It's Never Simple

Visits to the eye doctor provide us with simple choices......A or B, C or D.......and we just tell her which one makes our eyes happier and then we're on the way out with the right prescription and the ability to see.

Life in general never presents us with such clear cut options.

For a while now I've progressed day to day thinking that I would have no choice regarding working or not working. If I'm offered the visiting professor position I would of course take it......for what I eventually want to accomplish in life there would be no option for me to turn down a teaching position, even if it is for only one year. Alternately, if I'm not the candidate for that job then I continue with my nice quiet life at home.

And then this morning I got the call from my old boss that I never in a million years thought I'd be getting. He just found out that he's getting funding from the NSF (yay NSF!) and that it would be enough to support a postdoc for 2 years and do I want to come back. I suppose I should have been thrilled - now, one way or the other I can have a job. But I wasn't entirely thrilled. Now, I'm going to be presented with a choice and it's not really one I was prepared to think about.

He was honest with me - he knew that for what I want to do with my career that signing up for 2 more years of a postdoc may not be first on my list. And I was honest with him about how I've reapplied for the teaching position and I would need to hear about that before I agreed to go back to his lab. He was quite understanding and it's not like there's a giant rush. Generally, finding out you have the funding occurs 3-4 months before the funding actually kicks in so it's not like I'd go back to work next week - there's time for me to find out about the teaching job first. And, should I go back to work for him I think we'd sit down for a chat first and I would pretty firmly mention that I'm happy to sign up for 2 years as long as he's ok with me seeking adjunct teaching positions as well - and right away. It could work.

But do I want to go back to the bench? I've been kind of bored for the past 6 weeks but I've been happy and well rested. I've enjoyed keeping up with my house and the errands and having my weekends as weekends and not as 2 days in which to fit all the errands, laundry and housekeeping I can possibly fit. I would certainly like working again though. I liked being up at a certain time and having a place to go where I was productive and made an impact on something (small though that impact may be).

I kind of feel like going back to work in the lab would be for health insurance benefits and for a second salary and to keep from going stir crazy maybe more than it would be to go do science. That's not necessarily bad, but it's not great either. If I'm not going back for the right reasons, maybe I shouldn't go back at all. On the other hand - even though a postdoc is not the ideal path toward my ultimate goal I think it's more likely to get me there eventually than a hiatus at home and that certainly is an excellent reason to go back. And then of course there would be the guilt. Months ago my boss took me aside and told me he'd hire me back in a second if he managed to get funding - would I come back? And I said yes, of course. But I really thought he had a snowball's chance of getting funding (don't take this the wrong way - he's very smart, a great scientist and mentor and deserving of funding - but generally once you've lost money you'll never get funded again. In short, his getting money after all that's happened is pretty miraculous) and I didn't think I'd be as content as I am puttering around the house every day.

To make matters a bit more confusing - the money he's getting will cover a postdoc OR a tech for 2 years. He told me that there's a senior tech in the department looking for a job and he's wavering a bit between wanting a tech vs a postdoc. I'm pretty sure I'd win the battle if it came down to that because a postdoc is a stronger path to publication, but I'm worried that if I show even the smallest sign of disinterest he'll just take the tech. Either that, or I won't know about the teaching position before he needs to decide between the two of us.

For the moment though - there is still no decision for me to make since I don't know about the teaching position. That is my number one option. And I can of course make myself ill and keep myself up nights worrying and planning out every possible scenario but at the moment it's not worth it. So for now I'll keep myself busy by crossing my fingers for the teaching position.

I suppose if all decisions were easy life wouldn't be any fun, would it?

Girls Night

Last night was a girls night. Dinner and a movie with the girls I worked with and ate lunch with most often. I was excited. I miss them a lot, I miss our conversations a lot and frankly, I needed to leave my house for longer than the time it takes to run a few errands. I wasn't worried about awkwardness - no one blames me for having lost my position and I didn't leave angry.

I envisioned a nice dinner where we took our turns talking about whatever ails us. I would talk about going a little stir crazy and waiting to hear about my new job application. One girl (C) would tell us about waiting to hear if she gets to keep her job. The student from across the hall(T) would tell us about how her qualifying exam proposal is going and about how her boys are doing. And the student from my old lab(S) would tell me about her project and how the boss is driving her crazy and maybe she'd let me know a little bit more about what happened to my protein**

Of course nothing ever goes like you envision it. Don't get me wrong, the evening was very nice, just not exactly what I pictured.

