The Evils of Halloween

Halloween is one of my favourite holidays. Costumes, the colours of orange and black, and bonfires are top reasons that it's special to me. For somebody who find masked balls the absolute best for parties and fundraisers ... then add in the not-so-secret enjoyment I have for supernatural gaming, reading, and movie watching .... well, Halloween is simply the cat's pyjama's.

However, I have discovered a dark evil that will forever be associated with this glorious holiday. It is called ... baking.

I'll be honest. This started when Ellie's teacher assigns "snack day" once a month to each of her kids. Well, kid's parents really. So I would buy a nice large thing of fruit or crackers or whatever. I didn't really care. Then one of the mum's came out with a muffin pan. I'm like, what is that about? I must have said it out loud because Ellie answered me by explaining, that what is becoming clearly in my head as COOL MOM, made muffins together with nameless child that I have no memory of. This irked me. How dare she demonstrate more love and bonding than me? Unfortunately, I have since discovered, through Elle's tactful assistance, than I'm probably the UNCOOLEST mom because it would seem that we are required to go to centers, eat lunch with our kids at the school (seriously?), assist with little kid functions, etc. For anybody who knows me, I'm completely unqualified for these functions.

While I had a good excuse for nearly all the items (traveling, meetings, etc.), I was not-so-secretly relieved. However, the original muffin incident still was under my skin. So, I proposed to Ellie that we finally put to use those amazing 3D Halloween cookie cutters bought oh-so-many years ago at Williams Sonoma. The fact that she expressed concern about the fact that "mommy, I've never seen you make cookies before" and "mommy, you can just buy them, it's ok," merely motivated me to win this non-existent war for COOL MOM.

So! Off to an excellent start. The little Halloween apron in place, the tools in place, everything ready! A few problems occurred. The stupid recipe left out the value of flour when rolling out the dough. Easy enough to fix, but when I cut them out, the stupid recipe also left out the value of flour on BOTH SIDES. Whatever. In a valiant effort to ignore Ellie's head shaking back and forth in amazement at my ignorance, I plunge forward.

Then comes that sugary crap. Keep in mind I've just come from the Dominican Republic, which is apparently capable of only serving very sugary drinks, so I'm totally sugared out for like a decade. Even looking at that much sugar made me feel sick. Vowing to not touch the product of our labours, we add the food colouring, which I might note, was the ONLY very enjoyable part of this process.

Here's where I proudly pull out the Swiss decorating set that I bought in Boulder so long ago in a rare moment of domestic dreams, and subsequently Ellie and I battled who had the best decorated cookie. 

In the end, we had seven excellent specimens, out of MANY MORE that did not make it. The hours taken with this project based on my hourly consulting wage would have funded a European trip.

I told Ellie the following. 

"Enjoy them sweetie. Revel in them. Because this will never, ever happen again."

She agreed.

BTW, the Halloween set of cookie cutters, the beautiful Swiss decorating set, and the Spring butterfly, frog, and bird cookie cutters are in the "get rid of" room.

Seven Days of Tropics

Look! It's sunrise on the Carribean!

Laying on the beach for many hours.

Having drinks and food delivered to your beach chair.

Reading your heart out.

Sleeping a whole lot.

Playing in the ocean.

The first three days was serious physical catch-up to some rather intense burnout. However, I have discovered that being in the same place for eight days without the action of city life or at least something going on around me that changes is a wee bit too long for me.

After five days, I didn’t really care about drinks anymore, and the food was making my stomach more than a little unhappy. For a person who eats mostly vegetables, olive oil, butter, and ghee, my three options of food was becoming a little annoying, and even those items seemed somehow coated in vegetable oil. Thankfully we focused a lot on discovering local food, and as such, they were wonderful about providing that; otherwise, we would have been stuck with burgers and wings for lunch and steak for dinner. 

After six days, there was some very serious analysis of 2015 plans, reality checks, and re-planning. With that final act, I was ready to ride a pelican to Florida and figure it out from there.

I am truly grateful for this down time as I desperately needed it for mental and physical refreshment. With the non-work beach bum experiment complete, my next experiment for non-work downtime will be focused on something like hiking or fishing for a week.

I never want to see a French fry again though.

Nor sugary drinks. For a system that doesn't experience sugar, my body is very upset with me. ARG!

I WILL take more time for myself to sit and drink tea, read the paper, and do the little happy grounding things though. That value is certainly taken better root as a result of the Carribean week.

