Amber's Parents Visit Madison (in brief)

Oh man, it would take forever to actually cover all that went on last week with mom and dad coming to visit. Summing it all up, they loved how much more progressive and intellectual Madison is compared to home, loved meeting my friends, really liked Andy, enjoyed spending mornings on my porch while I snoozed on the couch. "Do you realize how hard it is not to just reach over and hug you when I see you asleep there?" Mom would say.

It didn't quite hit me until they dropped me off at work and headed back home how much I missed having them around, before and already again. I get to see where so many parts of me come from: the way I laugh, the way I pun, the way my cheekbones ride high on my face like my mother's, and how speckled my skin gets in the summers like dad's.

More than that, when you're a kid you can't like your parents that much. You think they're so dumb and old-fashioned and uncool. And it's good that you think that at the time, because otherwise why would you ever want to leave? After two years of dealing with all sorts of adults, finding the things I love in some and the things that drive me batshit insane in others, I get to see how cool and relaxed my parents can be. I am so very, very lucky.

Now it's back to work, and holy hell is it working time. As the summer bumbles on, I fight off the pangs of freakout concerning fall and prelims and student seminar by channeling it into working harder. More and more I have to put the blinders on and just focus on getting work done and not freaking out with how little data I actually have. Still, it's really scary some nights, when I try to drift off to sleep and all I can think is how lame my student seminar will be. How far all my friends will have gotten with their projects and I'll still be hammering away on a hope and a dream of a project. Head + wall: repeat.

From here on out, it's work, work, work until August, when I'll head back to:
1) Visit my family and attend a big family reunion outside of Columbus, OH.
2) Come home for a day or two
3)Hop on another plane and fly out with Andy to visit his family in upstate New York. This is kindof my "real" vacation in that it will be a new place and I think there will be alot of fun dinners and lakes and such. I only met Andy's parents briefly last year, so I'm looking forward to re-meeting them.

4) Come back home and prepare for another school year. I still have to T.A., and likely petition to do my prelim in the early spring (yay X-mas break craziness!)

Now I'm going to go make myself shower(boring) and read comic books and finish The Wastelands (not boring!)