A Cat Nap

Lately I’ve been really struggling with my sleep and awake schedule and with managing my health and exercise. A brief web search on sleep habits and cycles turned up a lot of hits about how to get more sleep, but what I’m struggling with is how to be more alert, awake, and energetic for a productive portion of the day. I feel sleepy, groggy, and tired a good portion of the time that I am awake. This isn’t really new - I’ve often struggled with fatigue - yawning repeatedly throughout the days even when I’m working or really paying attention to something.

I know some good tips that I can try to help feel more energetic and alert, but I am also struggling to make myself actually do these things. Lately, I would guess I’ve been sleeping about 8-10 hours a night. At least in the last week I’ve managed to keep myself from sleeping any stretches of over 10 hours. This is an above average amount of sleep to get, but it’s not clear whether it’s unhealthy. What I’m most concerned with is getting to a place where I have energy and feel alert during my awake time.

The national sleep foundation recommends waking at the same time each day, weekdays and weekends, to help establish your circadian rhythms. Additionally, they recommend regular exercise, and I have always found that to be helpful in being able to sleep when I want to. My current lifestyle could really use a lot more exercise, and so I’m slowly working on trying to get more of that. For now, I’m doing simple things like 10-30 minutes of yoga and walking around the neighborhood. It’s really hard, being able to do most of my work wherever and whenever I want, to work some routines into my day that allow me good opportunity for exercise.

I was able to find this information about sleeping too long on the national sleep foundation’s site:

On the other hand, some research has found that long sleep durations (nine hours or more) are also associated with increased morbidity (illness, accidents) and mortality (death). Researchers describe this relationship as a “U-shaped” curve where both sleeping too little and sleeping too much may put you at risk. This research found that variables such as low socioeconomic status and depression were significantly associated with long sleep. Some researchers argue that these other variables might be the cause of the longer sleep: the fact that individuals with low socioeconomic status are more likely to have undiagnosed illnesses because of poor medical care explains the relationship between low socioeconomic status, long sleep and morbidity/mortality. Researchers caution that there is not a definitive conclusion that getting more than nine hours of sleep per night is consistently linked with health problems and/or mortality in adults, while short sleep has been linked to both these consequences in numerous studies.

The link between sleeping a lot and depression is fairly clear, and I do tend to sleep more often and longer when I’m feeling depressed. But right now, I’m not sure if it’s depression related or just that I need to establish some new routines and patterns as my lifestyle and work have been changing. Mostly, I feel surprised by how challenging I am finding it to manage my own health and wellness.

Currently, for my husband and I combined, we spend $1,200 each month on health costs and debt. For health costs, this includes prescriptions, doctor’s visits, and a minimum of tests. For debts, this includes credit card, student loan, non-loan overdue university bills, bank fees (many of which we wouldn’t get hit with or would be lower if we had more money), and back taxes (from when we didn’t manage to pay enough estimated self-employment tax during that period when Husband worked full weeks and unpaid overtime but was only a “consultant” - just so that his employer wouldn’t have to provide him with benefits). And the monthly costs may increase soon since we’ll no longer be able to defer payment on my school loans, probably to about $1,400.  We are 24 and 29.  I’ve read that people in my generation have higher levels of debt in their 20’s than most previous generations.

With regards to credit card debt, I think I definitely fell victim to some predatory lending, and now I’ve got a debt with a really high interest rate and high over limit and missed payment fees too. I think I should have known better than that, but it’s too late now to ruminate. Now that things have calmed down, I’m going to see if I can get the rate down or transfer the balance to a card with a lower rate.

And now, I arm you with knowledge from Co-op America’s Real Money about predatory lending:

Predatory lending: Predatory lending is a fast-growing practice in which financial institutions use high fees, exorbitant costs, and other unscrupulous lending practices to take advantage of targeted groups—often the elderly, students, and low-income people. In the case of credit cards, banks may market cards to these groups that “contain hidden transfer charges, exorbitant late fees, and exploding interest rates,” according to the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL).

