This, that, and the other

I know I’ve all but abandoned blogging over the past year; my ambitions for the blog are much greater, but my energy is pretty much fumes at this point.

To bring my three or four remaining readers up to date: M. finished his MBA in December, passing his last two classes with flying colors, and he’s now beginning the process of looking for a new job.  His current one has a term limit that will be coming up in a year’s time, so he’s on the clock.  That said, he did get a raise this year, so we’re in good shape in the short term, at least.  He’s missing classes and the enjoyment he got out of doing something just for himself, but the kids love having him around more (well, Girl does, anyway.  Boy’s going through a Mommy thing right now, so he’s less excited – although he does bring M. his little plush football every morning and goes long while M. throws it to him, so there’s some kind of connection there).

The Girl is enjoying her last year of preschool.  She’s picked up some bad habits, but I think more of those are from me than her classmates, so I’m trying to tone things down a bit.  Four is easier than three in some ways, but the headiness of a little autonomy seems to drive her to do things and behave in ways that are sometimes counter to her best interests, which can be kind of exhausting.

She sings or talks – or sometimes does both simultaneously – almost constantly, which is also exhausting.  There are times when, as horrible as it sounds, I just don’t want to be around her for a little while.  I love her with all my heart, but she just wears me out with the sheer energy she has coursing through her little body.  I’m kind of dreading the same thing with the Boy, who, at just two, is still baby-cuddly and a little more effortlessly sweet than she can be now.  I’ll miss the baby he’s almost finished being…although I am looking forward to him having the same degree of independence that she has now.

And I’m still trudging around the foothills of Mt. Doom, back bent from carting around my f***ing dissertation for too long to be useful.  I’ve pretty much extended my grad student tenure into the realm of unemployability – at least, in academia – and have been coming to terms with that over the past year or so.  I’m still pushing ahead with the thing, mostly out of sheer will than any kind of motivation, but it’s slow going.  I think I may be on academic probation at this point, since I have failed to meet a couple of goals set out by my advisor, but she’s basically said for me to just keep going and send things in when I can.  I think my ideas – especially the most recent one, which ties things together at the broadest level – are solid, and maybe even good, but I’m constantly having to push past inertia and burnout to write anything, and what I do write doesn’t seem to do them justice.

But, that’s as it is.  If I do finish the thing, I’m hoping it will happen this year.  2010 is shaping up to be a bit of a watershed year for us: M. will need to have a new job by this time next year, the Girl will be in kindergarten, the Boy may or may not spend some quality time in preschool, and I hope to be done with my dissertation, for better or worse, by the beginning of 2011 (especially since my candidacy expires in May of next year).

And you?

(strictly speaking)…

Actually, the 3.96 GPA is meaningless either way – it just sometimes makes me happy to know I had it. It’s certainly not going to translate into gainful employment or anything.

Still bringin’ up the rear

Thanks for the kind comments on the last post. It’s mostly just venting on my part…I feel overwhelmed (so what’s new?) and buried under a mountain of things I need to get done.

I suppose I should be grateful, though, that I’m starting to get bored with messing around online. I can waste whole days doing nothing but staring blankly into the computer screen while small children raise themselves…not good for them, not good for me. But Facebook and Twitter only get you so far (I use them because they’re one of the only ways I get contact with the outside world), and everything else is kinda depressing, truth be told.

Still spinning my wheels on the current chapter, which is late, and which is making the next chapter even later, which will probably itself result in being put on academic probation. So much for the 3.96 GPA – it’s kind of meaningless if I can’t actually get the final thing done. I’m getting there, but since a lot of it involves reading/translating Japanese, it just gets very slow sometimes.

But, in the overall scheme of things, I can’t really complain. So far – knock on wood – H1N1 hasn’t found us (unless the plague we all had about a month ago was it…but I never had a fever, although the kids did, so I’m thinking it wasn’t) and I might even get them fully vaccinated (round 2) before it does…we’ll see.

Aaaaagh…another pointless post.

Motivation, or lack thereof

The dissertation work continues in fits and starts.  All the books (Write Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day!, etc.) say that the key is consistent, daily work – even just a little.  I believe this – I really do.  It’s just that there are days when the almost-2 yo is screaming and screaming and screaming, and the 4 yo is bugging and whining and bugging and whining, and the laundry is piling up higher and higher and higher, and the food…is not being prepared.

And motivation, such as it is, just up and leaves the building.

Today is one of those days.  I’m rapidly running out of time to meet my latest pushed-off deadline, and I’m fairly certain my advisor is reaching the limits of her patience with me.  There’s actually some progress on the conceptual side of things, but I hit a snag about two weeks ago (which happened to coincide with having to scramble to get the kids their (round 1) H1N1 vaccinations and deal with a serious car issue (misdiagnosed fuel line leak)), and I’m having a hard time getting back up to speed.  Or, you know, getting back up.

In the meantime, I’m still letting the TV raise the kids, still wondering how to fill all the interminable hours with them, wondering what to do with myself and my life…

I have good days – ones when I am bursting with have some energy and can actually accomplish things I set out to do – but these dull, darkish ones seem to be in the majority, even now.

