Home. Work.

So, it's been a very long time since I've blogged. I've been thinking about posting for some time, but then I get all caught up in feeling like I need to "backlog" all that's happened to me since last I wrote. Anyone who has ever skipped pages in their journal knows the feeling; you think that you'll come back to it, fill in the blanks. Surely you'd never forget those precious experiences! But inevitably, life happens. It brings you new adventures and additional things to write about and before you know it, you've abandoned the journal because it's all too much--there's too much to make up for.

So, with that in mind, I'm going to pick up my dusty little blog, give myself some grace for not writing for a long time, and pick up from here. But because I can't resist, I'll fill in some small (but important) details from the last few months:

1. I moved out of my South Congress single girl apartment where I had lived since coming to Austin, and moved into my beloved's downtown condo (which happens to be around 600 sq. feet). More on this to follow.
2. I took my qualifying exams for candidacy for my doctoral program, which are basically a comprehensive review of any/everything I've learned in grad school up until... last fall. There were two days of writing without any notes (I got 17 pages the first day and 13 the next). There were oral exams. There were citations written in the steam on the walls of my shower [i.e. Bandura, 1977, 1997; Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001]. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
3. My beloved and I got married on New Year's Eve. It was beautiful, perfect, very "us," and exactly what we wanted. We danced in the New Year with our families and dear friends. I would have the exact same wedding over and over again if I could.

So now, I'm a blissful newlywed doctoral candidate living in a tiny condo downtown with my beloved and our playful pooch. Sounds like good times, huh?

OK, so back to the tiny condo. It's lovely, really, but has been a work in progress since J. bought it a few years ago. Whenever I [calmly and rationally] complain about some sort of tool or dirty item of clothing in the living room, I am frequently reminded that he lived here for a long time with no living room furniture, with his refrigerator in the living room, and with only a single pipe coming out from the wall in the kitchen under which to wash his dishes. This to me is the remodeling equivalent of, "In my day we walked seven miles to school, uphill both ways, in the snow, barefoot and naked, and we liked it." Needless to say, the anecdotes don't do much to sooth my [calm and rational] frustration.

However, as of this very day, in addition to the two of us living here, we now both work here. That's right. Both of us. Here. Living and working. In the tiny condo. With the tools (the tools were gone for about 3 days, but came back when the shower door needed to be installed). It's like one of those displays at IKEA--the "Living in X square feet" ones that are ever-so-much-fun. Except at IKEA they have someone who cleans their X square feet for them. And a lot fewer papers strewn all about. And all those handy IKEA organizers to put things in. And now that I think about it, never any dirty laundry (thus making the whole simulation very un-lifelike).

Anyhow, both of us are still alive and well at the end of this first work day. We both were even quite fruitful in our work efforts [I got my new dissertation direction approved by my committee chair, worked on gathering some data, and posted a blog. He made a lot of phone calls and worked on some forms with some sort of abbreviated names that are somewhat meaningless to me.] So, kudos to us. However, I'm skeptical of how long we're both going to be able to be productive here. Or how long it will be before the new file boxes in the living room make me as crazy as the tools do. Or when the symptoms of too-much-time-together may start to emerge. So, cross your fingers (and maybe pray for our respective sanities).

Thanks for checking in. :)