It’s not just target groups that suffer from such practices. A Woodstock Institute report states that “the intricate web of penalties and fees implemented by the credit card industry may be one of the key factors for the high level of indebtedness among Americans. In January 2005, the average US household had seven credit cards and carried a balance of $14,000, the highest level of debt ever.”

I feel a little better knowing I have less than average credit card debt…

The last few weeks have seen an interesting hodgepodge of demands on my time, but I think I’ve managed to secure enough babysitting hours to stabilize the financial situation a little bit until we get our next cash influx, which should be a few weeks away now. Financially we’re in what Husband is calling a “famine cycle,” but I think I’ve succeeded in keeping it from getting as bad as it has been in the past. I pulled in all the cash from any savings account we had, enough to bring our bank account in the black again, and now I can put enough cash from babysitting into the account to keep from bank fees and bounced payments when some of our unavoidable bills are processed. This feels a little better, although it’s still really stressful as a significant portion of our bills are going unpaid, and thus our debt is just growing further.

I found a new occasional baby sitting gig, watching a 2 month old. I’m happy to be around a baby again, as the toddlers at my other gig are now 20 months and 3 1/4 yrs old. And so far, the baby seems to be a pretty easy baby, although I haven’t spent too much time with him yet. His parents are both musicians, and I’m going to be helping out while his momma gets some practice time in. So I get to listen to some great classical piano while I’m working, too! It’s pretty soothing. So far the baby and I seem to interact well - he likes my smile and my laugh.

So this is what my weekly schedule is shaping up to look like: 5-10 hours with the 2 month old, 10-15 hours with the toddlers, unknown number of hours in the lab (I’m a “part-time staff associate” for the summer), and 10-20 hours on the startup company. I’ve been taking time off from lab work the past few weeks to focus on helping to get the business pitch ready for our next attempts to secure funding, but I begin lab stuff again this week. We have some new summer undergrads who I will be meeting on Thursday and begin training on Friday. I’m looking forward to new potential mentees!

As for my mental and physical health, I’m struggling, but fighting hard. I’ve been a revolving door of various infections, viruses, and other stress-related sickness. I feel the pull of the bed, with the comfy covers and the promise of sleep and dreams, but I’m managing somewhat to get myself to do work. Last week I felt myself wanting to sleep an awful lot, but on Thursday I fought hard against the desire to stay in bed, and it was a good step. I went out and ran some errands in the neighborhood and then went to Starbucks and did some work there, and by the time I returned home I felt somewhat rejuvenated. When I get stressed out too much, I try to meditate and relax. When I feel like sleeping but know that I’ve had enough sleep, I try to get out and just do little things to get myself going. It’s these small skills that I’ve been cultivating to fight depression, and I’m definitely getting better at it. These struggles with depression and anxiety haven’t been easy, but I am definitely able to see progress in my ability to deal with everything and to fight my way out of the depressed state. I know that I’m dealing with everything that’s going on now in a much, much stronger way than I would have even two years ago, and for that I’m proud.

I failed the quals again, on my second try, and now I must leave the program. I learned this on Friday, May 2nd, (it started with an ominous e-mail late Thursday night, leaving me unable to sleep or relax or frankly function well at all until I met with the committee chair on Friday) and was sort of reeling from the information for a while. I originally began this post the weekend after that, but I was busy dealing with the actual life decisions and the immediate need for fun and relaxation, and I forgot to come back to it until now.

