A Day Out in D.C.

We had a good day today. It just wasn't perfect because it was President's day and lots of other people (and children) were out and about in Washington D.C. This sounds a bit selfish, I know, but it's one of the few advantages of being a SAHM* -- we get to enjoy museums and parks in their off peak days and hours, but that wasn't the case today.

Oh, yes, in case you're wondering, the wedding last night was nice, in spite of the weather that suddenly dumped an inch or more of snow right on us (I say that becase the snow was worse where the wedding was, here where my BIL lives there was hardly any)... Driving back to BIL's home was a bit stressful, since there were several accidents on the Beltway. But, back to our day. The boys throughly enjoyed our rides in the metro:
We first went to the National Mall and did quick stops at the Natural History museum (beautiful orchids there!) and National Gallery of Art. I was able to quickly see my beloved French Impressionists, that I hadn't seen live in over 8 years. The boys had fun recognizing the four Monet and Renoir prints that we have on our living room walls (I purchased them back in 1993 when I spent two weeks at my uncle's house getting to know D.C. -- that's why I love this city and its museums so much, it was "my first American city").
Then we went to the Air and Space Museum to have lunch (I forgot to mention that we visited the one close to the airport on Saturday after we dropped of my husband at the airport) and we took the metro again to the National Zoo. There we finally got to meet the baby panda:
The boys fell asleep on the way home (5:40 pm), the youngest in the metro, and the oldest in the car. The little one is still sleeping, but the older woke up and asked me to cook him some pasta, which I did, and now he's eating it. We need to go to bed right now, because tomorrow morning, really early, we have to drive to the airport... So I'll talk to you later!

* "Stay at Home Mom" for those not familiar with this pathetic acronym. I don't even know why I use this expression (I don't like it)... but I chose to do so today.

Shopping and Minor Misfortunes

(This was supposed to be last Thursday's post, but I didn't get to write it then. I'll go back to dissertation posts soon enough, but I don't want to get depressed today. I'm in the D.C. area and I'm going to a wedding with the boys this evening -- I'll let you know how it goes [Keiko - Claytinho's wedding]. I'm by myself with the boys in my brother-in-law's house. BIL is in Brazil with his family, as is my husband, who flew last night, and will be back on Tuesday)

My blogging friend Emily has recently found a good way to indulge in some "retail therapy:" No Cash Virtual Shopping. Well, Em, I'm doing the next best thing (or perhaps, an even better way to do it) -- I've been doing real shopping, not for me, though, for my friend in Brazil!!

This friend has two children slightly older than mine, a son (5 months older than Kelvin) and a daughter (8 months older than Linton), and two years ago she asked me to buy some clothes (mostly turtlenecks and sweatpants) for them and this has become a regular practice now, in every season clearance. "American" clothes (not really manufactured here, though, of course) are better and much cheaper than any clothes that she can buy for her children in Brazil, particularly if purchased at end of season clearances. Last Fall I bought a whole "wardrobe" of summer clothes for them, and now I bought lots winter clothes.

I have a lot of fun doing that, except when I have to drag the boys along in my shopping excursions. This year all it took was 4 shopping trips (two to Kohls and two to the "evil store" [WM] that I feel slightly bad for shopping at, in my desire of becoming "crunchier," but it's an evil that I won't be able to avoid until we have a better budget) for me to buy 24 pieces of clothing for the boy and 31 for the girl. How much did I spend? A little over 200 dollars. I did my first trips to each store by myself, but last Thursday I had to get a few more items from my friend's list before my husband traveled this weekend, so I had to take both boys to the store. The trip to WM was easy because they were going to get some Bob the Bui*lder characters (a set like this, with only the three bottom characters) , but we had some trouble in the rest of the afternoon.

We had some "minor misfortunes" then, most of which involved my oldest boy. First, I stopped at Staples because I needed to do some copies. While I copied, the boys played with their new toys. When I was almost done, though, Kelvin hurt his finger in one of those swinging trash disposal doors. It certainly hurt a lot, because he cried like a little baby... the worse part of when children get hurt is that they ask us to stop the pain, to make it go away and we can't do that! I know it's just the beginning of many things that will go wrong for them in the future and that that I won't
be able to fix.

I had to get a present for today's wedding, so we stopped at Target. The boys complied just because they wanted to eat bread sticks, which we did prior to shopping. Then we headed to Kohls and it was there the the worst part of our troubles took place. I was foolish enough to let them take their new toys into the store. I thought they would be entertained, but I overlooked the fact that they might have trouble sharing them.

While I was looking at some clothes, Linton was asking Kelvin for one of the toys, but Kelvin gave him one he didn't want. Lately, when Kelvin doesn't want to share with Linton, he's just been throwing the toy at his brother. So this time, he put the character on the floor for Linton to take, and kept on running around. Of course Linton didn't want that one and ran after his brother. When Kelvin went back to the same spot less than a minute later (all this while, they were really close to me, just 2-3 clothes' racks away), the character was gone! He called me, and we looked for it everywhere (after Kelvin had ran away from me and I grabbed his coat hood, whose zipper promptly gave away).

All the while, there was this elderly Hispanic lady, who was standing with her shopping cart right in front of the place where he had left the toy, looking at us and beholding our despair and frantic search. When we didn't find it, we gave up for a minute or two so we could cool off, and the lady went away with her daughter. I then thought, well, I have to ask that lady if she saw anything (I can't really communicate well in Spanish, even though I generally understand it, like most speakers of Portuguese do -- they don't understand us, though -- so I didn't try to talk to her when I was so frantic), so we walked around the whole store looking for them and caught up with them at the exit. The daughter (who had a bag over her shoulder with Ecuador woven into the strap -- Alice :) translated my question and the lady mumbled something I couldn't understand and which the daughter translated as "it's among the clothes." We went back and looked everywhere and of course couldn't find it. We were very baffled... and the good thing is that the boys were very good after that and I was able to spend a few more minutes shopping.

