Someday I’ll be Dr. Monkey

So, I’m starting grad school. Officially. Loans requested, classes registered for, a plan coming together and, mostly, a sense of going to the place that will work well for me right now. I ended up applying for the dream school referenced in this post https://athleticmonkey.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/the-pragmatic-chicken/ and was denied for admission, which wasn’t surprising but was still disappointing. I got into all the other programs I applied for however and will be starting classes THIS WEEK (picture a a slightly manic and panicked look on my face as you read that as I also have about 1000 other things to do this week and am not totally sure how it will all fit together) at the school that made the most geographic and financial sense for me.

I met with my advisor earlier this week and we laid out an ambitious but hopefully doable plan that gets me wrapped up in 2015…or 2016…I’m trying to be realistic about what the whole balancing life/work/dissertation writing will be like.

My little Bobo has four more days of preschool and then will start kindergarten this fall. Perhaps we’ll do our homework together in the next couple of years. I think sometimes about the fact that he is edging into the territory where he’s old enough that he’ll start remembering some of the things that happen now (my earliest memories are from around age 4/5). I wonder how he’ll remember this. Will he remember the nights that I won’t be home to kiss him goodnight because I’ll have class or will he remember the calming sounds of his beloved Dada reading him The Wind in the Willows at bedtime? Will he remember the times I’ll need to escape to the coffee shop to do school work or will he remember how we’d still go swimming on Sunday mornings, shivering together in the chilly pool water, neither of us wanting to get out?

I hope, very much, that he’ll remember our upcoming family vacation, which feels to me like a big last hurrah before another new chapter starts for us all. I think it is going to be a great trip…the one where my water loving boy will get introduced to the ocean for the first time. I’ll likely be doing quantitative methods homework at night after the kids go to sleep but I’ll be doing it while sitting on a screened in porch, staring at the Atlantic Ocean.

That seems like a fine way spend my first few weeks as the soon(ish)-to-be Dr.Monkey

Coffee Shop Time

I’m sitting in my favorite coffee shop, favorite for the fact that they give me unlimited refills on carbonated water, which I adore, across the table from my favorite four year old. He is busily shoveling yogurt in his mouth, eyes wide with unabashed staring at the quiet students from the nearby medical school while they study.

He wasn’t supposed to come with me, of course. This was supposed to be my quiet time, time to work on writing, time to decompress. It has been a busy spring, heading into a busier summer. I start grad school at the end of next month and summer is always insane at work so I am trying to be more aware of the fact that I have been operating in the red zone for weeks now, edging closer and closer to burn out. I’ve been tired and stressed and anxious. Some self-care is in order (why, yes, I have chatted with a therapist about this lately).

But when I got ready to go, I said goodbye to my boy, told him I was going to work at the coffee shop and he said he had work to do too…that his Angry Birds Star Wars coloring book need him to do work on it…please, Mama, please can I come too?

And I felt that tug, that gnawing awareness of the fact that I don’t get nearly as much time with him as I wish I did. I was also kind of curious, could he do it? Color quietly at a coffee shop, giving me some time to work and giving his papa some quiet time at home while the baby naps? Maybe this could be like a thing for us, a mother/son ritual, our Saturday afternoon thing (translation: I knew this was a bad, in terms of productivity, idea but I sort of want to see just how bad)

I’m typing this now as he is sitting on the floor, play with an ottoman shaped like a bear, make believing it is a Coast Guard ship, staying quiet enough that the only person he is driving crazy is me (just a little, though if he asks for another treat …)

So, probably no, this won’t be our regular Saturday thing, not if I really want to write and be still. So next time I’ll say “nope, work on your coloring book on your own time, kid” and I’ll probably feel some guilt but hopefully not enough to show up at a coffee shop with a laptop bag filled with coloring books and crayons.

I think maybe I need some practice at this self-care thing.

 

Performance Evaluation

Good morning, Miss Evelyn. As you know, you recently celebrated one year with our organization so it is time for your first performance evaluation. Please note that while this is an opportunity to recognize your accomplishments, it is also a time to provide you some constructive feedback to ensure your continued success here in the Monkey family organization. Mama and Dada The management do wish a long and successful future for you. Now, on to your evaluation:

1. General temperament and personality: EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS

You are scrappy and curious and snugly (please note, snugly is valued highly in this organization) and generally so easy going, except when you are being thwarted. Please note that you will continue to be thwarted on a regular basis (lets not discuss the toilet incident or what you did to that box of tampons or the recent “eating mud” incident as well) so we encourage you to work on finding more constructive outlets for your curiosity…speaking of which: stop messing with the electrical outlets.

2. Napping: NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

You shown real potential in this area (that two hour one last Saturday? Brilliant!) but there is a lack of consistency here that is troubling. You are little, you need sleep. Management needs a mid-day break sometimes. Let’s keep working on this one.

3. Eating: EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS

You’ll happily eat anything, though sometimes we do need to remind you to try to limit yourself to things that are actually food. Management is considering putting you in charge of an eating vegetables training program designed to improve the performance in this area for your slightly more experienced colleague who is striving for an “all pizza, all the time” diet that is not in keeping with the company policy on mealtime.

4. Collegiality: MEETS EXPECTATIONS

While it is true that you and your colleague often work very well together (see last nights extend game of “chase me and I chase you”) it must be noted that you are occasionally prone to being awfully territorial when it comes to who get to sit in management’s lap. Please note that management’s lap is for all employees and snuggles are to be equally distributed, even if that makes you holler.

5. Biting: NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

We celebrate your four teeth but implore you to stop using them to bite management.

