab meetings. Except it was on my iPad, so at one point, I may have said it was a good thong. The end.

    So, tomorrow is the conference. I do hope to get to see a bit of Montreal, but I fear I won’t have much time for much beyond the conference. It runs all day tomorrow, all day Saturday, and then it lets up mid-day Sunday, at which point we plan to get back on the road. I do hope I can squeeze at least a couple hours to see a sight or two, and may lobby for delaying our departure on Sunday an hour or so.

    Off to bed with me now.

    p.s. I have still been trying to get my photos and thoughts together to post some recaps from my Hong Kong trip. I’m getting closer. Though currently further away.

    k, fine

    Today was Phoebe’s first day of kindergarten. (Yes, this is quite late for school to start. Our school district’s start dates got bumped forward a week due to the massive power outages in the town and schools.) Last Thursday, the schedule first day of kindergarten, was a beautiful, pleasantly warm, sunny day with blue skies and fluffy white clouds.

    Today, on the other hand, was rainy. And I don’t mean drizzly. When we stepped outside to go wait for the school bus at around 8:30 this morning, it was raining buckets and as dark as dusk.

    Phoebe, however, was very excited for her big day.

    Phoebe is ready to go. Mr. Potato Head looks on.
    My camera didn't want to focus in the dim light and pouring rain.
    Phoebe and John reach the top of our driveway to wait at the edge of the stream running down our road.

    The bus approaching. The only shot of the bus I managed due to being unable to get my camera to focus fast enough in the dim light while holding an umbrella.

    —
    I have way too much to write about again, but need to get to bed. Things have continued to be crazy, but largely in a good way. My mother just left today after a really wonderful visit. (They always go way too fast.) I’m hoping to catch my breath for a bit tomorrow, at least after I get Theo off to daycare and Phoebe onto the bus and before I drive in to Boston for a lab meeting and a grad program meeting. I have not yet managed to upload my Hong Kong photos, as our regular internet connection is still down after the storm. (John got us a “mifi,” since he can’t do his work without an internet connection, but the service is very spotty, and we are still dealing with data limits.)

    Disconnected

    Life has been more than ordinarily crazy the past few days, so I haven’t managed to get online too much. Specifically, Irene came by (luckily for us, downgraded from a hurricane to a “tropical storm” by the time she got here) and threw us for a loop. (My mother has also come for a visit, but, at least so far, her visit has been far less destructive.) While we have gotten off easy compared to many, as far as the storm that is, our town is not yet back to normal. We are among the lucky 50% in our town to have had our electricity restored. (We had over two days without power and, since our town has no public water and we all have wells, running water.) Our phone and internet may be out for a while, but this seems pretty trivial compared to the damage and flooding that so many are dealing with. (And even compared to the many thousands of people still without electricity in the region.) We are safe, sheltered, and have ready access to food and clean water, not to mention plenty of other conveniences and even luxuries. We have been very, very lucky.

    If I have a chance in the next few days, I’ll try to get my laptop out to some place with an internet connection, so I can say more, and even share some photos (both of my neighborhood and of Hong Kong). In the meantime, though, I am rapidly chewing through my 3G data plan for my iPad, so I probably won’t manage to post much, respond much, or visit other blogs. (I also am really slow and clumsy at typing on my iPad, and fear what autocorrect may bring. I very nearly just emailed someone I met at the conference that I looked forward to reading his recently published paprika.)

    self-portrait, as drawn on a paper diner placemat on the occasion of the artist’s third birthday

    I think it’s a pretty good portrait. Here is a photographic portrait of the artist by the artist’s mother, taken under poor quality diner light.

    (As you can see, he’s grown quite a bit since his first appearance.)

    And here’s a short video to document the excitement Theo had about the day:

    (Hong Kong recaps will hopefully be coming soon. I owe YTSL at least one quality photo essay from our hike together! But for now I am too wiped out, and haven’t had a lot of time to do much of anything since my return other than catch up with the kids (yesterday), and commute for a work meeting (today) followed by taking the kids to Phoebe’s karate class, then Phoebe to an extra violin lesson, and then dinner out for Theo’s birthday.)

    packing my bags

    In just 6 days, I’m going to be on a flight to Hong Kong.

    Yup. I said Hong Kong.

    I can’t even express how excited I am about this trip.

    John, wonderful partner that he is, will be single parenting while I am away. I’ll be attending a conference in Hong Kong, and will be staying for 8 days. However, seeing as travel to and from takes such a long time, I will be gone largely for 11 days. In case you are unable to do the math in your head, 11 days with 2 small children and only 1 parent equals a really freakin’ long time. But John was willing and remarkably supportive, if not necessarily eager to be rid of me, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. (It also would have been unreasonably expensive for all of us to go.) I wanted to try to minimize my away time, but seeing as I will be travelling to the other side of the planet, I decided not to skimp too much on my end. Hence the 11-day absence.

    The conference is 5 days long, which leaves only 3 days of being a tourist, at least some chunk of which is likely to be eaten up by jetlag. (It looks like I’ll be cheating a bit, though, and ducking out of the conference one of the 5 days.)

    I have yet to work out the specifics of my plans for my non-conference time. Among my goals for my stay are:

    • A trip to Macau, the nearby former Portuguese colony that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
    • Seeing a Hong Kong action movie in Hong Kong
    • Eating obscene amounts of delicious food that I can’t easily find at home
    • Taking obscene amounts of photos that I definitely can’t take at home
    • Going on some sort of hike or excursion to a green space (YTSL of Webs of Significance has been taunting me for years with gorgeous photos of her hikes around Hong Kong. You might be amazed at the lush nature that can be found there!)

    I am very excited that I’ll be getting to meet up with YTSL herself. (She’s one of my earliest blogging friends. We coincidentally started our blogs on the same day almost 5 years ago, and “met” only a month later through our mutual love of movies with kick-ass women characters.) I’m also happy that I will get to see a friend from highschool who now lives in Hong Kong.

    I am very much looking forward to the conference itself, too. It is the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, known informally as ICPhS (or “ick-fiss”). It takes place only every 4 years. I went to the last one, in 2007, which was how I ended up in Saarbrücken, Germany. It was a fantastic conference, and I’ve been wanting/hoping/dreaming about going to the one in Hong Kong ever since.

    As you might expect, I have a huge number of things to go before my trip. For a start, I have a lot of work to do on the presentation my research group will be giving at the conference. (I won’t be the one speaking, but I tend to be the one who does graphics for our presentations.) I also have a variety of home and trip-prep things to do. Unfortunately, the timing of my big trip coincides inconveniently with our daycare provider’s own vacation schedule. She’ll be closed this Wednesday through next Tuesday. This means that I will have Theo on my hands for the 3 days before my trip, and also Phoebe on one of those days. This leaves 2 full working days, one of which I have committed to meeting with my advisor to discuss my own research “progress.” (Though likely we will also talk about the Hong Kong presentation, as my advisor will be the one presenting.)

    I’ve been wanting to write about how much I love travel, and was thinking that it would be one my “40 things I like” posts, but I don’t see myself having the time to invest in that right now. I have too many things to pack in during my next few days.

    Did I mention that I’m going to Hong Kong?