Looking ahead to 2017

I enjoy my tradition of reflecting each year on my goals and expectations for the year ahead. Usually I focus mostly on goals, but this year I want to devote more space to expectations in general. I am less optimistic about 2017 than I have been...maybe ever. I am deeply concerned about Trump becoming president tomorrow and I honestly expect the world and its people to be in worse shape at the end of 2017 than now. I expect my family (immediate and extended) to weather this year due to our position of privilege (employed, mostly urban, socially connected, highly educated, white), but even still I expect our lives to be diminished. Republicans in congress, Trump, and his political appointees intend to seriously mess with many things that are personally and professionally important to me (e.g. the Endangered Species Act, everything related to climate change being a real and present danger upon which we should act, protected lands), not to mention their intention to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But I'm not about to let these things happen easily, so part of my goals are related to civic activism. For starters, I'm attending a Women's March this weekend.

Personal/Familial
Help Jon get a new, full-time job with benefits
Applying for jobs sucks. I remember. It was super discouraging. I am doing what I can do support Jon in his career-change job search. This is the most important thing that needs to happen this year and it will make all of the financial goals below much easier!

Get Adele a passport and renew mine
This is among the more paranoid goals that I've ever had, but I want us to be able to leave the country if necessary. My passport expires next year and I have a lull in international travel for the next couple of months, so I need to take this opportunity to renew it. We already filed the paperwork for Adele. Jon's is good for about 5 more years. It would also be great if we could go visit my family in Canada sometime soon.

Clear my inbox every month

I granted myself email amnesty at the beginning of the year and I think I need to do it on a regular basis. I need to let go of more things that I'd like to do but just can't find the time. I can hardly find the time to do the other important things I want to need to do. I need more ruthless prioritization.

Celebrate my blogiversary (10 years!)

I've been blogging for almost a decade! WHAT. My blogging frequency has radically changed over the last few years, but I still enjoy the focus and outlet this platform offers. I want to do something special to celebrate...maybe get this printed as a book!

Read four books

Let's see if I can meet this modest goal this year!

Financial
Pay off our car
We are one small payment away from this! So. close.

Pay off all of Jon's course/credit card debt
We've been making steady progress, but we need to step it up to pay them off before our 0% interest period expires. This is the #1 priority when Jon gets a new job. We should be able to do this.

Shorten the repayment term on my student loans
Once we're sure we have the credit card debt paid for, then we can shorten the repayment term for my student loans to pay it down aggressively (Navient sucks, so apparently that's the best way to automatically increase your monthly payment). Oddly, our car loan has a lower interest rate so ideally, we would have been paying less on that loan and more on the student loan, but the terms aren't flexible like that, so we're waiting to be able to pay down the student loans.

Activism
Carbon offsets
In the face of Republican governance that does not believe in climate change, I think this is more important than ever. The easiest way to do this is probably by estimating our emissions and spreading it out over monthly payments.

Switch to electricity from renewable sources
The Republican love affair with fossil fuels makes me concerned about renewable energy, so I want to commit us to buying our electricity from renewable sources. This will take a big of research, which is the biggest hurdle.

Organizations we'll newly support with monthly contributions:
-wikipedia (we have given to them in the past, but lapsed)
-Pro-Publica (nonprofit investigative journalism)
-An organization that very efficiently transfers donations to extremely poor people (I believe that wealth inequality is a huge problem)
-Southern Poverty Law Center

Looking at these all, they are pretty boring. If this year is boring, I'll be satisfied. This year is not about being wildly aspirational—it's about modest changes to try and protect us (in the immediate and broader sense) in uncertain times. There's a chance that I will change jobs this year, but I suspect not. There's a small chance that we could end the year debt-free, but I suspect not.

Let's do this, 2017. More than ever before, we need to be the change we wish to see in the world and stand up for what is just. All of us. Every day.