Then, after paying for our purchases, I tried to fix my son's jacket's hood, before putting the jacket on him. It has one of those hoods that's zippered onto the jacket, and the zipper had "opened up" the wrong way when I'd pulled it when my son was running from me. While I was trying to get it to open, I yanked at it too strongly and the part that keeps it from falling off broke -- it just flew out with the little moving part (I don't know the names of these things)! I was so upset for ruining the jacket that we left right away and I forgot to put the jacket on my poor boy, when it was freezing cold and windy outside!!

Well, Kelvin (and I) learned several lessons that evening: first, he has to be careful with swinging trash doors; then, he must share toys with his brother and give him the toy that he wants in his hand, not toss it on the ground (particularly not in a public place); and finally, he must not run away from me (that, I know, I must enforce in a consistent manner so it does become a lesson).

Phew... we were pretty frazzled and sad about the lost toy and broken hood zipper when we got home. We weren't more devastated because I had just bought the same lost character the night before (not in a set), so the boys still have it, just not the one from the set (it was a Christmas/winter set, and the characters have "snow" painted on them -- I'm going to use them on top of the birthday cake, that way, if it's supposed to look like snow, I don't have to use food coloring on the frosting, good, huh?).

All right, I have to go... we still need to get a pretty bag for the wedding gifts.

Oh, and "Happy Chinese New Year" for you! Now, with my brother in China, I'm more aware of Chinese life and holidays. :)

So Close and Yet So Far Away

In a nutshell, that's how I feel about the dissertation and finishing my Ph.D.

I could write thousands of words on this subject, but I'll be brief, just because I want to finish this post. I still want to get to it into more detail here in the blog (I have drafts of posts already), but I guess it's a good start to think about it this way: how close I am and yet how infinitely far I feel from it.

I have drafts of all chapters and only one (of six) is relatively rough, all the others have over 35 pages or more. I have written hundreds of pages -- I can give you the complete numbers in another post if you're interested. I finished the analysis of the data last July and have dozens of graphs and charts ready. I know what remains to be done and how it can be done, but I just feel paralyzed. There are many many reasons for that, first and foremost, the fact that I care for my two boys full time, but still I know that I could have done something about it but haven't. I have just used my spare time to read blogs and blog. See? That's what I'm doing right now.

Of course blogging has become really important in my life, but maybe it's just too important and not really helpful at this point. And there are many other things. I started a blog post in my mind (I do that all day long, of course) in which I list all the reasons why I haven't been working and categorize them. I will try to do that...

So, here you go, the beginning of the dissertation conversations. I'm just so blocked that I can't even write this word without cringing and feeling an urge to cry. But more on that later.

Snowed/Iced In

I don't know how much I'll be able to write before my sons come to interrupt me, since they're watching a PBS program right now. [This was at 5 p.m. I got to write this and the next two paragraphs and upload three photos, but only got to finish this after the boys had gone to bed with daddy.]

It's been a looong day stuck at home with them. Not that most of my days are very different, it's just that I generally have the option of getting the boys in the car and driving somewhere, but not today. We did have fun, yesterday and today, playing outside, but I didn't finish cleaning my iced car (almost 3 inches of ice and snow on windshield) until a few minutes ago, and then gave up going out because the winds are too strong and my street is still full of snow.

But I wanted to share some photos with you, of course. Ice storms are only really beautiful if the sun comes out and everything becomes a beautiful sparkly [Google's spell check doesn't recognize this word, but I'll keep it :)] "winter wonderland" and it did get sunny today, so I was out frantically taking photos. Unfortunately, most of the trees around our home (we have none on our property) are really tall and those with low branches are across a lawn in my neighbor's property across the street, so I didn't get the close-ups that I wanted, but still, some good shots, I think, thanks to the powerful zoom in my camera.These next two were actually taken with the macro function (and not the zoom), since I was really close to this small tree in front of my neighbor's house.I let our cat (Blues) out, and it was fun to see him walking on the snow/ ice
OK, Lauren, I hear you, so I'm going to start working immediately on a series of angsty dissertation posts, although I'm not looking forward to it :(

Coming and Going

I was away from the blog in the last few days because last Thursday my husband decided that it would be a good idea to visit his parents this past weekend. So we left for Massachusetts on Saturday afternoon and returned last night at midnight. We love to do impromptu things like that, and, needless to say, we're really used to road trips, so a 5 hour drive is almost "nothing" to us. I don't think we'll be doing that again, but years ago we drove for 14-16 hours three times to go from Massachusetts to Michigan to visit my brother- and sister-in-law, twice on Thanksgiving weekend. Good thing they live in Maryland now!

Anyway... some things that have been happening here lately and that I want to blog about:

- Last Friday, for the first time since we bought our first computer in 1998, we had water spill on the keyboard (my oldest son was playing nearby and had just brought some water to me), and it's not working anymore, so I only have the laptop until we can get a new keyboard. I was very happy that this happened because it's the same keyboard from 1998 -- we never replaced it, even though the CPR and the monitor are gone now (more about the monitor at another post). It still worked OK, but the little "feet" that prop it up would often slip and it would lie flat on the desk, which annoyed me.

- My husband is traveling to Brazil again for two days.

- My parents renewed their U.S. visa yesterday and if their passports get back until Saturday, they're getting here a week from today. They're coming for my "final push" to get the Ph.D. More on that on subsequent posts.

- We've had some new ideas regarding options for my husband's future job and career and we're getting happier with the options that we may have.

- My almost 5 year old son is getting interested in writing, so I want to scan some of his writing for you to see.

Oh, and for those of you who have been concerned with his bad dreams, he's had very good nights lately and this morning he told us that he dreamed for the first time with his latest obsession: Bob the Builder. If it makes him happy -- good thing! I have to remember to tell you later a dream related anecdote about him. Remind me, OK?

- I have to tell you more about our visit to some of our "old haunts" in Massachusetts yesterday.

I guess that's it... I have to cook something for dinner, so I have to go.

Oh, yes, it's finally snowing and it's so pretty out there. The boys played outside in the snow for a while this afternoon. Too bad it's going to turn into freezing rain...