The main "problem" (and I hesitate to call her a problem, she was very very nice) was the girl that I wasn't expecting to be there. She's a brand new addition to the department - her first day as a student was my last as a postdoc - and she was new to our girls nights. That's great. I like new people. The problem was that she's a talker - and by talker I mean went a hundred miles a minute and rarely took a breath. If one of us managed to get a sentence in she would latch on to that new topic and start again at a hundred miles a minute. And again, I hate to call her a problem because I think she had no idea that we weren't really having a conversation and she was just so excited about everything she was saying. Meanwhile, we did get to hear a bit about T's kids and C did tell us about how she'll find out this afternoon whether or not she gets to come into work tomorrow. They asked me about the new job application but as soon as I said I've reapplied we were being seated and by the time we got to the table new girl started talking about something else. And, a little bit disconcertingly S barely said 3 sentences all night. She never said hello to me and didn't really look and me and was quiet in general. She's generally very loud and the first to be complaining about work and the boss so I took this as a sign that her life in the lab isn't great at the moment and never asked what was going on in there and she never volunteered.

And then the conversation took the inevitable turn towards hard core science. Most gatherings of people all within the same field of work usually turn towards work. It's what everyone has in common and when you spend more of your time with the people you work with than with your friends and family the problem gets even worse. I knew it would happen and I wasn't worried about feeling excluded since I know everyone they're talking about and I know science, it would have been easy to participate. But I didn't. As they got deeper and deeper into how many experiments do you have left before working on a paper and don't take that class at the same time as preparing for your mock and EM gets sent away and someone else does it and this person shouldn't be training you on the scope because they can't focus and during lab meeting..............I just sat back and listened. I had a fantastic moment of realizing how nice it is to not be in that environment anymore. I almost felt a little embarrassed for all of them for this to be so important that it's all they could talk about even away from work at dinner with someone they hadn't seen in a month.

And I realize that just one month ago that was me too - but it's amazing what looking in from the outside does to perspective. I've been having a pretty tough time feeling ok with myself - that what I'm most qualified to do I refuse to do anymore. But after last night's dinner I was certainly well on my way back to remembering why I chose to stay home for a while.

**The saga of my protein is a blog for another time - and it's one of those that will probably never be written because I'd have to include far to much science and I will end up having a rant of exaggerated proportions which is never a good idea.   

Home Improvement(s)

I'm taking today off. You'll be able to find me on my living room couch enjoying the Harry Potter marathon that's going on and reading. That's partially because I went to sleep at midnight last night and woke up at 4:30 to get S to the airport. It's also partially because it's Sunday and I've always liked to keep Sundays for myself. It's mostly so that I can prepare myself for the bigger projects around the house that await me.

Up until now, I've spent my time at home doing a thorough spring cleaning and while it took a long time and the house is much better looking because of it it really wasn't that taxing. I didn't have to spend money on supplies and I couldn't really mess up. Well, the spring cleaning is done and that means that the bigger projects remain. Starting tomorrow I become a regular at the local Ace Hardware and Home Depot. Instead of a rag, dust polish and a vacuum cleaner my tools will become paint brushes, drop clothes, an electric sander, spackle and a putty knife.

I think I'm prepared. My father spend an extraordinary amount of energy while making sure that I was useful. I spent all my summer throughout high school and college around the house doing things like sanding and staining/repainting stairs and storage sheds, mowing and triming the lawn, washing and waxing the cars and even pouring cement steps.

I'm a little nervous now though. This time the supplies are on me - if I waste or buy the wrong things then it's our money down the drain. I won't be able to just yell around the corner to Dad to see if I'm doing something correctly (although the cell phone will be handy). Of course the motivation to do my projects and do them well the first time is huge. There's the aforementioned problem of the supplies no longer coming from the magical parental bank account. There's also (and more importantly) the fact that I'm working on our own house. Everything I do to make it look nicer will make our time in it more pleasant and will help somewhere down the line when we try to sell this place.

And so the two major projects for this particular week are:

1) To fix the paint trim around the ceilings (and in some cases the ceiling paint itself) where we got a little tired last summer when we first moved in. In our defense we did all of our painting in about 3 days and it was hot and we had just moved and well, we just got tired and after a while that blue tape (that didn't really work all that well to begin with) just seemed like superfluous effort. I've gotten pretty used to the ragged trim in our rooms and even those occasional splotches of brown or blue that we managed to get on the ceiling.....but......it's not the prettiest........and now I have the time to go around and fix it.

2) To strip (with my brand new electric sander - yay!) and then paint the deck railing. I'm not sure if it's because the paint that's on there now was cheap, wasn't waterproofed, or this amount of peeling and fading is typical after suffering through a winter but it's not at all a pretty site out there. So I'll be taking my little chip of paint to Home Depot and requesting a gallon of the same stuff. Someone remind me to pay attention to the weather forecast before I decide to tackle that one.......