I’m still pretty shocked and fairly pissed at the faculty of my department. The other person who had failed the first time and been encouraged to stay and take it again also failed this time around too; I ran into him on my way home from meeting with the committee chair and he was on his way to meet with him. Perhaps I had misinterpreted, but I had thought when they asked me to stay and try again that I just needed to show a good faith effort to do better this time around. After all, I had to stick around for an entire year in order to take the exam again, including a semester after receiving my Master’s degree. And for that year they funded me on a departmental NSF grant. They had invested in me and they had been the only ones to educate me (I stayed at the same school as I did my undergrad). They had accepted me into the graduate program even after my struggles with depression throughout my undergrad years, and they had encouraged me to stay and try again when I failed the first time. I really thought that I’d be fine as long as I studied hard. And I did study hard - but I still failed.

So, you may be wondering, what happened?

Things I don’t know:

• Whether they deemed my performance better or worse than last time (i.e. what they were looking for). I took a different approach to studying this time around. I started studying before anyone else who took the exam this year, and it was my second time taking it so I had a better idea of what the experience would be like (but apparently no better of an idea of what they were looking for me to do). After I failed the first time, I was left with very little feedback. I asked to see my exam, but it wasn’t allowed. While he offered me some details about which subjects I had performed better and worse on, I had no idea if I had actually gotten things wrong, if they were unhappy with the place(s?) where I had to write “This is what I would do if I had the equation to start,” or if it was just that I hadn’t finished enough of it. This time, I felt more prepared and knew more material going into the exam, but there were still gaps in my knowledge. I felt (and still feel) like it was somewhat of a crapshoot, and all I could do was hope they’d either keep it to the most essential topics or that I’d be lucky enough to have recently reviewed the more obscure topics.
• Whether I got things wrong on the exam or merely didn’t finish enough of it. This time, I’ve been somewhat unable to think about and exam my exam performance too much. It’s just too painful. So I didn’t ask any questions when I met with the committee chair.
• What kind of departmental politics are going on and how they may have impacted the faculty’s decision to fail myself and my peer. Earlier this year, the faculty considered getting rid of the qualifying exam. Apparently some of the faculty think that we should still have it, but that it should be extremely strict, with no room for “Well he did better than last time” or “She’s a great researcher.” Those faculty think that in the past they had sometimes been too lenient. They cite departments at other schools (Princeton and MIT) where 1/3rd or more of the class is cut after the quals. On the other end of the spectrum, some of the faculty advocate completely getting rid of the quals. Some of these arguments and views may have been formed after last year, when 11 people took the exam and 3 of us failed. One person was taking it for the second time and passed, but I heard their performance was only marginally better. Of the three of us that failed, 2 of us were encouraged to stay and try again and the third was just told to leave. Later, there were complaints of politics playing a role in who got to stay and who didn’t, and I think this may have led to the viewpoints that it should be stricter. Meanwhile other professors saw that those of us that had failed were excellent researchers and had of course passed (and done fairly well in, I’m sure) the courses on which the exam was based. My understanding is that it is still possible they will get rid of the exam next year, or at least change its format.

Things I know:

