A less digital December

The four weeks of Advent seemed never-ending to me as a child. Christmas was made so much more magical by the fact that I had to wait forever for it to arrive. (Obviously, I mean literally forever here.) Now the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seems to evaporate like so much fog as the sun rises. A lot of that has to do with AGU, a huge conference, being in the middle of the month. But a lot of it is just the rush of whatever seems important when you're an adult. And okay, a lot of it really is important- like bills and groceries and exercise and work.

And then other times it's emails and games on the phone and things that might be nice but aren't as important by far as sitting don with friends and family and genuinely spending time with them. In November, before Thanksgiving, I decided to log off email on my phone and give up digital games until Christmas. At the time, I thought I would get so much time back in my life and I was sure that going "digital-light" would uncomplicate my December.

The good news, I guess, is that it didn't complicate it more. The month still seemed to fly by though and I'm not sure I ever had so much more time to do those things that are more important. I still felt rushed and stressed and out of time. So, while I'm not very much for New Year's resolutions, this year I might make one to be more conscious of how I'm spending my time and more mindful of the things that really matter.

My prediction for how long this resolution will last? Maybe a month?

Surprise Good Things

This week was the Fall 2016 AGU meeting in San Francisco, CA. For anyone not familiar, it's the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union and it's attended by over 20,000 scientists annually (24k last year). Just about every topic in the very broad Earth Science umbrella is covered and there is no way to see all of it. This year, a conversation that I had months ago with a friend has been on my mind as I move between meetings, talks, and poster sessions. I won't get into the longer conversation we had but, in response to a comment I made, my friend suggested that female role models were less important to me because I had always had them.

Though it took me by surprise, it was an incredibly true assessment. Throughout my growing up, I was surrounded by women (and men) doing awesome things. I was never told (at least, not by my parents) that there was anything that I could not be. Other people suggested it but I was always encouraged to shrug off their comments. Luckily, I am just contrary enough (it's an ingrained personality trait) that the suggestion that I cannot do something will usually spur me on to prove that I can, regardless of wanting to or not. It gets me into trouble sometimes.

On Monday evening, I met a fellow scientist, helicopter and fixed wing pilot. It's an unusual thing and even more unusual that both of us were women. Like all pilots when meeting, we were quickly off an talking. It was surprising and it was exciting. You have to understand the odds here. Women account for only about 5% of all pilots in the United States. Based on FAA statistics, only about 1.3% of all pilots in the US (both men and women) are dual fixed wing and rotorcraft certified. Even if that 1.3% applies to women (it's probably lower), the odds of happening to bump into another female PhD (roughly 1.5% of the population of the US), who is also a pilot with a dual certification were pretty low. We were both incredibly excited. ;-) It mattered in a way that is difficult to describe but deeply exciting.

Our meeting didn't change my belief in my own ability to do science or to fly an airplane or a helicopter but it was still powerful and unique to find someone that I shared so much in common with.

Christmas in Texas

You can take the girl out of the North but it's hard to take the North out of the girl. There are so many things I love about living in Southern states. Okay, mostly Georgia. Whether I'm in Georgia or Texas or Florida though, I still find it hard to get in the Christmas spirit when it's 70 degrees F outside. While "Christmas is still Christmas after all" (name that movie anyone?), I always find myself yearning for snow and for temperatures cold enough for hot cider and hot chocolate and warm clothes.

The day after Thanksgiving, I dutifully put on jeans, sneakers, and a long sleeve shirt, as if it were cool enough to warrant it. A whole group of us headed out to pick trees and drink cider and it was wonderful. As soon as we arrived home though, I swapped out my long sleeve for a t-shirt and my sneakers for flip flops. The house was starting to look Christmas-y and our cat was definitely in the holiday spirit but it still didn't feel quite like Christmas.

Last weekend we headed to San Antonio with close friends for a quick weekend getaway. It was raining and in the 40's or 50's all weekend. I think we were all drenched at one point or another. And it was brilliant. Rain isn't snow but it was cool enough to bundle up as we toured around. Warm beverages were no problem and neither was hot soup. The lights along the river walk were magical as we wandered along. Mass at the cathedral was great (and a well timed Saturday night coincidence), though I've never been to Mass with a mariachi band before. Somewhere between the chill and the friends and the lights and a beautiful Mass, I found a little more Christmas spirit. Even if it was 70 again today.

Home Improvement

Back when we were dating, my husband and I agreed to watch each others favorite TV shows. I'm pretty sure the idea was mine. My favorite show is Firefly though, which only ran for one season. My husband's, to his glee, was Home Improvement, which ran for eight seasons. Good grief. Since we made the original deal, we've watched both together and a number of other shows as well. And okay, we might re-watch Firefly as much as one to two times a year. Anyway, watching Home Improvement gave me some interesting ideas for what to expect from our own home improvements. The good news is that it set a really low bar.

Originally, we had planned to spend the fall "finishing" our currently unfinished garage. We decided to set that project aside until later for a number of reasons and then both immediately looked around and started listing off other things we could do. High on my list was our shower. We knew we didn't have the know-how to remove the whole thing and re-do it and, with Thanksgiving approaching, didn't have the patience to try but our caulk and grout was in pretty bad need of repair in some places. I'd like to say we dove into fixing it but our approach more closely resembled a child cautiously dipping their toe in an uncertain lake than anything else. We read articles and watched videos and hemmed and hawed and eventually got to work.

