Compromise

I listened to a story from NPR today on what the word compromise actually means and it included this great quote from On Compromise and Rotten Compromises by Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit: 

But even so, the choices we make say something about our character. In fact, Margalit suggests that we really should be judged by our compromises more than by our ideals. As he puts it: "Ideals may tell us something important about what we would like to be. But compromises tell us who we are."

This really resonated with me. It has been bouncing around in my head since I heard it. So often a person is praised for being uncompromising, and there are times and places where that is called for, but I think compromising is praise-worthy too. 


I tend to see compromise as a weakness, as giving in, but compromise is what gets things done politically, in a marriage, amongst friends, in the workplace. I want to celebrate it more and not see it as such a negative. Life is not black and white, we live in the gray, and we all need to bend a little bit for each other. 

No I will not make my own almond butter

I was at Trader Joe's which recently opened a store about five blocks from where I live. I HEART trader joe's and now there is one super close which is super awesome. Anyway, we desperately needed groceries. We were down to eating pasta with canned tomato sauce and feeding the baby only milk because we had no proper solids about. So after a long day at work and then coming home to play with the family, feeding baby, making dinner, and doing the dishes I headed out to TJ's at around 9 pm. The hubbie was home watching the baby monitor doing laundry and law school stuff.

I am comparing the sodium levels of almond butters versus peanut butters because I want to make some sort of almond butter ball thingies for the mini-me to feed herself. She has no teeth but really really wants to feed herself and I am constantly looking for more mushy but not too mushy things I can give her.

While I am doing this some a random guy in his late 40s comes up to me and says "you know it is really easy to make your own almond butter?". My response is along the lines of I have no time. He then proceeds to tell me again in more detail about how easy it is and doesn't take that long to make. This whole time I am not making eye contact, trying to read labels, and give the signal of GO AWAY. Again I tell him I don't have time to be making my own fucking almond butter (I didn't swear but in hindsight perhaps I should have).

Seriously, it is almost 10 pm on a Monday night and I am grocery shopping. Obviously I don't have time to be making my own god damn almond butter. Yes, I realize it would be cheaper and *maybe* healthier but what the fuck dude? I don't want to discuss recipes right now. Again I tell him that I have a baby, work, and have no time. Which prompts him to share with me how now he makes his own pancakes for his kids who are 11, 8 , and 5 (side note : when did 3 kids become the norm?) with wheat germ, and almond flour, and some other shit. At this point I am actually walking away while he follows me and continues to talk to me.

I realize I live in a small town and usually I enjoy random conversations with people as part of the charm of living in a small friendly town. But there is a time and place people. When I tell you I have no time and the grocery store is almost closing... take the hint, leave me the fuck alone! This was some serious mansplaining shit and I wish I had had the energy to call him on it instead of just politely ignoring him and walking away.

Good Minions

Good undergraduate minions are difficult to find and hard to train. But when you find the right combination of eagerness to learn, native intelligence, and good attitude it is like winning the lottery. They start to run your experiments from start to finish without supervision, they analyze data and plan future experiments before you get to it, they start on their own mini-projects, they present at lab meeting, in short they become grown-up scientists.

It is a joy to watch someone's critical thinking skills coming into being. It feels so beautiful to me, like watching the sunrise over the ocean. I have had the distinct pleasure of having had three excellent minions. I love my minions and when I get a good one I do everything I can to shove every spec of knowledge I have into their brains. I also always make sure to let them know how much I appreciate their hard work.

One of my awesome minions recently graduated and has gone on to a real job making 'real' money (his words not mine). This particular minion worked with/for me while I was on maternity leave. He was a fantastic, amazing, wonderfully efficient and effective lab assistant. He single handedly generated two of the figures for my paper while I was on maternity leave. Do you have any idea how amazing that is? I went and had a baby and came back three months later to lab to find mountains of statistically significant data. STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT DATA! I appreciate him to no end and feel very lucky to have had such a talented person working for me.

Today he stopped by to say hello and brought me these flowers as a thank you.

He that he doesn't much like his job as a wilderness fire fighter even though it pays really well. He enjoyed being a volunteer firefighter while he was an undergraduate but he thinks working in the lab has ruined him for other kinds of jobs. He said working with me taught him how enjoyable it is to be able to work independently, to use your mind, and now he wants a job where he has to think not just 'follow orders'. He is considering some kind of graduate school, but isn't sure exactly what he wants to pursue quite yet. He told me that he never thought he was that smart before working with me.

So although I didn't receive my NIH fellowship, I still feel like a winner today.

Fellowship Fail

I did not get the fellowship. Sad times at the PQA home. The main criticism was that I have been in my lab too long (2+ years) and the 'training potential' is not high enough. I got bonus points for switching fields for my post-doc but then penalized for taking so long to submit a fellowship application from my new lab. My frustration is that it took me this long to apply specifically because I switched fields and had to learn a whole new system of critters to work with.

le SIGH

So close, yet so far away.

Atheists are funny

I love Ricky Gervais, I think he is hilarious and the Office is brilliant, and I love that he is an outspoken atheist. It looks like he is working on a new show called "Afterlife" about an atheist who dies and goes to heaven. Sounds interesting doesn't it?

Link, video, stuff - fest

I learned about how indirect sexism has been described as creating a "chilly environment" that can be insidiously hurtful to women.

Yes, I play video games, no you can not see my boobs is a great post that explains why I personally avoided playing video games online back when I had time to play them.

Don't douche, also this new ad campaign for summer's eve is really douchy.

Other women sweat shit-tons like me and discuss creative solutions in the comments section.

This article on raising siblings to be friends, reminded me of how lucky I am to have such a good relationship with my brother as child AND as an adult.

Via ">Boing Boing a really cool, energy efficient way to bring light to poor communities:



I don't know why but I find this video of Maru the Japanese cat super star really entertaining:

Motherhood will make you piss yourself

So the baby (9.5 months) has been sick with a high fever. When she is sick all she wants is to be held by Mom, nothing and nobody but Mom. This results in me holding her for hours on end at night while not getting any sleep. She has been sick for four days when the fever finally broke. Which is a good thing because I was beyond exhausted at this point. We wanted to give her a day before sending her back to daycare just to be sure she was better so off to the grandparents she went. They offered, very kindly, to watch her overnight.

Oh sleep, blessed sleep, all I could think about all day was how well I was going to sleep. And sleep I did! I had that, don't remember my head hitting the pillow, kind of deep deep sleep. Which was awesome.

When I woke up this morning there was something cold and wet in my bed. I jumped out and realized that the cold wet thing was my butt. Apparently I was so exhausted that I did not wake up to pee.

I, a grown, fully potty trained, completely sober, adult wet the bed. In all my years of rowdy drinking and passing out I have never not made it to the bathroom. When I was nine months pregnant and peeing every three seconds I still never had accident. I am pretty sure I didn't have any as a child either.

But now, as a mother, I can apparently get so tired and run-down that I will pass out and not wake up to use the bathroom.

Motherhood, it will make you pee your pants.