Into Place, Things Are Falling

Like Yoda in this post's title, I spoke. Probably because philosophical and reflective, I am feeling. A good thing, this is.

Today (or what's left of it) is our tenth wedding anniversary. Wife's parents are here to be with Moose while Wife and I go away to an undisclosed location for a week to celebrate. We've been planning this trip for months, and we're very fortunate to have parents that will come in and help out with Moose when needed (I'm including you on this sentiment as well, Mom). TEN years since the wedding day?? I mean, I guess I can believe that. So much has happened since then, and it does feel like it was a while back. But then we start discussing that it's been "a decade," and then one thinks about the swift passage of time. And philosophical, one gets.

The last day of the first decade of our marriage (e.g. yesterday) was a banner day in the house of Chesterley. We bought and sold a house on the same day! Monday we placed an offer on a house we adore in our new city. The owner countered and actually came down quite a bit further than we expected. Tuesday night after a great deal of discussion, roller-coaster emotions ("can we really afford this?"), wailing and gnashing of teeth, we signed on the dotted line and sent in the paperwork yesterday morning. Then, yesterday evening we learned that the response we wrote to the buyers of our current home regarding a few points on the inspection report were accepted, meaning our house sale was a done deal last night. Needless to say we each had a stiff drink and danced around the house like happy people.

And then we slept well for the first time since the beginning of April. We are very thankful that the house stuff, in particular the sale of this place, went so quickly and relatively smoothly. I know of a few others who have struggled with selling a house, and I can only imagine what a long process would do your stress levels. I don't know when before I've been this stressed out continuously for several days in a row. Not a healthy way to be.

We'll get an inspection done on the new house after we return from our vacation. We do adore this house, though I'm determined to not call it "our house" till after the inspection is complete. Still, it's hard not to be placing furniture mentally or planning improvement projects already. Must stop! OK I won't, but I sorta feel like I should say that here. :-)

So Decade 1 ended on a high note for this family, and may all the remaining ones end equally as high. It's amazing how the various aspects of life can fall into place sometimes. And experiencing all of these changes with the same person right by my side over time is simply priceless. I am one lucky man.

Houses and Stuff

I thought our house-purchasing process when acquiring the residence presently known as Chesterley was rather stressful. We came into town for three days, and thankfully we had a realtor who spent the majority of her time with us. Moose was just under 10 months old, so of course he needed 'round-the-clock care, feedings, etc. We put an offer on one place, and of course we were worried it was going to stretch our budget. We low-balled the offer and hoped they'd take it. And then we LEFT TOWN with nothing definite on where we would live, and no plans to return to this town before actually moving here. Stressful! Fortunately it all worked out, they took our low offer, and Chesterley has been a wonderful place to live.

However, selling this house is also pretty stressful in itself. I think we're finding the prospect of leaving this place more difficult as the weeks go by. During the time we've lived here, our family has been through a lot. Between me and wife we've lost two grandparents and a parent, Moose was diagnosed with autism disorder, and we had the typical growing pains of a growing family, money concerns, low academic and career self-esteem, and other difficulties. We've had some high points as well: good progress through a Ph.D. for me, progress through speech and physical difficulties for Moose, increase in the diversity of types of voices taught to sing by Wife, numerous fun parties and other gatherings, great discussions with a gaggle of good friends, and now landing this job and preparing to move on is indeed another high point that we've experienced while living here. It's hard to leave a place where you've grown so much personally and watched your child transform from "plasma" into a real, live, very active, boy.

The house itself has changed quite a bit these last five years, and the changes are all part of the mark we're leaving on this place. New roof, great gardens (thanks to us, I must say!), new interior and exterior paint jobs, some new kitchen cabinets and such, new dishwasher, different curtains, etc. Wife and I enjoy 'keeping house' together, and I think we've come to be pretty good at it. And we always make sure we can afford it first, which is key. Being house-poor is useless. Big tax refunds are awfully helpful.

When we moved here, we didn't think we'd stay here forever. We figured we'd be here four years, and now we've been here five. There are things we've put up with here that we're hoping to not have to deal with in our new place. We have no separate dining room, and yet we enjoy having friends and family over for sit-down dinners. There are a couple of "warts" in the yard in the way it slopes toward in the house in back. Some other choices in the construction materials (cheap-ass vinyl siding, for example) would not have been our choice were we to actually build a house.

