Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

The storage unit arrived today (hurray!) and is parked in our driveway.  Unfortunately, after Sydney took the measuring tape to it, it was not in fact 8x8x12, but rather something a bit shy of that.  They may have been measuring from the outside or any number of ways, but the fact of the matter is that our bookshelves will not fit like we thought they would.  We have fewer cubic feet than we thought and we will have more trouble using the space efficiently.

Sydney’s a bit tired of setbacks, and we’d both like to get on with things, so we’ll hope for a smoother path over the weekend.

Erin

We began moving in earnest today.  We went up into the attic and hauled down nearly all of the boxes, old computer parts, fans, suitcases, and garden gear that we’ve stored there.  The attic, by the way, is roughly the same size as our apartment, which means we have been able to make better use of our living space, but it also means that we can collect a lot of things.  Despite our careful measurements we stood appalled by the thought that the storage container may not be large enough for all of our stuff.  Not sure whether we’re more appalled at the thought of having to figure out contingency plans for things that won’t fit or appalled that we have that much stuff.

We had a bit of  a fiasco with U-Haul today, as we rented a van in order to haul plywood sheets from the store to our house.  Simple, right?  But we thought we’d first use the van to take the garbage down to the dump, since it tends to make a big mess and we didn’t want to get our car dirty.  But Sydney loaded up the trash only to get stuck in traffic (it’s graduation weekend for Cornell) and fail to get to the dump before it closed.  Great: now we’ve got a van full of disgusting garbage and it all has to come out again, and the van has to be cleaned.  Plus, renting a vehicle is a lot more complicated now that we can’t simply have two drivers come along, one for the truck and one for our car; I guess nobody thought it was important to have a place for baby seats in moving vans.  But, after a heroic effort and a crazy night, Sydney brought home plywood at 10pm and we’re going to drop off the van before 8 this morning.

Katherine is responding to the extreme heat by sleeping less.  A lot less.  She hasn’t been keen on going down before midnight, and she’s up at 8.  The nap (and there’s only one) is half the normal length.  She is, however, reasonably happy being plopped in the playpen to keep her out of dangerous things while we pack.  As long as someone’s moving a lot she’s happy, even if she’s not the one doing it.

Back to it.

Erin

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