We have lots of big changes on the horizon.  First, I am starting a new job at the end of August.  I had completely given up on looking for work, and had instead committed myself to spending the next year home with Holden.  A job sort of materialized out of nowhere, and I was informed about it by a senior colleague at the institution I am leaving.  The job is at another local school, which is smaller and focused on preparing students for the job market.  I contacted the Dean, who was charged with filling the position.  We had lunch and she offered me the position on the spot, with the possibility of having this one-year contractual position become something more permanent down the road.  Of the 2 remaining faculty, they are both retiring, and I would be assuming the program director role (equivalent to department chair).  Um, how did this just fall in my lap ??   Was the past 2 years of job searching a karmic downpayment for this enormous leap in responsibility, pay, and status?  I get to oversee adjuncts, create the course schedule for the psychology department, advise students, do committee work, and teach.  I will also be getting paid more during my 9-month appointment than I made the entire 4 years at my last job.  I am still a little shocked that after all the effort of looking for work, that it literally came down to giving up.  When I gave up on continuing the job search, I wasn’t thinking that anything would fall in my lap.  I was just thinking that I would be with Holden for the year and re-assess things next summer.  And although I am incredibly excited about this enormous opportunity, I am also disappointed that I won’t have the next year with H.  I had been looking forward to the time with him, but that’s OK—we have the whole summer instead!

Here’s the other big thing that is going on.  I finished a 4-week course of antibiotics at the beginning of May for my continued eardrum ruptures.  I had a 2nd CAT scan after I finished the course of antibiotics.  The scan showed MORE remaining INFECTION.  I was given a referral for testing by an allergist (which is not scheduled until the end of June), and within 48 hours of going off antibiotics, I was sick again and losing my hearing.  I decided I had to start experimenting to see if I could get better before seeing the allergist.  So I eliminated dairy and gluten from my diet.  Within 2 weeks I was better!  I no longer wake up with a headache.  I have more energy.  I can hear again.  I can taste again.  I can smell again.  We can start doing things socially again.  It’s wonderful.  Although I miss cheese and ice cream, I don’t miss them enough to risk getting sick again.  I’m eating a lot of fruits and veggies, fish, and meat.  It’s good stuff.

The real reason I have hopped on here this beautiful Friday afternoon is to detail the funny things that Holden is saying.  In no particular order:

1.  “Kitty—NO!  Timeout!”

2.  “Poop jokes”

3.  “My bookcase will hurt you.”

4.  “My penis is hot.”

5.  “There’s a traffic jam going to the library.”  (Yeah, right.)

6.  When passing the local park on our way home, Holden usually screams at me:  “Turn around!!!!!!!!”

There are other funny things that I am blanking on right now, but I wanted to get them all down before I forgot about them!  He is changing so rapidly, I need to just take as much of him in at once as I can.  I love him so much.

Total cuteness at Big Truck Day.  He was *pleased* to see so many big trucks:

We are busy with Holden.  Busy with work (in my case, I am busy with quitting work!)  Busy with interviews for unappealing new work.  Busy with house projects.  Busy managing chronic sinusitis, ear infections, and repeated tympanic membrane ruptures.  Busy with oscillating between snowstorms and summer fun all in the same 4-day span.  Busy with packing away Holden’s outgrown winter clothes.  Busy with thinking about how life is just whizzing past us.

I’m not going to talk about most of this stuff here (mostly because much of it is highly unpleasant).  However, I will provide the abbreviated update (in pictures) of what has been going on with Holden.

We had a wonderful trip to Myrtle Beach during spring break in March.  Rob and I were sick that week, but it was still wonderful to relax away from work and spend some time with family.  While in South Carolina, we visited a zoo, the aquarium, and of course, the beach!  Holden got to experience the ocean for the first time, and also got to meet his great grandma for the first time!

Here’s Holden with his great grandma and 4 generations of Friesel men:

Holden at the beach:

Holden on his very first ride at an amusement park:

Holden also developed a fondness for otters while on vacation.  Ever since meeting these gregarious creatures for the first time, he will occasionally pretend to be an otter by “swimming” around the floor on his belly.

Here he is, meeting otters for the first time:

Upon our return to the great frozen north, we got to do fun stuff like attend the Shelburne Farms Maple Sugaring Open House.  We enjoyed a pancake breakfast fundraiser, chased chickens around the farm, and pretended to drive tractors:

Over Easter weekend, we dyed a few eggs:

And had a mini-Easter egg hunt in our yard:

And of course, no Easter is complete without chocolate (and a snooping kitty cat):

****Funny aside about this picture–we had already gotten H dressed for the day when he insisted that we put his pajamas back on OVERTOP of his clothes.  So we obliged.  What the heck.