(Sad) Things They Say

All right, I haven't yet mustered the courage to write about the dissertation today, so I offer something that I have been meaning to do for the longest time, some things my sons have been saying. The reason why I haven't really posted these more often is that they have to be translated from Portuguese into English which consequently causes some losses of meaning and humor. The few (so far five) times I posted these can be found under the label "Kids Say the Darndest Things (in Translation)" in my sidebar.

Expressing Feelings
My youngest, who is 2 years and 8 months old, has recently started to express his negative feelings in a very open manner. One of the words he's been using most often in his vocabulary lately is triste (sad). He wants all of us to know that he is sad that something happened. Even more often, he announces to all of us that he'll be really sad if something is done in a particular way. He also looks at what just happened and realizes the effect his "sadness" has on us.

Some example from the last few days:
"If daddy leaves I'm going to be really really sad!"
"I don't like when Kelvin doesn't share with me. I was very very very sad. And he gave that toy to me." (this had happened an hour earlier and he was reflecting on what had taken place)

Fears and Nightmares
My oldest son (who is going to be 5 in March) has started wake up at night very afraid. He says he has nightmares and worries about wolves and forests. It's been very tough on my husband, who is generally the one who gets up to sleep with him in the futon in the boy's bedroom. Tonight I was talking to him before he went to sleep and he said:
"Do you know what? I wish that the night was less long, I wish it was shorter."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I'm tired of having bad dreams."
"And what do you do when you have them?"
"I wake up with a sad face."
"And what do you do?"
"Should I pray? I don't pray."
"Well, maybe you should, so you wouldn't be afraid."
"But it's not God who brings these dreams, it's my head."
I didn't know what to say, he was perfectly right, so I just said:
"It's not easy to be a person, isn't it?"
He was quiet for a bit and then replied:
"You know what? I didn't want to be a person."
"What would you want to be, then? An animal? What? What do you mean?"
"I wanted not to exist."

Wow... isn't it a bit early to express such feelings? Or is he just so afraid of his nightmares that he just doesn't want to have to live through them. I wish we could do something to help, but I guess all we can do is talk to him about it and continue letting him sleep with us as needed.

I told him I'd be right back and came to the computer to type up this conversation. He came after me and we talked some more about this. I know that these "profound" things they say may not mean the same to them that they mean to us, but still, I'm surprised at how philosophical some of our conversations get. And this has been happening since he was three years old. He asks such inquisitive questions! I just wish I wrote down more of our exchanges.

Nostalgic for Irreplaceable Chocolate

Since I wrote a more serious post earlier "today" I decided to write a lighter one before talking about other serious things, like the dissertation, which I want to finally "tackle" in my next post.

Some weeks ago I ate the last of the delicious Ghirardelli chocolate squares that my brother - and sister-in-law gave us in our stockings for Christmas (thanks, sis', I loved them!). The taste of this particular one brought a flood of memories to me since it reminded of my favorite chocolate ever. So here it is, finally, the "Lindt chocolate" post I alluded to a while ago at the end of this post. Enjoy!

~~ ~~

There are some "rare" pleasures in life and one of them is finding just the "perfect" chocolate. The one that becomes your absolute favorite, a treat that is the best possible sweet reward at certain challenging moments or stressful times. I'm hard to please and I don't eat chocolate or candy that often, so it took me a while to find mine.

I found it though, years ago (in 1998?) , in one of the most improbable places, the little candy/chips/soda store at the Student Union building's main floor, near the entrance, in my graduate institution.

The moment I tasted the Lindt chocolate bar with liquid strawberry filling, I knew I had found the most delicious chocolate ever. I bought it once in a while, trying not to indulge too often, lest I spoil the pleasure of a "rare" treat. You see, strawberries are my favorite fruit, and this liquid, clear filling, had the most perfect strawberry taste, sweet, and yet tangy, a bit sour. Just delicious.

I guess I bought four or five bars before this particular chocolate simply vanished. In the summer of 1999 I spent a month and a half studying French in a school in France, near the border with Switzerland (Geneva) [I was actually born in this particular place -- more here items 2-10] and I went to Genève nearly everyday and looked for this chocolate bar everywhere and had no luck whatsoever finding it. On my birthday my roommate gave me this as a present:[Odd Curiosity/ Coincidence: Of the 22 results in the "Lindt strawberry chocolate" Google Images search that I did to find this image 7 results were Brazilian sites selling Lindt chocolate!]

This bar, with a creamy strawberry filling was pretty good, but not the same, not even close to the "liquid filling" one. My dear friends in Brazil (the same who visited two weeks ago) were also thrilled to have found "my favorite chocolate" when they gave me this same bar as a present in 2004 or 2005. Of course I didn't say it wasn't "the one" because I didn't want to disappoint them.

When I came back to Massachusetts from France, I found my favorite chocolate once more at a chocolate store at the center of the town where my sons were born (hint: same town where Sylvia Plath went to college), but since I didn't go there very often, I think that must have been the last time I tasted it, late in 1999.

After that, I lost all interest in Lindt chocolates. There was a time back in 1999-2000 when my husband and I became quite addicted to Swiss chocolate, particulary Lindt, eating the little classic chocolate bars everyday after lunch or dinner. However, I stopped buying them after that, and never tried to look for my favorite chocolate again because I knew I wouldn't find it. Lindt still does have a raspberry liquid filling chocolate bar (like the Ghirardelli one), but even though raspberries are delicious, they are not my favorite fruit! Once in a while we buy the Lindt truffles, but I don't really care for them that much (I prefer Ferrero Rocher, for example).

Isn't it sad to know that I will probably never taste my favorite chocolate bar ever again? The funny thing is that its very absence makes it even more "legendary" and delicious because of the longing that I now have for it and the way I can only remember what it tasted like. I really wish I could have one as a reward after my dissertation defense though -- wouldn't that be great?

Crossroads

*Edited to Add: this finally is the 300th post since that one wasn't :)

We were up talking until late last night, my husband and I. As you know, he sent out over 30 applications, got one phone and then campus interview and that's it so far. A handful of schools have sent their rejection letters, but most haven't said a word. It would be easier to know that doors are closed instead of suspecting but having no way to know for sure. It's been a month since the last deadline for sending applications so it's a very uneasy time for him. I'm glad my very brief search is over for good, but it would be good to know what we're doing, where we're going. Once that's settled, I have to send letters and CVs out and seek an adjunct job, anything.