Our new location is a much larger city, and fortunately it's not very far from SCT so we've visited the past several weekends to go house hunting. Lots of options up there. Lots of crap, too. Some expensive, and some not-so. Every time we come home to SCT, it hits us both how much we love this house. It's "home." This is the longest we've ever lived in one place together...heck, it's the longest either of us have ever lived anywhere except for the places we grew up. The thought of moving and starting over with our gardens, painting, etc. gets rather exhausting. And then the emotional side kicks in for me. Will the new owners of this place continue to take care of the yard, or will it all weed over? Will they repaint the "roasted red pepper" accent wall I painted in the kitchen as a surprise for Wife? Do they realize that the best son in the entire world learned how to walk, talk, eat and do most things he knows how to do under this roof? I need to get over these emotions toward this building, I realize. And I will. After all, the "home" is just going to move to a different house. Home is in the people, not the walls.

Tomorrow (OK, technically later today) is hopefully our last day for house-hunting, as our time is getting more limited. The hunting process is getting tiresome now...nothing seems to compare to our current house just yet. A couple of great places have had major, unchangeable things that will not work, like it's in the wrong school district or located on a busy road. The scary thing is, we're supposed to be out of our current house on June 26...ACK! Really hope the hunt goes well tomorrow.

It's tough to leave a place where you've done a lot of living...good and bad times mixed together. At least the family itself will stay together, and together we'll find a new container in which to house Chesterley. It's just sort of scary that in a very short time, life is going to change so much. No complaints though...just a little healthy fear here & there.

Two Important Meetings

IMPORTANT MEETING 1: Dissertation Proposal Defense.
I passed.

You know, it was actually an enjoyable experience. I felt like I had a highly-informed cheering squad instead of a group of adversaries. They treated me like a colleague. DC started off the meeting by saying, "We all want this study to work for you, and we're here now to help you improve it before you start." Can't ask for more support than that.

The end result was a pretty major change to the semi-structured interview protocol. This didn't surprise me at all: Honestly, I really didn't like the first one I had written. The feedback during the defense discussion was invaluable, and DC agreed. After we were finished and I watched them sign all the paperwork, DC invited me back to her office and we spent the next 45 minutes crashing through the edits of the protocol. SHE actually did the typing while I did the talking. Gosh she's cool. After that we decided to add a brief demographic survey that I'll have the participants complete prior to coming to my office for their interviews. I pulled together an Amendment for the Committee on the Protection of Human Subjects and submitted these new things to that office later in the afternoon. All wrapped up in a nice bow. Not really, it was wrapped up in an inter-campus envelope, but I'm just being figurative.

As I was driving home, I had a sudden urge to start packing up my house, in preparation for our move. Wait a minute, I need to do these minor things like SCHEDULE THE INTERVIEWS NOW!!! Oh yeah. :-)

IMPORTANT MEETING 2: Moose's Individual Education Plan for 2007-2008.
This is the meeting where the SCT teachers, therapists, preschool coordinator all come together with us to set goals and objectives for his schooling next year. He will start kindergarten. We're technically a year late, but that's really not a big deal. It was good of these folks to spend the time with us, especially since we're writing this for the new school district in the new city. We didn't finish today, so we'll finish things up next week.

OK, I'm off to officially invite participants to join my dissertation study (at long last) and then it's bedtime. G'night.

Newsworthy Tidbits

Two newsworthy tidbits to share here:

1. My dissertation proposal defense is set for Wednesday, April 25 at 10:00 AM. Please think happy thoughts.
   
2. I will start a full-time job July 1.

I don't write about the details of work here, as this blog focuses mostly on my dissertation process and a little bit on Moose. However, the new job is worth mentioning because we're going to move away from Small College Town this summer as a result.

We’re excited for the move, though it’s bittersweet. We have many, many wonderful friends here, and many of the resources for raising a child with special needs are wonderful. We enjoy the small-town charm, too. Those features will be hard to leave. However, we’re moving to a much larger city, and that will open up different opportunities for Moose’s schooling and for Wife’s career as a classical vocalist.

