Posts I’ve Written About My Work/School/Parenting
The Big Update
I dropped out of my master’s program! (we’ll get to that) It has been about six months since my last update on this blog. There were many days when I thought I should write something but never got around to it. A lot has changed and I have needed to adapt in response. It honestly hasn’t left much room for any discretionary activities like blogging. We went back to homeschooling the teenagers. They were excited to go back to school and were going to one of the best public schools in our area. They made friends right away and were…
Finally Successful
I finally had a completely successful day collecting data! I fully charged the batteries before heading out. I didn’t forget my badge at home, so I was able to access the lab. I made it to all three roofs without succumbing to heat exhaustion. I remembered to adjust settings on the equipment for each collar before starting the sample. I got an entire, usable data set! I got home, showered the sweat crust off of myself and crawled in bed. From under my quilt, I called the vet about my elderly, sick dog, barely managed to stay awake long enough…
Getting Up Again
You might have noticed (from my previous post) that I was having a sad. This is what I call my occasional encounters with acute depression. When I am in that space, it feels like everything is much more difficult than it objectively is, or even impossible, and simultaneously pointless. Why would anyone bother doing something so difficult if it might turn out to be impossible and even if it’s not, it won’t matter that you did it? I feel that it is necessary to prepare you for what I am about to say. I am not, in any way, suggesting…
A Minor Crisis of Purpose
I just took the midterm for my second summer class yesterday. I just came home from my second vacation also. I’m relieved to finally venture out to see family again. What a privilege to have these people in my life and to be able to visit them! Still, I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed by everything right now. I started trying to collect data from my research sites, but I’m encountering all kinds of hurdles. I’ve been unable to collect complete data due to dead batteries, extreme heat, and my surprise when it turns out I can’t actually carry that much weight…
A First Look
Yesterday, I hustled around downtown looking at green roofs with my advisor. There are three being included in my study. I considered some others, but it seemed like it would potentially be prohibitively difficult to access roofs on residential buildings, and I found one on a courthouse but couldn’t seem to figure out how to contact anyone about it. The three roofs are all unique! I wouldn’t have guessed that from the google earth views I used to locate them. They’re all fairly established (have been installed for several years), but the approach is different for each one. This dramatically…
My experience with ADHD
I recently overheard my MIL telling my husband that she has heard me say that I have ADHD, but she just doesn’t see it in me. My ex-husband has apparently also told our diagnosed daughter that he doesn’t see ADHD or ASD in her. This seems to be a pretty common experience for people observing people like us from the outside. I can’t recall any previous noticeable instance of someone questioning my mental health experience. Of course, my whole childhood is littered with, “try harder”, “pay attention”, “just do the work”, and “I don’t understand. You’re so smart!” When I…
School and More School
Today was the first day of the second semester of my grad school program. That’s a heck of a sentence. I’m taking two masters-level classes, working part time for one of my professors, homeschooling all four of my kids, and trying not to fall apart. With dentist, doctors, and various therapy appointments… I have described this situation like this: “my calendar looks like I tried to sweep confetti out of the carpet with a fork.” Again, I find myself endlessly thankful that my partner has a pretty flexible work schedule and a can-do attitude. However, even if he takes someone…
But Why?
I want to do a bit of a deep dive into why I’m doing all of this. I want you to know, and I also want to be able to look back on this when I’m really questioning myself. I wrote those first two sentences in March, then I tucked this draft away into the dusty recesses of the internet and probably didn’t even look at it again until today… Friday, December 18. It probably would have been a great exercise. I certainly had good, productive, self-aware intentions. Self-care is hard. Remember March? People in the US were already getting…
The COVID Remodel
Everyone’s doing DIY projects while they’re stuck at home, staring at the ugly trim in the living room, or the messy closet floor. I’ve been knitting and crocheting dish rags and blankets and I just started knitting what will hopefully turn out to be my first sweater. At the same time, we’ve got a contractor (just one) coming to our house most days to work on several projects we’ve been meaning to throw money at for years. Turning the twins’ room into two rooms. They’ve been wanting more personalized spaces and more privacy for a while. This year, for their…
Summer Dreams
Juno is better. It wasn’t cancer or poison… it was immune-mediated hemolytic anemia. She’s destroying her own blood cells for no discernible reason. So she’s been on a bunch of medications and on a pretty tight schedule of vet visits, and her red blood cell count is back up to normal. Which means she’s back to obsessively whining and barking at other dogs when we go on walks, stealing chicken nuggets when she thinks no one is looking, and chasing squirrels. Which means we have to get back to pushing plates to the middle of the table when we walk…
All is Well… Too Well
As I sit on the couch, putting my thoughts into a blog, my 7-year-old is watching Magic School Bus across the room. In their respective rooms, my other kids are programming, writing stories, and doing math. Today, everyone seems happy to do their work. Yesterday, however, the youngest was literally yelling about wanting “just ONE day off!” as though I’m some kind of tyrant when in reality, they’re getting weekends off and every day is a half day as long as they do their work when they’re asked to. In spite of the fact that the older kids have avoided…
Get Out!
Winter is really tough in this house. It’s a four-bedroom, ranch style house built several decades ago. Since it was built, the garage has been converted into a large bedroom and an even bigger extension was added to the back, blocking all direct sunlight from what is now the middle of the house. That’s where my computer is. We have a pretty big yard. That’s where we all go to get away from the confines of the house. My middle child and I sometimes garden, my son and the dogs play, and my older daughters like to lounge in hammocks…
I Hate Shopping!
It’s the Sunday before Spring Break and I’m super spent. We’re going on an awesome vacation for the whole week that the kids have off! It’s gonna be sunny and oceany and awesome! But I realized a couple of weeks ago that we hadn’t done any of the kids’ “warm weather clothes” shopping. So, of course, instead of doing the shopping here and there over the course of those couple of weeks… we did it ALL yesterday! To be fair, the girls spent last weekend with their dad, and taking people clothes shopping after school is basically impossible. Also, I’m…
Lists
Well, it’s the first Friday after my acceptance of acceptance to the masters degree program I chose, and to get myself off to a good start with this little accountability experiment of mine, I want to crank out a post about how I keep myself accountable. I love lists. Calendars, which I think of as chronological lists, also seriously improve my life. I have a whiteboard where I write household tasks that need remembering (like I need to report that crack in my windshield to my insurance company), and a scattering of other helpful lists all over my house. I…
Acceptance
Today, I sent a letter to a university to indicate my acceptance of their acceptance of me. It sounds ridiculous when I put it that way. What I’m really saying is I applied to a master’s program and was accepted! Today, I confirmed my interest in the program, and I start in the fall! I just finished my bachelor’s degree in biology and am starting my master’s in environmental science. I hope to eventually get my PhD in urban ecology, but maybe I’ll have a career in there somewhere since a PhD will probably land me squarely in professor-zone. I…
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