One of the biggest reasons for his/our disappointment in his job search is the success of his lab mate. Coincidentally, he's another Brazilian guy like my husband. He has a total of six job interviews. All of them at R1 universities (large universities with graduate programs whose main focus is research, not teaching, like in the smaller undergraduate-only liberal arts colleges). There are a few differences in his situation, though. First, this friend is not in the same area as my husband's. He's in the applied sciences rather than in "pure sciences," even though he's been doing a postdoc in the second. So maybe things are slightly different in those departments. Second, and most importantly, our friend is in his SECOND postdoc, this time in a "buzz area" and with a well known, established scientist at an Ivy League school. Sure, my husband is working for the same scientist at the same school, but because of the circumstances, he didn't get to work on the area he wanted to and is working in a more obscure subject. This is his first postdoc and has lasted three years.

Besides having been a postdoc for four years, our friend experienced bitter disappointment in his first two job searches. The first yielded two interviews, the second, none. But now he's reaping the benefits of his second postdoc at big shot school. So, he's been telling my husband he should go for a second postdoc to maximize his chances to get an R1 university job. That would mean two more years in "limbo" for our family, but might yield a "better" job for my husband.

What if there's an offer from the "Smallish Undergraduate State University" with strong research emphasis where he interviewed? What about the possibility of the "Small Religious Private University" with little opportunity for research in the West Coast? (I mentioned this second possibility here, I guess some of you may have missed it). Should he still forgo these offers for "real jobs" (although not the desired research focused jobs) in order to try going for another postdoc and pursuing the elusive dream of an R1 position?

We were just reflecting last night that all these discussions may end up being pointless because there could potentially be more interviews in the coming weeks, but we kind of doubt that. I mean, it's getting late in the game, isn't it?

And the bottom line is... We started looking back at our "plans" and realized that one of our problems may have been not having a clear goal to begin with. We were, like we say in Portuguese "shooting in every direction" (atirando pra todo lado) hoping to "catch" something (we have another saying for that, "o que cair na rede é peixe" -- whatever falls/is caught on the net is a fish) and now we're not sure we would want any kind of "fish."

The sad thing is -- isn't it a bit too late to be reaching this conclusion? Shouldn't we have thought of that years ago? Shouldn't we have planned something like -- "What we want is to look for R1 jobs for both of us, and if that fails, we can lower our expectations, we can set a different goal." Would it be wise to start setting such goals NOW? Waiting two more years for something that's far from certain? I am at a point (and have been for a long time) where I don't really care too much about what I end up doing. I feel like I want my husband to have a job he loves and then I'll find something for me there. Anyway, it's very unsettling to look back and feel like maybe we should have done things differently.

Of course there's a long history behind our academic lives that you don't know of. We were supposed to go back to Brazil to teach there, so we never aimed too high. There was no point in being ambitious because we had no choice. Then, we started enjoying been true scholars/ scientists and we even considered not going back on our own. It was then that they decided to stop the sponsorship and "release" us from our obligation to go back. That was around the time my husband had already decided to go for the postdoc, etc. Then, there's the fact that his "boss" got him to work on something he didn't really want to work on, an obscure area which is a hindrance, in spite of the name of the school and of the "boss." One of my problems, which I hope will end up being an advantage one day, is that I'm interested in way too many areas (within literature), so I don't fit in well anywhere. My dissertation work is interdisciplinary and I don't even want to work in one of the main areas my dissertation focuses in.

All right, you must be bored with all this discussion. Thing is, we're at a crossroads right now and we'll have to decide what to do within the next two months. We also worry about our family, about the boys. Where would we like them to grow up? Where would be the optimal place for our family to live? Is there such a place or should we just have a "bloom where we're planted" mindset?

P.S. My husband loves your comments here, Articulate Dad (he says that they're always so pertinent, so thoughtful), therefore I've been telling him that he should go read certain posts in your blog, which may help him, or at least have him feel that he's not alone in this struggle. I kept talking about you in our conversation yesterday.

What's (Not) Going On

I guess it's a mix of the "black hole" that is the dissertation and my avoidance of or inability to work with it and the winter woes.

Both Kateri and Left Handed Trees recently wrote about the "certain slant of light" effect of winter afternoons. Of course I was vaguely familiar with Emily Dickinson's poem, but in these eleven winters I have spent here, I hadn't really read it and thought about what these long winters do to us...

And now I read the poem and feel like weeping.

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

Emily Dickinson

It's so cold that I've been avoiding going out. I know I should, 'cause it would do me and the boys good. So tomorrow we will.

Some loose ends from the comment section...

Dear friends Articulate Dad and Alice commented some things I want to respond to.

Alice remarked that it looked like I'd lost weight in one (or more) of the photos in my celebrity look alike post (photos are now gone -- glitchy beta site problems, I suspect, but I'll replace them soon, you may be sure of that!). The thing is, when I was sick last year from May to July I did loose some weight, but all those photos were taken before then, so it's probably the angle. I am yet to discuss weight here, but let me just say that I've always been skinny, so there are positions in which I seem even thinner. (Edited to add: oh, but in one of the photos, the last one, I probably hadn't lost all the weight I'd gained in my second pregnancy -- some 38 pounds, 17 kg. so my face probably does look "fuller." I'll talk more about this topic in the future, OK? I've actually been meaning to.)

Articulate Dad said here that I shouldn't sigh too much because "It unbecomes [my] lovely disposition." Oh my friend... my disposition may seem to be really happy here in this blog, given your kind words and Aliki's nomination of this blog as happiest blog for a blog award. I am, indeed, a happy, positive person in general, but I'm always sighing. Sometimes there's no reason at all, but I do it... I sound like an old woman to those around me, I guess. I'm also quite a whiner, but I've been getting better, I just have some weaker moments of intense whining and complaining once in a while. (which my poor husband hates, BTW, so I generally soon stop).