Basically, it’s a job in institutional assessment situated in a division of student life. This is just the sort of thing I was hoping to find upon graduation. I’m feeling lucky to have found it several months before finishing the dissertation!

The new shop will support my dissertation completion efforts by allowing me some time away in the summer and fall. My goal is still to finish up in December, that is, assuming the dissertation proposal defense process goes OK next week.

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks. Our house went on the market just over a week ago, and by the end of last week we already received an offer! Now we need to haul ass and find a house in our new location. We went school hunting this morning, and that went very well, so now house-hunting can follow. Fun and pretty darn scary all at once. But we’re really, really happy.

A Basic Question

Last July I officially started my current job, which was essentially a promotion from a 50% FTE graduate assistantship to a 75% FTE graduate assistantship with supervisory responsibilities. The money was "good," and as a result I had no need to take out another student loan. The money was not "great," but for 30 hours per week, I had no complaints.

However, I am still on the student health insurance plan. The alternative, had I been hired as a true 75% staff member, was no insurance coverage at all. So, I was thankful to have been hired on as a grad-student at the salary I'm receiving, and I thought the student insurance plan was OK. Not great, but OK.

Moose wasn't on this plan last year. He was on a state-funded plan for which we qualified because our income was so low. This was a wonderful insurance plan, especially for a child with special needs, as it covered just about everything with no premiums or copay. Don't get me wrong: I'd rather not qualify for the plan due to high income, but I do miss this plan. We took him off the plan January 1.

Today we learned that the speech and occupational therapy (OT) he receives every week has not been covered since the start of the new year. Earlier in the year when we were deciding to switch him to this "student" plan, however, Wife called the insurance company to verify coverage, and they said "autism is covered." However, what was not clear was that they only cover "medical" expenses for autism, and not speech and OT. Speech and OT are only covered expenses if they are restorative. So, if I had been in an accident and needed to relearn how to use a fork, that OT would be covered.

Moose has never been able to speak. OT has taught him how to do things that other kids just learn, like using a fork, for example. My basic question: how is it that therapies provided by a hospital, and prescribed by a doctor, are not medical expenses realted to autism?

We are appealing, and we hope this turns out OK. But, what if it does not? Do we cancel therapies till we hear? The appeals process takes 30 days.

These insurance plans are designed for students, who typically are healthy and normally-functioning individuals. I mean, they got into college, after all. The plan covers prescriptions, doctor's visits, etc. That's all well and good, but when you realize your child has a mental disorder during a five-year stint as a graduate student, it'd be nice to at least be told what questions to ask in this regard. We would have found another plan or found another way to get the therapies had we known...

I may not have taken this job had I realized these essential things for Moose's care were not covered. On the other hand, this job has probably helped lead toward some bigger and better things (more later on those). I'm torn. Am not sure the money was worth it.

Proposing and Recruiting

Hi. I didn't post a follow-up over the weekend.

I did indeed finish up the proposal, and I turned it into the committee. It ain't perfect, but it's done...for now. As I delivered a hard copy to the home of one committee member, I reminded him that I'm a musician by trade. I said, "Just keep in mind: the first time an orchestra plays together, it usually doesn't sound all that good. This proposal may be similar." He graciously said, "Oh c'mon, it'll be fine, Rob," so perhaps that's a good sign that they're not seeking perfection, just completion. We shall see.

Meanwhile, I started my "snowball sampling procedure." This means I've asked about 14 faculty and staff members that I know here at LMU about helping me recruit people eligible to participate in my interviews. I've asked them things like, "Do you know of students who fit these criteria?" and "Feel free to pass this along to others." The hope is that the snowball, or the sample of participants, gets larger and larger the farther it rolls, or in this case the more it's shared. I'm seeking about 8-15 people total, and already I have contact information for 10! Amazing how fast this occurs after getting over the proposal-writing hurdle.

K bye.

Study # 07- 11947

Some quick updates, all of which are good.

