Last week, as the end of term activities wrapped up here in Oxford, I surrendered my keys to the office I’d been loaned this fall. I have to say, I’m going to miss the view:
Thankfully, I am only moving to the nice library carrels a couple floors up, and I’ll be looking out over the same lovely gardens. The natural light (and my inability to get a wireless connection there!) really contributes to my productivity.
Erin
This year I am sticking to a few Christmas decorations that 1) do not cost much 2) I will not want to take with me when we move (disposable Christmas, anyone?) 3) Katherine and Nathaniel can help make 4) will not take up much room in our tiny, low-ceilinged house and 5) are either indestructible or up high (Nathaniel can help make, but then we put them beyond his reach). So we’ve come up with this:
Best of all, though, my parents will be spending Christmas with us, and that really will make everything feel like a holiday, even if Sydney and I will each disappear for a couple of days during their visit to fly to the US for job interviews. So it’s not just Katherine who is counting down the days to Christmas!
Erin
I left for my office after getting the kids dressed and swirling part of Katherine’s hair into a cute little topknot. I returned to this:
Meanwhile, her brother came up to me with a tiny hair clip and a request: “Put it in, please.” He seemed inordinately pleased with this:
Erin
Earlier this week Sydney celebrated his birthday. Or, rather, he turned 35 in the middle of a very busy work week, and we delayed our celebrations until this weekend. There are very few things he needs (sleep, time, and an occasional babysitter come to mind) that I could present to him under gift wrap, but after some prodding he did come up with what I think might be the best birthday scheme ever.
Late Friday evening he decided to make a trip into London to go food shopping. Now, ordinarily, shopping is not Sydney’s thing, but one of the benefits of living close to a major metropolis is the opportunity to scope out unusual foods and spices. So he left early in the morning on Saturday to hit some of London’s major markets and returned just after lunch with a backpack full of unusual things: good cinnamon, unusual pepper flakes, Kaffir lime powder, a very soft papaya, several new kinds of apples for us to try, a gorgeous pineapple, smoked sundried tomatoes, persimmon, a loaf of rosemary bread, and some baklava. From deep in the bottom of the bag he also hauled out a large musquee de provence squash (which is apparently just perfect for pumpkin pie . . .). Needless to say, we feasted yesterday, and I didn’t bother making a cake after we were done!
Apparently Sydney’s idea of a birthday treat is to bring Christmas into our living room. The kids had a field day with all of the new things. “What’s this??” we heard over and over again from Katherine, and Nathaniel put on his best pleading face with “Please . . . I hold . . . be very gentle.”
It was wonderful to see them sizing up things they’d never seen before and asking for more words to describe the things they were holding. “Pine-apple!” was the favorite, I think.
Erin
I am hoping to get more pictures of the kids soon, but we’ve entered the time of year in which it’s dark by 4 (I knew there was a reason we were out for two walks a day in the summer! we were storing up!), and the lighting inside really isn’t enough for always-moving children. The kids have been outside regularly, but they’re bundled up with hats and mittens and coats, so there’s no much left of them for the camera to find. We have, though, been very energetic inside the house. Nathaniel has learned to play quite nicely on his own, when his sister allows him, so he’s busy moving small toys (a hodgepodge of wooden people, fruit and vegetables, and town buildings) from one pot or pan to another, “cooking.” While I’m in the kitchen, I’m regularly interrupted with requests for “da big pot,” “da tiny pot,” or, my favorite, “the heavy, heavy pot.”
“Nathaniel, what are you doing?”
“Cooking! I’m cooking da people!” Said with such glee.
Sydney and I briefly entertained the idea of inviting a big group over for Thanksgiving, but, besides the usual (we’re busy! very busy!), we realized that our house really doesn’t work well for larger groups, and one of us would have to be constantly on kid-monitoring duty. So, next year. We didn’t do a big Thanksgiving celebration for ourselves, though I cooked some celery-root soup and Katherine and I made sweet-potato crescent rolls for dinner. She is fully in charge of the rolling, and I think she really likes having some “dishes” to call her own.
When she’s not up on the counter, measuring flour, Katheirne’s usually interested in coloring or reading books. Both kids, though very unlikely to be found with a book in the summer, have really gotten into them recently. That means a few more torn pages as Nathaniel encroaches on big-kid books, but also a lot of fun cuddling and sharing. The Gruffalo is a favorite, and Katherine recites long stretches of it as she “reads” to Nathaniel. I like that book because the rhymes are easy to memorize, so I can “read” it to the kids even when I’m busy cooking and Katherine’s turning pages.