• I struggle with this exam format. I’ve written about this before. It was a closed book exam, 4 hours long. There were 6 questions, giving us about 45 minutes per question. Most of the questions were very detailed, and I just couldn’t work through them fast enough. I left some serious chunks undone because I ran out of time. Also, my subject uses math heavily, and while I’m good at and enjoy math, I’ve never been good at memorizing equations (or memorizing anything). For most of my undergraduate education (at the same institution with many of the same professors who wrote the qualifying exam), exams were open book. That worked for me because I’m very good at using the available tools and information to solve problems, but I don’t see the point in memorizing anything that isn’t used so often that I memorize it without trying. This time around, I had written out about 100 flashcards of equations I thought I needed to memorize to be prepared. While many of the questions on the exam were fairly central to their subject matter, about three of the six were what I’d consider to be detailed specific cases which ended up requiring the use of equations that hadn’t even made it into my flashcard pack. One of the questions began with and required an equation for a special case that I had not memorized, and I was left completely crippled on that question.
• I succumbed to the pressure during the exam. I had been studying for months, and I knew this was my last chance at the exam, and there was a lot of pressure. As I was working through the exam and finding it challenging, I began to get increasingly flustered to the point where I did shed some tears and I considered handing it in unfinished and walking away. I was distracted by how upset I was and unable to focus on trying to solve the problems in front of me.
• I’m a great researcher. I’m organized and self-driven. Because I began researching in my advisor’s lab as an undergrad, I’d made significant progress on my projects and we had thought I might be able do the degree in a shorter time than average. As a member of a small lab group, I’d managed as many as 4 projects at once, while most of my peers were only in charge of one. I’d voluntarily taken on managing and mentoring the undergrads in my lab. And I’m first author on a paper with my advisor that was published in the main journal for the subject area last fall. Many of my peers were struggling to come up with a project and to write their thesis proposal, and I already have a draft from a year ago when I used a class project to write it. And my first poster drew compliments not only on the science but on the easy organization of information and appealing visuals.
• Some of the faculty are sad to see me go. I know this because they’ve either told me directly or they’ve told my advisor.
• I contributed significantly to the department. I’m the founding president of the department’s graduate student association; in fact I was the ONLY grad student to even respond when the committee chair was looking for students to get a GSA started, and I went and recruited others to work with me. I’ve interacted directly with the graduate committee chair and the department chair, and I’ve often contributed my ideas and insights when they were looking for feedback or evaluation. Also, whenever prospective students visited I gave them tours and made them feel welcome.
• There are lots of places I can go from here. The graduate committee chair who gave me the news reminded me that I could still apply to other programs and that it wouldn’t go on my record or anything so it will just look like I just left with my MS degree. If I ever want to, I can return to grad school in the future, and I will be better able to choose a department that fits me.
• I am looking forward to trying out other directions. I wrote about this before the exam in my post on my career path, but I am excited about exploring other research areas (perhaps some women in science research?), popular science writing, teaching and tutoring, or maybe research or project management in industry. I’m also considering working full-time for Husband’s company in the fall, doing a combination of marketing, project management, financial management, and online community building.

Overall, this was a pretty bad experience, but certainly one that I’ve learned from. Some days I am happy and excited about exploring other opportunities. Other days I get a bit down from the shock and emotions of it all. Always, I have my husband, family, and friends supporting me, and for that I am both happy and thankful.

As I mentioned previously, among other things, failing the quals and being kicked out of the program has left me suddenly without health insurance after the end of this month.  For the summer, I have work lined up, but it is without benefits.  After that, I hope to be able to work for Husband’s company, which would make us both self-employed.  (For stability, I’ll get a real job if we don’t have a solid amount of funds in the company account).  After I found on e-health insurance that a medical plan with prescription (and maternal) coverage for Husband and I combined would run $700 a month,  Sara from Yellow Ibis shared with me this great NYTimes article on finding health insurance for the self-employed.

From the article I found this great resource, healthinsuranceinfo.net, which is hosted by the Georgetown health policy institute.  From there, you can get a free state-specific consumer guide on getting and keeping health insurance.  I haven’t completely delved through my state’s guide yet, but I’m glad I found this great resource!

In the past few months I’ve continually come across mentions of Millenials or Gen Y, and since I know I fell in around there age-wise and identify most strongly with the young people of today, they have always piqued my curiosity. So I immediately clicked through to the article when I saw Bob Herbert’s op-ed “Here Come the Millenials” on the list of most e-mailed articles on the NYTimes.

When I first got there, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I thought, “Here’s what other people are reading about my generation.” But it actually turned out to make me more self-aware of how not alone I am, how many, many others who grew up in the same America I did are facing the same things.

A number of studies, including new ones by the Center for American Progress in Washington and by Demos, a progressive think tank in New York, have shown that Americans in this age group are faced with a variety of challenges that are tougher than those faced by young adults over the past few decades. Among the challenges are worsening job prospects, lower rates of health insurance coverage and higher levels of debt.