First, I received Approval from the human subjects committee at LMU earlier this week, so I am now able officially to start recruiting participants for my study. Approval is good. From now on, I shall refer to the diss as # 07- 11947, the number assigned to my study by the Human Subjects Committee at LMU. Note the required space between the hyphen and the number 1. I am not kidding.

Next, DC came back from a series of conferences, and she gave me a bunch of feedback on the proposal. Feedback is good.

Third, DC thinks the propsoal is just about ready to go to my dissertation Committee. She informed the Committee as such, and now suddenly they all want the completed proposal by...TODAY. Committee interest is good. DC has asked them a big favor by accelerating my time line so I can collect data very soon. She rocks! I'm very lucky to have her.

Thanks to her feedback, and that of a couple of other Trusted Colleagues (TCs), I'm swiftly synthesizing a bunch of edits together into one coherent (God I hope so) document. Later this afternoon, I'll deliver copies to the Committee and then it's outa my hands till the defense date, which will happen hopefully within the next 10 days or so. We shall see.

A little bit stressed, but none of this is "bad" stress. It's all good.

Undercity Weekend

I had a nice undercity weekend here at home. Oh, "undercity" means "suburban." I'm just funny that way. I'm not sure how my neighborhood can be suburban where there's nothing truly urban anywhere nearby. I think I've identified a paradox: How can a suburban neighborhood be truly suburban with no nearby urban area? Discuss!

Anyway, I think this was one of the only weekends since I have been a homeowner (when we established Chesterley in 2002) that I did not feel any school work hanging over my head. Remarkable. We cleaned up the yard and put down mulch on most of the flower beds. So far we've put down 13 of those 2 cubic feet bags of the hardwood mulch. I think we need about three or four more for this one area along a fence line, but we need to wait for the hostas and bleeding hearts to come up first. We're trying a new weed-reducing method (just in a few spots) of laying newspaper down on the beds where we know plants are not growing and then covering them with the mulch (aren't we the little weekend warriors?) (so damn undercity of us). I hate weeding, but I hate how weeds look even worse. So, all of the beds except for one are done...and that one should be done next weekend when the plants start to come up. Feels like we're doing all we can to foster good healthy spring & summer gardens. I like gardening. I especially like it when I don't feel like I REALLY should be doing something else. Wife and I enjoy gardening together. Much fun. We like seeing the results of our work, and hopefully we'll reap some rewards for this work in a month or two when the growing season really kicks off.

This year I'm not going to use regular fertilizer on our lawn. I need to research organic lawn treatments, since Moose may be sensitive to toxins and stuff. It'll be different, but I always felt a little bit strange about pouring chemicals into our lawn and then later rolling around in the lawn with Moose and Chester. Should be a fun adventure, and perhaps less expensive than the fertilizers we'd buy at Large Home Improvement Store Out at the State Highway.

For dissertation work this week, I will edit hither & yon and await IRB and DC approval patiently. I've sent the proposal draft out to a few colleagues and relatives for their edits. Sort of fun to hear what they have to say. I realize this activity of sharing the work is part of my extraversion: I get energy from other people. Even with writing, I need to make it a social process. Otherwise, I'd seriously lose my mind and would probably lay mulch and newspaper over it by accident.

Two Milestones, No Libraries

I'm happy to report this is the first Saturday in a couple of months (not counting weekends out of town) where I will not go into my campus office for the day. The reason: last Wednesday about at 3:30 AM, I turned in a draft of my dissertation proposal to DC, "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Large Midwest University." DC is leaving tomorrow for two weeks, and she won't have time to read it till she's traveling back to town. That's OK: I need a little break here. Hopefully it'll be just about ready to go, and I can set up a defense within the couple of weeks or so after her return.

In addition, yesterday I turned in my documentation for the Protection of Human Subjects (Institutional Review Board, or IRB) approval process. This is to prove I'm not planning on injecting my interview participants with air and then sitting around to see what happens. I got DC's signature on those forms just before she jetted out of here, so I'm glad to have that ball rolling. It's good I have the two-week buffer till DC can read the proposal, because it may take that long to get the IRB approval completed.

So, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter. Heck, the tunnel itself is getting shorter. I CAN'T WAIT to start interviewing my participants and actually collecting data to see where this grounded theory study is gonna go.

