Someone, (and whenever i say Someone with a Capital S i am usually referring to Trent) sent me a random text message today. it said “academics are escapists who habitually look forward to travelling in order to escape their reality”. i wrote back, in true lucille bluth fashion “if that’s a veiled criticism of me i wont hear it and i wont respond to it” (honestly, i think she is my favourite tv character ever).
he may however have a point. i have spent the last week with very itchy feet and its making me a little ‘blue’ (see, another theme for todays post!). i know i said i didnt enjoy being away from home while i was in melbourne, but really, that was just about Lila. i missed her a lot. i would be perfectly happy if she could just come with me everywhere. she follows me around at home and wants nothing more than to be at my side, or in my lap preferably
shes there when im watching tv, knitting, working, shes there when im cooking.
today i am working from home so she did ocassionally take herself outside.
i am boring when i am working. i worked too hard on the weekend and hit a bit of a wall yesterday and came home early. my academic friend becky warned me not to get burnt out, and im trying, but im not good with balance, and its just reading, and writing, and thinking, right? so how do you get burnt out from that? well, you do. and it hurts when you hit the wall. but i will probably keep doing it anyway, because i want this
which brings me back to the travelling comment. i feel like its got under my skin now. two trips to america within 9 months and well…we all know where that kind of thing leads. i was reminded in melbourne (oddly) what a great time i had at the University of Pennsylvania, how ‘at home’ i felt there. i feel a bit like they were my people, and i miss them. i miss lots of things. i keep getting little reminders. sometimes involuntary ones, like certain emails floating across my screen, and i stop and indulge in them for a while and then it hurts too much and i have to pull myself away. theres that balance thing again…
so im working really hard at the moment, partly because i love the job i have and want to keep it, and partly because i want another one. that makes sense if you understand how academia works. i can only get the job i want, the one that means working overseas for long periods of time, if i can convert the contract job i have now to a continuing job. so im throwing lots of mud at various grant schemes hoping some of it sticks (yes applying for money to do the research im actually employed but not paid to do!) i think eventually it will.
i worked hard on the weekend writing my first online lecture using echo360. so tomorrow. it was an extension of the paper i gave in melbourne, but this time aimed at second year health students about why history matters
46 minutes of me rabbiting on about context and culture and experience. poor little things. im sure it hurt their heads, if any of them watched it. im really enjoying that part of my job though, and im getting more people in the school engaged with the idea of history and have now got some people in the education design department helping me with digitisation of what i find in archives (im making a moodle project site. dont ask). i have lots to do as well for the subject i’m co-ordinating next semester still. i discovered that rewriting one of the assessments means i have to remap the learning outcomes against the AQF. oh really, dont ask. its a steep learning curve and sometimes i think ive been handed the poisoned chalice, but its a great subject and once its all set up properly i will enjoy teaching it. it involves travelling to hong kong too. coincidentally.
i mentioned memories, and how they can make you, me, blue… i know im a sentimental romantic fool but im remembering lots of things at the moment, having lots of ‘feeeeeelings’. like, Someone turns 50 this saturday. 50. how is that possible. he was 32 when i met him. i was still only 25. just a baby. so much water under that bridge. it makes me sad. but im happy he’s still alive, amazed we both made it really. so much we had to fight through, but we did it. we’re taking him out for dinner somewhere special in sydney. ‘we’ is his new partner and her kids. and me. is that weird? its weird isnt it? people dont get that relationship sometimes, but he is like my anchor. i think if i didnt still have trent in my life i would feel like i didnt belong anywhere. i had a stupid argument with my sister last week. about travelling, and buying things for people while you’re overseas. i nearly walked away from her and family again entirely. but i stopped to breathe and told myself to suck it up, and we chatted yesterday and shared a joke on email and then i could breathe out again.
his 50th. 4 years this week we’ve been separated. i went to a flyball competition just briefly on the weekend where he was running ricco and possum. i might do flyball with lila, im not sure. im not a fan of the flyballing humans generally. but i ran into an old team mate dave, and we had a chat, and he has two small kids now, and i just thought of how life used to be when we were in the same team, and the night we told the team we were splitting up, and it still makes me cry. im a slow learner i think.
speaking of learning, i learnt this week to not make banana bread using that stupid donna hay recipe with the vegetable oil. i reverted to an old favourite.
there’s a reason these old fashioned cook books stand the test of time, even if they do have a 1970s sensitibilty. i made the bread today in between working.
working today was reading some papers on foucault for a theory session im running tomorrow. critical theory 101 i’m calling it. as if im an expert. not. and then when i needed a break i wound up some blue yarn
(see what i did there?) having pulled out the winter woolies and draped them around the fireplace in my bedroom
i can see there are too many things in red, black or grey.
i need more blue. in fact, i knew this a while ago and i had started two things especially: wanida socks in madtoshsock ‘ink’
and stonecrop scarf in madtosh prarie ‘thunderstorm’ i think.
or maybe the colours are the other way around. anyway, i have the madtosh merino light cardigan in ink that got commented on in purl soho (namedrop…another memory) and i need to wear more blue because i have blue eyes and that swarthy eastern european polish jew skin. (i had my colours done once, and im a Winter. i can wear blue, black and white and probably NOT red). or grey. i am making these socks in grey but they are not for me.
they are nearly finished though, and then i will start a slouchy hat in this gorgeous alpaca that i got from brooklyn general store.
it smells like brooklyn and makes my stomach flip with the memories. what does brooklyn smell like, i hear you ask, and im not telling.
its nice that its getting nearly cold enough to wear the woollens. it is cold in the morning, with heavy fog
and its getting dark early, i took this photo an hour ago and the sun is now nearly set and its only 430pm.
im going to stop writing, stop working, stop thinking now, and make apple and rhubard crumble
and watch richard armitage be a spook, and that will be a whole day of not talking to anyone except my dog. its just a bit like that at the moment. it will pass.
k xx