6. Gross Motor Skills: EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS

You started walking months ago (before, frankly, management was ready for it) and have been observed kicking the soccer ball, moving furniture around the living room, engaged in unsanctioned climbing activities and are now fully capable of making it both up and down the basement stairs. Management is impressed but wary.

7. Verbal expression: MEETS EXPECTATIONS

You seem to have three or four words (Mama, Dada, Hi and Uh Oh) but the fact that you use Uh Oh more than any other word is telling, little person, telling indeed.

Overall assessment: You are a fine and valued member of this organization, one who regularly makes the management say “ooh, I love that girl”. We have every confidence in your continued success here…but let’s work on the biting, okay?

Fresh

Though spring is stubbornly refusing to get sprung here in Iowa (it was 25 degrees when I got in my car for work this morning) I’ve decided the blog needed a little spring cleaning and freshening up. A new theme, some updated tabs, a dim hope to start posting more…

The baby turns one in two weeks. This is always more of a milestone for the parents than the kid, I think. We’ve survived, basically, the first year. I think we’re hitting our stride as a family of four (six, really, but four under this roof) though I suspect the baby will be a more challenging toddler than her brother was. She is more physically curious I think (we really didn’t have to baby proof for Miles. Evelyn, on the other hand, is currently sporting a goose egg from falling into a table and recently discover that she enjoys pushing the furniture around on the hardwood floors) and more mobile. We have to watch her more but she isn’t a needy, floppy infant anymore…sometimes this makes me sad (no more babies for us) but mostly look forward to the toddler stage.

The next stage of the life of our family is starting, I think.

A new stage is starting for me too. I’ll start grad school in a few months. I’m getting back into training for tris. Miles will start kindergarten in the fall. Mr. Monkey is plotting his next career move.

Good things, all.

So Big

This is a sweet girl who turns one next month. She has three words (“hi”, “Mama” and “Uh oh”) and she is scrappy and curious and quite possibly the world’s snuggliest baby. I adore her and her little old lady outfit and her owl shoes.

The Media Diet

Last week I, for a brief few days before I got a cold and lost all of my desire for self-improvement in a tissue soaking snot fest of self-pity, I followed through on the “no TV or electronic media after 7pm” plan I mentioned in my last blog post.

In some ways it was easy, as I started Monday, so after I got to watch my beloved The Amazing Race on Sunday night so I didn’t have to give up anything really painful. I fed the baby her last bottle, tucked her into her crib and turned off the TV, slid the iPad into a drawer and left my phone upstairs. I grabbed a book (Play by Stuart Brown, which turns out to be about the best thing to read when thinking about wanting to connect more with activities that really feed your soul or whatever hippie word you want to use, instead of zoning out on Twitter) and sat down and read until bedtime.

Did I want to zone out on Twitter? I did, briefly. I like Twitter. I have friends there. It feels soothing to me, this form of communication that requires to little energy. But then the book engaged me and I read until I was aware of feeling tired and then I went to bed…nearly an hour earlier than usual.

The next night I did the same thing…until I fell asleep on the couch at 8:30pm. My husband woke me to send me to bed and I felt certain that I needed to sleep but also that I would have stayed up much longer if I had been watching TV or on the internet.

The next night I was in bed at 8pm, which turned out to be the start of the cold that sent me back into the loving embrace of social media (on Twitter, they can’t hear your disgusting sneezing. A real perk when you are at the point of the head cold where you are ready to stick two tampons up your nose and call it a day).

Since then I’ve been back into the TV/iPad nightly combo and it feels familiar. I’m going to bed later again.  I’m also back to drinking Diet Coke in the morning after eight days clean and sober. I haven’t picked up my book…the one I like and am interested in and read 9/10ths of last week since then.

I think I need to give the media diet another try. I need less zoning. More reading, more writing, more connecting with Mr. Monkey.

Except for on Sundays.

Mad Men starts soon.

Disconnections

I am in a particularly navel gazey mood tonight, brought on by many hours of cleaning, organizing and purging of boxes of photos and mementos (I’m finally giving up the vision of myself as a scrapbooker and getting rid of lots of paper effluvia that I’ve been lugging around through five moves and two states).

I found myself looking at pictures of teenage and college me and reflecting on how my life has turned out versus what I thought my life would be like at this stage. I’m more successful in my work life than I think I expected to be and I certainly never expected to live in Iowa, though I’m generally happy here. I had hoped to be married and to have children and of course I am and I do, but, of course, both of those statuses bring with them challenges and joys I couldn’t have imagined as a 15, 20 or even 25 year old.

I felt sad though, realizing that some of the things that bothered me about myself one and even two decades ago still bother me now. I still spend far too much time thinking about what I weigh and how my body looks. I’m still not happy about the state of my physical self and I don’t think I have been for even one day in my adult life and that depresses and exhausts me. I keep thinking I’ll get it figured out some day, that I’ll find the routine and the will power I need (I hear my husband’s voice saying “it isn’t about will power, it is about self care” and he is right but that isn’t what my brain thinks when I am standing on the scale, sighing again at the number).

I’m not sure what do with this just now. Just unpacking it here for now.

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Quick, think of the top three things you enjoy doing.

Thinking, thinking, thinking.

Okay, so here is my question.

Do the top three things you say you enjoy doing actually match the top three things you do when you have free time?

Yeah, me neither.

(watching TV, mindlessly zoning on Twitter and constantly checking Facebook are not how I allegedly want to spend my free time… and yet…)

I think I am going to take a TV/nightly internet break this week. A little electronic media diet, effective 7pm every night.

I have a stack of books that deserve some attention.