I'll let you know how it goes.

A Husband-less Week

Tomorrow morning at 5 AM I'll be on my way to the airport with S who'll be in NY until next Friday for a training session with "The Company." Yes, 5 AM - so early that I'll have more than enough time to get to the airport and back and still be in more than enough time to shower and make it to the usual 8 AM mass. I wont' complain, however, considering that in 2 weeks when it's S's turn to get me to the airport we'll have to leave 30 minutes earlier (early flights = cheap flights). And once I'm done with the teary goodbye at the curb (because I can't drop anyone off or be dropped off at the airport without crying - it's a problem) I'm on my own for 6 entire days.

When I had a job and S was away I worked crazier hours than when he was around. Now that I'm home these 6 days won't seem quite as different as they once did. But I'm sure I'll get up to some of my old tricks. Mostly my old tricks revolve around food. First, I don't eat on a regular schedule - I eat when I get hungry and that's very unpredictable. Also I don't eat meat when S isn't around - just lots of Boca "chicken" patties, salads, baked potatoes, fruit, crackers, hummus and popcorn. When I go grocery shopping tomorrow I won't be armed with my usual list of here are all the meals we're having this week and here's what I need for that to happen, but instead with a mental list of things I tend to snack on.

My S-less week will also mean that the house stays cleaner for longer - I might have to run the dishwasher once. I might have one load of laundry to do. Things will stay where they belong. Now, don't get me wrong - I can be a tornado in my own house and undoubtedly S will tell you that the same is true of the cleanliness when I'm the one missing for a week, but it is truly amazing what one less person can do to a house.

I will be in sole control of our TV and TiVO. I can watch the All Star game on Tuesday night without hearing cries of "You will not watch that filth on my TV." I can sleep diagonally on the bed as I'm known to do when I have the whole thing to myself (that is once I fall asleep, which I don't do very well when I'm by myself.) The cats will reclaim their "half" of the bed which I'm pretty sure they're still bitter about losing even though it's been a number of years.

And of course I will miss S very much and will look forward to Friday night at 10 PM (we're really not good about having flights that leave and land at nice pleasant hours) when I get him back.

Here We Go Again (plus a side story)

The college has re-posted that position - visiting (September 1st to May 31st) as promised. It was posted on Monday morning while I was on vacation in Toronto and so there wasn't too much I could do about it other than see that it was up and be happy that all my documents are ready to go. I'm back home now but I'm tired from the hours on the road and so I'll wait until tomorrow morning to send along my e-mail just so I'm sure that I haven't made some silly typo. And then the process officially starts again.

In the meantime I will regale you with an adventure from our Toronto excursion........**

Not really ones to plan too much in advance, we decided on Monday afternoon that we wanted to go to Tuesday night's Blue Jays game. I got on-line, clicked on tickets and a short discussion of how much we were willing to spend later we had two tickets. Turns out that these tickets were in the 100 level section on the left field side. Basically, there was a direct line from home base to first base to us - as we sat I vaguely thought that we were in great position to catch a ball. Plus we were in the 1st row of that section which turned out to be immediately over the visiting (Tampa Bay, yesterday) bullpen. I thought it was kind of neat to be watching the pitchers warm up down there.

We got there in the 3rd inning when the score was 1-1. Great, fine - I was preoccupied with my hot dog. Then it was the top of the 4th inning - some guy from Tampa Bay at bat (sorry, I'm not particularly up on my TB roster). I was done with my hot dog and required water so I was kind of looking at home plate while trying to open my Dasani.

CRACK - very well hit ball. I keep opening my water.

Geez - that ball is heading in our direction. I keep opening my water.

No seriously - but I have really really bad spatial skills and so if I think it's headed right at me and might have a chance of reaching me it's really going to land well in front of me and the left fielder will make the out. I keep opening my water.

Oh s**t - I spill my water all over me.

Saved from a massive concussion and broken nose only by my husband's left hand (which is still sore and swollen by the way) which he stuck in front of my face just in time for the ball to bounce there instead of on me. In true comedic fashion the ball bounced out of his hand and into the hand of the chick next to us who didn't seem to care at all that I had just escaped certain doom. And, despite her being a "Blue Jays fan" she did not throw the ball back like a true fan should/would have.

In the end I have no souvenir from that game - not a ball, not a broken nose. I think I'm ok with that........

**Caity gave me a shout out in her blog which has significantly increased my traffic (thank you, I really do appreciate it) and has also resulted in me feeling the need to continue writing with some regularity - even if I'm just relating ridiculous stories about my cat nearly killing me at 3 AM or almost being hit by a home run.