Family Life and Grant Writing Do Not Mix.

Sorry its been a minute since I’ve updated the blog – Andy was, until recently, working on an NIH grant (this would be to fund the research in his lab). So while Andy has been living in a mini-nightmare (i.e. working 16 to 18 hour days), I’ve been trying to do most of the taking-care of Tess.  I think Tess realizes that he’s been a bit more absent than normal, because Tess has either peed or pooed on him during all the diaper changes that Andy has done in the past couple of weeks.  She never does that when I change her, and I do 90% of her diaper changes!  Poor Andy. 

My fellow “science friends” reading this probably know what I mean about life during grant writing – it is a total, all-encompassing hell.  It consumes your every waking minute for at least month – even when you’re not actively sitting at your desk writing, you’re thinking about it.  Oh, you’re asleep? Doesn’t matter. Dreaming about it. It consumes you.  The closer you get to the deadline, the worse it gets.

This was Andy after writing a grant a year ago.  You can see what it does to him.

We were burning old papers in our fire pit here 

as therapy for how depressing science can be.  

Of course, while life is crazy the world just throws more crazy on you to make things interesting.  For example, the day before his grant was due, Tess decided to just be in a foul mood for no reason.  She was fussy and wouldn’t sleep.  And I was on my own trying to calm her down since Andy HAD to finish he grant.  It sucked.  I didn’t have 5 seconds to call my own that day. She’s lucky she’s so darn cute and snuggly!

Tess can get a lil cranky sometimes!

"But mommy, look at how cute and snuggly I am!"

Another lovely unnecessary life complication happened the week before.  We had some pretty bad thunderstorms last week here in Atlanta, and as it was rolling in I heard some of the towns west of us were getting hail.  Our driveway is only wide enough for a single vehicle, so one of our cars always blocks the other in.  Since my car is old and Andy’s is brand new, I went out and switched our cars so Andy’s was under the carport instead of mine, just in case we did get some hail.

Andy's car - clearly this was a few months ago.  

It isn't that green even in Atlanta right now.

I haven’t been out much lately so it had been a while since my car had been started.  The morning after I switched our cars, Andy went to leave for work but my car wouldn’t start because the battery was dead.  Apparently there was enough battery power for me to start it the day before, but I didn’t leave it running long enough for the battery to re-charge.  Oops. 

So now his car was blocked in by mine, which wouldn’t start. And we don’t own jumper cables.  First, Andy went across the street to see if our neighbors had jumper cables. They did not.  Crap.  So then we decided that we would push my car out into the street using Andy’s car – our driveway is on a slight incline so we wouldn’t be able to push it ourselves.  But our neighbor’s mother had parked her car right across from our driveway, and since my car wouldn’t have power steering I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to turn it quick enough and might hit their car.  So we also had to ask them to move the car. 

OK so after all this running around with the neighbors, we are finally ready to do this.  Except for one thing – I just don’t know what the rules are about babies and being alone, so I err on the side of caution and don’t ever leave Tess alone.  I don’t even leave her sleeping to go take a shower, so clearly wasn’t going to be able to leave her in the house while we screwed around with our cars for a half hour.  So I had to get her up out of bed and into a carseat to just sit in the car with us while we tried freeing Andy’s vehicle.  Of course this had to be just one of the only cold mornings we’ve had all winter, so I have to bundle Tess up in wool sweaters and a hat and blanket and mittens and God knows what else.  I stopped short of using an electric blanket. She was dressed like damn Nanook of the North and was going to be outside for precisely 3 seconds as I walked her from the front door to the heated vehicle. 

I need to learn how to dress this child.

This was us out for a walk and it was about 48 degrees out.

She's literally in a snowsuit. What's wrong with me?

OK Tess was locked and loaded, and we were ready to do battle.  We put a towel between our two bumpers, got into our cars and used our cell phones as walkie-talkies to coordinate this mess.  So Andy starts backing up and pushing me back up the driveway. So far so good, this was totally working! When we were about at the top of the driveway my wheels must have been turned slightly one way, and Andy’s were turned slightly in the other direction, so we were slightly off kilter and I heard a horrible scraping sound.  Shit. 

At this point I also realize that there was no way I was going to be able to turn the wheel fast and far enough to parallel park in front of my house on one go without any power steering.  What if my car was in the middle of the street and I was stuck?!  OK back to the drawing board then.  At this point Andy decides to instead pull his car onto our front lawn, so I can roll back up into the carport space and he could snake his way around me to get out.  What a shit show it was.  When we were finished, he went straight to the ace hardware at the top of the street to buy our first set of jumper cables.  Now we know.

But now the grant is done and Andy is back!  I can’t wait to take a bath and sleep through a midnight feeding!  

Tess and Dad will be spending lots of time together watching 

6 Nations Rugby now that the grant is done!

Our little monkey.

And here's this video I took for my mom just because she's cute!