Light and Momentary

Seven Quick Takes: New Semester Edition

1. Oh, you guys, it's a glorious day. The sun is shining brightly and I don't have to teach today!

2. Teaching 4 days a week is going to be an adjustment.

3. This semester I have two classes, one grad and one upper-level undergrad. Their content is pretty similar, which means that lecture prep overlaps -- more detail for the grads, more explanation for the undergrads. But still-- I had forgotten how long it takes to prep a lecture. I think it was like forgetting about childbirth pain. You think to yourself, "It can't really be that bad, can it?" And then -- surprise! -- it is.

4. Luckily I have left behind much of the angst that attended lecture prep in the early weeks of last semester. I knew that it would take me a lot of hours to pull together six anatomy/physiology classes, but I also knew that I could handle it. And I know too that the prep load will lighten a bit when we get into the clinical portion of the course.

5. I'd been feeling more confident until Wednesday afternoon, when the chair sent out an email saying that course evals were ready to review. Reading them was something I'd been dreading, so I decided I'd just bite the bullet and look at them right away. There was a lot of grumbling about my standards for writing assignments -- a whole lot.

6. I have been thinking a lot about this. (Read: waking up in the middle of the night with student comments on the brain.) On the one hand, I don't want to be the Usage Nazi, nitpicking meaningless distinctions. On the other, they're heading into a profession that requires more writing than the average job, and I want them to be prepared for that. If I give them four weeks to write a short paper, and post my grading rubric in advance, and steer them to the writing center if they're uncertain and review first drafts on request and STILL they turn in papers with mistakes on every page -- then, yeah, I'm going to dock their grades. I will not apologize for expecting grad students to use semicolons correctly.

Doesn't mean it didn't smart, reading those comments.

7. I'm going to have a chat with my chair this morning about the whole thing, to get her take on whether it's typical grumbling from students who aren't used to getting Bs, or whether there's a kernel of truth I should take to heart. Here's hoping I can let it go afterward.

More quick takes at Jen's.

Seven Quick Takes: Nom Nom Nom Edition

1. I am typing this post with a cup of coffee at my elbow. Not just any cup of coffee, though -- a madeleinian cup of coffee. We're out of milk and cream, so I popped open a can of evaporated milk. The taste and the mouthfeel take me right back to my grandmother's kitchen. I can hear her saying, "Would you like a little Pet milk for your coffee?" to my mother and my aunts in the tone of someone proffering a special treat. I am remembering the coziness of her kitchen and a feeling of satisfaction at being big enough to sit with the grownups.

Maybe by the bottom of the cup I will remember what color the curtains were.

2. It's Thursday as I'm typing this, and dinner is almost ready. In the oven there's a beet-green quiche, made with not quite enough eggs and a blend of sour cream and evaporated milk. I do not expect it to be a hit. It's time to go to the grocery store.

3. On the stove I have a pot of delicious soup which I will never make again. Once for Christmas my MIL gave me a book called Master Chefs and Their Crazypants Recipes, or something like that. Each recipe had at least 20 ingredients, to be combined in a dizzying sequence of steps. Any cookbook that has me making praline powder in step one and moving on to the complicated stuff from there is above my pay grade. But do you know, if I were to write up the recipe for this soup it might almost fit in. A slacker's crazypants recipe, or something.

4. The soup is only accidentally complicated, made of beets and carrots that I roasted on Christmas Eve and gussied up on Christmas Day. It wasn't hard to chop an onion coarsely and fry it up with some garlic and ginger. After that I just had to tip in the leftover veggies, add a splash of apple juice and enough stock to make it look like soup, and hit it with a plop of sour cream and an immersion blender. If I wrote it all down -- "first, prepare the Roasted Beets With Saffron Cream, followed by the Blanched Tamari-Roasted Carrots Accented With Butter and Orange" --  it would sound fancypants rather than seat-of-the-pants, which it actually was. It makes me wonder how many of those crazypants recipes came from people scavenging in the back of the fridge, thinking, "Better use this up before it goes bad." I bet it's easier to recreate an accidental success if you have a sous-chef to do the heavy lifting.

Maybe I need a sous-chef.

5. It's Friday now, feast of the Holy Family and my firstborn's 15th birthday. I've been waiting for this day, when my children would be 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15. Doesn't that sound orderly? He told me he'd be happy with any kind of cake I wanted to make, and so I am going to try my hand at a Swiss roll: devil's food cake, whipped cream filling. If the rolling is a disaster, I'll turn it into a trifle and pretend that was my plan all along.

6. The reason I had that pretentious-sounding Saffron Cream for my beets was actually a children's book -- Tomie de Paola's Jingle the Christmas Clown. Years ago the kids and I made the delicious cookies it describes, covered with sunny saffron icing. On Christmas Day the kids were happily rolling out cookies. (Does that sound very domestic of us? It was not. I had made the cookie dough on the 22nd or 23rd, but I just couldn't get it together to bake them until Christmas.) I let them eat the whole first tray, thinking they'd make a second batch that we could ice for the grandparents to enjoy after Christmas dinner. I let a pinch of saffron steep in a little dish of milk until they announced that they didn't want to make more cookies. I'm too cheap to throw out saffron, so into the beets it went. I think we might try iced cookies again this afternoon.

7. New Year's resolution? At the top of the list: more veggies, less sugar.

More quick takes at Conversion Diary.

Seven Quick Takes: Ultra-Speedy Version

1. Two weeks into the semester, and I love it except when I'm beating back my anxiety with a figurative broom. The students are responsive and engaged; they ask a ton of questions and they laugh in the right places. I'm doing better with pacing my lectures and I'm feeling less overwhelmed.
2. School is going better than I expected for the kids. My first-grader is really enjoying his teacher; my fourth-grader who has often been restless in the classroom tells me every day that he really likes school this year. The transitions to junior high and high school seem to be going well also, though I haven't checked grades online to see if the teachers' perceptions square with my kids' perceptions.
3. This business of being able to check my kids' grades from my own living room-- I'm not a fan. My parents had NO IDEA what was going on with me at school, and I think there's much to be said for letting kids be responsible for their own schoolwork. Thoughts?
4. Item: the schools have banned all homemade treats. If your child has a birthday or you want to contribute to the Halloween party, you must bring in individually wrapped treats with nutritional labels. And yeah, I get it that allergies can be a problem, and that some people are careless about food safety in their home kitchens, but are HoHos really the kind of thing our kids need to be eating more of? My boys have so enjoyed being able to choose the treat I'll bake for them to share with their classmates, cupcakes with real chocolate and real eggs and some sneaky whole wheat pastry flour. Plus I have this Baking = Love thing wired deep inside me. Love ≠ Buying HoHos. I do not approve, she said grumpily.
5. You know what else makes me shake my head, and perhaps my cane, in fetching get-off-my-lawn fashion? My kids need a signed waiver in order to bike to and from soccer practice. There is SO much to be said, if you ask me, for teaching kids to get around on their own, to navigate their neighborhoods, to be responsible for getting themselves places on time -- as well as for reducing gas consumption and time spent elbowing siblings in the back of the van while mom gets progressively shriller. The form from the soccer league says "We do not encourage players biking to and from practice." Harrumph, she harrumphed grumpily. Two of my boys have soccer practices that are easy biking distance from our house, most of it along a beautiful paved bike trail. They're biking, dang it, no matter what the league encourages.
6. Tomorrow my husband is taking the four boys on a bus trip with Scouts. They'll be gone from 5:15 in the morning until about 10:15 at night, so it'll just be Stella and me here in town all day. I bet you a dollar she'll be up for the day when they leave at 5:15.
7. Which means I should get to bed pronto. G'night.