The Pregnancy

Tomorrow my little one turns 2 months old, so I'd better get these thoughts down before they leave me completely! At the beginning of my pregnancy, I thought I'd want to blog all the time about being pregnant. It turned out that that feeling went away after we started telling people (i.e. right at the time I could have started blogging about it). So for the curious, here's all 38 weeks summarized in one place.

As I've mentioned before, it made a lot of sense to try to have a baby before finishing grad school. My advisor was very supportive of his grad students having kids, and my student health insurance covers maternity 100% (I'm planning a post later about the bills for this baby). We waited until I was finished with field work because being pregnant or bringing a child to Ukenzagapia would have made it even more difficult. Then we waited several months more and tried to time it so the baby could be born in that sweet spot after my defense but before graduation. I went off the pill in June and started tracking my cycles using this book (HIGHLY recommended!). I was anxious that it might take us several months to get pregnant, but I got pregnant in September, which was the first month that I ovulated when Jon and I were in the same place (I was away at that time in both July and August).

I could tell (from charting my temperature) that I was pregnant several days before taking a pregnancy test. I also started having mild nausea almost immediately-- about 10 days after ovulation, around the time of implantation (which is also right after I did a triathlon!). Mostly the nausea didn't make me really want to throw up, it just make me feel gross and made my relationship with food desperate. Thankfully, a friend of mine (and reader of this blog!) mentioned that it's an EMPTY stomach that usually makes you feel sick. This means that when I was most hungry, NOTHING sounded appealing. When I felt the empty stomach nausea coming on, I tried to find the closest food that didn't sound gross. These foods for me were pretzels, tortilla chips, banana chips, and carrots. I needed to eat something little like that to calm my stomach before I could think about something like cooking dinner (which otherwise sounded disgusting and totally overwhelming). This made me diligent about packing snacks for myself if I was out and about. Thankfully, the nausea for me mostly went away after 5 or 6 weeks.

I saw a midwife for all of my prenatal care. As long as I was in the university hospital system, everything was covered. I didn't really have many options, but the one option I had ended up being a good one! Many people asked if we were planning a home birth when I mentioned seeing a midwife, but these midwives all attend at the hospital. I didn't have much interest in a home birth, and I felt like delivering with a midwife at a hospital was the best of both worlds for a low-risk pregnancy: the low-intervention philosophy of the midwives but all the specialized OBs and facilities in case something went wrong (which it did).

I intended to have an active, fit pregnancy. I rode my bike to school (at least occasionally) until about 5 months, and I stopped then mostly because of the weather. After that I walked or took the bus. I kept going to group fitness classes and swimming until I injured myself right around 5 months. I did exactly what they tell pregnant women not to do. Please, let this be a cautionary tale.

I was alone at the office on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (January 21). In a fit of office cleaning, I decided that a box of magazine left by some former grad student that had been in my office for YEARS just HAD to go. That day. And no one was around to help me. So I tried to be careful. I carefully moved the box from the floor onto my wheelie chair, pushed it down the hall, and then moved the box from the chair onto a table. Later that afternoon, I noticed a little bit of pain in my pubic bone. I went swimming later that afternoon and felt the pain a little when I kicked on the breast stroke, but didn't think too much of it. I knew my pelvis was supposed to be widening and I figured that's what I was feeling.

But after just a few days the pain was much worse. Walking started to hurt. Having to catch my balance suddenly. Dragging something with my foot. Getting dressed. Getting in and out of bed. All of these motions made my pubic bone hurt, and not a sufferable kind of hurt, but a stop-doing-that-immediately kind of hurt. It wasn't getting better, and I was quickly feeling extremely limited by the pain.

My instinct told me there was a way to make it better and that I didn't just have to wait it out for the next 4 months. I emailed a friend and colleague who had just had a baby a couple of months before and was still in physical therapy for severe post-partum pelvic girdle pain (PGP). I did some reading about it when she ended up back in the hospital (!), and it seemed like what was happening with me too. She told me to get help as soon as possible. I had to get a referral to physical therapy, and PT couldn't schedule me for almost 2 weeks after that which felt like an eternity to start treatment. So, I scheduled an appointment with a chiropractic school nearby, because they could see me the next day and it wasn't terribly expensive.