So, here you go... some random thoughts about what's going on around here, or not going on, since there's not too much. OK, I won't sigh, I wont! Now you've made me self conscious. ;)

I'm a Neat Freak?

I've seen this quiz a lot lately, and thought I'd give it a try. Good thing I'm just one step further from "well-adjusted" (see other categories below). I think the description kind of fits me too, it just makes me laugh because unfortunately I'm not really a neat-freak and I wish I were. Of course I'm a perfectionist, and I do enjoy cleaning after a party and helping out... so some characteristics do fit me. (Oh, and I did it last week on 1/31, but only got to post it today, just so I get to post something, you know...).

Well, so here's the result. I didn't have the time to edit it (I would have had to deal with the html) so it has a lot of spaces, particularly at the end. I did get to move the picture up, but couldn't bring the parts close together. One thing I did manage to do, make the text boxes narrower so the text fit and could at least be read. Phew!

The Neat Freak

, you're now logged in!

Below you'll find your test result. After, continue on to your
homescreen to discover what we're about.

continue to OkCupid homescreen >

You scored 45 anxiety, 37 awkwardness, and 64 neuroticism!

You exhibit neurotic behaviors without the underlying anxieties, and you manage fine socially while balancing compulsive urges...so you must be The Neat Freak! You are happy, well-adjusted, and...organize obsessively. Your friends call you OCD, but you're not: you just love to tidy and categorize! Your low anxiety score implies that you are able to relax, can enjoy the here and now, and have a healthy amount of self-confidence. Your low awkwardness score implies that you are socially capable, are personable and charming, and probably go to parties and have fun (especially cleaning up afterwards!). Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors--probably cleaning, organization, perfectionism, and other orderly compulsions. __ See the other results! Well-Adjusted The Neat Freak The Dork The Geek Phobic Obsessive-Compulsive The Subtle Neurotic The True Neurotic My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on anxiety You scored higher than 99% on awkwardness You scored higher than 99% on neuroticism Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Confused

I just found out from a phone call from my husband that I spent part of the day under the delusion that it was Wednesday and not Thursday.

I know it doesn't really matter much (unless one misses appointments and such), but still, I hate the feeling of having been "living" in the wrong day in my mind.

During vacations, when I'm at the beach, or traveling abroad for days or weeks, I easily loose track of time and sometimes I don't know what day of the week and of the month it is. This doesn't bother me at all. On a "regular" week it does, though.

There's often an easy explanation and in my case it has to do with the fact that our friends left on Monday afternoon. On Monday morning I took them to Center City to see the Liberty Bell, so it felt like a Sunday because of the sightseeing. I did know, in the back of my mind, that my friends were flying back to Brazil today, a Thursday, but I still got confused.

It's no big deal. I did the laundry, thinking all the time, "Oh, I'm doing the laundry earlier this week" -- ha ha, no such luck! I know I should be happy, the weekend is just around the corner, but it's just strange to feel confused. It's the vulnerability and frailty of the human mind that comes to the surface when something like that happens, and it bothers me.

Odds and Ends

Nominations:

My lovely blogging friend Aliki has nominated me for the Share the Love Blog Awards. I'm very touched that she thinks that mine is one of the Happiest Blogs (that's the category) she knows. If you agree with her, you can vote for me in the coming week (from Feb. 1-6). The rules, and I guess the link to the voting site are/will be here.

I have, in turn, nominated two bloggers: Aliki for "Most Inspiring" blog -- those of you who read her know that she can write very touching and inspiring posts on simple moments of life; and Jo(e) for "Blogger You'd Most Like to Meet." Of course I'd love to meet all of you, but Jo(e) is one of the bloggers I really hope to meet someday. So you should go vote for them too (if you agree with me)!

Job Search:
It looks like there's another possibility, one that we had almost forgotten about. It's a small school in the West Coast that had been contacting my husband since last year about a possible post. It's good to know we may have more than one option, but at the same time it's a bit nerve-racking. The hardest thing will be deciding where to go. One deciding factor may be a possible teaching position (adjunct/ instructor) for me -- if one of the places offers that.

Dissertation:
I really really really need to go back to work in earnest. Today was the first day I did any work in nearly two weeks. I NEED to do this!! Especially if we actually get to have job offers. I've been avoiding this topic here forever, but I'll have to face it. And spend less time blogging too, so I'll wrap this post up right here.

95 Years

Today is my paternal grandmother's 95th birthday. She is my only remaining grandparent, so I really treasure her and feel sad that I can only see her once a year or so when I go to Brazil.
She is still fairly healthy and completely lucid. Unfortunately, two years ago she broke her femur and she's been bed-ridden ever since, which is a trial for her and the daughter who lives with and cares for her. She spends her time knitting and watching TV, especially the news. She's been knitting booties for many many years (see last photo below), but a couple of years ago I put in a request for scarves and now, in addition to several bags full of booties of all sizes and colors, I also have many beautiful scarves (I'll post some photos another day).

My grandmother, whose name is Olivia Diva, was born in the South of Brazil (in the state of Paraná), the daughter of German and Polish immigrants. At 15 she married my grandfather, also of German descent. Last year I was asking her why they married so young back then, and she replied that when my grandfather started going to her house on Sunday nights to talk to her, her father said right away that they would need to marry soon, because he had no money for kerosene (used for lighting) for him to visit every weekend.

They had 9 children, but the oldest one, a girl, died still in infancy. Grandma says that they were too young and inexperienced and didn't know how to care for a baby. Of their eight remaining children, the first four were boys (my father is the second) and then four girls came. Three of my aunts live on the same city where grandma lives in Southern Brazil, three sons are in Brazil, and the third son and the youngest daughter have lived here in the U.S. for many years. She has are 12 grandchildren (I'm the third oldest) and now five great-grandchildren, with a sixth on the way for later this year.

In the late 1940s when my father was a boy (of eight or nine, I think) and six of his seven siblings, had already been born, the family sold their land (they had a small farm and a water powered corn flour mill where my dad worked) and moved to the Northern part of the state of Paraná. That region was then a thick forest that was being opened for settlers and for the planting of coffee. Now it is fully deforested and rich in agriculture (I grew up in that region in the 1980s, but that's a story for another day). My grandpa opened a general store and was very successful. My dad (the one squatting at the front on the photo below) lived there with them, working at the store, until he was 21 when he left to pursue his education (he had stopped his schooling in 4th grade).