This struck me hard. Husband and I absolutely face all three of those (bold emphasis mine). While we are highly educated and skilled enough that we are both confident we can find jobs when needed, the choices may be more limited than we’d originally hoped.

When I met Husband, he was working as an elementary school computer teacher, despite his degree in CS and experience in web jobs during the late 90’s. He didn’t want to do this forever, but it was a job, and it paid something, so he was there. He had been doing web design on the side, and I encouraged him to try to find a job in that full-time. He was miserable in that job, so with his freelance plus my work-study income, we decided that he could quit, quickly improve his web portfolio, and find a new job. That winter, he did, but it didn’t include benefits, vacation, etc. He took it as a way to get his foot (back) in the door, and worked for a year without health insurance coverage. Meanwhile, we both had racked up debt on my credit card for things like, oh, eating.

The story could continue but I’m going to stop there. You get the point. Similar themes as we progressed through the next 3 years, and here we are. My being kicked out of school leaves me without health insurance, and Husband has been unwisely living without it for a year and a half, despite the fact that he’s on medications and has some medical issues. For the summer I have work lined up, but, surprise surprise, without the possibility of benefits. I just looked up yesterday the cost of putting Husband and I on a health insurance plan for the self-employed - $700 or more combined. Each month.

Among other things, we are fed up with the government. We see that in a completely free-market economy the rich get rich and the poor get, well, shit on. We both think that while free-market works well for a lot of things (like motivation for work to be done well and efficiently), we need more safety nets, more regulations to ensure opportunities for the poor and minorities, and more compassion in American politics.

Later in the article, Herbert writes:

According to the study: “Millennials mostly reject the conservative viewpoint that government is the problem, and that free markets always produce the best results for society. Indeed, Millennials’ views are more progressive than those of other age groups today, and are more progressive than previous generations when they were younger.”

The study is right on, because that’s exactly how we feel. This is not the America I learned about growing up. I see so many people in worse situation than ours (around me everyday when I go home to my apartment in the Bronx or any time I visit Husband’s family), and Husband and I both are fed up with the political state of the country. Even most of the “liberals” aren’t liberal enough for us. You think America offers equal opportunity? Bullshit.

I came across this article from ScienceNOW about a new study on whether the mom’s calorie intake at the time of conception affects the gender of the baby. The idea that it might is based on the Trivers-Willard hypothesis:

In 1973, biologist Robert Trivers and mathematician Dan Willard predicted that to maximize the number of her descendents, a mother should have some control over the sex of her offspring. If she’s healthy and has plenty of food, male offspring are her best investment because they can produce more progeny than can females. But a mediocre male cannot, so mothers with limited resources are better off having girls.

The study, You are what your mother eats: evidence for maternal preconception diet influencing foetal sex in humans, was done in the UK by Fiona Mathews, Paul J. Johnson, and Andrew Neil. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get access to the full text, so all I had to go by was the abstract and the article from ScienceNOW, but it sounds interesting. Mathews and her colleagues proposed that if the Trivers-Willard hypothesis is true for human mothers, a mother with greater total calorie intake might have more male babies.

The researchers looked at what the first-time mothers were eating at the time of conception. They found that of the mothers who consumed a total amount of calories in the top 1/3 of the subject pool, 56% had sons. In the lowest calorie group, 45% had sons. Male births are in a “small but detectable decline” in some industrialized countries- since 1970 the proportion of male births in the US has gone down by .1% - and now researchers have evidence that maternal diet may be one of the factors involved. There are likely other factors as well, such as environmental contaminants.

One of the interesting parts of the study is that it found a slightly stronger correlation between how much cereal the mother eats at the time of conception and the gender of the baby. Only 43% of mothers who ate less than one bowl of cereal per week had sons, while 59% of mothers who ate at least one bowl of cereal each day bore sons. From the ScienceNOW article:

With fewer women eating breakfast, Mathews says that the Trivers-Willard effect could be at least part of the explanation for dropping sex ratios. Breakfast may be particularly important for maintaining blood sugar levels, which have been linked to increased production of males in other mammals, although the precise mechanism is unknown (ScienceNOW, 30 November 2007).