We chose not to do the whole shower both, I believe, feeling pretty sure that we would fail the first time and need to re-do everything anyway. We cut out the worst of the grout though and all of the caulk and, a week later, had a re-caulked and partially re-grouted shower. It's not the prettiest thing in the world but the final product is a lot better than what we started with so I think we'll call this one a win. Of course, in the end, we didn't mess up so badly that we needed to immediately re-do anything so our shower grout is just going to be a little mismatched for a while. It's not the worst thing that could happen.

Hilariously, while our shower was out of commission, we used one of the other bathrooms. Now we have a list of projects to attack in that bathroom. Apparently this is exactly what being a home owner is like.

Before

During

After

Old Things

Marking our sixth move in two years (yes, that's right sixth), my husband and I drove a uhaul of stuff from my parent's home in FL back to TX this past July. Much of what was on board was furniture that they were kind enough to give to us, allowing us to finish furnishing our home. Beds, sheets, towels, dressers, and shelves will turn our previously empty rooms into a place for friends and family.

Then there were the boxes. The boxes that you inherit when you become an adult, live in your own place, and have some elbow room to take on all those pieces of your childhood that you left behind. As I mentioned a while back, I have a special affinity for hand-me-downs, for things that once lovingly belonged to a friend and now belong with me. On this, my husband sits almost diametrically opposed to me. The newer the better. Brand new preferable.

So, as I gush over my old puzzle collection, my many boxes of Legos, and my baby dishes, my husband grumbles, as good-naturedly as he can manage, that we will always be surrounded by old things. He wonders if our children will someday ever have new things even as I lovingly hold baby blankets made for generations of children before me and imagine covering our someday-child with them.

Looking for a way around this stand off, I briefly thought that we should wade through our old things together. Compromise is always easier when we are both involved. The idea never even made it to the table though. As soon as it had formed in my mind, I realized exactly why it wouldn't work. My husband's family left things behind when they immigrated to this country. The baby blankets belonging to great grandparents, the hobby horses, the toys, the hope chests, and the heirlooms, were all left behind for a new country and a new life. My husband doesn't have old, he only has new, and, as much as I want my old things to be our old things, they only tell the history of my family, not his.

I wonder what old things my family once left behind and I wonder where those things are now. It was so long ago though that the whole thing is intangible to me. It's someone else's history that is only very distantly related to mine. I hope that someday both my husband and our children will love the history in those old things but, in the meantime, perspective makes the grumbles and complaints about them easier.

The cat knows how I feel

Blogging recently has been tough. Work has been especially busy and, many days, feels entirely overwhelming. Maybe someday I'll blog about that, but today isn't that day. I'm facing another knee surgery in the not too distant future and, despite knowing that the surgery and recovery will be a lot easier than the last one, it's not a fun or happy prospect. I actually did write a blog about that but decided not to post it for any number of reasons. If you want to read it and don't feel like it will make you squeamish, let me know and I'll email it to you. The election is looming and, while there are so many things I'd like to say about that, I've started and stopped those blogs more times than I can count.

So, what's this not-very-cheerful sounding blog about?

Maybe it's the value of life. Maybe it's me wondering where all this rage is coming from.

It seems like I can't log on to facebook anymore without encountering angry posts and articles. With the exception of my friend's who post pictures of their children and (or) cute animals, it feels like wherever I look there is someone angry about something. Usually I roll my eyes, find a cute kid picture, and try to put whatever unnecessarily mean thing I read out of my mind. As the election draws nearer though, it's getting harder to ignore. I genuinely like reading posts from different political, cultural, and economic views. I seek them out. I have friends with whom I deeply disagree on a broad spectrum of issues but we still love each other, respect each other, and frequently get to have good debates with each other. And then.

And then I read an article from an author who hopes that every member of the opposing political party will die.

I'm not even kidding. My heart rate sped up and I did a double take and then a triple take. How has it come to this?

I can't separate my belief that all life should be respected from my faith but I'd like to believe that, whether a person holds a faith or not, they can respect that life is a precious and wonderful thing. It's fragile and too easily destroyed. There's a lot to be angry about this election season and I know how angry I am personally about things that I feel shouldn't be happening. I still can't imagine ever wishing someone dead over it though because your life is precious whether we agree or not.

When I was in the second grade, a boy in my class started shouting that he hated me. I can't remember what triggered his reaction but my teacher's response has been indelibly ingrained in me ever since. She pulled us both up to her desk and said, very gravely, you do not hate, you do not know what hate is, you never say that to another person again. It was, by far, not the worst experience I can remember from that school but it has defined nearly every bad experience I've had since then. You do not hate.

I think I wish my second grade teacher was here now. I'd like to think she'd be telling people on both sides to stop name calling, to stop saying awful things, to sit down and talk.

Maybe consider doing something nice for someone on November 9th. Donate to a food pantry or a charity. Buy a meal for someone who needs it. Adopt a pet. Send someone flowers. No matter what happens, it seems like there are going to be a lot of upset people next Wednesday morning but it would be awfully nice if everyone could take a deep breath and try to make someone else smile.

PS. If you're not sure what the picture has to do with anything, I chose it because (a) cute animal and (b) the title of this post.