To make a long story short, my pelvis was out of alignment which caused the PGP. Best I can figure, when I moved that damn box, I braced it against my thigh, and the pressure indirectly exerted on my pelvis via my femur shifted it. Normally, the human pelvis is not so easily shifted, but the hormone relaxin loosens up those ligaments that normal hold everything in place. This is why they tell pregnant women to be careful with heavy objects and new exercises. It's not really about injuring the baby but injuring yourself. I could feel that the two halves of my pelvis were slightly uneven where they meet in the middle of my pubic bone.

I went to the chiropractor and physical therapist nearly every week for the rest of my pregnancy. Both did some adjustments, which definitely helped. After the first few weeks of treatment, my pain was more manageable. I had good days and bad days, but I had good days! The pain level seemed to change most radically overnight, so I talked extensively with the physical therapist about how to sleep. I got a memory foam pillow for between my legs. The PT gave me exercises to do in the morning and night, and I did them religiously. The only other exercise I was doing was a water fitness class, and even there I had to be careful and there were some moves I couldn't do without pain (so I didn't do them).

I had basically no nesting instinct. In fact, our place was so messy that I probably had an anti-nesting-dissertation-finishing instinct. The last 4 months of my pregnancy were also the last 4 months of my dissertation. I worked like crazy. I got up, did my exercises, went to school, worked on my dissertation, came home, worked on my dissertation, did my exercises again, and went to bed. On the weekends, I got up, did my exercises, worked on my dissertation, did my exercises again, and went to bed. I wrote much of my dissertation sitting in our guest bed. If I was struggling to stay awake at my desk, I took a nap on my office couch. Some days I had midwife, chiropractor, or physical therapy appointments or went to water fitness. Some evenings I hung out with friends, but nearly not as often as before.  I had hours upon hours of uninterrupted time (and I needed it!) to work on my dissertation, and I knew it would not be that way again any time soon. I was so motivated to finish before the baby was born.

There were so many things I put off until after my dissertation or defense! I just wouldn't let myself near the edge of the preparing-for-baby rabbit hole. I sent my dissertation to my committee 31 weeks 4 days into my pregnancy and defended at 34 weeks 4 days (babies are considered full term at 37 weeks and 'due' at 40 weeks). During those three weeks in between, I hosted a baby shower, had a baby shower, filed for a tax extension, went away for a long weekend, applied for and interviewed for a job, and prepared my defense seminar. I felt like I could really start thinking about being pregnant!

I never got to the point where I was done being pregnant and I thought I had at least another week. In the week before Adele was born, we went to a breastfeeding class, wrote a birth plan, bought a car seat, unpacked the zillions of hand me down baby clothes, bought nursing bras, and had a cleaning service clean the apartment. My water broke at 37 weeks 5 days and she was born about 28 hours later. But that's a post for another day.

Looking up

Things have improved since my last post (which I think was uncharacteristically negative). My mom came back for a few days to help and I was able to catch up on many things while she was here which has left me feeling less overwhelmed. Jon's mom is coming next week which will be a big help, too. Adele has slept 3-4 hours at a time the last few nights so I'm reasonably well-rested. I can feel that I have more energy. Yesterday I took my first solo excursion with Adele in the car and I wasn't completely exhausted by it.

The midwife said I'm still not allowed to get in a pool, though. I had my followup with her yesterday, and she wants me to follow up again in 2 weeks since I had such a rough go and I'm still not healed. I hope that I get the ok on swimming then because I want to start my water fitness class again. It's about as gentle as it gets for exercise and I think it will feel nice.