I really wish I could read the actual article, because I’m particularly curious about this part. I eat lots of cereal - but rarely for breakfast. Rather, I munch on staples like cheerios for snack food at any time of day. The ScienceNOW article continually makes the jump from cereal to breakfast, and I want to know the details from the actual article. Did they ask whether they ate the cereal at breakfast time? If the effect is really about blood sugar levels, then the question of whether they ate breakfast may be more important than how much cereal they eat. And what about women who eat breakfast, keep steady blood sugar levels, but also keep a low overall calorie intake? Where did they fall?

Finally, I also take issue with the title of the ScienceNOW article, “Want a Boy? Eat your Wheaties.” While I understand that it is easier to stick to either X% have boys or X% have girls, I had a bit of a visceral reaction to the “Want a boy?” part of the title, because while I know I’ll be ecstatic and loving with my children no matter their gender, I’ve always daydreamed most often about a baby girl.

While an article title must provide a hook to get the potential reader to go read it, this title seems to me to really simplify the findings. Maybe something like “Want to choose your baby’s sex? Modify your diet.” would have gone down smoother but still hooked people. It seems like it would be easy for an average person to read the actual title and either think “That must be crap science” (this admittedly crossed my mind) or “I’m going to go eat Wheaties every day now.” In reality, from what I can gather with just the abstract and the ScienceNOW article, eating breakfast and/or cereal every day may increase your chance of conceiving a son to 59%. That is a significant increase, but the 41% of mothers who follow that and have girls is no small number of moms. And if I want to have a girl, should I start skipping breakfast and avoiding cheerios? That sure would seem foolish going into a pregnancy.

I came across this article today, which I wanted to briefly share. Yet more reason for me to get healthier before we start trying to get pregnant! I am making good progress and so is Husband, so we’re on the right track. Since we joined Traineo (a year ago), I’ve lost 12 pounds and he’s lost 27 pounds! Over a whole year 12pounds may not sound like a lot, but it’s been very easy and sustainable and because of that I’m confident that I can keep it off and continue to lose more!

Anyhow, here’s an excerpt from Reuters’ reporting of the study:

However, infants of the 39 overweight or obese moms had significantly higher percentages of body fat (13.6 vs. 12.5 percent), higher fat mass (448.3 grams vs. 414.1 grams), and lower fat-free mass (3,162.2 grams vs. 3,310.5 grams) than the babies born to the 33 normal-weight women, Fields and his team found.

…

Gauging babies’ body composition at birth could provide a clearer picture of their health than weight alone, Fields added, but then the question remains as to what should be done if babies are found to have a high percentage of body fat. One possibility, Fields said, would be to encourage their mothers to breastfeed. His own research has demonstrated that formula-fed babies tend to be fatter.