How the cookie crumbles

Years ago, I was going through a really rough time. The exact how, what, and why aren't really important anymore but I definitely wasn't in a good place. At first, the boy I was dating thought he could fix me. When he couldn't, our relationship was over. Not long after, my closest friend at the time followed him in the same way. I will never ever forget her telling me that she just couldn't stick around and watch me be sad. It took me years to find any peace with what happened, with the idea that people I trusted, people who loved me, could walk away like that. Months later I sat down and talked to a priest about everything that had happened, about my confusion, my anger, my hurt. His response was nothing I ever would have anticipated.

Maybe they did you a favor.

It didn't feel like a favor at all. It felt very much like the opposite of a favor. The priest didn't stop there though. He went on to suggest that people who walk out of your life when things get rough aren't friends at all. That I was better off without those kind of people. I didn't even think priests could say that kind of thing.

Luckily for me, I found better friends. Friends who loved me exactly where I was. Friends who were sad that I was sad but knew that sometimes you just need time and space to be sad. Because that's okay.

Recently a friend going through a rough time, mentioned that they felt they had to be a certain way- the way they were before. Our situations are so different but all I could think in that moment was that I needed my friend to know that it's okay to be different, to be sad, for as long as it takes. Because everyone who loves her will be sad with her and when, down the road, a day comes that feels a little warmer and a little sunnier and a little better, we'll all be there for that too.

Two Years

Yesterday, my husband and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary and I think that all we know for sure about this marriage business is that two years feels a lot like one.

We hadn't been living together for a month yet when our first wedding anniversary rolled around. We celebrated in a big way (Red Bull Air Races! Hockey game!) but we missed out on many of the things you might expect from a couple that has been married for a year. Among those things, the year old wedding cake tradition. In all of our moves, our cake ended up with neither of us until well after our first anniversary. So yesterday we dutifully pulled it out of the freezer and dug in (after letting it warm up a little) to our now two year old wedding cake, which was surprisingly delicious!

Of course, I'm wondering if we'll always feel a year behind or maybe we'll just always feel like we've been married for half of the actual length of our marriage? Probably time will catch up with us at some point but for now it's kind of cool to feel like we've had two first wedding anniversaries.

Backyard Science Part II

Composting is SO COOL!

That's not even sarcasm. It is really the neatest, dorkiest thing ever. Maybe it wouldn't be as cool if I wasn't so into science, it's hard to say. It's been four months since we started composting and the shear weight and volume of material that has been diverted to our backyard compost bin is pretty incredible. I haven't been keeping a tally of exactly what's gone into the bin but I do know that we have filled it to bursting at least a dozen times. (Total volume of the compost tumbler, 37 gallons.) I'll be pushing material in and thinking to myself "okay, this is it, we're going to close it up soon and let the last material in decompose." Then I check it a week later and half the volume has disappeared into thin air. So, some adventures from the last four months.

Adventure the First.
I've become that person. The person I said I wouldn't become. The one who brings a spare plastic container to work so that I can bring home my orange peels or apple cores and compost them. After four months of composting, throwing things like that out just doesn't sit well with me anymore. My husband rolls his eyes but is reasonably good-natured about it.

Adventure the Second.
Having guests over. Sometime, back when this all started, my husband and I had a conversation that went something like this:
Husband: You're not going to compost at parties are you?
Me: Of course not! That would be a ridiculous pain!
Well. That went the same way as "of course I won't bring compostables home from work." I spent the first party we threw after the compost tumbler was set up cringing at food waste going into the trash. Now I set out three bins at parties: compost, trash, and recycling. And our friends have been fantastic about it.

Adventure the Third.
But won't it smell? I often ask guests to the house if they would like to come out to the compost with me. Often this is because guests mean extra food, which means that I need an extra set of hands to carry everything. This invitation is often met with a concern over the smell. No one wants to hang out with smelly stuff. I sure don't. That's okay though because the compost doesn't smell. It's pretty incredible but a well balanced compost is pretty unscented. We had one incident early on when the compost was getting a little too dry. I added moisture and then we entered rainy season. I'll admit that it smelled for a while then. I had to start scrounging for carbon sources to add, which leads me to...

Adventure the Fourth.
Importing other people's compostables. Leaves are a great source of carbon for compost. That's awesome and easy if you live in someplace where leave drop easily and often. If you live in southern Texas though, there just aren't enough leaves to keep up with our food trash. Especially in the rainy part of the summer when everything is hot and wet all the time and nothing dries out ever because the humidity is ridiculous. Paper is another great carbon source but it composts quicker if it's shredded. We don't own a shredder so I now import shredded paper from other people. We keep a whole cabinet of it on hand to add when we add another batch of kitchen waste.

Adventure the Fifth.
Mushrooms. Oh my goodness the mushrooms. I thought at one point that the compost was molding. That does happen sometimes and is a good indicator that we are not adding enough carbon or that it needs more oxygen, or both. Some vigorous tumbling and a little poking around though (with a long stick) proved that my compost wasn't molding. It was growing the largest mushrooms I have ever seen. Coincidentally, the mushrooms of doom started appearing about three weeks after a batch of mushroom scraps made their way into the tumbler. Go figure. A composting friend says that these are called "volunteers." She recently had some volunteer cantaloupes come out of her compost. I did not cultivate my mushrooms. No problem though, they are organic (very, very organic in this case) and simply decomposed once the temperature of the pile heated back up.