I don't know who that boy on the left is, but from left to right you can see my Grandpa, my youngest aunt, Grandma, my oldest aunt and the next to last daughter, the one who lives with Grandma now. My dad is at the front. I'm guessing this photo was taken around the time that he left home, or shortly thereafter, in the late 1950s 0r early 1960s.

I still remember the store and their house in that small town, although I was quite young (six) when they sold it and my grandparents moved to the state capital (Curitiba). In the following photo, I was three and my brother was not one yet.
And here is Grandma with my son, who is wearing one of the booties she made for him (she makes them for adults too):
I hope I can see her again next time I go to Brazil, but one never knows. My maternal grandmother died seven months after I moved to the U.S., days before turning 94. I feel blessed just to still have Grandma (Vovó) Olivia, and to have had a grandmother in my life for so long. I hope my sons remember her, or at least cherish the photos that they took together and the few moments they shared. The links between the young and the old are so beautiful to behold!

Great Weekend

We had a most wonderful weekend. Two of our best friends from Brazil visited for full three days, and it was heavenly! These are the same friends in whose house I was staying at when I wrote this and whose daughter is picture with my son in this post.

We just talked and talked into the nights, did some fun shopping together, and ate good food. Yesterday we took them to one of our favorite places, Longwood Gardens (photo above), and they loved it. It was snowing lightly outside the whole time, which added to the magic of looking at those magnificent flowers. My friend took the following picture of "the three men of my life:"It was a very refreshing weekend. Now, however, I need to start thinking seriously about the dissertation and all the dark fears that come with it. I have to start facing this "monster" so I can conker it once and for all in the coming months. This is scary. Scary because I'm aware of my many limitations and my literally disabling flaws. More on that soon, though. Right now I just want to enjoy the lingering feelings from the magnificent, perfect, weekend. (Sigh)

Brazilian Wedding

Last Sunday we went to a wedding of two friends from church. I've been to many weddings of Brazilian friends here in the U.S., but none can compare to this one as far as the flower arrangements go. This was actually the first wedding I've been to in this country that looked pretty much exactly like a wedding would look like in Brazil. In Brazil, all weddings have many flowers, even the simplest ones. Flowers are not expensive in Brazil and you can always count on a talented friend, or a group of them, to decorate the church (or the venue of your preference) for you, sometimes for free (obviously you still have to pay for the flowers). Those who have more money can choose the best people and pay those friends or acquaintances for their work and those who have even more, hire professional wedding decorators. The work of these"free-lance" ladies (it's generally women who do this) is generally as good as the the professionals, though, as you can see in these photos.

(that's my son on the left)

In this particular wedding, the reception was in hall adjacent to the church, so here you can see one of the ladies who made the flower arrangements carrying one of them from the church into the reception area. The next photo features the bride and groom's table, which I thought was amazingly beautiful.












I wish I'd taken more photos of the flowers, but I guess you get the idea from these. In the most recent weddings I've been to in Brazil, or those I've seen photos of, many of the flower arrangements feature large glass containers of various shapes filled with water (like the one pictured above on the right -- which has flowers floating inside) and fruit, generally limes, or oranges, depending on the color scheme. (I'll try to scan a photo of my brother's wedding later to show you how they look).

Well, here's a bonus photo.
I thought I'd include because besides being very cute, you can't see anyone's faces.

Celebrity Look Alikes

*Edited to Add*
- (2/5/07) This seemed fun, but the My heritage site simply pulled out the photos for some reason, so you can no longer see them. Not fun!
- (10/30/07) - I went to their site, did #1 and #2 again and figured out a way to save them to my computer so I can post them as an image which will be here "forever."#3 was already saved in my computer and I added a bonus one at the end. And I don't even know why I'm wasting time on this.

I saw this yesterday at Emily's blog and I like her post title: "If only..." Yeah, if only I did actually look like these people. Of course I had to try it, so I went ahead and uploaded three photos. You can check out the results and do the same if you like. This site's genealogy services seem to be amazing, I may go back and try to work on my family tree there.
NOTE: too bad the photos don't really fit my template. I fixed them by changing the height and width in the HTML, but I didn't want to make them much smaller so they wouldn't look too fuzzy.

1st try:
Here I used a relatively recent photo from August 2006 - spontaneous, taken by my son.I was really flattered to be thought to look alike Kelly Preston. Hmmm... I really don't think so, though. Holly Hunter was a nice surprise -- I really like her. I don't know the next four people, but... WOW, Sophie Marceau? I'd really like to look like her. But, wait a minute -- Tori Spelling? I always thought she was really ugly... oh well.

2nd try:
February 2006 photo, also taken by my son:
I only know three of these women and was flattered by the far away resemblance (66% is the highest -- see, I don't really look like them!!). But Holly Hunter and Sophie Marceau - again! - and Sarah Michelle Gellar -- wow. They even include this gorgeous Russian woman (Vodianova), who looks like she's 13.

3rd try:
Older photo, from April 2005, posed, and taken in the sun by my husband, so I'm squinting:
Surprisingly, this is the only photo that turned up the only celebrity that I have been told repeatedly by one of my dissertation committee members that I look alike: Andie MacDowell. Other than that -- Do I really look mostly like a man in that photo? I do think it's pretty cool to look like Richard Dreyfuss, John Stewart, and Gene Kelly, among others, but I thought it was pretty strange that mostly men turned up!!! Good thing some of them are quite handsome, not Kirk Douglas (only perhaps young) and Rudy Giuliani!!

It's really funny to see how the angle of the face in the photo, as well as the facial expressions are the things that determine resemblance in their face recognition "engine."
----------
Edited in 10/30/07 to add this one which hadn't been included in the "original" post:
These results are a bit bizarre since I look the most like a Chinese man and also look like three African American artists, but they do include Andie MacDowell and Gabriel Byrne -- whose photo does look quite a bit like the one I used for me.

