Professor mommy

Fantastic news all around -  we had an excellent and productive trip to the Amazon, I got the promotion to tenure track (still in the negotiation phase, but the offer is official - YAAAAAAY!), and my masters student successfully defended.  It took a couple weeks, but Maya has completely forgiven us for our long absence (she was pretty mad about it), and I've headstarted two whole flats of seeds for my garden this year, including a bunch of aji amarillo peppers so that I can make the Peruvian delicacy huancaina upon harvest :)  Life in our household is happy and vibrant!

However, there are two things that weigh on my mind: 1) the insane increase in productivity/efficiency that I'll need to shoot for if I'm to get tenure here, and 2) the decision about whether or not to have another child.  Make no mistake, the first child didn't seem like a choice (in a good way).  If I couldn't both be a professor and have one child, then I didn't want to be a professor.  A second child, though, is a much different decision that feels far more like a choice.  On one hand, I'm being offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here - to be a leader in my field, to stay in school FOREVER (could anything be more fun?), to be a woman in a museum culture that currently has zero (that's right, zero) female curators in my discipline at the top collections.  If I botch this opportunity because I trade the last little bit of sanity and time I have to invest in a second kid, I'll have regret.  However on the other hand, if I rock the pre-tenure years and arrive at the end of my career without even trying for a second, I'll have regret about that, too.  So pretty much the only way to not have regret (of the major life decision variety) is to try for another child AND rock my pre-tenure years.  Hmmm….

To accomplish this, I'm going to have to be more brutal about my tradeoffs.  I'd like to think that this will result in an amazing, streamlined, improved version of myself over time, so it's not a negative.  But it does mean that I will lose free time, I will need to be ruthless about not spending much time on things that don't directly advance my career or family goals, and simply be better at life than I have been - while somehow remaining centered and relatively stress free.  Because I clearly don't know how to do this well yet, I am reading lots of books to figure out what combination of strategies might work best for me.  The book that I'm reading now is called "Professor Mommy: Finding work-family balance in academia," and it's somewhat helpful (but not perfect).  However, I'm specifically looking for books in the vein of "You can do it!!" and not "Here's how you're screwing yourself," so a fair number of books have already been cut from my list of possibilities.  There's one statement in Professor Mommy that really rings true, though - their observation that you don't read a lot of stuff about how people are doing this successfully because they literally do not have time to write (or often talk) about it.  I'll see what I can do to document at least some of my journey here…within my ruthless boundaries of time allocation :)

Anyway, I'm not pregnant, so don't get too excited yet.  Having just traveled to South America, I had to *at least* wait 28 days after return to confirm that I am indeed Zika-free (although Peru has had no documented cases of Zika within its borders, I was fanatical about DEET application and permethrin-infused clothing while there, and nobody on the entire trip got any illness at all…or even a botfly, much to husband's dismay).  I had a preconception appointment with my midwife (it was sooo good to see her again!), and she gave me the green light this week.  I didn't document my first conception journey at all, and I don't know how much I'll blog about it here now either.  I will, however, announce good news here when/if it comes - I'm old now, so all bets are off.  I won't try forever, either, because RIGHT NOW is literally the best timing I'm ever going to get in terms of funding and responsibilities, and it only gets harder from here on out.  But if any of you readers are still out there, that's the current update from the North Country.

For those of you who only check the blog for photos, I'll leave some now - it's been a fantastic spring here, so we've spent a surprising amount of time catching snakes!  Maya had her first swimming lesson of a new session today as well, and I'll get some photos of that next Saturday.  Onwards and upwards! :)

Maya in here Cusco alpaca gear!

I *may* have gotten an alpaca sweater, too :)

Maya and dada with a water snake!

Maya's been a trooper with learning how to flip for stuff.

And hold them gently!

The beginnings of my seedlings :)  Maya helps spray them
with compost tea every day!