I really wasn't sure how the backyard science experiment in composting would go. We still haven't harvested any dirt, though we could if we needed to. So far though, it's just really cool. Sometimes I take food out and just spend a little while poking in the compost with a stick to check out how quickly different things decompose. Yes, that does make me pretty weird. That's okay. My parents assure me that the Oscar the Grouch "I love trash" was my favorite as a kid. I'm sure they especially loved me singing it in public, which I was apparently pretty fond of. So maybe this whole composting thing was pretty predictable after all.

Heads or Tails

As in, things I cannot make heads or tails of.

After struggling to keep up with yard care over the summer, we finally bit the bullet and decided to look into hiring someone. My husband was meeting with one potential business owner when he had a conversation that neither of us knew what to make heads or tails of. The lawn care provider asked some questions about us, which was pretty normal. Somehow our different last names came up. Suddenly the conversation took an abrupt left turn.

"Around here, I can see why she wouldn't take your last name. That would make getting hired really hard."

Wait. What?

My husband then tried to explain that it was a personal choice. That it was partly because of my doctorate and partly because of a family legacy that is dear to me. The guy wouldn't hear anything of it though. He was sure it was because I was afraid of reprisal, of racism.

The guy had no idea that way back in college, I nearly broke up with a guy who said he wouldn't marry someone who wouldn't take his name. (Ironically, he later did just that but that's the sort of thing love does to a person.) He didn't know anything about us at all but he was sure he did.

The whole thing was surreal and weird and discomforting. Most of all though, it had me worrying that maybe other people felt the same way that that guy did, that they made the same assumptions. And regardless of anything else, making sure that that possible assumption doesn't stand was worth a blog.

Something about 30

I had planned a great 30th birthday blog- 30 things about being 30. I knew it wouldn't be universal but I thought it would be fun. I had spent days in the car driving to or from work, thinking up things to include in the list. Then I sat down to write it and everything flew right out of my head. And not by way of my fingers and the keyboard. Oh well.

The truth is that being 30 feels just like being 29. Twenty nine felt a lot like 28. And so on. That's not to say that 30 feels anything like 13 but the differences are small, fluid, and ever changing. I remember being baffled as a kid when I was asked how it felt to be a new age. I never felt any different. It would almost definitely be more accurate to ask how I felt after a life event. For instance, my grandmother died between my tenth and eleventh birthdays. Any growing or changing that I did that year was far more altered by that than anything to do with my age.

Speaking of my Grandmother, I think the single biggest change I can point to between twenty and thirty involves her. I remember my 20th birthday. It was preceded by a rough year and a lot of uncertainty. At the time, I had a healthy sense of "well, what now?" I had no idea, no particular sense of direction, and was still working out who I was as a person. I can't say that any of that is untrue now but I also have a sense of working towards becoming something that I did not have a decade ago. I'll always be me but if I could grow to be some of my Grandmother too, I'd consider that a huge success.

Lazy Posting

That love your spouse challenge is going around facebook right now. I'm enjoying all the cute pictures that I get to see of my friends and at some point I was nominated by a friend. I'll pass on nominating other people but decided to dedicate a blog post to the challenge instead. Looking through pictures was fun and I set myself the additional challenge of trying to find as many photos of myself and my husband as I could that show us but not necessarily our faces. Somehow, to me, those can convey all the emotion in the world, often more honestly than when someone asks us to smile for the camera. There were a great deal more that I could have chosen from but these seven span our first summer of dating all the way to last fall. We're in all of the them, I promise!

Eleven months

Eleven months makes a huge difference. Give or take eleven months ago, I was camping on my own up in Copper Harbor, MI. The weather was fantastic- all except for that last day when it poured and I discovered that 20 year old tents cannot necessarily be successfully re-waterproofed anymore. Aside from when I was mountain biking, it never felt particularly hot and there was Lake Superior just a stones throw away to cool off in afterward.

Fast forward eleven months to my husband and I camping with two of our close friends outside of Austin, TX. Just take a minute to mull that concept over. Camping. In July. In Texas.

I'll start off by saying that the weekend was fantastic! I returned happier and calmer for having been outdoors so much (and not the kind of being outdoors that involves weeding, mowing, tree trimming, or any other form of house maintenance). But wow was it hot. It was the kind of hot where you purposefully take a cold shower and feel better for all of two minutes afterwards. I was entirely unprepared for this type of camping. My trusty sleeping bag, which has weathered November nights in the Blue Ridge Mountains without a sleeping pad was 100% useless in the Texas heat. My little tent, which is great for staying warm, suddenly felt like a sauna. Our friends were a lot more prepared.

I was, admittedly, baffled when it was suggested that we drive two cars. I looked at our pile of gear, taking up barely half of my car trunk, and wondered what on earth I was forgetting. My first ever camping trip (way back when I was maybe 8) was a backpacking trip and, while lots of my trips since then have been car-camping, I still tend to pack like I'm backpacking. Because why not? Texas summer is why not.