More quick takes.

Seven Quick Takes: End of Summer Edition

1. Best news I've seen all week: my friend Carla held her baby today. This is her seventh baby but her first experience with adoption. Go wish her well!
2. My syllabi are printed up and waiting for the start of classes. I'm so excited. SO SO SO excited.
3. Except I'm a little worried about the part where I said I'd be lecturing on neuroanatomy and cerebral circulation for two and a half hours. That's a lot of neuroanatomy and cerebral circulation.
4. School is back in session for everybody but the preschooler. First and fourth grades are going well, even though we got the first-grade teacher who made me crazy in '06-'07. (The first-grader came home and said, "He wasn't mean at all!" in wondering tones that made me kick myself for not being more circumspect. The issue was never that he was mean, for the record.) Junior high was better on the second day than the first -- the first day left my sweet introvert a little wobbly in the wake of the noise generated by 800+ 11-14-year-olds. Unfortunately, they called me this afternoon to say they'd forgotten something important and they needed to redo his schedule completely, which is a bummer but we'll hope it works out for the best. And high school seems to be going fine thus far. (High school!) My oldest is off to the local Catholic high school, taking two city buses each way to get there and back. He has spent more time this week with his shirt tucked in than in the preceding five years. Or maybe ten.
5. I went to the high school open house earlier this week and I have this observation to offer you: people who have children in high school are OLD. Grizzled. Wrinkled. Balding. Sagging. I wonder at what point in the distant future that will happen to me? [LA LA LA LA I can't hear you.]
6. Thank you for your comments on my last post. I was a little worried about publishing it and it was good to hear from you.
7. Time for me to go get those messy subcortical structures sorted out in my head and then in my lecture notes. Wish me luck.

More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Cute Toddler Edition

1. Last night the boys and Elwood were walking downtown to see a movie and Stella thought we should tag along. She was disappointed when they got ahead of us, until I asked if she'd like to go for ice cream. "Ox weem!" she exclaimed. "I wuff ox weem."


2. I could eat her up with a spoon sometimes.


3. On the way home we played Scary Dinosaur. She would growl and shout "Somp! Somp!" while stamping her little feet in their flowered sandals. This was my cue to wave my hands and shriek "Oh no! It's a terrible dinosaur." I would run down the bike trail ahead of her until she stopped growling and said "Eek!" "Eek" means it's time to switch places so she can be the scare-ee.


4. Sometimes she wakes in the night crying and tells me she's sad about a scary monster. I wonder where that comes from? I'm not sure where she's been seeing scary monsters.


5. She is like a lot of toddlers in her eagerness to assert possession. She'll routinely let us know that something is hers. Instead of saying "mine!" she shouts "mine's!" It makes sense, if you're hearing "yours" and "hers" and "ours," to give "mines" a whirl. It makes me smile, though, to hear that improvised double possessive -- like it's not just hers, it's reallyreallyreally hers.


6. A few days ago I was reading some old posts and came across this one where I wrote about Joe. He's my explorer, I said, and described his spontaneous visit to the neighbors at just-barely-three. Stella has an explorer streak herself. Yesterday I sent the two of them outside together, thinking they'd play ball in the yard for a few minutes. When I sent Alex out to relieve Joe, they were nowhere in sight. She had led him down to the school playground, half a mile away. I am having a little adrenaline surge remembering it. (The three of us had a talk about the capital-I Importance of telling mama before you leave the block. I love it that our kids feel comfortable navigating the neighborhood on foot, but yikes.)


7. I took Stella with me to campus today because I thought she'd be happier that way, playing at the house where she stayed on Fridays during the school year instead of staying home with a fairly new babysitter. She had forgotten, though, that it takes an hour to get to Theresa's house. About two-thirds of the way there she asked to nurse. "Siddamidda," she said emphatically. "Siddamidda?" I echoed, baffled. "Yes!" she answered, pleased that I'd understood so quickly. "Sid-a-mid-a," I repeated slowly, and then the light dawned: sit in the middle. "Darling," I said, "who will drive the car if I sit in the middle?"
   
   She was indignant. "Come on, Mom," I could see her thinking, "why are you bothering me with details? Make it so!" That's one of my favorite things about toddlers, that certainty that mom can make the magic happen. Having a teenager at the same time makes it clear that it's an evanescent certainty. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Adrenaline Edition

I hope Jen doesn't hate it when I write posts that are stories in seven parts instead of seven unrelated bits of things. This is a story in seven parts.

1. I walked to the downtown movie theater after dinner -- my husband told me I'd enjoy the movie and an evening out is always a treat. Forty-five minutes in, my phone started vibrating. "Home calling," it said. I slipped out of my seat to see what could be going on.
2. My husband almost never calls my cell -- it's been months and months. He doesn't have a cell phone; he doesn't like cell phones. He usually figures it can wait. It was weird enough that he was calling at all, even weirder that he would call when he knew I was at the movies. It was a little like seeing a police car in the driveway: it doesn't have to mean that something bad has happened, but it means you'd better pay attention. My guess was that one of the kids at home needed stitches.
3. It wasn't any of the kids at home; it was our oldest. I had dropped him off for a Scout overnight at 5:15 like the troop newsletter told me to, but there were only two other families there. (Turns out the kids were actually supposed to gather at 7:15 -- a scheduling mistake made it into the newsletter.) We couldn't get any of the scoutmasters on the phone, but one of the parents talked to a friend of his at the campsite and told us it would be fine for the boys to head out there. Another mom said she'd take Alex to the overnight for me; it's happening at a camp about 15 miles away. I thanked her and pulled away.
4. This is why my husband was concerned to receive a call from the scout who was organizing the  event, saying he didn't know where Alex was and did we? We did not.
5. My arrhythmia fired when I saw "home" on the screen of my phone, and it didn't improve as I stood there in the lobby trying to figure out what to do. My husband and I talked it through and agreed that it was most likely just a mix-up. He said he'd wait by the phone, that I should stay and watch the movie.
6. My memories of this movie are going to be pretty vague. I was trying to pray and be calm, but I am the queen of the worst-case scenario. In a ditch? In the hospital? Abducted by this apparently helpful and involved Scout mom? My imagination kept churning and my heart kept racing.
7. It took us a long time to connect with the scoutmaster in charge of the event, and the scout whose call started the whole thing wasn't answering his phone at all. But I talked to Alex 15 minutes ago: he is with his friends, alive, and not hypothermic. (Yet. He left home with no rain gear and no jacket. It's not a good night for that.) He was teasing me on the phone about my worry, saying something about "s.e..ll my ...o..rg..a..n..s" over the staticky connection. "I love you," I said, extra-loud and over-articulated in case I sounded as fuzzy to him as he did to me. Such a relief to hear his voice, crackly and indistinct but unmistakably his.

