Acknowlegdments

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I would like to thank my partner for his patience during the writing of this [project] and Epsilon for the hours of playing monsters in tunnels with me he sacrificed, which he knows belong to him by right.

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I do wonder why spouses are thanked for their patience, support and understanding, but not kids. In his own very real way, Epsilon supplies me with plenty of the first two, if not the third.

Grad school moments

I'm trying to remember the last time I felt this good. Perhaps it was when I wrote this post.The fact that it may be this long between periods of feeling satisfied with life and work is scary.

Maybe it is because I had a good week at last week's conference. There was a good exchange of ideas with people working on similar problems from a very different point of view. I managed to work out a result in my spare time that bodes well for a prospective project. I found out that someone has just done much of the hard work for me for a project that's currently lying dormant. Most imporantly, I slept. I went a whole week without having to wake up before 4 am to get to Univerity F, or get back to His Town after midnight, to be woken by Epsilon at 6:30.

Maybe it is because time with Epsilon this weekend was filled with the magical time with kids that parents tell non-parents about (fun time at a park, a good family dinner, reading stories out loud in the living room), and had very little of the time that parents don't tell non-parents about (the late evening tantrums because he's refused to nap, wakeup at 5:30 am because he's overflowed his diaper, but can't get back to sleep after).

Maybe it is because I've spent much of the day working in a coffee shop watching the rain outside, with a warm pot of tea next to me. Maybe it is because I'm taking a break from my commute this week, so my partner and I somehow found the time to talk about life and friends and things last night, instead of dealing with the necessities of getting the house ready for another week of single parenting.

Whatever the reason, it is on some level disturbing to me that I associate this peace of mind and calm with my grad school days. That is a period that few people look back fondly on (I think?). I think it is a definite sign of a need for a drastic reform in my life.

Sick

I remember as an undergrad, most terms would have a point in them when things started to slide; I'd taken one more class (again) than I could realistically handle; the post teenage drama that filled my social life exploded; my depression flared out of control; I came down with pneumonia during midterms; I signed up for one too many extra curricular activity that I didn't realize far enough in advance that I needed to cancel. It was always something or another. As an undergrad, I had not realized that part of good study and self care habits was working with a buffer for all the things the inevitably go wrong in life.

Grad school was different, and I was a much happier and successful academic there. Somehow, it feels like all those lessons were unlearned with Epsilon. No, unlearned is too harsh. Neither of us realized how much went into being a parent. And we can't exactly punt Epsilon the same way we would pull out of organizing a big social even in college.

So here I am. Two days of grading until after midnight followed by getting up at 6:30 with Epsilon, while he is sick has me in bed with a flu bad enough that I spend Saturday in bed, Sunday asleep, and practically voiceless on Tuesday. One of my classes takes approximately 0 prep time. The other takes 12+ hours/week. I cancelled Monday's lecture of the latter. Today, I think I am well enough that I can stand in front of the board for 2 hours, but nowhere in my fog have I had the coherence to learn and prepare lectures for this class. It is being cancelled again. My 20 year old self is dismayed that it is that time of term again.

This time, however, I seem to have the flexibility and wisdom to take care of myself during it.