Our well prepared friends pulled out extension cords (the campsite had power), portable air conditioning units, and fans. I was torn between laughing hysterically and being incredibly jealous. Their much larger tent could fit an entire queen size air mattress and, when you're sleeping in 95 deg F heat, that has to be more comfortable than sleeping bags. This kind of camping was something I had trouble wrapping my head around and I bemoaned the fact that my husband will never ever want to go camping "my way" again. That said, that cup of freshly ground coffee before our early morning hike tasted delicious and we did not turn down the offer to borrow a fan for our tent. It's safe to say that I got a little spoiled too as I traded my usual camping food (oatmeal, GORP, PB&J, apples) for the containers of fresh cut fruit and vegetables that our friends were thoughtful enough to bring along and share.

Eleven months makes a big difference. I'm already looking forward to our next camping trip with our friends though and we brought back books of the Texas state parks to start our planning with. Maybe the next time it will even be cool, or, as cool as it seems to get in Texas.

Someone Else

A few weeks ago I was talking to my Aunt and mentioned that sometimes I wished that I had a different personality, that my hopes and dreams for life were different ones. I'm not sure what answer I expected but the one that she gave rang so true that it has been bouncing around in my mind in the weeks since. Be who you are.

Jenn, she reminded me, if you are the class clown then that's who you are. If you aren't that person and you try to be them anyway, you will just end up unhappy. We talked about plenty of other examples too but that one example stuck with me. I thought back on my attempts to be someone I wasn't when I was younger. I wanted to be the class clown, the kid who was goofy and could get away with it. That just wasn't me though. Adults knew that I knew better and I usually ended up embarrassed for my own attempts.

The advice was so simple. I can always keep improving as a person, as a friend, as a wife, as a daughter but, at the end of it all, I am who I am. And apparently that person is a little quirky. My Aunt told me something else that resonated as well. When you are being the person you are supposed to be, you are a happier person and other people can tell. Maybe I knew that already but sometimes you need to be reminded.

Happy July Fourth all!

Pick Me Up

Last week was a lousy one. By Saturday I really, really needed a win.

Despite wanting to sleep the entire weekend away, midday Saturday found my husband and I in the local mall having some Chik-fil-A for lunch and running some errands. The lousy thing about being an adult (besides having to pay taxes) is that you don't get to put life on pause when lousy things happen. The house still needs groceries, you still have to show up at work, and things still need to get cleaned. So there I was, waiting for food at Chik-fil-A and feeling awfully rundown.

Out of nowhere there was a tap on my arm. Standing next to me was an older woman, walker and all, and her husband, wearing a WWII veteran hat. Before I could say anything the woman smiled up at me (and let's face it, I'm not that tall) and said "I just wanted to tell you that you have fantastic legs, really beautiful." Message delivered, they wandered slowly off, clearly watching people shop more than shopping themselves. I called out a wobbly, stunned "thank you" after them. And immediately started wondering if the whole 30 second interaction had just happened.

I pinched myself. They were still there, in my line of sight, smiling serenely and chatting. For the first time in a few days, I smiled.

That woman didn't know me from a hole in the wall. I'll never be able to tell her how much I needed a win in that moment. I'll never be able to thank her husband for his service. (I wanted to and was just a few steps too far on the side of shocked as hell to put it into words.) Somewhere out there though there is a fantastic person who did a small, unexpected thing, and gave me the win I needed.

So go ahead, do the unexpected. Go out of your way. Lift someone up. Because maybe they need a win too.

Backyard Science

Possibly the best advice to new parents I've heard regards naming children. (Full disclaimer: having no children, I reserve the right to completely change my mind on this later in life.) Don't share the name of the baby. Once the child is born, everyone will more or less tell you that the name is fantastic, that it fits, that it is just right. (Aaaaaaaand, I'm sure plenty of people have had less positive experiences too.) But really, who wants to look at new parents and ask "you names your child WHAT??" As if they didn't already have enough to worry about.

Much like the name of an unborn child, I've nursed a dream for "someday when we own a house" for a few years now. I did my research. I discussed it with my husband. Otherwise though, I kept it pretty quiet for fear that I would get talked out of it. A few months after moving in though, I was ready to finally move forward. So, you're probably wondering what crazy thing I've gotten myself into now.

Composting.

Yes, that's right, the brilliant science of attempting to turn our trash back into dirt. For me, it's really just the next logical step for someone who wants to reduce their environmental impact. Growing up, my house was a waste-not-want-not kind of place. Our town had more categories of recycling than anyplace I have ever lived. Suffice to say, I have a deep appreciation for my current access to single stream recycling that gets picked up at my curb. (I have some concerns about the efficacy of single stream but there's not a lot I can do about that at the moment.) If your trash was found to have any of the items included in over 20 different recycling categories in it, you received a fine and then the town stopped picking up your trash. So, out of very ingrained, very compulsory, habit, recycling is something I take pretty seriously. Nothing else in our house went to waste either though. If clothes, sheets, and towels were too ratty to be donated, then they became rags and painting drop-clothes that we proceeded to use for another 10 to 20 years to come. (Really, really not kidding. If I enlist my Mom's help, I'm sure she can find rags that out-date me.)

So, after lots of research, I finally settled on a tumble style composter. We don't have the room on our property for a compost pile. They're great if they can be kept far from the house and less great if the only place you have available to put it is right behind your garage. Lots of compost bins are essentially a trash can with one end open to the dirt below and the other end latched so that material can be added but critters are kept out. I thought about this one long and hard because the previous owners left behind a lot of ratty trash cans and I would have been happy to re-purpose one of them. (There are also inexpensive, but slightly fancier mesh versions.) The lack of backyard space still posed a big problem though and my husband looked distinctly unhappy about the prospect. So, a tumbler won out. It's fairly compact, closed to critters, and much more movable than the other types of composters. Also, I don't have to get a shovel and turn the pile over by hand (instead you roll the bin) and I don't have to worry about "layering" different material types to make sure everything is well distributed.