More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Speedy Sleepy Edition

1. This has been the busiest work week I've had since I started my job in August. I was working on reviewing a manuscript (submitted today!), revising an article that's due in two weeks (not done), and analyzing data for a conference presentation early next month (so so so not done). I've been working more hours than usual, but it feels good to be making progress. I have so much freedom in my job that it's easy to drift. Deadlines are good.
2. However. Between the deadlines and the Toddler Who Never Sleeps (sung to the tune of New York, New York: she wants to be a part of it...), I feel like I've been running hard. I tell you what: this little girl is the worst sleeper I've encountered yet, and none of my boys were what people think of as good sleepers. With the boy who used to be the champion sleep depriver, before his sister dethroned him with her spectacular feats of sleeplessness, I remember trying to console myself. I would say to myself, "You know, of all the things a kid could be bad at, sleeping's not the worst choice." These days-- I mean, yeah, I know technically that's a true statement but I'm not finding much consolation therein. The two of them are just wired a little differently: they seem to be missing the thing that says, "When it's dark outside, then we sleep." Stella's been waking up most nights -- suddenly going SPROING! AWAKE AWAKE AWAKE NOW! -- somewhere between 1 and 4. If it's in the early part of that window she'll re-settle eventually. If it's toward the later part, she may well be up for the day. It's been painful
3. Huh, I might need the Seven Lengthy Laments round-up instead of Seven Quick Takes.
4. I am trying: institution of bedtime snack in case she's waking up hungry, dark towels over the bedroom window, and elimination of chocolate from her diet and mine. Chocolate seems like a long shot but I've already eliminated caffeine from my coffee and she surely does act like somebody slipped her a stimulant. It started right after Easter so the timing is right for it to be chocolate. Of course I am as boring as possible in the middle of the night -- no lights, no games, nothing but boring singing and boring rocking and boring nursing and boring resting in bed or crib. Any ideas for me?
5. Do you remember a few months ago when I posted about an unexpected insight in the Adoration chapel? It's happened twice more since then: a flash of wisdom that is clearly not my own thought, once about a marriage issue and once about a work issue. Pretty cool and much appreciated.
6. Don't forget that the Baby Surprise Jacket knit-along starts Sunday! I have hardly touched my knitting needles this week because I have been working in the evenings, but I'm looking forward to a work-free Sunday in which there will be knitting.
7. When my family asks me what I'd like for Mother's Day I always tell them I'd like to have a picnic together at the nature center. It never seems to work out the way I envision it. Maybe this year? We'll see.

More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Crazy Shakespeare Project Edition

1. I am banging right along on the Crazy Shakespeare Project: twenty days, twenty acts. Even if I get sick of it in April, this was absolutely the way to read the Henry VI trilogy. It would have been so painful to read those plays at my previous one-per-year pace. I would have been all "Wait, is it Suffolk or Somerset who's having an affair with Margaret? I know it's one of those Suh-something guys. And hold on, I thought Gloucester used to be a good guy!" [Yeah, that would be because the previous Gloucester died and the title (not a name) was given to Richard of the shriveled soul.]

2. I am not much of a Shakespeare scholar -- I didn't know that the three Henry VI plays and Richard III were written as a tetralogy. Yesterday in Act V of 3 Henry VI I realized that of course I had to read Richard III next. Of course. Gulp.

3. This is the fourth time I have started Richard III. It is one of the longest plays Shakespeare wrote, and in years past I have read about half of the first scene and said, "You know, I think this is a good play to read another year." This time, dernit, I'm getting out of the first scene. My husband and I saw a performance of it in '92 or '93 and neither of us can recall anything but vague impressions: long, slow, with a diminutive ranty king and Elwood's sister in a crazy wig.

4. I've been asked a few questions about the specifics of the project. Electriclady raised the question of reading on her Nook vs. her physical Complete Works. I have been rotating from Kindle to iTouch Kindle app to physical book. The electronic versions of the plays are really cheap, ranging from free to $0.99 -- at least for the plays I've priced so far. I got all three Henry VI plays for $0.89, total. (I think it's imperative to buy an edition that lets you go right to the scene of your choosing; not all of them do.) The disadvantage to the electronic versions I've bought is that they have no footnotes, and sometimes footnotes are indispensable. I usually read on a gadget until I begin to feel frustrated by the lack of footnotes. Then I skim all the footnotes from that stretch of Kindle reading in my Complete Works, and keep going in the book until I get interrupted. I keep the iTouch in my pocket so I can read while I'm nursing the toddler or even while I'm waiting for the onion to brown. (It's caramelized, kids! Not burned [because I was trying to finish the scene], just caramelized!)

5. Speaking of interruptions and reading around a  houseful of children, another question was whether I have a set time for reading each week. I squeeze in bits wherever I can throughout the day, and usually finish up the day's act before I go to sleep. With the Kindle I can read a fair amount while I'm getting Stella settled at naptime and bedtime.

6. A couple of people have asked me about the selection of plays and their sequencing. The selection is completely idiosyncratic: the plays on my list are the ones I haven't read yet. I put them in that table in fairly random order, so I expect to jump around quite a bit.

7. Three people so far have said, "This makes me want to read Shakespeare!" To each of them I have said, "Yes! Do! Tell me all about it!" I'm having a blast with this project so far. If you're interested in reading four or more plays, you can still sign up for the Shakespeare Reading Challenge. If you just want to read a little bit of Shakespeare, I'd love to hear about it here.

Thanks to Jen for hosting Quick Takes!

Seven Quick Takes for a Saturday: Resolution Edition

1. It's the time of year for reflecting, and I can't help but think that 2010 was a productive year. I finished the PhD, decluttered my house, got all my pictures into albums (through July) got into shape (sort of. I am pretty slugly at the moment), and finished the novels of Dickens. Wheeee! It makes me say, What next?? I didn't hit my New Year's resolutions from last year, but I was aiming pretty high. Each one, it turns out, bore its own fruit, and so I'm enthusiastic about aiming high again.

2. I read a couple of really helpful books this year about discipline, change, and time use: Switch and 168 Hours. I was kind of lukewarm about 168 Hours at first, but I have continued to think about it. Laura Vanderkam is exactly right: you live your life one hour at a time, and it's easy to let the hours slip away. I was dithering about how much to tell you about Switch, and my dithering paid off -- take a look at this thorough post over at Bearing. I found it useful to think in terms of the Rider/Elephant/Path framework. Erin will tell you all about it, but it boils down to the reality that willpower is finite and you can't just will your way through change.

3. One example of how this worked for me recently is the laundry situation. I have been writing online about my laundry backlog for as long as I have been writing online, which is kind of sad, but this summer it dawned on me that I needed to get my Elephant on the team. Instead of taking baskets of clean laundry up to the guest room, where they would mysteriously not fold themselves yet again, I started leaving them in the living room. I can deal with one basket of laundry in the living room, or perhaps two if I am unusually busy, but more than that makes me intolerably twitchy -- twitchy enough that I fold it, as a matter of fact. Huzzah! (I am sure there are many of you who would frown on having a basket of unfolded laundry in the living room, but I have to tell you it beats the heck out of the Laundry Andes that used to bury the guest bed.)

So. The actual resolutions--

4. Body. First on the list is sugar, again, though I continue to struggle with how emphatically to eschew sugar in a culture that celebrates everything with sugar. I think I'll try giving up all solitary, non-celebratory sugar. I'll have a slice of my kids' birthday cakes, but I won't keep eating cake alone after they go to bed. (This might be delusional, given my history. We shall see.) I'm also planning to run 500 miles this year, or do an equivalent amount of other exercise if my aged joints give me trouble.