In other news, we are mentally preparing to be in Big City for the fall (which means I'm going to start implementing the backup plan). If I don't find a job by late July, I'll hold on to my dissertation, remain a student, keep health insurance for me and Adele, and be a TA for the fall. Then if I still don't have a job come Christmas, we'll move to Jon's Hometown. I'll apply for jobs, but considering I've submitted exactly one application in the last two months (and that was a re-application), I'd say the odds are against me finding a job in the next month.

While my mom was here, we made some plans for August. She's going to accompany me to ESA and take care of Adele at the conference. It's amazing how much more expensive a conference gets when you can't really share a room and need to be close to the convention center. Jon was going to come along with me, but then a major work thing came up in the middle of that week. I know there will be other grandparents along as helpers- I've noticed them in previous years. I'm trying to remind myself that I won't be able to do as much at the conference as I usually do but I'm very much looking forward to it.

Priorities: finishing or getting a job?

Applying for jobs is a lot of work. A few weeks ago I decided that I was more worried about finishing than I was about not having a job by August, and I don't feel like I can both finish and apply for lots of jobs. I've applied for one job, and I'm not planning to apply for anything else unless it seems like a great fit because staying here a little longer didn't seem like a bad idea.

What's my backup plan? I figured that I could spend the rest of 2013 in Big City and teach here. Jon can keep doing what he's been doing, and I could maybe be a TA in our department (people have done that after finishing).

Slowly but surely, holes are being poked in my backup plan. First of all, Herb told me that the average completion time in our department is so high now that not everyone will be able to get a TA position. This has basically never happened-- they always bring in extra students from other departments to TA the classes. This makes it less likely that I could be a TA in the fall. I'd probably have to teach instead at a smaller institution in the area (I suspect it would be more work for similar pay, though it would give me valuable "real" teaching experience).

Then I started worrying that I might not get my August check if I officially graduate before payday. I talked to a staff member about this and she doesn't think it will be a problem, but I don't trust her opinion 100%. I'll get a second opinion on this.

But then there's health insurance. If I finish in the summer, my coverage only goes until mid-August. I thought I could use COBRA to extend it if we stay in the area. My student health coverage is great, but it turns out it's not technically insurance, which means that I can't use COBRA- I'd have to be enrolled as a student. Our baby is going to be on that plan for the summer, but then if I don't have a job by mid-August we'll have to find something else. Jon has super high deductible insurance since he has no options from his employers. I suppose that's what the baby and I will do, too, as a temporary measure. What a pain in the ass. Can we please get our heads out of the sand as a country and offer single-payer, universal health care?

With the incentives in all the wrong places (e.g. graduation= losing affordable health care), it could turn out that my best option is to not turn in my dissertation until September and stay on as a student TA. Hopefully not.

Counseling

I don't think I really blogged about it, but I saw a counselor once a week last spring before I left for Ukenzagapia to work through some of the issues surrounding my sister's death. I didn't feel like I was making any progress though, so I'm going to again with a new counselor. Several people have told me that I shouldn't hesitate to try someone new. Counseling is available through the university which means it is inexpensive or free, but it can take a while to actually see someone. I got on the waiting list right after I got back from Ukenzagapia so that I can start to see someone as soon as possible, but I'm still waiting to actually get an appointment.

2008 in review

Many, many changes happened for us in 2007. 2008 has had its share of ups and downs for us but mostly things seem to be looking up and I met many of my goals for 2008.

Academically, 2008 started with great uncertainty about where I should do my fieldwork. That dilemma was solved when I met Sam, who easily convinced me to work at his field site in Ukenzagapia. I received four small grants and a pre-application approval for a grant in the spring, though I was highly disappointed when I didn't receive the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Without the NSF fellowship, I had to teach this summer which restricted my field season to a small window of 5 weeks. During that time I had my first brief research trip to Ukenzagapia, but wasn't able to collect any data because of permitting issues. All in all though, it was a useful and productive trip.