Aprehensive about (Prospective) Coming Changes

I was away from "blogland" for two days while at my brother- and sister-in-law's house. I was able to check email, but didn't stay online for long since my husband had taken our laptop for his job interview. Besides, I had to watch the boys and help my SIL.

The campus interview went really well, thankfully. He even visited the elementary school we would probably send our son to if we were to move there.

Wow, did I just say that? Sending my son to school?

Well, first of all, we know it's premature to start thinking of moving there, but one just can't help but imagine how it would be. My husband brought with him some touristy materials (maps and booklets) and a real state pamphlet. Looking at those houses in the car on our way back home I started wondering what would our prospective house look like. I feel happy that we would be able to (finally) get a bigger place, a one family home.

Mostly, though, I thought about my son. And school.

I really really wish I could be a more organized person and home school him. I know about "cyber schooling" too, a friend of mine just told me all about it just two weeks ago. I think it wouldn't be the best for us, though, or for him, since I just don't have confidence in my abilities to be disciplined and organized for both of us. Besides, I think he would thrive on the structured environment of school. I feel so torn about this!! Part of me feels that he's so young (he'll be 5 and a half in September) and that having my son away from me for seven hours is just an excruciatingly long time. I miss him already, just thinking about it. Aliki just wrote a beautiful post about similar issues.

If my husband does get an offer, I will look for a job there too, but if I don't have a job and just have to stay home with my youngest, I think it will feel very sad to have my oldest in school when I could be teaching him at home. Could I pull it out?

Besides, I cringe just thinking about having to get up really early everyday to drive him to school (we would have to drive him there, or car pool). If I worked then I think it wouldn't bother me at all, but if I don't... oh, that won't be easy!

Well, there will be many many changes, that's for sure. I've been looking forward to most of them, but I hadn't really thought about this school thing. Today though, as I held the packages from the school (with registration information, the rules and regulations, etc), this reality became very palpable to me. And I've been giving my son extra hugs and cuddles ever since, as well as talking to him about school. He's OK about it, but not that interested in this conversation. He'd rather talk about his upcoming Bob the Builder birthday party (we decided the theme at a dollar store yesterday!). I guess he's right. We have to concentrate on more immediate events.

In three weeks or so we'll know. And then the real excitement and worrying begins!

Delicious Pineapple-Mint Juice

This week I bought a big pineapple. We ate some of it and I saved the rest to prepare one of our favorite juices -- pineapple-mint juice. It's become a popular juice in Brazil, but I don't remember drinking it while I still lived there 10 years ago. I heard of it from a Brazilian friend sometime in the past two years and since I always have spearmint in our herb garden (particularly to make tabbouleh which I like with lots of spearmint, and not as much parsley) , we have enjoyed this juice quite often ever since.

Thanks to the warm weather, I didn't even have to go out and buy spearmint. Mine aren't big enough to harvest, but my neighbor's are. I took this photo of them after harvesting the biggest leaves:

(I hope this is not all the snow we have this winter!)

The juice is very simple to prepare, you just put the chopped pineapple in the blender with the spearmint leaves, sugar and water (photos with no water yet, obviously), after blending, it's best to pass it through a sieve before drinking.












Let me know what you think if you try it, I'll be curious to know!! My mouth is watering just by looking at these photos... yum!

News from the Kitchen

After last week's bitter cooking disappointment, this week was much, much better!!

I cooked pinto beans on Tuesday, and instead of preparing the traditional Brazilian meal of rice (generally long grain white rice, but I usually prepare brown, or basmati rice) and beans (not together, cooked separately, and then mixed in each person's plate), I decided to go for a Mexican style meal instead. Some of our American friends call it "Haystack" and many of our friends in Brazil like to eat it too, particularly at pot luck meals because it's quite simple to put together. We pile on our plates: tortilla chips, cheese (not for me, though), pinto beans (warm enough to melt the cheese), chopped lettuce, homemade salsa, and sour cream. Yummy. The boys ate everything in their plates. My husband joked that they like it because it's "Latin" food ;)

We had that on Tuesday and Wednesday -- this is a common practice at our home, preparing a meal that lasts more than a day, or gets transformed into something else the next day. Take lentils, for example (I looove lentils). I cook them to eat with rice one day and then, the next day, I prepare this dish that my mom calls a "pilaf" but which I'm sure must have another name, since at least here in the U.S. all the pilafs I've seen involve rice and other things. Anyway, it's simply lentils with bulgur wheat soaked in water and cooked together -- it's pretty mushy. I season it with sautéed onions and we eat it with sour cream, or yogurt. My oldest son adores it.

The rest of the beans remained in the fridge and on Thursday night I put it in the blender with water to make the base of a common Brazilian soup: Bean soup. I sautéed onions and garlic, added the puréed beans, chopped potatoes and after the potatoes were almost cooked, whole wheat angel hair pasta, broken into small pieces.

On Wednesday night I prepared a lot of bow-tie pasta with tomatoes and frozen artichokes from Trader Joe's for Thursday's lunch (I'm happy that I've been able to cook pasta only once a week -- the boys would eat it every day, I know). The main meal in our household is lunch, not dinner, but I let the boys eat some pasta for dinner then and I ate it too. Today I just sautéed some tofu and cooked some brown rice with carrots and edamame (green soy beans -- which my oldest son picked out of his rice -- the week couldn't be perfect!).

All right, I do have a photo for you, but not of the food I described above. And I'll put it in a separate post, all right?

This Year's Job Search and I

Thank you so much for all your support regarding my rejection letter, I really appreciate it, more than you can know. I tried to respond to the first commenters in the previous post. Several people who commented after the first seven apparently didn't read that post, so I'm attempting a third one on the topic.

First, this was not my first rejection letter, it was just the latest one, and final, in this round of three meager applications. I last year I applied to one single post, was surprised by an email considering a phone interview and got a rejection letter (which did hurt a bit). This year I got one pre-MLA rejection letter, silence from the second university, and the post-interview rejection letter. (too many links already, I'm skipping the interview news and interview post :)

Second, I was much more upset with the application that fell through (because of a rec. letter that never got sent), than with this one. Yesterday I opened the letter, filed it away and never gave it a second thought. I decided to write a post about it because I knew many of my readers were interested in the job search and I wanted to give them (and myself) closure on the process.