A few weekends ago found us standing in Home Depot trying to find composters. I knew they had them in stock because I had checked in advance. One person told us that they were with ladders. I didn't even bother checking up on that lead because I was sure that not only were they not with the ladders but that the person I asked probably didn't know what a compost bin was to begin with. We headed to garden instead. After some fruitless searching, I finally asked another employee. Who had to ask yet another employee. Eventually we were directed down an aisle that had previously been closed off for re-stocking. No wonder we couldn't find it. The guy pointed me to the composters and then asked if I had done this before. I told him I hadn't and he snorted and walked away. Okay, fair enough. I might be crazy but that's okay.

I picked out the least dirty of the clearly rarely touched boxes and we headed home. Way too many screws and a few hours of trading on and off with my husband later and we had produced a composter. I started nervously making contributions the next day. I won't have a solid answer on how well this experience has gone for at least a few months but so far it's going pretty well. I've been surprised that friends visiting the house very quickly started asking what should be set aside for compost and what should go into the trash. I don't think my husband is anywhere near as enthusiastic as I am about our backyard project (that's okay, he has his own pool chemistry project to contend with) but he's glad that I'm excited, which is really all I can ask for.

Not another election year

Every presidential election cycle reminds me of the same political cartoon. It was published during the 2000 or 2004 election and showed a couple in bed, about to turn off the lights. The two candidates were shown crouched by the side of the bed, like eager puppies. One spouse turned to the other and asked "honey, did you remember to let the candidates out?"

I enjoy political cartoons in general but that one has always stuck with me. I even have it in a scrapbook of my favorite cartoons. So, it's election year again and good luck hiding from it. I think I liked elections a lot more before facebook though. By the time I was old enough to vote, I also had a facebook account but facebook was still new and status messages were still limited in length. I'm pretty sure most people posted about the party they had gone to, what they did at the gym, or something about how hard classes were. I remember some pretty good election debates in my freshman dorm room but I never remember anyone being called "stupid" (or anything worse) over their views. No one left angry and no friendships ended over differing political views. You disagreed and then you moved on.

Apparently not so anymore. Want to debate politics on facebook? Cool. I'd rather do it over a table with some wine and snacks but hey, go for it. Let's up the standards though. My opponent isn't "an idiot" because we disagree. Most likely, their priorities are far different than mine. Different experiences have shaped us and that's okay. Often, it makes for a really good discussion too. In fact, I respect the heck out of a facebook friend of mine who publicly went on facebook and apologized for rude language during a facebook debate that, it would appear, deteriorated quickly. The friend and I agree on almost nothing politically but I still can and do respect him.

Back in college, I dated a guy much like the friend I just mentioned- we could not have agreed less on politics, religion, the economy, or anything else if we had tried. Among the things we didn't agree on was how to vote. Thankfully, we both agreed that exercising your right to vote was critical. (Seriously, GO VOTE.) I believed in voting within a two party system though and he believed in voting for the candidate that you had the most faith in, regardless of how obsolete their party. I told him he was throwing away his vote.

A decade later, I find myself unable to vote for either party's presumptive nominee. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and we'll end up with a candidate or two that I could consider voting for. It could still happen. Right?

Seriously though. I'm now eating my words from a decade ago. Because I would very much like this to not look like an invitation to debate me on facebook (but let me know if you want to talk over snacks), let's keep this theoretical. The nominating conventions haven't actually passed yet so I guess it still actually is. Theoretically though, I might feel ethically and morally unable to vote for either major party candidate. I've been told I'll be throwing away my vote. Mickey Mouse 2016 anyone?

There are other candidates out there though. And no, I'm not talking about Micky Mouse, Darth Vader, or the tooth fairy. Research them. Maybe if everyone voted for the candidate they believed in most, we would end up with a better outcome in November. I know I'm not the only person looking at the possible choices in despair. Before you choose your favorite fairy tale princess as a write-in vote though, check out the other people. The ones that you, unfortunately, will not see in a major presidential debates but might have real experience and real ideas and could, possibly, really be a better fit for you.

I've you've stuck with this post this long, please stick with it just a little longer. I was really less than enthusiastic about writing this post because I do try to keep my political debates off the internet. A few days ago though a friend posted an inoffensive status about her beliefs. Replies to her post were rude, offensive, and shallow. She replied without lowering herself to the same level. Debate politics on facebook if you want to (again, preferably not with me) but be polite, pretty pretty please.

Flying Toilets

Just kidding.

We had a really exciting Saturday night a few weeks ago. It was great. We finally got to do something we'd been looking forward to since before we bought the house.

We (mostly my husband and our friend) finally replaced the inner workings of our half bath toilet! You're probably thinking seriously? this is what you're writing about?! Yes, yes I am. If you didn't have the pleasure of hearing the toilet before it had minor surgery then you didn't get to hear it doing it's best job to mimic a high pitched rocket launch. You could pretty much hear the toilet flushing anywhere in the house.