While I was in Ukenzagapia, I applied for and was offered an interdisciplinary fellowship which I accepted. I went to my first big conference and loved it. This fall, I made some progress on my endless review paper and reapplied for the NSF GRF. I did not, however, meet my goal of submitting my review for publication in 2008. I am making progress in my graduate career; I have a committee and a date for my prelims! I'm still enjoying grad school and I'm satisfied with my progress so far.

Personally, the year started off on a bit of a roller coaster. My parents put down our border collie just shy of her 16th birthday. I didn't blog about it at the time, but it was sad to say goodbye to her. Then in March I had appendicitis, and my grandfather passed away in April. Thankfully, my student health insurance covered my appendicitis 100%. Later in April, Jon and I decided to get married after more than 5 years together! From then on things really looked up for the rest of the year.

In August we moved into a new apartment in our building, even though I really thought we wouldn't be moving this year. The apartment is great and we have no regrets. Based on entries in our guest book, we've had 31 different people sleep at our apartment on ~53 separate nights in the past year so it's totally worth it to us to have a more accommodating place (that's counting guests from our smaller apartment too).

Aside from our tiny 1/3 share of Google stock and my IRA dropping in value, we have not been directly affect by the financial crisis (yet). We are thankful for my fellowship and Jon's steady employment.

With respect to my personal goals for 2008, we did buy birthday gifts for all the little kiddos in our lives and we donated more than ever before to worthwhile causes, with the bulk of it going to Obama. Three cheers for his election! I did not do so well at putting money into my IRA. I only managed a few hundred dollars in spite of my raise with the fellowship! I've got to do better next year. I'll post soon about my goals and expectations for 2009.

My blog readership has grown slowly but steadily over the past year. Sometimes I have blog envy, but honestly this is how I want my blog to be. Thank you to all of my readers, known and unknown, new and old, academic and non.

May you all be the change you wish to see in the world in 2009!

Cheers to a new year, new challenges, and new opportunities.

University health care

In short, I had a laparoscopic appendectomy on Saturday night and spent the whole weekend in the hospital. I don't owe a cent, and now I'm at home recovering. Thankfully, my student health insurance covered everything 100% (except the taxi rides). I am so thankful that I didn't have to worry about the cost of my tests, hospital room, or surgery. I am all in favor of universal health care because no one should have to worry about their ability to pay for necessary hospital expenses.

If you want the details of my appendectomy adventure, read on.

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On my way home on Friday evening I started having general abdominal pain. It got progressively worse until I started feeling nauseated, then felt like I was going to black out, then I vomited most of what I'd eaten for dinner. About an hour and half later I threw up the rest of my dinner. I felt better after the second round because the general pain went away, but it became localized on my lower right. I had a fever of 100° F. It could've been food poisoning, but the pain on my lower right was classic appendicitis, so we went to sleep prepared to go to the ER in the middle of the night if it got worse. I found that sleeping on my right side made the pain go away so I slept all night.

When I woke up on Saturday (Jon's birthday), the pain was still there so we made an appointment at the student health center to see a doctor at 9:15 am. After an hearing my symptoms and pressing on my abdomen she sent me to the ER saying it was likely to be "appendicitis or an ovarian cyst." We didn't have to wait terribly long in the waiting room before I was admitted and given a room in the ER. We spent the next 9 hours there while they took urine samples, blood, gave me an IV, did a pelvic exam, and took a CAT scan. I didn't have a fever or a high white blood cell count (both signs of infection that usually go along with appendicitis), so they spent a long time ruling out other possibilities such as ovarian cysts or torsion. I had no pain as long as I wasn't moving. Walking hurt, as did using my lower abdominal muscles, and obviously all the pressing they did.

I finally had a CAT scan about 5 pm which revealed conclusively that my appendix was inflamed. I had mild appendicitis. Did you even know you can have mild appendicitis? You learn something new every day. I had classic symptoms of appendicitis but it was in the early stages of infection so it wasn't at the point of bursting and being life-threatening. Thus, I waited about 5 more hours for surgery as they only had one team of anesthesiologists that night and they first had to deal with a much more critical patient. After about 9 hours in my room in the ER, they gave me a real hospital room which was quite nice. We watched "The Sound of Music" and the beginning of "Big" before they took me to surgery.