We also have been taking MANY, MANY trips to the local parks.  Here was an especially beautiful day, where we grabbed lunch at the Beansie’s Bus and let H run wild in the park following an ice cream treat:

In April, we had some special visitors come up from Maryland.  A good friend of my dad from his childhood has two adult children, both of whom are now in their 30s.  I keep in regular contact with the daughter, who has two kids of her own.  Her girls, who are 6 and 4, had a lovely time with Holden.  It was their first time in VT, and they had a blast!  Holden loves being surrounded by beautiful girls:

We have been painting with chocolate pudding:

And most recently, we have hiked Snake Mountain (elevation 1300 feet) with Grandpa.  Unbelievably, Holden was able to hike about 2/3 of the way up totally on his own, before I was forced to haul him up on my back the rest of the way.  He is such a strong little hiker already!

Here we are at the top:

Today, Rob took Holden out to meet the Storm Troopers while I stayed behind and re-finished our countertops.  When Holden met the Storm Troopers, he asked if they were Snoopy.  Yes, H—Storm Troopers totally have that black and white thing going on, but they are decidedly NOT Snoopy.  So cute.

And the best surprise from today was unexpectedly running into Holden’s best buddy Mallory (with whom he used to share a nanny):

These two seemed to remember one another—they have always gotten along so tremendously.  I hope they can always be friends.

It’s been a while since my last substantive post.  I have SEVERAL half-finished posts, including a post that is actually about how I have a pattern of starting things and never finishing them.

And actually, in addition to being incredibly busy trying to unsuccessfully balance work and family, I have had much on my mind lately.  This is the biggest reason I haven’t posted in such a long while.

I have decided to leave science.  And I am leaving my job (only 10 more lectures and 8 more surgeries to go!).  Once I do this, there will be no turning back.  Once you’re “out of the game” you can’t just opt back in.  It’s a permanent decision.  And I am about as OK with it as I could possibly be.  Here are my reasons for this decision, in no particular order:

1.  Rob has a good job here in VT.  VT is a good place to raise a family.  There are no permanent positions in my field in VT.  Therefore, staying in VT means that I will not be able to get a permanent position in my field (being geographically-restricted becomes problematic when you have highly specialized skills).

2.  The job I have (although not permanent) is completely non-optimal.  I get paid about enough to cover H’s daycare costs.  That’s it.  I don’t have paid sick leave–every time I get sick (or H gets sick), I don’t get paid.  But the daycare still does.  In addition to the crappy pay and lack of benefits, I have ZERO scientific autonomy.  I could suck up the pay situation if I felt like I was deriving some job satisfaction in terms of pursuing my own research interests.  But because I ultimately have to collect data to satisfy the funding agencies, what I want to do does not matter.  I’m basically like a technician then—sort of like what I was doing when I first got out of college, except that I am paid far less.

3.  The university offered me a position for next  year—more teaching responsibilities and the snazzy new title “Research Scientist.” I quickly deduced that it’s the same thing that I am doing right now, just a new job title.  I turned the university down.  They now have to do a national search for a candidate that has the appropriate background and skills to teach the courses they are offering.  You know what amazes me??  My skills are apparently so rare that they have to initiate a national search to replace me, yet I was getting paid less than minimum wage.  It just doesn’t make sense.

So that’s it.  I don’t have another job to go to.  I had investigated the option of becoming a licensed psychologist and re-specializing in clinical neuropsychology—but after many conversations with faculty members and the licensing board, it became clear that would also not work.  One of the program requirements was an APA-accredited internship, of which there are none in the entire state of VT.  So that option was out.  I could become licensed at the master’s level, which also involves more training, but honestly, I just need to step away from all of this for a while.  I need some time to process things.  I can’t really say how completely heartbreaking it is to train for so many years—4 years of graduate school, plus 4 years of postdoctoral fellowship—and come out of it with zero options.  And the worst was taking my 7 page CV and whittling it down to a one-page resume.  My publications—gone.  My invited talks—gone.  My presentations—gone.  Part of me feels like I did it all for nothing.  I have to start over, and pretend like it all never happened.

The weirdest part is that people are SO supportive of my decision to leave academia.  Faculty are supportive.  Friends are supportive.  Family are supportive.  Everyone seems to know that it was a lost cause, and they were just waiting for me to realize it too.  I actually felt more support in leaving academics, than I ever felt the entire time I was in it.

I am trying to view this as an opportunity to take a new direction with my life.  And also as an opportunity to spend some time with Holden.  It’s likely that we will pull him out of daycare sometime in mid-May after my teaching responsibilities are over.  I don’t think I will have a job lined up that quickly (and some have suggested that I don’t go back to work for a while—I’m not sure how I feel about that suggestion).  I do know one thing for sure—as much as I put into my research and teaching—the hours, the effort, the driving myself crazy with not having everything figured out perfectly the first time, the endless quest for answers—I rarely felt appreciated each day when I would go into work.  But if I take some time away from the career track to spend with my little guy, I will be appreciated each and every day I go to work.  Holden might spit at us during our meals together, throw his books, terrorize the cat, or whine endlessly for no apparent reason—-but no matter how many times I raise my voice or put him in a time-out, no matter how exasperated or tired he makes me feel, no matter how depleted my patience will become, no matter how many journal articles, invited talks, and job opportunities I will pass up, I would do it all again for Holden.