Of course, I'm not entirely sure any of us really knew what was going on but what could go wrong with one aerospace engineer and one marine mechanical engineer working on it? They both have degrees in defying gravity!" chimed in one of our friends. Luckily the real answer to that was nothing but I quickly envisioned our toilet growing wings and flying away.

It might not have been the most exciting Saturday but it felt pretty good to check a big thing off our list, make our house a little more ours, and learn how to fix a toilet. If I now tend to imagine the toilet in our hallway bathroom flying away, that's okay too.

The Cool Aunt

I was planning to blog about the house and back-up blog ideas included my thoughts on how it is already over 80 degrees F in Houston most days or how I can't believe that there can possibly be as many accidents as there are every day in Houston. Instead I'd like to blog about a conversation I had with a friend last weekend.

My friend is going to be an aunt for the first time. She, like me, grew up with cousins around her age and we were talking about being an aunt without children. I thought back a few decades, to before adulthood, before I grew disconnected from my family, to a time when my childless aunt was one of the coolest people I knew. Sure my other aunts and uncles had kids my age but that meant that I had a relationship with their children, my cousins, but not necessarily them. My childless aunt though was awesome. She spoke to me like I was an adult, or at least it felt that way at the time. I was able to hang out with an adult (who wasn't my parents) and have an adult friend. It made me feel adult and important.

Interestingly, the whole experience was so significant to me that it has made me actively want to have that childless-aunt time with my own niece and nephews. This time that I have now is so precious to me. When I spend time with those kids, all of my attention can be on them- their concerns and interests, their well-being and happiness. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

So here's to all the aunts and uncles without children who get to focus their love, energy, and attention on their siblings little ones.

And just because it's important to start them early, this is a picture of me explaining to my niece about volcanoes around the world...

Settling In

Yes, that's right. We have jumped off a cliff. Taken the plunge. Bought a house.

We began looking for a house last November and had a few false starts with houses that looked great but weren't good choices for us for one option or another. After a particularly stinging disappointment (a nearly perfect house with some serious exterior issues), we were feeling quite discouraged. No more than a few days later though, a new listing was posted and we thought it looked pretty great. No more than a week later, we had put in an offer and were anxiously waiting for news. I, foolishly, thought that our offer being accepted would end the really tense part of the process. Ha! Little did I know...

The details are too long to get into but I'll summarize the highlights of what went wrong here.

Wrong turn 1: My husband was already living (and paying bills) in Texas when I moved here. We didn't bother switching any of them into my name because that seemed like a lot of hassle for no reason. Apparently not. I didn't have enough credit cards to satisfy the bank for our mortgage because I like paying in cash whenever possible. No problem right? I have eight years of bill paying history, all of which reflects good credit. But wait! I'm not still paying any of those bills because I had the audacity to move in with my husband. No luck there. That's okay. I have lots of other payments- like car insurance! Crushingly, I pay my car insurance bi-annually because ... I don't like having to pay lots of bills? Anyway, at this point, we had an actual, legitimate problem. We were told we would need a waiver for my "lack of credit."

Wrong turn 2: We got the waiver! Wait, you're thinking, that's great. That's not a wrong turn at all! At this point, waiver grants, we had no idea why our mortgage was still being held up. After weeks of asking and, eventually, escalating our problem, I was told that "the mortgage process is just very complicated so sometimes we tell our clients what they want to hear." Yup, the bank had just lied about the waiver. Which brought us to...

Wrong turn 3: My new job! Of course, the job came well before we found a house that we were interested in. Applying for a mortgage, I furnished my existing pay stubs as well as my offer letter for the job I was about to start, which clearly stated I would be paid monthly. The bank, in its infinite wisdom, was waiting for me to furnish pay stubs from my new job. They hadn't told us that they were waiting and hadn't considered that our closing, at the start of March, wouldn't allow enough time for me to get them a monthly pay stub and then a credit waiver in time.

It all ended well a very stressful five weeks later and we are now proud home owners! That said, by the time we closed, I was frazzled and stressed by the whole process and wondering what sort of mess we had gotten ourselves into.

It's taken about two weeks but I'm finally beginning to feel excited about our next big adventure- home ownership!

Coffee and Commuting

My new job also brought a new commute. Frankly, it's not that great. I'll be working on ways to improve it as I get more settled into a routine but that's not happening for a little while. Houston has astoundingly bad traffic. For reference, I grew up outside of NYC. Driving in Atlanta is more or less a dream compared to Houston. One Friday morning a few weeks ago, the entire highway was shut down. Not a lane. Not two lanes. The whole, entire thing. It took me two hours to get to work and I have only once in my life regretted the decision not to stay home more than I did that day. In general, it's about a 45 to 50 minute trip each way.

Over the last month of commuting, I've developed a metric by which I now gauge every daily drive. My coffee. Here's how it works:
If my coffee is still hot as I pull into work, it was a great commute.
If I've had a few sips and my coffee is warm but not hot, my commute was pretty average.
If my coffee is cool, my commute was lousy.
If I have no coffee left, I should have stayed home.

Environmentalism Fail

I'm pretty sure my husband thinks I am a rampant environmentalist. I grew up in a town with 30+ mandatory categories of recycling though so I'm more or less programmed to recycle. My Mom was also pretty thrifty and nothing ever left our house without being reused. To this day, I'm pretty sure we have about 100 aluminum pie plates somewhere.

