Thanksgiving
We'll start at Thanksgiving. We spent Thanksgiving with Rob's family up in Toledo, and it was fantastic. Rare for a family get-together: there was almost no fighting amongst kids! All the kids were old enough to just go off and play, so we didn't see them all day. I suppose I should be lamenting that my kids aren't constantly attached to my hip any more, and I should be singing a sad song about days gone by. ... Whatever. It's GREAT! Hurray to have the baby stage behind us!
Rob also was able to spend some one-on-one time with his sister, Chiara, and I don't think that's happened in a long time. Good times.
While we were up there, Rob's mom asked Teancom if he was her baby. He said, "No. I'm my mommy's baby." It just made me smile, cause I'm always asking him if he's my baby. Sometimes he'll say that he's big instead, but usually he's happy to be my baby and sit on my lap and suck his fingers. He's still a cuddle bug. He's also possessive about the term "baby cakes," which is one of the pet names I use for all my children. The other day I called Elijah my baby cakes and Teancom said, "I'M your baby cakes!" He's actually really possessive about just about everything that involves me. We were watching old home videos of Teancom as a baby, and I realized that he's been possessive of me from the very beginning! What a stinker.
Nativities and a Migraine, a story
The weekend after Thanksgiving Rob went back up to Toledo to sing in his mom's stake's Nativity with his sisters. Miciah went with him, so it was just me and the boys at home from Friday night to Sunday morning. They had a great time and it went well. Plus, me and the boys sounded like a treat. Having only 2 kids around is not a problem, right?
All except on Friday night my vision started dimming. It was really bizarre and sort of scary, since it's never happened to me before. I was having trouble reading because spots of light kept getting in the way of the text, and the whole left side of my peripheral vision was black, like static. It's not like I was up late, either; I was in bed, lights off, by 10 p.m.
I didn't have time to wonder about what was going on, though, because when I woke up at 9 the next morning I had a MASSIVE migraine. The worst of my life. So I called Corene and she took the boys for a few hours. Then I called the Browns and they took the boys for a few more hours. I was finally able to get out of bed at 1 p.m., the boys were back home at 3, and we survived the rest of the day. We didn't go to a party that evening, which was a bummer, but what do you do. Rob came home before church to get the kids because I still wasn't feeling good, but we did go as a family to our stake's Nativity display later in the day, and it was fun, even though it completely drained me.
No more migraines like that. It was NO GOOD at all. And it just figures that it happened on the day when Rob was out of town, right? I guess that's the way it goes. How else can we be deeply grateful and in debt to our friends?
A Working Furnace is NOT a Luxury!
Yesterday morning our furnace wouldn't start. Luckily, it wasn't very cold outside, so the house stayed at 65°. Rob came home to take care of stuff, and he went downstairs and randomly started tapping things with a hammer until the furnace started again. So we have heat now, but who knows how permanent that situation really is. So we decided it was finally time to bite the bullet and purchase a new furnace. We've had problems with the furnace nearly every year we've lived here, and some of the problems have been large problems.
Thankfully, this year we have more money in the bank to cover this, the tax incentives are better this year than they were last year, and we'd already been through the hassle of interviewing companies. So we just called up the 2 companies that we liked best from last year and asked for an updated quote (we still have all the paperwork. We saved it because we figured we'd be using it this year). The prices didn't change, and so we easily picked a company. Zimmer Heating and Cooling will be calling us on Friday to set up a date to install our new 95% efficiency furnace (our old furnace is a nearly 30-year-old 70% efficiency model). So either next week or the week after we won't have to wonder any more if our furnace will turn on after a cold night. Merry Christmas to us!
Rob's News
A lot of people have asked me about the news surrounding Rob and possible jobs for the Fall. Well, there isn't any news to share, and that's why I haven't shared it. Rob didn't get the Xavier job he wanted, but that wasn't unanticipated. He has applied for several more, a few of those in Cincinnati. He's still making connections with people and institutions and generally doing a good job of putting his name out there.
Some of the job-related things he'll be up to in 2010:
- In the Spring he'll be teaching a 10-week introductory genetics course for the University of Cincinnati.
- He's made contacts with Raymond Walters (a 2-year open enrollment college), and they asked him if he wanted to teach an on-line course at some point. They tried to make it work for January, but it's not going to happen.
- Raymond Walters has a position opening for the Fall, and he'll be applying for it. His contact told him they expect about 30 applicants, and she gave him pointers on how to prepare for an interview.
- He's teaching the same NKU Bio 120 lecture and lab that he's teaching right now, from January - May. He'll probably have 2 lab sections instead of the 1 he has now, which will mean a few more hours for him, but also a little more pay.
- In July he committed to teaching a 5-week Bio 120 course for NKU. It'll possibly be as much as a lecture and 3 labs (but probably not less than 2 lab sections). This means he will be ending his post-doc at the end of June so that he can teach this class. He's happy that they'll pay him enough that he can spend a month doing teaching exclusively.
- Most likely he will be unemployed for the month of August. Nearly every job starts in Sept. 2010. So it's a good thing there's still money in that savings account after the furnace purchase, since we'll be living off savings for a month or two.
And there you go. That's Rob's crazy life, and therefore our family's crazy life. Rob gives his final tonight, and I'm looking forward to our family's 2 weeks of together time. We're in need of it. Some days it's super easy to do everything I need to do, and some days it's just not so easy. With the Holiday season upon us, I've had more days of Not Easy, and poor Rob is taking it personally.
June will be our "off" month, even though he'll probably be scrambling to finish up with his post-doc stuff. I'm thinking about trying to do an extended weekend camping trip to a local-ish National Park or something. No 6-week cross-country venture for us this year.
Christmas
On Saturday we finally did our Christmas shopping, which has made me much less tense. 2 weeks before Christmas is cutting it too close for me, but we just hadn't had the time.
Next week, Tuesday, this gift from my parents will arrive:
Our Anniversary
Next Monday is our 9 year mark for marriage. To celebrate, we're going to hang out at the museum on Saturday. Super lame, right? But I love it. Next year, for #10, Rob's been informed that the date can NOT be lame (even though I really do like lame dates). He's already thinking about it, and it may or may not require reservations for a cabin. I'm excited in anticipation.
A Miciah Story
To end this super-long update, I'll tell a really good Miciah story. This is from Sunday.
I walked by Miciah's teacher in the church hallway and he said that he yelled at Miciah. I was shocked because usually Miciah is very well behaved for teachers. He looked at me and said, "I yell at her every week, but today was an exception." I should mention that this is the teacher who does fun things like tease Miciah by calling her Queen of Yellow when she's wearing a yellow dress. Stuff like that. Perfect for Miciah.
Anyways, I asked what happened and he said that he asked her to stop touching his paper. She touched it again. He told her to stop or she would have to leave class. She touched it again. (At this point in the story I rolled my eyes. That's just SO Miciah.) He said, forcefully, "That's it! Get out of class!" Miciah looked like she was about to cry so he backed down and told her she didn't have to leave so long as she didn't cry. Then he felt bad (this is the difference between me and him. Miciah has taught me that I can't feel bad about it. I would have kicked her out of class and not had even an ounce of guilt) and so he said, "Am I the meanest person in the world?"
Miciah looked right at him and matter-of-factly said, "No. My Mom says that she's the meanest, most awful person in the world, so it can't be you."
Rock. On.
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