Guest Post

Marian’s Vacation: An Outsider’s Perspective

By Guest Blogger and Occasional Lunatic:  Ellen

Marian’s patented approach to relaxation is exhausting.  Hurrying to the beach.  Hurrying to get food. Hurry so that we can relax!  I’m constantly chasing her around the resort trying to keep up.  It’s actually a wonderful workout.  I have tricked her into participating in several ‘organized group fun’ events, including our sad attempts to learn Spanish and arguing with borderline-racist people from Chicago.  Our attempts at speaking Spanish are hopefully not annoying the lovely staff, who have endured my obsession with learning about local culture and cooking.  In addition to learning how to cook plantains and make a medicinal rum drink, these forays drive Marian nuts, which is an added bonus.  But I know that she is glad that I asked, so expect to see future posts about her cooking plantains.  She also gets mad when I try to make friends with the other guests, but this always ends up being entertaining and we have decided that we are in an Agatha Christie novel (complete with Russians!).  Together, we bravely traversed a giant trench in the ocean to find a stable sandbar from which to body surf waves.  The trench was 6 inches deep and terrifying.  But we are brave.  We are strong.  We are emboldened by alcohol.  Marian has read four books to my half of a completed book.  She pretends that she is not competing with me, but I know better. 

In conclusion, Marian is actually successfully relaxing in a way I never thought possible.  We sit on the beach in the shade all day reading or sleeping. We leave the beach only to get food and drinks.  However, since there are only eight other guests during the down-season, Marian has figured out how to get several staff members to bring us drinks on the beach.  In these moments, she is to me, a god.  

Much love from a perfect beach vacation!!

-Ellen   

Slowing Down

Slowing Down.

This, my friends, is no easy feat. Despite the fact that I complain about the absurd pace of travel, clients, and studies, the idea of truly slowing down is equally absurd. Having always been a fan of the “work hard, play hard” adage, I was good with a highly active holiday schedule, and challenged to completely unplug from career or research related thinking.

The Dominican Republic has many lessons in store for me.

In my effort to truly unplug and recover from what has been an excessively brutal schedule this year, I am finding that coming in the off-season is essential because staying in the resort is approximate to your private island because. There are 16 people residing in the resort from Russia, Germany, Canada, USA; and suddenly I found myself waiting to see Poirot or Miss Marple be registered. Every person here seems unusual in an interesting way, including the Russian fascinated with the clouds and showing you his many photographs of them. You dare not be rude because everybody knows everybody here. If somebody doesn’t show for dinner, you actually wonder where they may be.

And then there’s the speed, or complete lack thereof. On a personal level, I didn’t know that I could sleep this much. Cranking through two books in two days, I have found that the majority of my time to be on the beach under a thatched covering alternating the experience of sleeping and eating. 

On a resort level, I find the lack of speed hysterically funny. Other than taxi drivers, moving quickly appears to be an abomination. The security guard is typically asleep, and nothing starts on time. Spanish lessons started 35 minutes late this morning, and Salsa dancing simply never happened. It’s not that it was cancelled. It simply didn't occur.

At this lack of speed and with so few people, you start to notice amusing details, such as the terrified gigantic husband who was being forced to ride horses with his wife on the beach. The horse decided that was a good time for a gallop, and the 6’3” 250lb dude is screaming for help. The guide gallops after him, and the locals on the beach roar with laughter.

They are pretty amused with my preference for veg over meat. I carefully explain with kindness that their menus of an assortment of fried meat is not my preference, and if they could just make me some vegetables and rice, that would be great. There is a telephone call, some massive giggling, and then waiting. The phone rings again. More giggling. Some confirmation from me that I do not want meat. He lists out the variety of meat just to be sure I know what it is. More giggling. It paid off though, with a huge dish of beans, fresh veg, avocado, and fruit. Now I am known as the crazy veg person, although they seemed quite pleased with my having their very delicious goat. I also have in my possession the proper local way to fry plantains, thanks to my friend’s endless interview with the trapped bartender of how local’s eat. However, I suspect that any person who keeps pictures of his crab paella is quite pleased to share how locals eat…

Really, none of these little experiences would have occurred in my normal schedule, and in that way, the Dominican Republic has taught me my first lesson, which is that the little experiences and stories are not mundane or stupid. They are frequently amusing and create tenuous little relationships that can last for a few days and have no more obligation except to provide memories.

No Research!

When you are a doctoral student, "fun" reading is a journal related to your field that isn't a study article. Or perhaps a lighter book that talks about concepts, but doesn't get into the weeds. This is as light as we usually get. However, with this being my quarter of collecting data and my last residency complete, I'm starting to smell freedom in my literary choices. Granted, I still manage to sneak in the occasional historical novel or something relevant to what I'm doing at the time, but frankly, my non-research reading is far too frequent for my typical reading preferences.

Thus, it only seems appropriate to go hide at an all-inclusive resort in the islands ... complete with a stack of wonderfully irrelevant books :) It's possible that I couldn't help myself in taking somewhat relevant books (the last three), but the rest are all deliciously useless. Fantasy, supernatural, and steampunk reading will entertain me for a week, and if I get to it, I may even get to the natural history, religion, and health. Those, however, are not the priority.

Sleeping will be a focus too. Lots of sleeping.