5. Soul. This year I am aiming to get to Mass a hundred times, although it is a little weird to count one's Mass attendance. I am also planning to talk regularly to my spiritual director about my internet usage, which continues to be a problem for me. Those Sunday Night Strategizing posts have been a fantastic self-discipline tool for me, so I'll keep them up. (I also feel a little weird about posting them here, because I think they are simultaneously boring and very personal. I'm going to scoot them over to their own blog, one I've had set up for a while, and see how that works. I'll link to them for those of you who've found them helpful, but you won't have to read them if you're tired of my to-do lists. Although-- anyone tired of my to-do lists probably stopped reading this post a couple of paragraphs ago.)

6. Mind. Remember my frustrating Shakespeare project? I am seizing the bull by the horns, resolving to finish the works of Shakespeare this year. This is ambitious, because I have 16 (or 17? must go and count when I finish this post) plays plus most of the poetry to read, but I'm going to give it a shot.

7. Family. Here my plan is to stay off the internet between the end of school and the end of dinner clean-up, and after 10:30. I also want to pray more explicitly for my kids, instead of just vaguely lifting them up.

More quick takes here.

Approximately Seven Quick Takes: Fretful Toddler Edition

1. The toddler is sleeping like a baby these days, which is to say: badly. Trouble going down for the night, trouble staying settled. I am the Putter-to-Bedder-in-Chief in my house, the Grand Poobah-rina of Wakeful Children, which means less leisure time in the evenings. This too shall pass, I know, but here's hoping it passes quickly. I am sprinting through this post so I can just call it a night if she wakes up unhappy.


2. I served the craziest dinner tonight but it worked out pretty well. Bearing-Erin linked to this recipe recently, and when we got kale and chard both in our veggie delivery today, I decided to give it a try. I thought, "What if I used it as a crepe filling, and put some leftover pumpkin in the crepes? That way if the kids hate the filling they can still have reasonably nutritious pancakes for dinner." I've been on a pumpkin tear lately, strewing muffins in my wake.


3. Pumpkin muffins: universal thumbs-up, especially with a sprinkle of chocolate chips. I use an adaptation of the muffin formula Amy Dacyczyn lays out in the Tightwad Gazette. Highly recommend getting it down pat so you never need another muffin recipe: beat two eggs and about 3/4 cup of buttermilk or clabbered milk or thinned-out yogurt. Add 2-4 tablespoons of oil or melted butter and a bit of vanilla, along with about 2/3 c. pumpkin puree. Mix well. In my version you don't need to mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl. On top of the wet ingredients dump 2 c. flour (go right ahead and sub in some flax meal, wheat germ, almond meal, etc., or use all whole grain flour -- whatever suits). On top of the flour sprinkle 1/2 t. salt and 1/2 t. lump-free baking soda (because lumps of baking soda in the finished product are so disgusting, like the anti-chocolate chip) along with spices to suit: ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, pinch of cloves, cardamom if you're feeling wild and crazy. [EDITED! Oops! This is a hazard of sprinting through recipe-writing! Also add a quarter-cup of Sucanat or the sweetener of your choice. Hope nobody tried to make these for Saturday breakfast.] Mix swiftly, emphasizing speed over lumplessness to avoid tough muffins. A handful of chocolate chips may make your crowds of muffin-eaters ooh and aah, like fireworks if fireworks were brown and melty. And edible. Not so much with the fireworks analogy, I guess. Anyway: bake in a preheated oven for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Use this approach to make any muffin under the sun, adding moist things like banana to the wet ingredients, and dry ingredients like nuts on top of the flour.


4. Part of the reason I have been especially flexible about the flour component of that muffin recipe is that we've been having trouble with Indian meal moths. They are very sneaky little suckers. I am double-wrapping and freezing and wielding my mighty mighty fly swatter with vigor and determination, and they keep surprising me. I hadn't seen any adults in a few days, after killing one every other day for a while, but tonight I found that they'd moved in on the sesame seeds. How do they get into glass jars, I wonder? I imagine them with teeny-tiny lepidopterous tunnel-boring machines.


5. So dinner worked out better than you might expect a dinner of pumpkin crepes with coconut kale filling to work out. Everybody whose age is measured in double digits ate it contentedly, and Stella nibbled happily from her bowl. The younger boys, though, weren't convinced about the kale and Pete hated the crepes too. He clung to my knees after dinner. "Please, Mama," he pleaded, "don't make me new things for dinner. Just make me old things. Like quesadillas."


6. What do you do when your kids hate what's for dinner? Our policy used to be that a boy could go quietly and get himself a slice of whole wheat bread with peanut butter. I'll tell you more about that another time -- wakeful toddler.


7. The end. More here.

Seven Quick Takes: Seven Weeks In

I realized today that I've been working at my job for seven weeks now. Time flies when you're having fun, I guess. Here are seven quick(ish) thoughts about those first seven weeks:

1. Kids are adjusting fine. I am here to send off the elementary boys three or four mornings a week, depending on the week, and I pick them up from school four or five days a week. Stella stays with my husband for my  half-day out of town, which is fine by her if exhausting for him, and with a college student who comes to our house for the morning on the days that I work from home, and with a family in the town where I work on my long day over there. I go and nurse her down at lunchtime and she seems to be happy with the arrangement. She was excited to go back today after a week away. "Teessa! Zaa!" she exclaimed when I told her where we were going. (That's "Theresa! Sarah!" for all y'all who are not fluent in Stellish.) She's having a lot of fun with their princess costumes and sparkly shoes, because sparkly shoes are thin on the ground at our house.

2. The work is really fun. I have a manuscript almost ready to hand off to some readers before I submit it to a journal, which is exciting if nervous-making. I am expanding one of my dissertation analyses to see what it looks like in a different sample of kids, and I'm jazzed about that too. I was invited to participate in a qualitative study, which is a new methodology for me. I have two postdoc mentors and they have been so SO helpful and encouraging. Today I was talking with one of them about a slightly obscure interest of mine (okay, it's probably fairly high on the obscure scale: I want to take a crack at writing code to evaluate the emergence of pluperfect in school-aged children). When I got home there were two articles in my inbox from her about emergence of present perfect in slightly younger children. So there's lots of support and enthusiasm for my work, which is invaluable.

3. A small part of the job is admin stuff, which is not my favorite thing to do but I can't complain. I have to track down the previously funded people to make sure they're fulfilling their service obligations, for instance, but most of them are friends of mine and I am looking forward to checking in with them. If the yuckiest part of your job is still something to look forward to, that's a pretty good job.

4. I got a nasty letter from a publisher last week. Remember when I wrote a grant in the spring? I've been planning a study that looks at the reliability of an instrument widely used by clinicians. I wrote to the publisher requesting permission to use part of the instrument in an online study and got a response that blew my hair back. (Addressed, infuriatingly, to Dr. Moist Gladly -- come on, guys, you can spell my name correctly when you make veiled threats in my direction.) I am talking to the university legal office about the situation, because I think (a) the "fair use" clause covers me and (b) the publishers are mostly trying to cover up the author's dearth of reliability data. I don't have my heart set on doing the study -- this started as a way for me to get some practice writing a grant and getting IRB approval for a project -- so I'm mostly interested to see how it unfolds. How will copyright law and academic freedom intersect, especially given the university's desire to cover its figurative butt? Stay tuned.

5. Occasionally I wish I were a little more involved on campus. There are a million cool ways to be plugged in and I keep reading about them on the email list for postdocs affiliated with the neuroscience program. There are lectures to attend and well-known speakers to take out to pre-lecture breakfasts and research chats and neuroscience-oriented outreach to kids in the community and lots more. There are also, however, five kids in our community an hour away from campus, five kids who need their mom. So.

6. I am thinking uncertainly about next year already. I can probably renew my contract for a second year. There's some expectation that I'll be applying for faculty jobs for next year, but [whispers] I don't think I want a faculty job for next year. I am very happy with my low-stress no-tenure-clock no-teaching-responsibilities job.

7. One of the bits of Laura Vanderkam's book that I liked was they way she writes about finding your dream job: what kind of work would you do even if you didn't get paid for it? Academics get flak from many different quarters: commentators on Fox News say academics are a bunch of godless liberals; pragmatists say academics are ivory tower denizens who couldn't hack it in the business world. This week I am all filled up with a happy vision of my purpose at work: I get to investigate my ideas about how kids learn to communicate, one of the things I am most passionate about. I get to solve the puzzles involved in getting computers to do the stats and the boring bits of my language sample analyses. (I should revisit this post the next time I am exasperated with my stats program. I will not be saying "I get to solve the puzzles" at that point.) I get to write about my ideas so other people who are passionate about children's communication can keep nudging our understanding of human language forward.

And I get paid for it. It doesn't get much better than that.

More quick takes.

Seven Quick Takes: Things That Are Making Me Crazy Edition

1. Evening activities. I have three boys in soccer this year, which means four dinnertime practices and a coach who is lobbying for a fifth. Ai yi yi. Also: Scouts, confirmation prep, and games club, all starting between 6 and 6:30. Dislike!
2. My hair. It is falling out left and right, with the result that it looks like goats have been chewing on it. It is EVERYWHERE. I was cutting my hair out of the vacuum cleaner's beater brush on Monday and thinking, "If anyone else in this house left this much hair in his (or her) wake, I would REQUIRE him (or her) to go get a buzz cut." Also: the Nexxus people have reformulated Humectress. I have been a loyal Humectress customer since I was in high school, because it was like Haldol for my crazy hair. Harrumph.
3. My heart. The littlest things have been triggering my arrhythmia. I feel tense so I have more arrhythmia episodes and the feeling of my flying heart makes me tense.
4. A general dearth of fun. I am not exercising because the last time I went for a run it made my chest hurt, which raised some red flags for me in light of this recent change in my arrhythmia. I am not blogging and I do love to blog. I am hardly seeing my friends at all. I have a super-fun knitting project in progress (Kernel in peacock blue Malabrigo with extra beads -- love it), but the baby who usually knows not to mess with Mama's knitting thinks that Mama's knitting + beads is a completely different ballgame, one which she should be allowed to play. This is not, in case you wondered, conducive to lace-knitting.
5. Bedtime. I am spending a lot of time getting the toddler to sleep. By the time the big boys are in bed I just want to wrap the quiet around me like a superhero cape and jump off the back of the couch in elation because the house is finally still. This would not be a completely crazy idea (only a moderately crazy one) except I want to keep doing this (figuratively, you understand) until 11:00. Which is too late for me to go to bed if I hope to be pleasant and smiley the next morning.
6. School transition stuff. My son who gets some special ed support has a new teacher who thinks his problem is just that he just needs to slow down and try harder. This makes me ever so slightly ballistic. I am talking to the special ed teacher about how to approach it so I don't burn any bridges with the classroom teacher, but GRRRRR. My kindergartner needs a little extra help learning to get himself off to school with a reasonable lunch and off to soccer practice with all of his gear. He doesn't make me crazy in the slightest (I could eat that boy UP with a spoon and then a straw for the melty bits after (which might sound even crazier than jumping off my couch while pretending to be Quiet Queen, faster than a speeding sound wave, but it's late at night and you are getting the unexpurgated me to think of what you will (and how's that for a run-on parenthetical construction?))), but I keep forgetting that I need to allow some extra time for it.
7. My secret fear that I am hopelessly lazy and that's why I'm having a hard time getting a paper drafted for publication. There's this balance in academic writing that's kind of tricky for me. You have to leave yourself enough time to think, because you're writing stuff that requires thought. But you have to keep moving forward, even if you write "must find out more about this part" and "aagghhh why am I such a terrible writer?" as placeholders. If you don't, you find yourself (or at least I find myself) sliding over to Google Reader instead of doing the hard work of thinking and getting the words down in a row. Blech.

Things I am going to do in order to feel less crazy (am I going to get booted out of 7 Quick Takes if I have 14 things?):

1. Email the other parents on all three soccer teams to see if anyone might like to carpool. Email the other Boy Scout mom in the neighborhood, ditto. People don't seem to carpool for those activities but BOY I wish they did. Also: serve "tea" at 4:15 (in lieu of dinner at a reasonable person's dinnertime), featuring new-to-me low-stress recipes from this blog. Elwood doesn't get home until after 6, and it will be good to have something that can wait in the crockpot and stay warm for him.
2. Go get three inches of hair cut off, somewhere besides the cheap neighborhood place I usually go. If not this weekend, Tuesday night.
3. Bite the bullet and make a doctor's appt. Add "take beta blocker" to my list of morning tasks so I stop forgetting.
4. Do a time log. I have been meaning to blog about Laura Vanderkam's book, and this week is especially timely. Remind myself that I don't have to run hard for 30 minutes to get some benefit from exercise: I can bike over to church instead of driving. I can do a few dozen push-ups. Cast on something simple and pretty so I can knit in spare moments when the toddler's on the loose, instead of thinking wistfully about the beaded project.
5. Start teaching the baby to fall asleep while I rock her (instead of walking her or driving her). Tuck Joe in earlier and give him permission to read by flashlight for half an hour, so I don't miss the baby's sleepy window. Send the big boys to bed half an hour earlier with permission to read for a bit. Tie myself up with baling twine and drop-kick the resulting bundle of procrastination into bed by 10:30.
6. Get the email out of the draft folder and into the special ed teacher's mailbox. She has surely dealt with this many times before.
7. Finish an article draft by Wednesday -- just crank it out in git-'er-done mode, giving myself permission to write atrocious-sounding sentences in the pursuit of a finished first draft.

I'll udpate Sunday. More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Escapist Edition

It's the last day of summer. On Monday my kids go back to school and on Tuesday I start my postdoc. Which makes it only sort of the last day of summer -- there's still the weekend -- but it's our last lazy lounge-y weekday. I am having a serenity FAIL, so let me tell you about my summer non-Dickens reading instead of indulging my stressballness.

1. For my 40th birthday, my husband gave me a Kindle. I am by nature a late adopter and I would never, but never, have bought myself a Kindle. I said thanks rather wanly, and was surprised to discover that I love the thing. I love being able to look up words and references painlessly as I go. The built-in dictionary is pretty limited, and if I am stumped by a word it probably will be too, but it's unexpectedly satisfying to have internet access to answer questions on the spot. Pages load fairly slowly, which keeps me from getting sidetracked by link-chaining as I often do with a speedy connection. I also love the highlight function, since I am an inveterate turner-downer of pages and underliner of favorite quotes. This lets me keep them all in one place, with a search function. I also like seeing other people's highlights; it gives me a cozy feeling to be visibly part of a community of readers. And (this one is kind of embarrassing) I love the bar at the bottom that shows me how far along I am. Whenever I read a book I am constantly calculating how far I am into it. The Kindle does it for me and I never have to pause at a tender moment to divide 148 by 567 in my head. 

2. Good Books About Smart Misfit Kids. The first book I read on the Kindle was The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which was so, SO much fun. It's reminiscent of Agatha Christie, but chiefly because of its setting. I can't remember when I've enjoyed a character more than Flavia de Luce; I'm glad she's going to have her own series. In real-book format I read a couple of other books that fit this same theme: Born on a Blue Day, a memoir by a man with Asperger's, and The Last Samurai, which my husband picked out for me at the used bookstore. I thought I would just read the first few chapters to be polite but then I gobbled up all 500 pages with intemperate glee. (Are you noticing a theme here, about my husband and his right-on gifts?)

3. Another Book About Smart Misfit Kids. Oh my goodness, I hated The Magicians. For most of the book I could handle the bleakness because it kept looking like there were bits of hope for the main character. The writing is really good too, and I could sympathize with Quentin, a smart loner who grew up loving a fictional series of books about a fantasy world. And then -- this is sort of a spoiler, but then the endpapers are sort of a spoiler -- there is a hideous plot twist. It's as if you went to Narnia and it was a land of anomie and despair. Even worse -- (this bit is definitely spoiler-y so I'm changing the font color; just highlight with your mouse if you want to read it) it's as if the Pevensies had transformed Narnia into a land of anomie and despair. At this point I was 400 pages in, so I kept plugging. The tacked-on implausible ending made me want to fling it across the room.

4. Books About Unexpected Mercy. A Severe Mercy had been on my TBR list for years and I finally got to it this summer. Lit turned into one of those books that I kept seeing everywhere I turned until I finally bought it for my Kindle. (That free sample thing could be dangerous. Pushers everywhere know how to get their customers hooked, I guess.) I am struggling here to say something non-cliched about these books and coming up empty. Gripping. Funny (Lit, not A Severe Mercy.). They reminded me that God is bigger than I tend to think He is. In particular, the blue-chalk Bible story in Lit sent shivers down my spine. (Typing that reminds me of another thing I like about the Kindle: the search function. You can use it for purposes both pragmatic and petty -- when you can't remember, say, which character Joe is, or when you think to yourself, "Didn't he just use that selfsame obscure word in the last chapter?")

5. Easy Reads, Good and Bad. I find Joshilyn Jackson's books both hilarious and un-put-down-able, and so I was looking forward to the release of Backseat Saints. It did not disappoint. I also enjoyed Lady's Hands, Lion's Heart, a midwife's memoir reviewed here. Back in June I picked up Commencement on a whim. Quick read, dreadful book; included here only for the sake of completeness.

6. Fascinating and Scary. I read Fruitless Fall on Lissa's recommendation. Loved it, even as I was horrified by it. Highly recommended to anyone with the slightest interest in food and eating. I'm still kicking around the idea of tucking a hive of bees into a corner of our backyard, though I suspect the neighbors would grouse. (Also perhaps my husband and children would grouse.)

7. Kid Read-Alouds. I read Watership Down to my three middle kids this summer. It was a bit of a battle, with one complaining that it was too boring, one begging to read more, and one who was a bit too young for it but who didn't want to be left out. Well worth the effort, though. I had to stop for a minute to cry during the epilogue ("...the stranger's ears were shining...") and they all piled in around me, patting me and saying, "Mom! Mom, it's okay! Don't cry, Mom!" Lovely memories. Now we're three chapters into Treasure Island, which has been easier so far.

More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Really Really Speedy Edition

1. I just submitted a grant proposal.

2. That's why I've been scarce.

3. It was surprisingly fun to say, "You should give me thousands of dollars, and here's how I'm going to spend it all." I started the proposal out of a sense of obligation -- grant-writing is a skill I ought to develop -- but I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would.

4. I asked my advisor for a simple (required) letter saying that this project I'm proposing wouldn't interfere with my work duties next year, and she wrote the very nicest, most enthusiastic letter you could imagine. You should totally give that money to Dr. Gladly, she told them, because she will spend it very wisely.

5. Dr. Gladly. It's going to take me awhile to get used to that.

6. I am resurrecting The Vegetable Project, about which more soon.

7. Dishes call.

More quick takes.

Seven Quick Takes: Tempus Fugit Edition

1. Tomorrow, friends, I am posting my BIG list (that's the Butt-In-Gear list -- things I am going to do before I turn 40). I created it on the 19th of March and I've been procrastinating about posting its whereabouts. It's like once I post it on the internet, I have to do it or else look silly.

I hate looking silly. One could argue that it is worse to be silly, whether or not the internet knows it, than to look silly to a bunch of mostly strangers on the internet, but LA LA LA I'm not going to think about that right now.

2. Elizabeth Foss just posted that she never wastes time. Oh, I wish I never wasted time. Why I am I more willing to get behind on folding laundry than to get behind on RSS feeds?

I think one of the tasks on my list needs to be to teach my children to fold laundry to my specifications. Cheerfully. I need to get better at delegating.

3. Today there is no school and I am going to recruit my children to help with some cleaning and organizing. Goals: finish the reorganization of the dining room and the play room. Also, make some progress on the grant I am writing. Also, do some prep work for the two parties we're having this weekend. And write some thank-you notes and work on finishing up some Cub Scout stuff. And maybe warp the space-time continuum because I have trouble with manageable to-do lists.

4. The baby is in a really needy stage. Really really really needy: sick, teething, taking off her diaper at every opportunity. She is a triple handful this week and I only have two hands.

Maybe I could get an extra hand or two grafted on.

Or maybe I could accept that I'm not going to get a whole lot done until that last molar is through and the green snot faucet dries up.

5. I think the RSVP is a lost art. For the two parties this weekend I've received a total of six RSVPs, including two from the grandparents. I have no idea how many gift bags to make up for tomorrow. We might have two guests or we might have twelve.

6. The second party is for Joe's First Communion. Darling Joe -- I keep thinking about the day he was born. He keeps reminding me that he wants to go to confession tomorrow. "I want my soul and my body to be clean for my First Communion," he says. Can do, sweetie. He's come a long way -- here are two posts from the old blog about taking Joe to Mass as a 2- and 3-year-old. He was an octuple handful in those days. (That deacon's homily was probably my most embarrassing moment as a mother. So far, at least.)

7. Baby just climbed into my lap and fell asleep. How about that? Time to get to work.

More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Burning Down The House Edition

1. We had lamb for Easter. It's always lamb; this time we did a slow braise with a leg of lamb on top of small white beans and veggies. The only pan big enough to accommodate everything was a foil pan that wasn't very sturdy.

It was sturdy enough for me to get it in there, but later in the day I moved it lower in the oven so I could bake a chocolate-raspberry cake on the top rack. It wasn't sturdy enough for that, and winy bean broth with minced onions sloshed onto the oven floor. Rather a lot of bean broth, which soon became charred bean broth. The house got smoky and we turned on the fans. No problem.