Today Wife and I are pondering what we'll do together will all this Time. We're taking a vacation in May for our tenth wedding anniversary. She asked me to go with her TO THE LIBRARY today to check out some books to plan the trip. The LIBRARY? Nooo.....no more books! Maybe we'll go get some mulch for the flower beds, or paint the kitchen, or something....but not the library!!!

Happy Birthday, Chester!

I almost completely forgot that today is Chester's birthday! He's 8. EIGHT?? And to think, he used to fit in the palm of my hand. Literally.

I don't have a more recent picture of Chester than this one, taken last fall with me and Moose. This was just a spontaneous shot...both boys hopped in my lap at once.

Anyhow, woofa woof woof woof (translation: Happy Birthday, Chester!).

Deadline is looming

I’m working on my dissertation from home today. This came after cancelling a trip to visit relatives. I hate cancelling trips. I hate the fact I couldn’t get to my “real” job today. But, if I do not finish the proposal here soon, I will need to wait a year to collect data, and that would negatively impact all fronts: job life, home life, school life. So, no stress. None whatsoever. Ha. I value the rich life I lead outside of my professional career, but for the moment I’m needing to be a hermit. Lovely Wife is allowing me the space to do so, and the relatives we were going to visit aren’t too upset, I don’t think. But man I could use another week alone to get this done. Instead I have two days and the usual juggling of my life’s components. That’s OK…I realize I’m lucky to have components to my life. I just wish a few of them could give me a break for a couple of days…

Anyhow, I’m here in my peaceful home office/prison. I’ve been locked in here since about 8:30 AM, actually. Since the weather’s nice today (76 degrees right now), and since it’s spring break for the local schools, many of the neighborhood parents are taking time off to be with their kids…and I think they are all outside playing right now. One neighbor has a very loud motorcycle, and he is driving it up and down our street, back & forth, each time practically blasting me out of my seat. With the coffee surging through my blood right now and the constant motorcycle engine scaring the shit out of me, lemme tell ya I’m writing wicked FAST right about now.

Looks like it’s gonna rain soon. I hope it pours so I can have some quiet. I’m grumpy!

I am very close to finishing up the one major hole in chapter 2. I have about two more pages to write on chapter 3. Then I need to finish a pretty major overhaul of chapter 1, but I think I’m almost done there too. If this were due tomorrow, then I could stay up much of the night and finish. I’m actually that close.

Perhaps I’ll just stay up all night…hmm.

The motorcycle just drove by again. Pardon me while I peel myself off the ceiling.

Forecast is not as stormy

While the "to be or not to be" schedule isn't panning out as quickly and efficiently as I'd like, my perception of the urgent nature of the proposal defense date wasn't quite right either. My delay does not bring all bad news: I can take the extra week or so I need to get the proposal up to snuff, and then I should still have time to collect data. It may require taking a week off of work in April to do nothing but complete the interviews, but then the data collection will be completed and I'll be on no one else's schedule but my own.

DC gave me edits on chapter 1 over the weekend. This was waaaaay cool. She actually had me come to her house Saturday so she could explain where she wanted me to go with this. I tried to stay up all night on Sunday night to finish up edits to chapter 1. That was a dumb idea. I dragged my ass yesterday at work and didn't get nearly as far as I had hoped. Got 8 hours of sleep last night, and this morning I'm much more bright-eyed. Time to get through these edits before the work day starts at my 3/4-time job.

Details of Moose's Diet

Take a look over at Wife's blog for a very well-written post that describes the new dietary things we're dealing with for Moose. It's been exhausting on many different levels, but now we're gaining energy by seeing him "come back to us" with his personality, after about two months of sort of being away. I guess I just haven't wanted to talk about it much on this blog.

I honestly don't know what I'd do without my wife. I think she's the most patient person I've ever met.

No More Additional Articles or Books!

I hereby place myself on a moratorium on article- and book-obtaining activities. Unless a member of my committee requests I read something different for the proposal, I am no longer allowing myself to obtain any new reading materials.

I went to the library this morning to get one additional article, and of course I came back to my office with THREE in hand. I've read the one I sought in the first place, and now I must finish up chapter three, which is now a day late.