Perhaps beach walking too. I heard that when you're on an island, there's lots of ocean around you, so I may investigate for at least a walk a day :P

Observations

Attending my last PhD residency here in London, I’m sitting in a great little pub in Notting Hill, smiling to myself, and sometimes giggling over thinking about previous sessions. I don’t typically consider myself as the personality that spends a lot of time processing, but really, this week has been a major processing experience for me. In the past, my mouth is typically waggling quite a bit. This time though, I’ve been very quiet unless called upon, and funnily enough, I’ve probably contributed more in this method than all my mouth waggling residencies. However, falling into those observation strategies that my poor qualitative professor tried so hard to establish in me as habits, I’ve observed quite a bit, especially in the way of dominant ways people handle their stress.

Know-It-All Stress Reaction
All of these generalized classifications are in every major group I’ve experienced, whether in a workplace, conference, or less fun, in airplanes. In an effort to be authentic, this was really me in my first two residencies. I wanted to help everybody with my prowess of the topic area, and be observed as the brilliant one. Thankfully, I think that I’ve finally moved on, although I have to watch for ensuring I don’t swing the pendulum and do the other extreme. I don’t want to be unhelpful, but I don’t particularly volunteer much. After all, there’s many others with the know-it-all affliction already torturing the hapless soul who asked the question. Sometimes they are wrong. Usually their comments are incredibly obvious. Always, always, always….opinions will be shared regardless of request.

Fearful Stress Reaction
This is the funny one. It’s not funny that they are scared, but it’s hilarious how it manifests itself. For example, sitting this morning in a tight little circle of super freaks (hopefully that doesn’t include me, but I suspect we all could be categorized as that), we were indulging in the less than fascinating world of multiple regression. Somewhere in the middle of statistical output, the facilitator suddenly asked, “is this just a refresher for some or is this new enough to demonstrate?” This is where we enter the interesting juxtaposition of pride and fear. Pride says, “oh god, I can’t be there one to be the dummy!” while Fear goes “oh god, please please please stay at this level!” So, me, with a growing need for a pint, speaks up and says “this is so NOT a refresher for me!” *easier breathing around the room … somebody stepped up to demonstrate lack of knowledge* J

This was an especially good example….the facilitator says “I’ll demonstrate the major differences between mediation and moderation” (as variables). As a silent prayer of gratitude goes up, she starts on mediation.

Panicked student goes “that is mediation … not moderation!”

“Yes,” says the patient facilitator, “I’m covering mediation right now.”

Panicked student goes “but what about moderation!”

Patient facilitator explains that she will cover moderation.

Panicked student goes, “so you definitely will cover moderation AFTER mediation?”

“Yes.”

Ha! Hilarious. That is the perpetual and blinding fear that I see in most doctoral students at the higher level residencies.

Stubborn Stress Reaction
Wow. You want a group of insanely stubborn people, it’s the students who are writing their prospectus. They want THEIR study, no matter how infeasible it is. Graduation at some future point is clearly not in their scope and they are on a path to save the world. Granted, I remember those days, but I also remember how short lived it was. However, you do have to listen to get the reality check because residencies is really one of the safest environments to share your fears, concerns, excitement, etc. Thus, people are going to be nice as they provide recommendations that essentially say, “why don’t you re-think that?” It’s really easy to leap into the solution instead of establishing a problem and seeking to prove that problem. This is the classic error of the early days of dissertations. My cohort has an especially stubborn one who thinks that X not only is essentially non-existent in today’s organizations (I can promise you that’s not entirely true), but she wants to create model that every single corporation adheres to on topic X. Deathly pause of quiet occurs as everybody processes the fact that there is zero allowance for difference in values. There has been effort to explore those areas with her, but right now it’s not being heard very much. I suspect that she’s feeling stress defending it and can’t hear right now.

My Change
This is my little self-epiphany thought and something that I’m seeing in other colleagues as well. I actually do care about all of those individuals in each category I represented here. All the best, I think, if they are not really ready to hear the changes they will inevitably have to accept if they wish to finish … and that’s not with a bad attitude. I do wish them the best and hope it will click sooner rather than later. However, I don’t have responsibility to change their minds. I provide my feedback, engage as much as possible, and leave it with them. I used to stress so much if I saw errors, but even in workplace environments, I’ve noticed that I can respect decisions that I disagree with, practice my inward predictions, and observe the outcome. More importantly, I learn from each of those experiences without the emotional charge that can sometimes go with it if you try and stress over controlling scenarios or people. This is a real freedom that I’m starting to very much enjoy.

English Reading (book reviews)

Really it's about the books being borrowed from a friend in London across past visits, so when I came here for my PhD residency this week, I stuffed them in my backpack for their rightful return on her shelves. She has excellent tastes in books ... although the one was a dud for me. Try as I will, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall is not for me and I give up. Dodger was wrapped around Charles Dickens', so you know I already adore it, and then Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman was beyond awesome. Funnily enough, that was the one I was the most uncertain about, but it in fact was hilarious while influential.

So...these three have been returned, and the backpack space is duly getting filled with replacements, only this time purchased ones from my visit to Cambridge today and what I'm sure will be a couple more before I leave London :)

View all my reviews

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars