Getting my English up

Ari likes the nice weather, and she really likes climbing on mama's and papa's bikes. :P

This was me letting her run around the "back yard" (And by "back yard", I mean tiny fenced in space behind our house with two very broke benches and an increasingly enormous quantity of greenery round the edges) while I cooked. She fingerpainted and played with her balls and played with the trailer and then wanted to "ride bikes".

We've also been doing a lot of drawing with chalk on the front and back stoops.

This is Dr. Ari, running off to save lives.

We finally went and got a membership to COSI. COSI memberships are usually hella expensive, but we are not only poor, we are officially poor and on public assistance. That meant we were able to get an "access" membership, for not hella expensive.

That, in turn, means that Ari gets to go play in Little Kidspace, which is the kick-ass play area they have. It's got a water play area, and a big ol' playground, and some dress up/pretend areas and an enormous pile of blocks. Oh, and a giant helicopter and ambulance that kids can get in and "drive". Anyway, so this was Ari, dressing up like a doctor. She was running off to go drive the ambulance.

The weather has been warm, but it's been crazy rainy the last couple days. Yesterday, it started just pouring down. Ari wanted to run back and forth on the porch, getting wet.

As for us- Thad is done subbing for the school year. He's supposed to start a test grading job on Monday, which will run for maybe 6 weeks, and then he will go back to the Target. Well, up his hours at the Target- he's still working there one night a week.

My kids (I mean students) are supposed to give me their finals tomorrow, and then I have to grade them. Otherwise, I'm done for the summer. My goal is to have my final draft of my dissertation proposal done in the next week. I am, however, being frustrated in that goal by being stupidly sick.

For those of you who didn't know, I'm about 8 weeks pregnant, due sometime in January. I am in the hating-my-life stage. It ought to last about another month, or so.

Cordon bleu rolls in puff pastry

I'm here, trying to remember what in hell I've been doing for the last two weeks. Teaching... working on the dissertation. Trying to read French (a whole long article; too long to try to impose on Rebecca to translate for me), and hoping to get a computer thing going to help gather some data for my dissertation. Everything is going slower than expected, which is- as I understand it- the nature of the beast.

This weekend, we went to the Viking Festival, now an annual favorite (Ari's been every year she's been alive, thus far). Miss Ariadne had the Good, Good Times there, as you can see.

The Viking Festival is pretty low-key and relaxed, and not terribly crowded, so it was easy for Miss Ari to run around. Everyone was pretty nice about it, too, on the occasions on which she went running into someone's booth or tent or whatever. :)

She also had loads of fun with the music. We listened to this band composed of a dude playing a German bagpipe (did you know that the Germans had bagpipes? Apparently, most of Europe did) and another dude playing various kinds of drums. Ari, as you can see, had a good time dancing.

Then, they asked if anyone in the audience wanted to come play drums, since they had alot of drums. We got Rick up there playing, and Ari and I danced until I was too tired. Then, as the next number was starting, Ari ran up and started playing with a free drum. The guys in the band didn't mind her messing with it, so Thad came up and held it for her while she played. :D

Then we went home and ate pamcakes and played Munchkin and watched a little Doctor Who.

This is so my child. I'm not sure what it is, but she is super into wearing big people shoes. Like, she got Rick's big ol' stompin' boots and was clompin' around the house in 'em like a little crazy person.

Anyway, it occurs to me that I haven't talked at all about my absence from my life here, or the outcome of anything. So, well, first of all: I passed.

Let me just say that again. I passed.

I only found out yesterday, because yesterday was the oral defense, which was really scary to contemplate beforehand, but not actually so scary in real life. It turns out that when you spend three weeks locked in an attic doing nothing but read stuff about a set of topics, you actually have opinions and thoughts about those topics afterwards. Who knew?

Let me just take a quick break to show you my daughter, in a shirt I made for her. Well, Janessa dyed the shirt, but I put the TARDIS on it. This was not staged, by the by. She went and got the Doctor to play with all on her own.

Anyhow, so I was locked in an attic*. I planned to stay with R&B for a week, and stayed for two. Lovely people that they are, they fed me lunch and breakfast and dinner and let me put enormous stacks of books on their dining table and play my 82-song "work" playlist over and over again. And they let me talk at them- at length- about analogy and grammaticalization and theories of contact-induced change. They even went "uh huh" and "yeah" and "bitch is crazy!" at the appropriate moments, and didn't complain when I seemed like I might just be staying indefinitely.

It was this huge, crazy thing, of me coming face to face with the work. Do or die, moment, right? No excuses, no putting it off. In theory.

So, my exam was due the 27th (a Wednesday) and it became clear by Monday that I just wasn't going to make that deadline. Brian told me I had to have it in by the morning of Monday the 3rd at the absolute latest. And there I am, on Sunday morning. I had 8 pages of question 1 and 5 pages of question 2 and 4 pages of question 3 and no pages at all of my dissertation proposal. At all.

After three weeks of not being able to write much at all, I suddenly went into overdrive. The final version of the exam was in the vicinity of 30 pages, and the proposal (written in about 4 hours straight on Sunday) was 28 pages long. It's been years since I wrote that much in one place. Hopefully it bodes well for the future. I've certainly been in a funk as far as work is concerned.

Anyway, I turned in the exam at about 3:30 in the morning on Monday. Then I went to bed around 5, and got up at 8 and taught. Thank god, I wasn't lecturing- it was presentations from the students.

Then, I didn't think about the exam for a solid week. Didn't read over my answers, didn't even look at a book. I moved back into my own house again. Then, after months and months of not feeling motivated to do anything except mess around on the internet, I suddenly felt like making stuff. So, I did that shirt applique, and started making myself costume pieces for Unhallowed Metropolis, and cooked a five course gourmet Victorian dinner for game night, and planned all kinds of fun stuff for upcoming days. Like Friday, when we're going to play Sheherezade and have a delicious Middle Eastern dinner that I've planned. There will be pastry involved.

Then, it was time for the defense, and I hadn't looked at or thought about my exam for a week. I ended up just reading over my answers in the morning. And, shockingly enough, when they asked me questions, I knew the answers- or at least, I knew things to say. I had ideas and responses. The exam was two hours long, and it was 15 minutes shy of over before I even noticed the time.

I turned my paper in to the Graduate School yesterday afternoon, so it's official. I swear, I didn't know whether or not I was going to finish the exam until that Sunday morning. It was that close, and there were moments when I thought it might well kill me. But here I am, and I passed.

There's the dissertation, now, of course, but I refuse to think about that for a while now. I have creative food to cook, and Victorian clothing to sew.
____________________
*To be fair, it was a lovely attic. It had a nice desk, and shelves, and a comfy chair next to the window where I did part of my reading. It also had an enormous bathroom with a gorgeous clawfooted tub, which is where I did most of my reading- with my sonic screwdriver and my postit notes balanced on the edge of the tub.

All this has happened before

This is Ari playing with Vir and Atom Smasher. Her play table there is one of those expandable storage bins you can buy. Silly me, I thought I was going to use it as a clothes hamper. Ari knew better, of course. After the tenth time I found my clothes dumped on the floor, it officially became hers to play with.

Ari's been funny about doors opening lately. Every time the front door opens, she freaks out and tries to hide under things. I have no idea why, or what she thinks might be coming in.

This cracked me up today. It's K-9 keeping company with a triceratops, a spinosaurus, a fluffy bunny and a rubber ducky. My daughter kicks ass.

So, on Friday, I leave to go to Vienna, to give my poster at the International Morphology Meeting. And then, my exams start. I should be done around the end of February. Wish me luck, and don't expect to hear anything out of me for a month.

Bar some becue

Brooke sent us some pictures from her birthday party on Saturday, and I present them here for your delectation. This first one is Ari begging ice cream from the birthday girl. Not shown is Ari totally vikinging the birthday girl's chocolate truffle, and stuffing her little face with it. :)

Well, I'm back to work. I haven't been able to face revising The Paper That Will Not End, so I spent today working on prepping materials for Mary's class (my source of rent money for the summer). Today, I rewrote a homework/online quiz. Oh, and I cleaned my desk. It was getting pretty bad.

Poor Thad got stuck with a double shift because of my meeting with Mary today. Hopefully that won't happen again- I did tell her I'd prefer to avoid Mondays and Thursdays. Since none of the four of us involved in this project seem to have a set schedule, that ought to be pretty easy.

I'm looking forward to getting to take Miss Ari out to some places this summer. I already picked up some tickets to COSI and the conservatory, and I'm going to try to get some zoos soon. :) Plus, we can attend playgroups! Huzzah!

Sweet paste

I graded final exams today, and worked on the draft of The Paper That Will Not End- which I owe Brian tomorrow, so he can look at it before he leaves Friday.

Cute story: today, Ari was reading her Richard Scarry book (which, by the way, she loves absolutely to pieces. Literally.), and she was looking at a page with some pictures of cats*. There were two pictures of cats with hats- one with a too-small hat, and one with a too-big hat drooping down over his eyes. Ari pointed at the first cat, and said, "Dat!" Then, she pointed at the second cat and said, "Seep dat!" Which, for the uninitiated, is her way of saying that the cat was asleep. Because she couldn't see his eyes. :D My baby is smart.
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*I know, I know. All the pages in that book have pictures of cats. And disturbingly cannibalistic pigs.

Papa Joe's

Here it is, Tuesday already. Let's see... so far this week:

Thad-

• Didn't get a tooth pulled (it was a near one)
  
• Wants Chinese food
• Bought our baby bubble soap

Ari-

• Bit me on the arm today- and drew blood! >:(
• Took a bath without screaming for the first time in ages today
• Had a tasty rice and lemon tart dinner

I-

• Can't freakin' figure out how to copy from DAT to my computer
• Had my DAT recorder mysteriously fail to record 4 out of 5 times
• Made a tasty lemon tart yesterday- I need a proper tart pan sometime

Oh, and I'm trying to work up an abstract for a project I haven't done yet. Whee!

Out of ink

These are some pictures from a week or two back, when we went to the Viking festival. Contrast, if you wish, with last year's Viking fest pics... Ari was much smaller then, and trying to climb into things less.

(I swear that I put down the camera and hauled her out of there before she damaged even one of those delightful gay pride foxtails. :D )

Today is interesting, because I couldn't get to sleep. It's now five in the morning (as you can see), and I just haven't been sleepy. Poor Ari also suffered from insomnia; she passed out around 2:30, I guess. But it was clear that she desperately wanted to sleep before then.

Tonight was my craft night- I was pretty busy. I made all these guys. So, that's good. Now I will give them to someone else, and she will try to sell them.

Other than that, I spent all day grading. I promised my students I'd have their papers back to them today, and I shall deliver. Now, I just need to have a decent lecture prepared. Sleep might help.

Wasted pine nuts

This is Ari, playing with beans on the floor. It was great fun, up until she decided to try to eat the beans, and papa had to fish a bunch of soggy, uncooked beans out of her mouth.

Ari's actually in a growth spurt (I think). She's been starving the last couple days, just eating all the time. Yesterday, she ate a grownup's portion of baked ziti and was still hungry afterwards.

I'm trying to get work done while Thad's off. I'm writing the first draft of my paper, so think of me. I hate writing papers.

This is Ari playing dress-up. She likes putting things on (hats, bits of clothing, etc.) and looking at herself in the mirror- I'm not sure what that means for the future, but I think it's adorable. On the other hand, her parents play dress-up, too, so she comes by it honestly.

Oh, and she knows Hawkman ("Hot-mun") and Hawkgirl ("Guhl") by sight. And, when we were playing pinochle the other night, she said "pass!" for her papa. Awww.

The Queen of Air and Darkness

Here is a picture of Ari in her new cat dress, whipped up in a fit of crafty-ness this afternoon. She picked out the fabric; she near hurled herself out of the sling trying to get at it when she saw it in the fabric store. :) She was really excited the whole time I was making it, too- she kept trying to get to the sewing machine, saying "DATS! DATS! DATS!" This is the first non-costume I've made for her, and it was really easy. Didn't take long at all... I'd better not keep it up, though. :)

We had a nice day today... the weather was lovely, and Ari went for a bike ride with papa to the library, which she greatly enjoyed. Oh, cute thing: this evening, Thad was holding her and he grabbed me and gave me a big kiss. After a bit of watching us kiss, Ari decided she wanted in on that, and stuck her face in the middle of us to get kisses. :D

School starts again tomorrow, and I must get into writing my paper in a serious way. No more vacation for me.

Here's a video from yesterday, though:

Chest stove in

Whew... we had a busy weekend. On Friday, we had a bunch of people from my mom's group over to play board games. It was four couples, three toddlers, and two babes in arms. In our house. It was awesomely fun, but it got pretty crazy.

Ari had a great time playing with the other kids. Here you can see her with Rheya (who's just her age) stacking cans one atop the other.

Then, on Saturday was the annual vernal equinox party. The upside of having two parties in a row was that we didn't have to do too much cleaning in between- surprisingly, the kids didn't do too much damage.

It was a lovely party- the weather was beautiful for the first time since I've been throwing parties for the equinox. We went across the street and played bocce in the park- a little contingent of neighbor kids came up and begged to play, which was fun. My side won- just barely.

Then we went inside to eat (quiches, roasty veggies, mini creme brulee cheesecakes, and an incredibly awesome berry torte brought by Jeff) and dye eggs. Ari did a few.

This is Ari running around, holding her bunny.

Today, we got up and went to meeting after Thad's job. Since then, we've been basking in our home-alone-ness. :D I did some projects- including making some puppets- and we got caught up on a few things. Which is good, because this is the last of my break. The quarter starts again tomorrow, and I go back in for the first time on Tuesday (I'll be T-R at work now, for those for whom it is relevant).

On the docket for tomorrow: doing my class syllabus!

Now, here's a video of Ari playing in the ritual equinox Arkham Horror game:

Rules dispute

This is Miss Ari's "cat dance". She literally does this all the time when she sees cats. Why? I don't know. But cats are clearly very exciting.

As you can see, we went over to Rick and Brooke's for dinner this evening. I spent most of the day (including while we were at R&B's) grading exams. I hate, hate, hate grading. :P It'll all be over soon, though- I'm almost done with them.

Feelin' woozy

This is what I did this evening. I have a Goal, and that Goal is to make enough of these little monsters (I have a page full of designs) to have space at a convention art show in the fall. Anyway, I've had this little dude kicking around in my head for over a year, and it's kinda cool to see him in 3D now.

It's been pretty warm here the last couple of days, and Ari and I have been out at the park. Ari no longer likes the swings, for whatever reason, which I thought was interesting. She definitely likes the slides, though, and climbing on the playground equipment.

We're going into the department tomorrow; maybe I'll try to remember to bring the camera and take a few shots of her there. She has good times.

Midtown

Today was the first day this season that I've been outside without my coat on! Ari and I went over to the park, and she ran around for an hour. Then, when Thad got home, he took her for a bike ride. The forecast looks nice for a while- maybe that groundhog *wasn't* lying. Maybe. :)

Ari is much the same- talking lots. New words lately: "pants" "butt" "birds" "bacon" and "apple" (plus others I'm forgetting, I'm sure). She's been trying to say "apple" for a while, but she'd just say "ap! ap!". Tonight, she said "ap-ooooh!".

This week was the last week of class for me, and now I have two weeks off. At some point next quarter, I have to have my paper in. For the moment, though, I'm giving myself a break, and a little vacation- at least through to when my dad comes, next week! :D

Dissapointed

These are pictures from yesterday- I didn't write yesterday out of a desire to go to sleep at a reasonable hour so I could be rested for my presentation today. Which is over now. I refuse to do work for the rest of the weekend now. :)

This is Ari in a pirate hat, reading her book with a pirate hat in it. She finds this very amusing. You might suspect that this shot was in some way staged, but you would be wrong. My little girl knows that pirate hats are awesome!

I took this picture of Ari just because I thought she was pretty. She's eating shrimp artichoke melt over noodles. Or, more properly, she's just eating noodles.

We went into the department together today, and Ari promptly did what she could to charm the heck out of all the other students. :) There's one student who Ari has decided is one of her buddies, and she ran right up to her and spent a while sitting on her lap and playing with her.

Angelo was hoping she'd talk for him, and he wasn't disappointed. She said "cat" and "dog" and "pig" and "up". People ask me sometimes what all she can say, and I can't keep track of it. She's getting new words all the time! It's so exciting.

Sexy Abe

Here we have visual proof of Ari's teething. The hands she has shoved in her mouth obscure the gobs of drool on her chin, but you get the idea, I'm sure. It seems to be an on-and-off thing, and I haven't seen any evidence of an erupting tooth lately, though, so I think nothing's imminent.

It's been a weird week. I had my practice presentation on Monday, and it went fairly well. Then, on Tuesday, we spent the whole day shopping for food (three hours and 250$) and doing laundry (two loads darks, one load whites, one load diapers). We had gotten to the point where we barely had anything edible in the house, and no one had clean underwear anymore. :P Jaime, sweetheart that he is, brought food over and cooked us dinner Sunday night so I could finish my handout without worrying about food.

Now, ensconced with food and clean underwear, I have to face the actual presentation. Brian gave me notes for extensive revisions of my handout (why do I never seem to have fewer red marks on my handouts, no matter how often I revise? ;) ), so that's my job now. I pretty much have tomorrow to do it, too. It's good, though, to have an advisor who's so helpful with comments. The handout should be much better when I finish with it.