Current Challenges

1. Parenting two under the age of five.  One talks pretty much every waking hour of the day.  The other just screeeeeeeams.

2. The neverending dissertation.

3. I seem to be perimenopausal.

I realize that none of these are horrible, and one of them is actually very excellent (although I could seriously do without all the damned screaming), but I’m good.  I don’t need any more challenges right now.  Thank you.

Johnny’s 10 point blog bio

Johnny is passing around a meme wherein you write your blog bio in 10 bullet points, and I have never been one to pass on a meme:

1. Met M. through Match.com in Tokyo
2. I was there doing dissertation research; he was working for Giant Transnational Telecommunications Firm
3. We spent one year apart, when I came back to the US to finish up coursework and do comps
4. He returned in July
5. By October I was pregnant with M2
6. We were married the following January
7. M2 was born that May
8. We moved closer to my parents for help with M2 while M. worked and I wrote
9. C. born two years later
10. Still trying to write my dissertation, the deadline for submission of which is 19.5 months away.

We’re getting an old person!

That’s awfully flippant – sorry.  I’m usually much more deferential and respectful towards my elders – especially ones I haven’t met.  But I couldn’t resist.

It’s true, though – we volunteered to host a woman who survived the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima while she’s here for memorial and educational activities.  We don’t have a big house by any stretch of the imagination, but the girl’s bedroom is fairly large (in the old house, the same room – since our old house and new house are the same basic model) and has a proper twin-sized bed.  Girl can come sleep in our room while she’s here (Girl loves sleeping in our room anyway), and we just need to provide breakfast and some other meals – her transportation and activities have already been arranged.

She arrives on Monday.  My house is a disaster.  Maybe I should paint the walls in the living room or something?

It occurs to me…

I never finished telling the story of the house purchase, did I?

It went something like this: the house appraised low.  Very low – as in $30,000 less than the original price/first assessment.  This was because, according to the place that did it, it’s becoming more acceptable to use foreclosures in calculating comparable properties, and one had sold on Dec. 31 for a low price that affected the second appraisal.

We figured there was no way in hell that FM would ever, EVER accept an addendum asking for the price to be dropped $30,000, but our realtor, bless her heart, basically said “What do you have to lose?” and drew up an addendum that asked for the lower price and also asked that the per diem ?fine? ($100/day, which was racking up quickly at this point) past the agreed upon closing date be waived.

And damned if they didn’t take it.

So, for the inconvenience of waiting a month (30 days, to be exact) in limbo while all of this was going on, we made $1000/day.  We figured it had a lot to do with FM wanting to be done with this property; the moratorium on foreclosures was about to expire, and they were anticipating a slew of new foreclosures to come on the market shortly.  We figure they just didn’t want to have this old listing remaining when the new foreclosures arrived.

We closed on Jan. 31, and my parents embarked on a whirlwind of renovation for a month.  They were scheduled to leave for their annual trip to HI on Mar. 1, so they gutted and rebuilt the kitchen, upgraded the electrical wiring, installed canister lights in three rooms, refinished the beat-up wood floors, and painted most of the house in the space of 28 days.  When they returned, my Dad re-sided the shed out back, put in new insulation in the attic, relocated the attic access ladder from the ceiling in the middle of the living room to the linen closet, installed exhaust fans in the bathroom and kitchen, finished up the canister lights, repaired a bit of roof (which will need to be replaced sooner than later), and oversaw the crawlspace project (removal of old, wet insulation, treatment of space for mold, reinstallation of new insulation).  He also spackled…everywhere (there’s still dust on stuff) and just generally took care of everything we needed for Round One of the house improvement project.

There’s still stuff that needs to be done: the living room is still unpainted, and I’ll probably have to repaint at least part of the kitchen where I’ve left painter’s tape up for several months now.  The linen closet also needs painting, pictures need to be hung, area rugs need to be bought, and window coverings are required in several rooms.  But we have a house, the base mortgage payments (before taxes, etc.) are lower than the rent in our last house, and the kids each have a room.  That last one is the best part.

The House Across the Street

…is a complete and total mystery to me. At any given time, there are three people who come and go with regularity: two men, one woman. There seem to be three cars involved, and any one of them drives them at any given time: a Prius, a VW bug, and a new Tacoma truck (this last one was apparently wish-fulfillment for the ‘main’ resident – the one who seems to be there the most and who walks the dogs – who had truck-lust after he saw my Dad’s truck here while he was renovating).

Is it a home? An office? Both? I seriously want to just go over and satisfy my curiosity by asking what the deal is…but it would probably be inadvisable.

Aaaaaaaagh.

Totally burnt-out, and I have a hellish summer to get through. Bought a house, now have two dead baby birds in the molding above the front door. And many little tiny bugs going to and from their little dead baby bird carcasses.

Dissertation: have a deadline for two chapter drafts, don’t see how it’s ever going to come together, given that I currently have no help with the kids and #2 is rather needy.

Kids: TV is raising them.

Me: Utterly exhausted – literally. I can’t sit down without passing out. Except at night, when I can’t sleep for worrying about the dissertation, crappy parenting, and dead baby birds.

Cardiac episode: Probably imminent.