Yesterday I made a large Christmas tree out of posterboard, and I’m hoping that over the weekend the kids will get a chance to decorate it. Their nursery teachers have talked all about their “gluing and stickin'” prowess, so I’m hoping to see some of it for myself. We’ll also put up our Advent calendar and make some snowflakes; Katherine doesn’t appear to remember them from last year, so it’s an all-new adventure for her. But the biggest holiday activity will be play time with grandparents. My parents are arriving shortly before Christmas, and they’ll stay with us for about two weeks. They bravely chose a time a) when planes will be full b) when Sydney and I will have to disappear for a few days, consecutively, for job-interview trips to the US and c) when the cold will be sure to come in nicely through our very un-insulated English house. But having them here will really make it feel like a holiday, and I’m really excited to see them.
Erin
The job-hunt advice just gets weirder and weirder. This past week I sent off what I think may be my last job applications (with a total in the high thirties; Sydney thinks I’m not sufficiently discriminating), and look forward to getting on with my real life while the search committees transform my carefully prepared applications into recycling. But a recent article had me thinking I may have a bit more work to do. One advice column advised applicants to google themselves regularly, since you can be sure that committees will be doing it if they’re interested in you. I do, occasionally, but haven’t found anything worrisome either about me or about someone who shares my name. I was reminded, however, that internet search results are “geo-specific,” as in, searchers may well find different information if they search from different regions in the States than they will abroad. So, if you feel like it, you’re welcome to google variations on my name and let me know if you come up with anything that raises a red flag. If I’m lucky, all you’ll come up with is a boring description or two of my work. I can deal with that.
Erin
While pointing unmistakably at my planner: “Dat. Book.”
“You want Mama’s book?”
While giving me a wide-eyed look: “Be very gentle.”
Is it any surprise I gave him the book?
Erin
I was surprised to read about the rioting, much of it with a racist edge, on the Ole Miss campus after Obama’s re-election. Just a few months ago I was there, watching my parents and daughter walk through the memorial to James Meredith, the black student who began the process of racial integration at Ole Miss 50 years ago. It makes me cringe to see new fodder for those who are all too ready to dismiss the South as a bastion of racism and ignorance. This even though, from what I remember, my liberal college in Connecticut was out in full mourning the day after Bush was re-elected, with plenty of unsavory talk about moving to Canada, preventing ‘stupid’ people from voting, and the like.
In the week since this year’s election, I have been congratulated by many Britons when they hear my accent, as they assume both that I am American and that I voted for Obama. I have gotten plenty liberal since leaving my home state, but one of the things I miss most about it is the way that, in a state with strong red and blue tendencies, people were not too quick to assume they knew you or your voting tendencies. I wish more people in the ‘enlightened’ places to which I’ve traveled would do the same, so as to keep the door open for a real discussion, rather than patting each other on the back.
Erin
Sydney returned from his talk on Friday ready to play helpmeet. He’s been taking the kids for much longer stretches and has completely taken over the kitchen this weekend while I frantically put together a talk for next week. One of the not-so-great things about giving a talk on your current research is that you’re right in the thick of it when you need to stop and put together a polished presentation. Sydney has been unabashedly delighted to have an excuse to cook up delicious things, and he has turned a deaf ear to my protests that all of my desk time leaves me ill in need of decadent lunches and dinners. So, expect me to be taking some long walks at the end of the week, once the presentation is over.
Erin
Sydney and I are busy this week: he gives a talk in London on Friday and I give one here in Oxford next Wednesday. As we were both sitting down to start our papers, we realized that I will be giving a full-length lecture for the first time (roughly an hour), and he will be delivering a shorter paper for the first time (roughly half an hour). Unfortunately, Sydney will have a hard time condensing, and I’ll be scrambling to prepare for a lengthy talk on new material. So, a busy week ahead of us! And, of course, the kids are up at night with the latest cold . . .
Nathaniel’s new words are really making us laugh recently. On sitting down with a thump when he meant just to bend down: “Oh dear!” And, whenever I ask if he’s seen something that’s gone missing, or if I ask what he’s been doing, he promptly tells me that it got put in the fireplace (our house’s place-where-things-cannot-be-retrieved), and confesses, “‘thaniel did it.” Apparently his sister’s constant tattling on him is having an effect.
Erin
Alan Schmierer