Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

We reached the pinnacle, and with it our reward: snacks, water, a gorgeous view, and a breeze.

Erin

Both cat and kid are enjoying the new arrangement of boxes and furniture around our house as we start a bit of packing.

She climbed in, but she couldn’t climb out.

Katherine shows off her climbing skills–and proves that our barriers were completely ineffective.

And the cat climbs higher.

Erin

Our friends Jenny and Joel (who are expecting their own baby any minute now), offered to take Katherine while Sydney and I went on a date night, since we’re preparing to be apart for most of the month of June.  We decided to use our evening for activities that we can’t enjoy as easily when Katherine joins us.

We drove to a nice restaurant, Stonecat Cafe, on Seneca Lake, where we ordered everything on the menu.  Okay, maybe not everything, but we had every course, followed by tea.  It was delicious food and, unlike Sydney’s prediction, we did not spend our time talking about the birds we’ve seen in the past week or the plan for packing.

After dinner we enjoyed a few minutes of quiet time at Stewart Park, where we sat on a bench and watched the sun set.  Okay, so I watched the sun, and Sydney, binoculars in hand, pointed out birds to me.

Then we went to a chamber concert that was really, really fantastic.  There was a clarinet trio, which made me very happy, and there was a lot of Brahms.  We haven’t been to a concert since well before Katherine was born, and it was a great treat.  So nice to sit, be quiet, and enjoy music.  I got a hankering to play again after watching all of that gorgeous music being made.  I’m not sure, however, whether it was the gorgeous music I longed for–or the ability to focus so intently on a single, sustained project.

At any rate, we picked up our little girl (who was bouncing and awake at 10:30!  What is with this child and late nights!) and headed home, all sleepy and satisfied.

Thank you, Jenny and Joel!!!

Erin

From the contagion of the world’s slow stain / He is secure

– Shelley, “Adonais”

I was zipping along with Conference Paper #2, thinking I would get it done in record time.  But as I was poking at it I realized a major flaw.  I was contrasting Woolf’s search for a non-Christian means of mourning the dead with the poets of old (who usually end their poems by offering the lost loved one up to God).  But the poet she cites most frequently in Mrs. Dalloway is Shelley–whose pamphlet on atheism got him kicked out of Oxford, and whose atheism was a major factor in his failure to win custody of his children.  Hmm.  So I am rethinking and enjoying the chance to leave the 20th century for crazy Romantic poetry.  And it’s interesting to see Shelley try to reinvent the elegy to suit his beliefs without alienating all of his audience.  It means I am unlikely to get this paper finished as soon as I’d hoped, but it also means I will be working up material to expand one of my dissertation chapters.

Erin

I will be giving a paper in Kentucky two weeks from today.  Which, given that I’m currently in a New York house that shows little signs of packing, means that much has to happen between now and then.  But I’m trying to be very relaxed about this whole thing, partly because I want to do some more cooking before we leave (which means we need lots of things I should be putting in boxes), and partly because I’d like to enjoy as much of Ithaca and my husband as possible before Katherine and I leave both of them.

The current situation also works as good motivation, pushing us to temper our natural inclinations.  I would like to have packed a month ago, but I’ve held back, knowing that there will be plenty of living out of suitcases and eating road food in the near future.  And the longer I wait the more likely it is that Sydney will be able to help.  On the other hand, Sydney would like to wait until the last minute, but he knows that anything that’s not done by the time I leave will be left to him.  So we’re meeting in the middle.

To further those ends, we went on two lengthy hikes on Wednesday and Thursday, covering ground we’ve never hiked before.  Ithaca just has too much good hiking!  We did close to ten miles over the two days, with lots of up and down.  Katherine loved it, particularly the really rough parts.  The two adults are quite tired by now, but very happy to have made time for those good walks when we’re so close to leaving.

Erin

We’re entering parenting-induced dementia.  I hear it doesn’t really go away as the kids get older.  It starts by giving your kid something fun and shiny like your watch or a clock.  And it ends by you turning the house upside-down later that day to figure out where she might have put the dratted thing.  The postscript?  You then start to wonder of all needed-but-not-readily-visible objects, “Did she do something with it?  Should I check the sock drawer for my computer cable?”  Yesterday we found Sydney’s watch in the file drawer.  The stability of the world is now thoroughly undermined.

I am reminded every day now of my dad’s tireless efforts to teach his kids (I heard this until I went to college), “If you use something, put it back where you found it!”

Erin

As we make our plans for this summer and for our move to England, some pieces are falling into place.  We’ve nailed down a complex plan for the summer that should give us lots of time with family: I think I’m going to be squeezing in a visit to extended family in the South when I visit my parents in June, and Sydney’s parents have arranged for us to rent a place just a few houses down from them for much of the summer.  And we’ve made plans for work: I’ll be giving two papers in June (one in Kentucky, one in Portland, OR); Sydney will probably be returning to Ithaca to defend his dissertation before we leave the continent; and, needless to say, we’ll both be writing like crazy this summer.  And we’ve arranged for a storage container to be dropped at our house at the end of the month, when we’ll fill it with stuff and have it hauled back to Syracuse to sit for three years.