2. On Wednesday of last week I cranked up the oven. I was going to bake sweet potatoes and roast asparagus, so I wanted it pretty hot. I slipped in my tray of sweet potatoes and went to play in the yard with the toddler. (She wants to be outside ALL the time these days.) "What's that beeping noise?" I thought to myself a few minutes later.

As you will doubtless have guessed, the beeping noise was the smoke alarm. It's much quieter in the yard, but after a few minutes the light dawned and I went inside to see what the deal was. It was quite smoky and getting smokier. I peeked inside the oven--

--and saw flames. "Hm," I said to myself, "that's not good." I shut off the oven, thinking that the combination of no gas and a closed oven door would quickly put out the fire. Except it didn't-- when I peeked again a little later the flames were higher. "Hm," I said to myself, "that's really not good." How not-good was it? Fire extinguisher not-good? Fire department not-good? Just wait and see not-good? The doorbell rang.

3. Pete had been playing at a friend's house and the mom had just brought him home. "Hi," I said, "could he stay on the porch for a minute with you? There's a fire in my oven."

Somehow saying it aloud made it much more real and I started to feel a little trembly: I had started a fire in my oven and it wasn't just going out like I had hoped.

Mercifully the friend's mom was not at all trembly. She said, "Oh, do you have a fire extinguisher?" We got the fire extinguisher and she was poised to spray. She said, "Are you sure you want me to do this? It's going to make a mess."

I wasn't sure. It was SO helpful -- providentially helpful -- to have someone there thinking along the same lines without the emotional baggage of "all my kids are in this house and I seem to have started a fire a fire a fire a fire in my house my house my house my house."

4. [WAIT! We interrupt this post with an AHA! moment. There's been this irksome low buzzing-humming noise in my house for the past couple of days. Was it a computer? Was it the turtle tank filter in need of attention? I just figured it out: it was the speaker. The toddler turned the volume knob for that speaker all the way to 11 and that was the problem. She gets around, that Stella does.]

5. We peeked again and the flames were lower. We agreed that we could give it another few minutes without risking a fearsome conflagration.

The fire went out, leaving the house full of haze and me very wobbly with adrenaline.

At the other mom's suggestion I sent the kids outside. The middle boys were playing in the room over the porch where the Legos live, and didn't hear me calling from downstairs. I stormed upstairs. "I am summoning you outside URGENTLY because we had a FIRE in our kitchen, and you are playing with Legos as if it doesn't matter to you!" They both got a little panicky ("We couldn't hear you! a fire? A FIRE?") and I felt dreadful.

I ordered a pizza from the front yard and piled them in the van. When we got downtown I said to my husband (who had come home from the bus stop as we were leaving), "Wait, I'm having a moment of panic that something is still smoldering in there and it's going to ignite while we're out eating pizza." I ran back home to check. It was fine, of course. But it shook me up to see flames in my oven, flames that grew when I cut off the gas.

6. I cleaned off the plate that goes over the igniter, and I haven't had any further trouble. (Though you'd better believe I was watching like a hawk the first time I turned it on again.) I've been using it a lot this week because we had a crazy surfeit of eggs: broccoli quiches on Tuesday, spinach souffle on Wednesday, spaghetti pie last night.

But.

The boys asked me for homemade pizza tonight and I agreed. Only later did I remember that you're supposed to bake pizza crust at 500 degrees.

Do I dare?

7. I'll let you know what happens.

More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Astonished Edition

1. In the wee small hours of yesterday morning, I sent the dissertation off to my committee. They have two weeks to read it, and then on March 10 they will convene. I will present for about an hour and they will grill me for about an hour, and then they will decide whether or not I pass. Passing is the most likely outcome. My advisor wouldn't have let me proceed if she had any doubts, because it would be really bad for her tenure case if I failed and also because she is a really kind person who would never set me up for failure. Me, though, I am seizing the opportunity to be doubtful because that's how my anxious little brain seems to operate. Part of me can't believe it: I wrote a dissertation. I'm almost finished with my Ph.D.
2. To celebrate I went out and bought sock yarn. Two skeins, because I know how to live it up. Then I came home and organized my yarn. (My husband is going to sigh a sad little sigh when he reads that part. Right now our house looks like its keeper has been completing a dissertation and mothering five children, with not much time to spare for filing or culling magazines or tidying the back entryway where the feral shoes are nesting and plotting house-wide hegemony. There are many things that need organizing around here, and the yarn was not what you'd call a pressing organizational need. But it makes me happy to have my stash organized.)
3. It is perhaps a little wacky that I then made myself a knitting to-do list. I have been doing the Ravelympics (because hey, wrapping up a dissertation isn't enough to fill my time here in the last half of February), and I am going to have to sprint to the finish line. I am making a little Tomten Jacket and while I have all kinds of embellishments in mind for it (applied I-cord edging! afterthought pockets! little felt flowers appliqued around the bottom!), I am going to be happy to get the seams sewn and the zipper in by Sunday evening when the Olympics end. 
4. All this time spent writing and revising has made me weary of the sound of my own voice. It also makes me glad I'm not writing a dissertation in the humanities! Kudos to Lilian and blogless Rachel (who should totally start a blog) -- I don't think I could do it. I had good intentions about replying to all of your encouraging comments (I still have good intentions about that), but I was tired of hearing myself yammer on. And on.
5.  I am struck by the irony of continuing to blog when I am complaining about the sound of my own voice.
6. And when my house looks like its organizational scheme was dreamed up by Cornish pixies run amok. (Was it Cornish pixies that wreaked havoc in Chamber of Secrets?)
7. So we'll make these last takes really really quick. Thank you, everybody, for all of your encouragement. It's been such a help to me.

Seven Quick Takes: Piecemeal Edition

1. My 10yo had a big project due today, and we were working until bedtime last night to get all the parts and pieces printed out and presented neatly. When we finished, he sighed with relief. He said, "Mom, have you ever had a big project and a deadline and you weren't sure if you could get it finished?" I said, "Yes, darling, I sure have."


2. Are you sick of hearing about my dissertation? Do you wish I would stop grousing about it? Believe me, I am SO ready to stop talking about my dissertation. But it is crunch time, crunchy crunchy crunch time, and I am crunching away. Today I am trying to get chapter 4 revised. I have five chunks left, and I am going to write a quick take each time I finish one. Watch this space -- I'll see if I can get it finished by bedtime.


3. I had a moment of blogger's regret when I realized that my oldest son had commented on my MathCounts post without reading the other comments. I felt churlish for not responding (belatedly, thank you all for the congratulations and good wishes and reminiscences), and especially about not remembering that Tracy had mentioned the "mathlete" thing. I asked him if he might like to comment again after reading the nice things people said about him, and he said, "This is why I don't want you to blog about me." SIGH.
   
   If you have wondered why I rarely blog about my sons, it's because my oldest went through a stretch where he didn't want me to write about him at all, and I realized how quickly his brothers would be the same age. I remember WRITHING in embarrassment when I was in junior high and my mother talked to one of her friends about me. Imagine if she had posted it on the web! It makes a person grateful to have come of age in the era of carrier pigeons. More or less.
   
   I mostly blog about the baby because if she does get to junior high and say, "How could you write about me like that? All those posts about how cute I was and how much you all loved me?" -- then I will tell her as lovingly as possible to get a grip. And I won't even feel guilty about it.