• I am having a very negative day inside my head.  It is one of those days where the tasks of being an adult and taking care of oneself and a small household of two adults seem overwhelming.  One of those days in which I think, godD*MN, there are just too many things to be done!
• It goes something like this.  Flicka Mawa lists off stressors in her head, and then feels tense and irritated.  Flicka Mawa thinks of Husband, and how he would tell her not to give in to those feelings, and wills her brain to busy itself with other topics, mostly through meditation.  Thoughts turn to stuff like: “It will get better. It will not always be like this.  Focus on your breathing. Let the calm flow through you…” you get the idea, right?
• Shortly, Flicka Mawa’s brain distracts itself with thoughts of impending doom and lists of things to do or things to be upset about.  Flicka Mawa either 1)gives in and sheds a few tears while she cuddles in a blanket and tries not to disturb Husband who is very busy prepping for his first business pitch to his older brother tonight, or 2)manages to be strong for some period of time, meditating and willing self not to dwell on the negative thoughts.  Switching between 1 and 2 ensues for the remainder of the day.
• Primary reason for today’s stressing? The sudden realization that in the past 2 days our bank account went from low to -$500, and all of a sudden that $1k check that Husband FINALLY got his freelance boss to send is going to be cut in half before we even see it.  This is the bank accounts first dip into negativity since, oh, February of this year.  It has probably spent more than 30 days in the past 6 months in such a state.
• I am getting kind of sick of it.  But I know it’s almost over, Husband and I have agreed and things really ARE going stellar for him right now, but it’s just, well…I just DON’T want to deal with this right now.  I have $5 in my purse, he might have up to $10 in his, and among things like having to pack something for lunch and dinner tomorrow from the limited food we have here, this also means that I can’t even afford to buy your basic over the counter medication for the d*mn yeast infection I seem to have gotten…
• The yeast infection is probably from all that sex I’ve been having.  At least this is a positive point in my list of random bullets.
• This morning’s realization led to another one - tax day is less than a week away, and now we don’t even have enough funds to pay someone to help us file, let alone to pay anything that we might owe.  And they’re going to be uber-complicated this year, because neither of us got W-2’s, I got paid via outside stipend for part of the year and internal university stipend for part of the year, and of course cash for my babysitting, but then husband, his is more complicated, as he had no full-time job all year - just a few of those MISC forms for some freelance work, and some cash investments in the company that went towards paying for Husband’s time as he worked on it.  Then there were some company expenses paid for out of our own accounts, and he works at home so we have can factor in home office costs.  All this leads to the taxes being much more complicated than last year and likely taking 10 times more time to do than either of us has to give in the next 3 weeks.
• And my Dad is about to drive past our corner of the world as he moves from my childhood homestate of MA to Myrtle Beach, SC.  He wishes to visit and take us to dinner and see us before he moves further away (SC) than he is now (MA).  But the best part is he’s planning to pass by in 2 weeks and my quals are in 2.5 weeks which means he should be planning to move a few days before the quals.  Now, if visits with my dad were all fun and no stress, I’d definitely say I’d make a way for it to work, but it’s not like that.
• I think that’s enough random bullets of consciousness (Is that what RBOC stands for when I see it on blogs?). I’m going to go watch some CSI:NY.
• Speaking of CSI:NY, at times like these, I find myself thinking of all the myriad of things I could go and do with the training I have up to this point at time.  One of the things I think about sometimes is forensic science.  I love solving mysteries, and chemistry, and if it weren’t for the danger and the crime involved, this would be an ideal endeavor for me, I think.
• Other things I think about doing instead of or after finishing grad school: science writing, like trying to go get a job at a science magazine or working as a freelance science writer.  Working in a paid position in a lab somewhere.  Being a professor who specializes in the interaction of science and the public, and maybe writes popular science books.  Finding some way to be a full-time mentor to aspiring women in science (mentoring the undergrads is my FAVORITE part of my current job).
• Or I could just wait for Husband’s company to sell for 10 million (not a completely unreasonable amount for an innovative website company such as the one he’s creating) and then play computer games all the time. And have a second home in Amsterdam.
• And have kids.
• Really cute kids.
• Like the ones I watch part-time, who love me so much it totally warms my heart.  The mama told me the other day that older toddler asks her if I’m coming over on days that I’m not, and that he’s even said “Mommy, I love you…and I love Flicka Mawa” when I wasn’t even there.  Kid, I love you too.
• Seriously, I’m off now.  Hope you all are having a better day than I am!

I just measured my waist because I’m looking for an 80’s prom dress for a friend’s party and I needed to know my measurements to shop for vintage dresses on ebay. I also happen to have my creative notebook with me, in which I have my measurements written down at various times that I’ve planned a new sewing design. And I’ve lost 4.5″off my waist since the beginning of the year! Sweet!