Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

On our walk through the parks today, I met the guard at the gate with “I am watching the clock!”  He warned me that they will be moving up the gate-locking time again tomorrow.  It’s now dark at 6pm, and pitch-black by 7.  I think we’re diving right into late-fall weather, too, with things a bit wet and windy.  So, it’s time to dig out the hats and mittens!

We decided to have an English breakfast for dinner today: scrambled eggs, a side of mushrooms/bell pepper/onions, and baked beans.  The kids were quite happy (protein-lovers that they are), and it was nice to keep things simple this evening.

Erin

I’ve been working my way through Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk for a project proposal.  Du Bois articulates so many problems of current American culture that I have a hard time remembering that it was written in 1903!

The kids love jumping on our air mattress, but today they used it for a different kind of play.  Katherine ordered Nathaniel: “Sleep, sleep, ‘thaniel.”  He obediently lay down on his stomach, and she tucked his blanket around him, handed him his Eeyore, and proceeded to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”  They did this several times in the course of 20 minutes, after one of which she looked him, looked at us, and commented, “He’s kind of cute.”  We’ll see how long this cooperation lasts.   

Erin

In this past week I’ve had three interesting Iowa encounters, all without leaving Oxford.

For the first one, our former housemate, Christi, of Ithaca, drove through Iowa in her mammoth road trip across the country.  She goes on record as the first person to follow “Oh, I’ve driven through Iowa” by remarking that she loved it.  Apparently she encountered the gentle rolling hills in the southeast part of the state and she liked the big sky.  So, Iowa, you made a good impression on a New York State native.  Nicely done!

In the second, I found myself in a pub after choir on Tuesday, chatting with a Swede who not only knew where “near Chicago” might be, but who had spent a few weeks in the northwest corner of Iowa, in tiny towns whose names I only remember from high-school government class.  He is a chemical engineer who worked with ethanol, so that explains the bizarre choice of destinations.  He, too, enjoyed his time there, and he found the people in the towns friendly.

And, in the third, I bought a mini trampoline from a family who is moving . . . back to Iowa.  The husband of the couple was actually born in the same hospital in Waterloo that I was.  It was great to encounter people from home, and, though I don’t envy them their current situation (he’s just turned in a thesis, they’re moving this week, and she’s due with #2 in January), I am envious that they know where they’re going next and will soon be settled.

Erin

Erin

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve been spending less time at the parks and more at home.  As someone who was ready to stake her parenting identity on the motto”Outside Whenever Possible!” I’ve been wondering how and why this happened, and how I feel about it.  A look at our day yesterday answers a few of those questions.  We got up early (just after 7), but it took awhile for the kids to work their way through breakfast.  They’re eating more slowly than usual, due to the colds that keep them from breathing and eating simultaneously, but they’re also hungrier than usual (a growth spurt for both of them?).  Last week Sydney hit the grocery store almost daily.  So, if you throw in a shower for me, a time-out for Katherine, and a load of laundry, we didn’t get out to the parks until 11am.  By that time, though, both kids were slowing, so we limped, rather than raced, around the park while Katherine waffled between walking and riding and Nathaniel took out his dislike for his current cold through an unbroken stream of demands: “Want to pet swan.  Want to pet duck.  Want to swim.  Want blackberries.  I want blackberries!  I want cucumber.  I want apple.  I want down.”  We did fine, but we were all pretty tired after we finished our two-mile loop and came home.  So much for a long, luxurious walk with snacks, as I’d imagined.  We had a lengthy supper after the kids’ nap, as they worked their way through three bowls of pumpkin rice pudding.  And then neither one showed any interest in going outside.  They preferred to play quietly, both together and apart, with cars and balls on the ground floor of the house.  Katherine then got her first try at real “help” in the kitchen, as she poured and measured most of the ingredients for biscuits.  We also read books all throughout the day, mostly in bits and pieces as time and attention allowed.  Given that the current weather is distinctly fall-like (rainy, windy, and cool), and it’s fully dark by 7pm, I’m wondering if kids instinctively kick into hibernation for the winter.  If these habits outlast the current colds (their third in the past month), I’m going to start thinking my children are like bear cubs.  Sleeping through winter doesn’t sound so bad, come to think of it.

Erin

I’m back from the conference and, though we’re all very tired, things went well.  For the last three days I’ve been catching an early-morning bus into London, walking half an hour across town to the University of College London, and enjoying a mix of papers and more informal talks over tea.  The return trip was sometimes a bit less pleasant, since I was walking across London late at night: perfectly safe, but I’m not much for lots of lights and noise and roving crowds on the streets.  I was always glad to settle into the bus for the quiet ride home, and I took some nice naps there!  I think Sydney and I are finding conferences a bit less easy than we used to; although it doesn’t seem awful to short your sleep for a few days so that you can pack in lots of time at a conference, both he and I ended up with serious headaches that first day and still struggled on the second and third.  I can only hope that things will improve as we get a bit more distance between ourselves and the worst of the sleep deprivation that comes with little kids.  Still, I’m no longer having to make conferences a family affair while I nurse a baby, so that is a great relief.