I was quite calm about the whole surgery thing. I had my wisdom teeth removed but that was the only surgery I'd ever had. Still, I trusted the doctors completely since they do appendectomies almost every day. I think I would have been much more stressed out by the surgery if I felt really shitty, but since I didn't have a fever or pain as long as I didn't move I was able to make interesting lighthearted conversation with the various doctors I met. One of them who Jon named "Dr. McHandsome" has relatives in RFC so we talked about that for a while. Dr. McHandsome was such a stereotypical thirty-something, tall, dark-haired, scruffy faced, handsome ER resident that he looks like he stepped right out of a TV show.

Laparoscopic appendectomies are the least invasive kind. They make three small incisions and go in with a camera and some instruments and pull the appendix out through one of the three holes. They said the surgery itself would only take about 45 minutes (I'm not sure how long mine actually took). I asked the anesthesiologist when I would wake up after the surgery and he said I'd wake up right away. They started me on an IV with something that knocked me out before I got in the operating room and I have only a vague image of being in the OR.

When I woke up, it was to the sound of a nurse on the phone calling for someone to come pick me up from the recovery room. I saw that the clock said 1:45 and I kind of freaked out because the doctor told me I'd wake up right away and that the surgery should only take 45 minutes I went into surgery around 10:45! Then I was out of it until the nurse called again for someone to come pick me up. During this time poor Jon was waiting in my hospital room all worried because it had been nearly 4 hours since I left and no one would tell him how the surgery went or why I wasn't back. Finally he convinced the nurse to go with him to go pick me up from recovery since the person who was supposed to move me obviously wasn't available. I remember hearing his voice and being glad that I was going back to my room but I was terribly annoyed that I hadn't woken up right after the surgery like my anesthesiologist told me I would. I remembered from getting my wisdom teeth removed that some people wake up from anesthesia very emotional, so I rationalized to myself that I was in a terrible mood from that. My throat was also very dry from the breathing tube they put in during surgery (which I don't remember) but I wasn't allowed to drink anything yet. I didn't want to talk to anyone except Jon so I half-pretended to be asleep (I was mostly asleep so I didn't have to pretend much) and presented my arms as necessary for vitals and mostly just frowned. Jon translated for me when I needed to talk. They gave me morphine and I think Jon and I fell asleep in my hospital room around 3 am.

Nurses came in a 6 am and 8 am to take my vitals, and then a surgeon came in at 9:15 to tell me I could drink water. My bad mood finally started to lift around 10 am when I got my throat moistened enough to talk relatively normally. Overall I felt a lot worse than I had the day before. My abdominal muscles were really sore (and still are today). Oddly, I am somehow compensating with my neck and so my neck is really sore as well. Mariya came to visit me in the afternoon and brought me flowers which was lovely. Every beloved hospital patient leaves with flowers, right? I had liquid Easter lunch and liquid Easter dinner in the hospital (broth, jello, sherbert, juice) and went home shortly after dinner. Today I finally get to eat real food. I haven't digested any real food since about 4 pm Friday.

I have to make a follow up appointment for next week. Until then, I'm not supposed to do much. I definitely can't ride my bike, so I might be taking more taxis than usual. I'm not supposed to do any heavy lifting (no more than two gallons of milk) for 6 weeks. That means I should get the all-clear just in time to start field work in May.

I had big plans for what I was going to accomplish this week, but I'm going to take it easy. Whatever I get done, I get done. Jon is home from work today to help me out and run errands for me (eg. I think we left my cell phone at the hospital). We'll celebrate his birthday next weekend when we're NOT in the ER all day.

I hope all of my readers had a better weekend than I did!