OK, one more time:

NO NEW ARTICLES OR BOOKS!

Thank you, I needed that.

No Colon

This post has nothing to do with my, or anyone else’s, excretory system.

During these last three or four years, I’ve assumed my dissertation’s title would have a colon in it. Something like, “Rob’s Dissertation: An Exploration into the Mind of a Mad Man.” Just kidding. Well, here I am with a decent title in hand, and there’s no colon. I’ll admit, I’m a little bit stunned!

"To Be or Not To Be" Schedule

I am now officially on a tight time schedule, but I think this is doable as long as I don’t lose focus. It’s pretty simple: if I don’t finish this on time, then the dissertation gets delayed for at least a semester, if not a year, since I need to interview seniors in their last semester of college for my study. Yep, either it’s gonna happen, or it’s gonna not. I’m shooting for the former.

Revised versions of chapters 1 and 2 went to DC at our meeting yesterday morning, and she seemed pleased. There is still a small hole in chapter 2, but I know exactly what I need to do, and I have the literature sources to do as such. Now I just need to “do.”

I need to turn a draft of chapter 3 into DC by tomorrow. I thought I had said draft in my hand at yesterday’s meeting. However, I must have dreamed making edits to that. I’m not kidding. I was surprised that the draft I had in my hand during our meeting still related to the old mixed-method study. I couldn’t believe it: rather embarrassing. Fortunately DC just had a good laugh about it stating that she’s been there before. It’s good to not be alone! So I’m madly making revisions to that this morning and cutting out anything related to the old study. It’s rather freeing, I must admit. Hopefully in the next couple of hours I’ll have a decent draft which I can edit later today after I work this afternoon.

DC will read everything over the weekend and give me feedback Monday. I will incorporate her feedback early next week, and I’ll fill in the hole in chapter 2 then as well. By the end of next week, March 9, I must deliver the completed proposal to my committee. This gives them two weeks to read it. I'm supposed to defend the proposal sometime after spring break and before DC leaves for big conference she’s running at the end of the month. This should leave me just enough time to do the interviews I need to do before the end of classes this semester.

The Mozart CD is on repeat and I’ve been cranking away since 8AM here at the home office-prison. It’s either going to be late nights or early mornings from here on out. But at least it’s the home stretch for the proposal, at long last. Nothing like the end-of-the-line push to get the work done (I hope!).

It just takes a little Mozart...

...for me to find focus. One of the first CDs I ever bought was a recording of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 26 in D-Major performed by Murray Perahia. This is the CD I'd put in whenever I was in crunch paper-writing time in college, graduate school the first time, and now graduate school the second time (TEN years later...ugh, age, where are my cane and vitamins?). Why I don't remember to put this CD in every morning, I'll never know. I always focus and get a lot of work done when I hear this piece. It's benign enough that I don't just space out and listen to the music. It helps me filter out the rest of the world and do nothing but write. There are three movements: faster, slower, and fast (my translation of the Italian). During the fast movements I write, and during the slow movement I read and proof. I don't mean to do it that way, but that's just the rhythm I've established. I think it's subconscious. Many times I just put the CD on repeat mode and so I can crank through a big paper.

Guess I'm going to have this tune running perpetually here in my office for the next couple of weeks. I've just burned the CD to my office computer.

Chester is Flatulent

Get out of my office, smelly dog!

The poor thing. I wonder what he ate.

Elusyve letter y

Y am seryously thynkyng of removyng all ynstances of the letter “i” from my dyssertatyon and replacyng them wyth the more elusyve and less-frequently used letter “y”. Wouldn’t that be nyce?

OK, Y realyze that’s probably not the best ydea. But yt would be pretty funny nevertheless. You can tell Y’m goyng styr crazy wyth dyssertatyon-wrytyng these days. Perhaps the upcomyng snow storm wyll bryng me back to a mode where Y can be more productyve? Y hope so.

Friday Haiku

My friend & colleague, Jon , and I wrote this today after a meeting at work.

Our meeting is done
The decisions have been made
Let’s go home and drink

Dude, that's a Haiku.