The more I get into my research the more I think I may want to keep working on Ford’s novels, so I’m a bit worried that I may be hooked on another author.  That’s the last thing I need. Ford wrote over eighty novels in his lifetime!  It’s not as if Woolf and Faulkner won’t keep me busy all by themselves! But the people I met in the Ford society were all very welcoming.  I had great talks with people who are still finishing up their degrees, those who share my current nomadic life, and those who have been teaching at the same institution for forty years, as well as those who live in the States, the UK, or Europe–some who have lived in all three.

As tends to happen, we talked life as well as academics, and I’m kind of amused to find myself, from some mysterious combination of having finished my degree and having two children, situated among the “grown-ups.”  I know the ages and temperaments of most of the young children who belong to the scholars at the conference, and I watched with interest as we all juggled our home and work life.  One woman slipped away to Skype with her husband and daughter occasionally, another asked around for ideas for a fun present to take home, and a new father confessed that he was surprised to find how hard it was to be away from his nine-month-old son even for four days.

Next week, we’ll be doing something similar, but in reverse: Sydney will be taking the bus into town for a few days for a conference (one held in the same building mine was in, oddly enough), and I’ll be staying home with the kids.  Thanks to a nursery morning in there, I should have a bit of help, but it’s kind of fun and funny to swap roles quite so literally.  We’ll be glad for a few differences, though: Sydney won’t be wearing heels and skirts for his trips!

Erin

Well, it’s Wednesday night.  In the past couple of weeks I have put together a paper for the conference I’ll be attending tomorrow, and we’ve somehow all managed to get through it without serious meltdowns, fights, financial distress, or crippling illness.  I won’t be writing the paper on the bus, or while sitting in panels at the conference.  And I won’t be leaving behind an already-stressed spouse who has nothing left to get him through the next three days of 24-hour childcare.  As you might have guessed by now, the same can’t be said for many of our past conferences and deadlines.

It helps that this paper is not squarely in my area of expertise, so I’m approaching it with a bit more of a relaxed manner (and, hey, it’s on profanity in war literature, so a sense of humor seems to be in order).  And it helps that, with the job market looming, this doesn’t seem like the scariest thing on our radar.  But it’s heartening that we will, for once, be able to juggle family and work in reasonable shape.  We’ve had reasonable sleep in the past few days, and I’ve even polished shoes for tomorrow and made pretzels to take as a snack.

So, off to join the commuters to London and to immerse myself in all things Ford Madox Ford.  It’s a conference built entirely around the recent scholarly edition of his four-volume novel, Parade’s End, and the release of a new BBC miniseries version of it (in case you don’t have the patience for 1000 pages of fiction).  So, imagine a room full of people all hugging the same book and gushing.  I’m going to enjoy this.

Erin

Katherine and Nathaniel are currently in their second round of we-just-started-nursery-and-whoah-new-germs colds, so our house currently has lots of naps, occasional whiny duets as the kids battle for my lap, and parents who don’t know whether to laugh or cry at our rotten luck on the minor-illness front.  It always, we’ve decided, happens when one of us is facing a deadline.  Later this week I’ll be going into London for a conference (right now, judging by the kids’ needs, I’m guessing I’ll be doing some of my revisions on the commute, just before I deliver my paper), and once that’s over the term will have started at Oxford.

This week I’ve been inundated with emails about getting my university ID and keys to my office (which I’ll only have until Christmas, so I’ll try not to get too attached), and I, gulp, saw my name on the list of speakers for later this term, next to a title for a project that I haven’t started yet.

Sydney and I have also started compiling lists of places to which to apply for jobs as openings start appearing, and, though it’s not a great year for jobs, we’ll have plenty to keep us busy for the next few months.  I sent out my first application earlier this week, which gave me a chance to work out some of the kinks.  Sydney has been fairly quiet about his deadlines and projects for the near future, but I think that’s because he’s worried that if he discusses them out loud it will guarantee that the children will get sick again right before his deadline.  I think he’s doomed whether he talks about it or not; the phrase is “Man plans; God laughs,” not “Man says his plans aloud; God laughs.”

Erin

Katherine was very excited about nursery all summer, so I was interested to see what she thought of things now that she’s been attending for a couple of weeks.

“Katherine, do you like nursery?  Do you like playing there?”

“I like eating there.”

That’s more informative than most of her answers to my questions.  She regularly affirms that she likes going, and that she prefers going to nursery to staying home all the time, but when I ask her what she had for lunch or what she did in a given day she responds, “I don’t know.”

Erin