This picture is of Miss Ari, passed out mid-diaper change. She walked all the way to the comic store and back with her papa, and apparently just collapsed in exhaustion afterwards. She didn't even end up staying up that late, despite sleeping from 5:30 to around 7:00. Note the book she's curled up with... awwwwww.

Oh, and I feel all like I accomplished something- I made dinner tonight. I made a recipe from the 6 o' Clock Scramble book, and it was tasty and easy to make. And I even made a vegetable. I never feel so much like a grown-up as when I make a whole dinner and we eat at the table, I swear. :)

I leave you with a picture of Miss Ari, coloring (notice, if you will, that she has put a bunch of her crayons into her dice bag, too) and playing with her fairy dolls. :D

Mixed feelings

Ugh. This weekend sucks. Working on an abstract and a handout.

A few Ari things-

• Ari's all into dancing lately. And spinning around. She'll do it at random, but more often if there's music. It's adorable.
• Ari's been eating like crazy- growth spurt maybe? We've been getting free dept. food the last few days, and she's munched it down. Crab rangoon? Egg rolls? Blackberries? Chicken kebabs? Turkish bread? All munched like crazy. Tonight, she ate two big chunks of chicken, most of a Turkish bread and some veggies. And then, when we got home, she declared she was still hungry and ate an entire plate of noodles.
• Ari's had a dog sort of day. We walked past a man with a dog today, and she said "cat!" I said, "No, honey, it's a dog," and she immediately said "dok? dok!" Later, when we went to the department party, she saw the host's dog, and immediately said "dok!" She was really scared of the dog at first, but by the end of the evening she was at least tolerating his presence. She kept following him around going "dok! dok! dok!", but every time he'd turn around to check her out, she'd squeal and run away.
  
• Thad and Rick inadvertently taught Ari to say "sucks" today. We think. It might be "socks", or possibly "fox".
  

Fitting it all in

Augh, when it rains it pours. I've ended up hosting someone for prospectives weekend (damn you, spare bedroom!). Which is this weekend. Which is the last weekend before my presentation. :( I'm going to be spending every spare minute- after we clean up our house for the incoming guest- working on aforementioned presentation. Wish me luck. I have to have a version of it done by Monday... Oh, and my ICHL abstract. Mustn't forget my ICHL abstract.

Ari is a sweet little snuggle girl. She didn't nap this afternoon for her papa, and thus had kind of a rough evening. She did pass out right when I got home, and I have to admit, I just loved having her all passed out and snuggly in my arms for a while. I always miss her when I'm gone, and I love having a chance to hold my chubbly, snuggly little girl when I come home.

Today, Ari said "please" and "bye bye". I think she thinks "please" means "read me a book!", but it's hard to tell.

Sweet pies

Since tonight is Changeling night, I'm probably not going to get a chance to post later on, so I'll just post now. I'm still at school. Ari was asleep last I checked, so I'm having to wait to get a ride home. Roads and sidewalks in our neck of the woods are still so bad that it's not practical to bike, so I'm dependent on my monkeys to ferry me around. Oh, and plus, I had to bring pies to school today :D

The pies went over really well at school today. Angelo liked both of them. We had them for snacks at Changelings (the historical linguistics study group, not to be confused with Changeling the roleplaying game), and no one even realized they were gluten-free till I mentioned it.

I haven't seen Ari much today- not since the morning- so I can't speak about her. We had a really sweet waking-up this morning, though. She was all snuggled up next to me and looking like such a sleeping angel. I'm looking forward to seeing her in person again soon.

Don't forget the beans

This is me trying to make gluten-free pie for a friend of mine who may or may not be but probably is celiac (he's not man enough to actually take the definitive test, but eating wheat makes him sick). One of his chief loves in life has been pies and pastries (followed swiftly along by pasta, poor man- have I mentioned he's Sicilian?) and I decided to try to encourage in adjusting to his new diet by making him pie. These pies have a sweetened goat cheese base, with orange curd and whipped cream on top. Thank god, he's not showing signs of dairy intolerance.

This, on the other hand, is the rare two-headed monkey, from (I am told) the wilds of Borneo. Or something like that. It ambushed me this morning, and this was the best picture I was able to get before it leaped upon me!

I spent today trying to get work done. I have two weeks until a major presentation, and I still have this class to teach, and I've been feeling pretty sick for most of a week- which has made it difficult to work. Anyway, I'd best get my nose to the freakin' grindstone.

Ari has been her sweet self today. She's definitely teething, and her sleep/napping has been unfortunately disrupted.