4. On the subject of blogging about kids, it's hard to know what to blog without seeming braggy. If I restrict myself from talking about our struggles, then I'm left with telling you how super-awesome my kids are. And of course they are super-awesome, but they're also real kids and they make real messes and they do things that leave me spluttering real splutters. It's a tricky balance.


5. For instance: they're really into numbers. Rob commented about thinking that "8!" in the supergeek post meant 8 factorial. They love factorials. They talk about them all the time. On the playground last fall, a kid said to Joe, "My dad could beat up your dad!" Joe said, "As if! I bet your dad doesn't even know what 8 factorial is!" I was astonished the day before yesterday, when the 10yo asked him, "What's 8 factorial?" and Joe answered right away: 40,320. Weird, huh?
   
   It's hard to get the tone right, to make it clear that I am not saying "Behold, my genius children" -- only trying to share a snapshot of life in our family, where we all like numbers but where I am on my fourth attempt to tape the dryer vent back together. We're not so much with the handy around here, about which more later.


6. Our dryer wasn't working right. It would get hot and spin the clothes around, but it took them forever to dry. So I took it apart. (She said modestly, secretly pleased with her hexhead-screwdriver-wielding self.) Inside I found enough lint to make a baby sweater, enough change to buy a cup of coffee (in 1990), and enough buttons to open a haberdashery. (A very small haberdashery.) Also, an assortment of Lego pieces and rocks.
   
   The dryer works much better now, except I have to tape the vent hose again. You would think that duct tape would be just the thing for taping ducts, but it doesn't hold. I have new tape and steely resolve -- not to mention an alarming pile of laundry. If the PhD thing doesn't work out, maybe I can go into dryer repair.


7. My brain hurts. Revising is slow. The end.

More quick takes, most of which are probably finished, are here.

Seven Quick Takes: The Edition In Which I Break Out My Imaginary Lasso

1. It was SO helpful to me to post that list yesterday. When I was tempted to get discouraged or off-task, I kept my eyes on the prize: <s>. I don't know what it says about me that I am so motivated by crossing things off lists, but I am.


2. When I posted it, I thought I would get it all done in one day. I don't know what it says about me that I consistently have completely unreasonable expectations for myself, but I do.


3. On the subject of completely unreasonable expectations, remember my New Year's resolutions? FlyLady got flung under the dissertation bus and my daily decade average is probably only in the high single digits, but I had been doing well with not eating sugar until the weekend. And then blam -- it always takes me by surprise, how much worse I feel when I start eating sugar again. Energy, equilibrium, everything. Blech.


4. On the subject of blech, I have to revise my results chapter this weekend and there are so many things I'd rather do. Organize the basement! Replace the annoying flapper valve on the downstairs toilet! Clean out the dryer lint hose! Have a recreational root canal! Go through childbirth! At least after childbirth you get a baby. My dissertation is not going to be very cute or very cuddly. If I lie down and die of dissertationosis in the next couple of weeks, put it on my tombstone: Here Lies Jamie, Done In By Figures 3.1 and 3.2 Because Lordy They Just Would Not Cooperate.


5. Sorry, this quick takes post has been interrupted by the search for a lasso with which to rein in my inner drama queen.


6. Huh, with my inner drama queen tied up (imagine Miss Piggy in one of the Muppet movies, tossing her hair and squealing and demanding to be freed in order to write more epitaphs for herself), I don't have very much to say.


7. How about a baby story? With all of my babies I have played a silly game. I ease them down over my shoulder, holding their ankles as they dangle down my back, and say, "Oh, dear, I've lost my baby! Where could he be? I'd better look around for him." Then I turn around in gentle circles and usually the upside-down baby giggles at silly Mama. Holding on very carefully, I say, "Oh, no, I've lost my baby AND there's a big LUMP on my back. What could it be?" I slide them down all the way until we can peek at each other through my knees. (I am doing a terrible job of explaining this.) I say, "OH, it's YOU! I'm so glad to see you!" and we both laugh as I set them down on the floor.
   
   Stella does not think this is a fun game. She clings to my back like some kind of fierce little marsupial and will not slide down. I have almost given up trying it with her, but the boys and I had so much fun with it when they were toddlers. I want to tell her, "If you could relax a little, sweetie, and trust that you were in good hands, you would have more fun."
   
   Which could be a lesson for her mother as well.

More quick takes here.

Seven Quick Takes: Parasite Edition

1. Many thanks to JeCaThRe for the Cetaphil suggestion. I treated all five kids on Saturday; haven't spotted any lice, either alive or dead, since Friday. I am girding my loins to repeat the treatment tomorrow. It takes a l-o-n-g time to get all five heads coated and combed out and blown dry.

2. I am continuing my efforts to smother any lice with the temerity to transgress upon my head. Every other night I saturate my scalp with olive oil. I use almost a cup, which is a whole lot of olive oil but I have a whole lot of hair. Then I cover my hair in plastic wrap and cover the plastic wrap with a towel, and head to bed. I had been thinking that I smelled like salad, and then my MIL brought me 30 pages of home remedies for lice -- one of which was a vinegar rinse. That could almost go on a restaurant menu: this salad features delicate tendrils lightly coated with olive oil. You'll enjoy the subtle vinegary tang and the faint crunch of exotic phthiraptera eggs.

3. ICK ICK ICK. Sorry. If I don't laugh I might cry, so I keep looking for the funny. I have been musing that I would probably rather have lice in my house than mice in my house. Lordy, do I hate mice. Isn't it weird that in this country we have two giant theme parks dedicated to animals that sneak into our homes and defecate in our food and run across our feet while we sit peacefully reading our email? (Not that I've been scarred for life or anything.) Imagine if Walt Disney had sketched a Rickey Louse instead of a Mickey Mouse. Annette Funicello could have had a cute little beanie with a pair of giant lice jutting out in lieu of ears. Am I a marketing genius or what?

4. It's interesting to me that lice have such a high ick factor when we don't lose our minds about, say, mosquitoes, which also suck our blood and make us itch. Or even fleas or ticks. I am grateful that I read the Aubrey-Maturin series this summer because I am certain I would have been more freaked out about the lice otherwise. At least I don't have any weevils in my biscuit. If you could pick your parasites, how would you rank them?

5. This post is making me itch.

6. Silver lining #1: Last Friday I was not laughing about any of this. I was hugely upset at the prospect of having things CRAWLING on my SCALP and I shuddered my way through my shower feeling grateful that I am too nearsighted to see anything that might or might not be falling off my head as I scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed some more. I combed and combed and combed under the water, tugging out fistfuls of hair. I was feeling decidedly sorry for myself until I remembered St. Clare, cutting off all of her beautiful curls to embrace Lady Poverty. I resolved to get a grip but do you know what? All of these hot oil treatments have been good for my hair. It's all shiny and curly, and my hair is thick enough that you'd never miss the odd fistful. Go figure.

7. Silver lining #2: my friend around the corner offered to help me go through my hair with a nit comb. In the moment I was so busy wringing my hands that it didn't really register: she offered of her own free will to go strand by strand through my potentially lousy hair. I said no thank you, opting for the ignorance-is-bliss salad-head approach instead, but wow. That's a true friend.

Eek, this is more than anyone really wants to know about my hair. More quick takes here.