Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Today was filled with packing and phone calls, but tonight Mom and I walked through town (and up to the high school, which was, reassuringly, still very much the same), and we made tacos for dinner.  Adam (my brother) and Shannon (his girlfriend) joined us, and we all settled onto the deck with large plates.  Absolutely delicious.  It has been pretty blisteringly hot in the past week, but for the last two days we’ve had gorgeous weather, turning almost chilly in the evenings.  After dinner Dad started up a fire, and we migrated to the front of the house, where we formed a ring around the fire and lazily ate s’mores.  After Katherine went to bed we really settled in, and after Adam and Shannon had to leave the neighbors joined us, so we made the most of an evening of teasing, eating, and catching up.  Really a lovely, lovely night.

Erin

It’s been a frustrating few days for us, as both Sydney and I have been on the phone a lot recently, calling up one business after another.  He’s trying to hunt up internet service for us, replace the fridge in the cabin, etc., and I’m talking to both our health insurer and doctors’ offices to make sense of bills that just came in.  And we’ve both been calling UPS, since our packages have spent over a month getting from New York to Nova Scotia.  Sigh.

But I’ve just about finished packing, it looks like everything will fit (despite Grandma Birdsong’s habit of buying new clothes for Katherine at the drop of a hat), and we are hoping that by tomorrow evening the Penner family will be reunited in Nova Scotia.  I’m starting to have dreams about living down the hall from Sydney and not being able to explain to our RA’s that we’re married and should closer to each other, particularly since we have a daughter.  Yes, it’s definitely time to go home.

Erin

I was running through the various things I need to pack before Katherine and I fly out on Wednesday.  Sydney has some of our clothes and nearly all of our books, so all I really need is a ticket, passports, and some food/distraction for Katherine, right?

Wrong.

It doesn’t matter that I will be bringing my daughter to her father; from the viewpoint of immigration officials it looks like I’m taking my child from her home country without the presence of her father.  As in, I might well be kidnapping my own child.  So I need a signed letter from Sydney saying that I have permission to leave the country with her.  If he were to travel alone with her he’d need the same from me.

Good thing that suddenly dawned on me today, when we still have time to get a letter faxed from Nova Scotia!

Erin

When I was in Portland Sydney and I were at the far extremes of the North American continent.  He was, however, suddenly (roughly) as close to Katherine as I was–two time zones apart. Freaky.

Part of the reason for the relative inactivity on our blog recently has been the sheer volume of email between my parents and me (how’s Katherine doing?  is she sleeping well?) and between Sydney and me (how’s the conference?  how are you settling into our summer cabin?).  So, although we were quite far apart we actually learned a lot of the day-by-day activities in all three locations.  And, lest I have failed to mention it before, Sydney has a fabulous writing voice; I’m sure that’s part of the reason I’m not as keen on phone calls when he’s away as everyone else seems to think I should be.  The writing’s quite nice 🙂  It also reminds me of when we were dating and would send instant messages between our dorms.  An odd form of nostalgia, I suppose, given that we often now talk about our daughter in our written conversations.

Erin

After a great weekend in Portland I’m home again in Iowa.  Katherine seemed interested in playing with me this morning, though I didn’t get any sign of “Oh, you’re back!  I’m so glad to see you again!”  She was probably wondering why Grandma ran off to work.

I didn’t get great loads of work done, as I thought I might.  It seems that even when you don’t have a little one at your knee you still may have trouble getting things done!

I did, however, enjoy the roses in the “City of Roses” on my 2-mile walk to the grocery store, wonder frequently what kind of strange conifers I was looking at, and eat some great Cuban and Mexican food with my friends Steph and Jamie.  Always good when conference locations line up with the hometowns of friends.  I also stayed in a dorm for the first time in five years, and I laughed that the four-bedroom suite in which I was staying was considerably larger than our Ithaca apartment (these college students aren’t exactly roughing it).

Although I’m generally pretty outgoing, I’m a bit slow at introducing myself and starting conversations at conferences.  As usual, though, things picked up as the days went on and we had more to talk about, and I had a number of people introduce themselves after my talk and express interest in my project.  By the final night I found myself having an hour-and-a-half conversation with a lady down the hall–all while I stood in the door frame of the bathroom!

Erin

As I was flying to Portland yesterday I got gorgeous views of winding Dakota rivers, leaf-vein-like mountain ranges, and even magnificent Mount St. Helens and Mount Hood (at least, that’s the natives’ best guess as to what I saw).  I am not used to mountains towering over the cloud horizon.  And now, of course, I would like nothing better than to rent a car and go off to see the Columbia River Gorge, the mountains, and some beautiful waterfalls I am told are nearby.

But instead I’m gearing up for a long day of papers, mine among them.  The conference schedule has shifted so that a bigshot is now on my panel.  Which is why I will soon leave to run through my paper a couple of times!

Although yesterday began at 2am with a two-hour drive to the airport, things went well.  I didn’t sleep much, but found myself inclined to read articles for work.  After I got into town the public transportation worked smoothly, and I made it to my dorm housing on the University of Portland’s campus without incident.  Last night I went out for dinner and a walk with my friend Stephanie, a Cornell grad and a Portland native, and we had a fabulous time.  So incredibly wonderful to meet up with a very good friend and work our way through a thousand topics.

Erin

So here are the numbers for the trip:

• Species seen: 149
• Life birds seen: 28
• Individual birds recorded: 4250

To put the number of species seen into perspective, last year I saw 136 species in the entire year. So I’m very satisfied with the trip.

As Erin mentioned, now I’m settling into a cabin. It’s a very nicely built, large log cabin. We’ll definitely have more space than we’ve seen in a long time. But the stuff I’m finding in the cabin is rather interesting: a spinning wheel, an antique cabinet radio, a pool table, a stuffed bear, a bearskin rug, more dear heads and antlers than I can count, a wooden toilet, a double-barreled shotgun …

Sydney

Sydney has safely arrived in Nova Scotia, no longer gallivanting about the continent.  He is also getting a first look at the cabin where we’ll be staying for the next couple of months.  He warned me that childproofing could be interesting, and he mentioned something about a bearskin rug.  We’ll see what Katherine makes of that!

As he settles in, I’m about to take off.  I’m flying to Portland tomorrow for a conference, leaving Katherine with Mom and Dad.  I am hoping that she and I will be just fine apart, and I didn’t book horrifically early flights just to get me back as soon as possible.  Assuming I don’t melt into a puddle, I’ll present a paper on Woolf, atheism, and Romantic poetry, and use the evenings to meet up with my friends Steph and Jamie.  And I’ll check out West-Coast weather, which is about 20 degrees cooler than here.  I’m not looking forward to yet another time-zone change, but everything else should be great.

Erin

Katherine is sleeping muuuuuuch better these last few days, and we’re all happy to have our happy girl back.  We took her out for a grocery run and, as I was strolling through the baby area, I saw a baby cell phone.  As in, for six bucks I can have a little phone that looks and acts very much like a real one.  I’ll have to remember that when Katherine begs for one in a few years . . .

Erin