Whew.

But then there are the trickier pieces, for which we’ve resorted to bargaining.

Sydney’s put in a bid for some time away from civilization while K and I are in Iowa, giving him a chance to rejuvenate after a long year of job-market stress and new-baby sleeplessness.  I’m guessing there will be birdwatching and a serious lack of shaving.  I, in turn, have put in a bid for some family expeditions to gorgeous hiking in Nova Scotia, since I am keen on any opportunity to stretch my legs and backpack Katherine.

And then there are the things we haven’t figured out yet.

How do we make sure all of our mail and paperwork get rerouted to England?  How exactly do we want to handle the cat?  Are we going to apply for jobs next year, or enjoy the freedom to skip it and focus on academic work?  Is something happening with the visas?

So we’re waiting and beginning to pack.

Erin

Seeing as I will soon no longer have the chance to enjoy birdwatching around Ithaca (I’m pretty sure Oxford will have far fewer species to see), I’m making sure to get a good bit of birding in before I leave. It’s going quite well; I’ve had better luck than usual at finding both the common species as well as some of the more unusual ones.

Erin thinks that all I care about is the rankings so, in order to live up to her expectations, here they are:

Now let’s provide some context. The two guys at the top are members of The Redheads; the next two people, as well as the person after me, are members of Team Sapsucker. These are the two teams that the Cornell Lab of Ornithology sends to the World Series of Birding. The two teams have done extremely well in the past. Anyway, this year’s WSB is in two days, so I need to make sure to go out and advance in the rankings while my competitors are occupied in another state.

Sydney

Today I was hunting for wild rice recipes, since we seem to have hoarded a bunch of it.  When I came across a recipe for wild-rice stuffing I was thrilled, since it called for four cups of rice, half of that wild rice.  I failed to realize that this was a recipe intended for a large Thanksgiving gathering, and that the stuffing would fill my largest baking dish.  Something tells me that we’ll be eating that for quite awhile . . .

Erin

– There are more kinds of soy-based protein products out there than I could have ever imagined.  And many of them are pretty good.  And Ithaca produces at least half of them.

– Along similar lines, vegetarianism doesn’t mean rice cakes and spongy tofu.  Thank goodness.

– With some practice, I, too, can learn to walk up hills without fearing heart attack.  Particularly if I have to sprint 90 steps up the side of a gorge every day I teach (nothing like running late for motivation!).

– If I force myself to take regular walks I will get to the point where I need them, prioritize them, and look to them for relief from migraines, desk-restlessness, and other problems.  And I’ve learned that I can walk in Ithaca’s coldest weather, even if it’s less pleasant than a dewy spring morning.

– That whole baby-backpacking thing is great.  Absolutely great.  Here everyone does it, whether a hippie or no.  I realize it’s not for everyone, but it has really worked for our family and will be a lifesaver as we move to England.

– To appreciate beautiful areas by getting out and using them, as much as life allows, and not just take a peek when we have company . . . and also to use company as an excuse to get outside and enjoy beautiful scenery (yes, all of you wonderful people who have visited, only to find yourself being coerced up a gorge ridge).

– That the compartmentalized life does not pay off.  I’m reminded here of some of the benefits of having work and home not complete strangers to one another.  Our department secretaries knew we were expecting a baby, so they worked out a teaching schedule for us that wouldn’t have us teaching at the same time.  I see my students around town and get to watch them grow up.  And I take Katherine to campus frequently, both to make use of the lovely lawn and to make lots of students smile as they pass.  It’s nice to remember, every now and then, the entire world is not populated by 18-22-year-olds.

– How to run the academic marathon, rather than burn out by treating it like a sprint.  I’ve seen something of the long hours my professors work, but I’ve also seen them trying to live a little, and I’ve started to find my pace.

– Moving is hard, particularly when it seems that nearly everyone in your town is doing it, too, but it’s important to make good, deep friendships regardless of the short stay.  Thinking transiently serves no one.

– The more people that cook in a family (and in a community), the better.  There’s always plenty of it to go around, and it’s fantastic to share the enthusiasm with your family members.  The only problem is the skyrocketing grocery bill, but in the scheme of things . . .  It’s also been great to live with Christi and be able to swap recipes (and just have someone walk over with a steaming bowl of curry when you walk in starving).

– That I married an impressive shoveler.  Sydney can clear the driveway in twenty minutes even after a sizable snow.  I’ll make sure that we spend most of our lives in a place where I can make use of this skill.

Erin