Third, I am not considering leaving academia just yet. If you've read some of my writings from a while back (while I was struggling with feedback from the dissertation writing) -- I have many many problems with Academia to begin with. Some have to do with my personal history of being a foreign student, shaped by another, fairly different, academic atmosphere, and others yet have to do with my own insecurity, etc... (early posts (2005), dissertation rant and following response).

So, some of the things that you readers commented on have been on my mind for years now. As I wrote yesterday, I don't feel the least pressured to stay in academia just because I'm getting the Ph.D. If I can't get a job as an academic, though, then, how am I supposed to continue being an academic? I think I won't ever stop researching, I just feel it's pretty sad to have "Independent Scholar" under one's name on a tag when going to conferences. I was even looking at this depressing page at the Chronicle of Higher Educations's site ("Non Academic Careers for Ph.D.s"). The Chronicle's essays are sometimes, as we say in Portuguese "a cold bucket of water" being thrown on one ("um balde de água fria") -- a bitter reality check. That's why I don't check it often.

Finally, as you know, the Job Search is not officially over for our family yet!! My husband is still on it, so we'll have some more excitement to follow here in this blog :). And I'll be back to this subject soon enough.

(P.S. I'm cheating a bit on the time, since I want this to go as a Thursday and not Friday post, I may want to post "tomorrow" again - it's 12:06 am, for the record :)

Blogging Milestones!

This is my 300th post*, what about that? Well, what this really means is that I don't write often enough, since I've been blogging for 2 years 2 months now. The new blogger is very helpful in that respect, allowing me to see right on my sidebar how many posts I wrote each year. That would be only 5 in 2004, 91 in 2005, 175 in 2006, and 15 already in 2007 -- if I continue in this rhythm, which I hope I do, I will write over 300 posts in 2007, doubling what I already have... Let's see if that happens.
*[Edited to add: this is very disappointing, but 300 posts for blogger includes the drafts I have saved -- so I have actually published only 287 posts -- sorry about that! I won't change the title or delete the first sentence, though... I'll get to the 300 mark in a week or two anyway :)]

First, I want to thank everyone who commented in the previous post. It really helps to know that I can count on the support of my friends in the blogosphere:
* Thanks Sarah, just to know you're there helps.
*Aliki, I truly hope something will come up for me -- as it did for you -- if my husband does get a job somewhere.
* I'm not down at all, wwwmama, and your comment allowed me to find out that I was featured in the last two carnivals of GRADual progress (more on that in a minute) and that really cheered me up today!
* My dear friend Articulate Dad, thank you for your words of wisdom, I truly value your input (and you may or may not have noticed that my SIL thinks you're pretty articulate! :) -> thanks for the comment too, sis'). AD, You are perfectly right, as I have debated here before -- I am not absolutely convinced that I have all it takes to become an academic. I do know, though, that I definitely love researching and producing scholarship. You can rest assured that if I do take this path it won't be because I think anyone expects me to become a scholar just because I'm getting a Ph.D., but because I truly want to do it.
* Thanks for the positive thoughts, Jo(e) and Lauren!

So, I was thrilled to discover that two of my posts had been featured in the fifth and sixth Carnivals of GRADual Progress. I have checked out some other carnivals before, more precisely Carnival of Feminists and the Teaching ones. I even tried submitting a post to the second or third Carnival of Feminists, but it wasn't included, so I felt discouraged about carnivals and didn't pay much attention to them from then on. (One last thought about feminism, I don't like to theorize much, so when faced with the question of how I became a feminist, I just shared a personal story [same link -- I'm trying to get you to read my old post]. And that was not good enough. I felt I wasn't a good enough feminist for them since I didn't discuss "real issues" in my humble post) .

Anyway... as I was saying before my digression, I was delighted that I was included unbeknown to me. In the fifth carnival, my post in response to Bitch Ph.D.'s question about being a mother and getting a Ph.D. was included and wwwmama included my pre-MLA post about academic conferences in the sixth edition. I guess this totally restored my faith in carnivals (big grin), or at least gave me the feeling that I do fit in somewhere after all, at least among other graduate student bloggers. (I'm sure I also fit in nicely with other "mommy bloggers" and expatriate bloggers).

Well, that's it for now. I really really wanted to write a post about Lindt chocolate right now (interesting, uh?), but I'll have to do that some other time. And tomorrow... a change of gears: a heavy-duty mommy post for you!! :D

It's Official

The job search is over for me. I received the "official" rejection letter yesterday.

I'm not disappointed because I knew I had "blown it" at the interview. I wasn't prepared enough to present myself well and, to be honest, I don't think I'm really prepared to face a tenure track position right now. I have doubts whether I will ever be prepared. Maybe after adjuncting or teaching for a while and padding my CV with more publication and service. I do have a strong teaching record, but I never worried too much about the teaching evaluations, so those aren't that great. Actually, I just couldn't bring myself to read them while I was teaching, they made me feel awful. (That shows you how much I don't like feedback). Of course there are many good ones, but several not too good.

Now that there is the concrete possibility that my husband will get a job, we're thinking even about alternate careers for me. I know I should still give academia a shot, but that may have to wait until next year. I say that, but I haven't even checked the "post-MLA" job postings, and I know I should. Maybe I'll do it right now. Well, if hubby gets the job then I will have to find something to do there, because I'm definitely finishing this year, but that's another topic!

Photos from Brazil - I (Flowers)

A while ago (last November) cloudscome asked me if I could post any photos from Brazil in the blog and it took me this long to finally getting around to it. I'm going to make it a series, since I have way too many. I'm starting with some flower photos that my husband and I took in December 03- January 04. The first one is a photo of my aunt's neighbor's front yard, in the city of São Paulo. The second one is from the tree right in front of my parents' house. The remaining photos were taken here -- an ecological park at a beach town in Southern Brazil. Enjoy!