Just kidding. I know exactly where they are. And it's more like 85, but who's counting?

So yes, by Texas standards, I probably am a rampant environmentalist.

Recently, I've been looking for ways to lessen the amount of garbage we produce. At home, I'm pretty good (there's always 'better' and maybe there will be more on that later this year) about this no matter how many times my husband has to roll his eyes as I stop him from throwing something out while insisting "wait, we can use that!!

I realized that I could do better when I am out though. So this week, I brought my own mug with me when I went to buy coffee on the way to work. I asked while ordering if they could use the mug instead of a styrofoam cup and was told they could. I paid and waited for my coffee. Minutes later I watched as the person behind the counter poured my coffee from the exact same styrofoam cup I was trying not to waste into my reusable mug.

Sigh. Fail.

Momma says...

I remember the day in graduate school when I woke up and realized that there was exactly no reason why I could not have ice cream for breakfast. Sure my Mom would probably have been horrified, no matter how much she loves ice cream, but I was an adult. I was on my own. And I was totally going to eat half a pint of ice cream for breakfast because why not?

So maybe not everything our parents tell us is completely legit. For instance, my niece and nephews are delighted to get cookies for good behavior. I'm wondering how old they will be before they realize that rice cakes are not cookies. I hope I'm there to see it. More often than not though, the things our parents tell us are for good reason. Because they were once our age. They know.

When I started driving on my own, my parents had a strict no-radio-in-the-car rule. I was sure it was the lamest, dumbest rule ever. I followed it for a while though because I was pretty sure they would know. I didn't know how they would know but maybe they would and maybe I would lose my car privileges. Of course, they explained to me that the rule was so that I wouldn't be distracted by the radio. Jeez guys I thought to myself it's driving, not rocket science. Years later, and thousands of miles of driving experience later, I could understand. I couldn't believe how unbelievable cocky I had been. Experience does matter and you can't teach it, no matter how much every parent ever probably wishes that they could.

So tonight I was baking some rolls and muffins for the week. Rushing to get everything done before dinner, I put some butter in the microwave to melt and didn't bother to cover it. I could hear my Mom in the background saying "You better have put something over that! You're cleaning it up if you make a mess! But seriously, in twenty years of baking, I have never once exploded butter in the microwave. I know how long it takes to melt it. Despite my spotless track record, I knew exactly what had happened when there was a loud BANG! from the microwave. I looked up abashed to see butter everywhere.

I mean, everywhere. It was dripping down the door. It had somehow gotten underneath the rotating tray. Don't even get me started on the ceiling of the microwave. It was coated and dripping and, in the back of my mind, I could hear how this would have played out at home. I would protest that something like this had never happened before and my Mom would point out that, eventually, it was bound to happen. That this wouldn't have happened if I had just covered the butter like she had asked. Next time Mom!

On the upside, our microwave hasn't been this clean since Thanksgiving. Otherwise known as "the last time Mom visited."

Living the Dream?

I was lucky enough to be able to work remotely for the last few months. It was a huge boon that allowed me to move to Texas, live with my husband and not end up in a really lousy situation with my lease in Michigan. All around, a good thing that I am very grateful for!

That said, after a few months, I had begun to wonder if I was really living the dream. Sure I could wake up 20 minutes before I had to start work. And I didn't have to wear anything more formal than a hoodie. Lunch was easy too and I didn't need to have anything prepared in advance.

I also had no work-life separation. It was too easy for me to work all night long, after working all day long, because my office was also my home. I didn't have anyone to talk to during the day and started to go pretty stir crazy. Eventually motivation was pretty hard to come by with no colleagues, few deadlines and no meetings or phone calls. I used to be a work at home pro, when I only did it every once and a while, but after a few months I was struggling.

After a month of wind-down on the project I had been working on, I started a new postdoc down here in Houston last week. It comes with a hefty commute and a more formal dress code than a hoodie and shorts but it is also providing me with a lot of structure, people to talk to during the day and a challenging set of goals and objectives. Best of all, when I come home at night, I can leave my work at the office (I might choose not to but that's a different issue...)!

Grandparents

My grandparents have all been deceased long enough that my memories have taken on that vintage film quality. I remember smells and shadowy faces but nothing is very concrete or very real. Sometimes I think about the kind of relationship I might have had with my grandparents, especially my Dad's Mom, as an adult and I wonder what we would have talked about.

Books. We would have talked about books. I'm sure we would have talked about lots of other things too though.

This week I started a new job. (More on that later.) Sunday night, while eating dinner, my husband's grandparents called. He deferred it until we were done eating. I had gone out to run an errand, leaving him to return the call and fully assuming it had nothing to do with me. When I returned, my husband, sounding only a little confused, told me that his Grandmother had wanted to talk to me. I asked why and he said he didn't know. So I picked up the phone and returned the call.

"You are starting a new job tomorrow- I wanted to wish you good luck and tell you that we love you." And then it hit me. Huh. Maybe that's what it feels like to have a grandparent. My memories of my own Grandmother's voice are fuzzy and, like a dim star, only there when I don't think too hard about it but despite that I was sure that if she was alive today this is the call we would have had.

With the start of a new job, I've also decided to open a new blog and this post will be cross posted on the next adventure in my life - Fifteen Hundred Miles South.