2 weeks blog free.. because life is pain! (a la The Princess Bride)

Man in Black: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

It has been 2 weeks since I have blogged. I have a multitude of reasons. Most of them are draining my will to live. I will only touch on the highlights, since the minutia of my everyday life is not interesting to read about, let along write about!

Inigo Montoya: Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

The house deal fell though. Our buyers didn't want to compromise so we called their bluff and canceled the sale. Our house went back on market and less than 24 hours later the original buyers came back with our original compromised offer. We accepted and are back under contract. Then we were left dealing with inspections, surveys, repairs and relocation mumbo-jumbo for the past few weeks.

Prince Humperdinck: Surrender?
Westley: You mean you wish to surrender to me? Very well, I accept.

LabDad has moved out of town and has begun to work at his new gig. I am now a single mom. ThePrincess and ThePeanut were still in daycare, but that ended today. I will admit I teared up when I had to pick them up for the last time. Part of me is mourning the loss of that extended part of our 'family.' We loved our teachers and they loved our kids and it is so hard to think we will never see them again.

Prince Humperdinck: You truly love each other and so you might have been truly happy. Not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the story books say.

The packing process will begin this weekend. The movers are coming and I need to go through and designate stuff to be sent either to our small rental apartment, or to long term storage. That should be a blast with both girls underfoot.

I also have started interviewing up in our new city. Thankfully, I am batting close to 1000. Almost every resume I sent out has come back with a request to interview. But now I am getting cold feet. I am not sure what I want to do, stay in academia or move to industry. I am not sure if I want to focus on animal models or move to more clinical work. Big lab or small lab? Male or female PI? Private research institution or state uni? AHHH.. I can't decide. At least I have chioces!

Inigo Montoya: Is very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.
Westley: Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.

I also am dreading (with a capital D) finding a new daycare and reestablishing life in our new city. There is so much to do, and until I get this house sold, move up there and can really get my bearings, I can't really do anything but fret!

Fezzik: You just shook your head... doesn't that make you happy?
Westley: My brains, his steel, and your strength against sixty men, and you think a little head jiggle is supposed to make me happy?

Hopefully the coming chaos will be kept to a minimum (eh, who am I kidding, of course it won't!) and I can get back to my regularly scheduled blogging. I am going to get through this.. right?

Buttercup: We'll never survive.
Westley: Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has.

Damn you Recession!

So close, yet so far...

That is how I feel about this whole house contract. This deal has officially gone off track. Not just off track, it is pretty much completely in the ditch. Our house didn't appraise high enough for our buyer's offer. But their offer is inflated since they couldn't afford closing costs so they rolled them into their mortgage.

Well, in this financial atmosphere, there is NO wiggle room in the appraisals. You can't roll jack squat into your mortgage.

Soooo... We are at a standstill. They don't have the money for closing and we aren't going to suck it up and pay it for them. It looks like the offer is going to fall though.

Great. Just great.

Since I wanted to start over from square one.. It was clearly so much fun the first go-round.

Yay Lab Techs! (Can't live with 'em, can't live without them)

This is just a shout out to Damn Good Technician who offers up some great advice for people who are currently lab techs or are considering tech-ing, either as an interim stepping stone before moving onto to *cough*cough* "bigger and better" things, or as a lifetime career.

They are wonderful gems of wisdom (even if you aren't a tech I suppose). I also want to point out that yours truly added her own pointers in the comments section so check it out and save me the work of restating them here.

Clearly there may not be much advice to career techs out in the blogosphere, because our tips got picked up over at Genomeweb. Does that mean we're famous?

Already stuggling with my identity.

Day 1 of being unemployed and it is hitting me that, without a job, I am no longer LabMom. I'm just plain old Mom and that is not very interesting. (Boy, that didn't take long. )

I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head about this topic:
About the struggle to remain who you are when you don't get to do what you like to do or what you are good at.

About how my definition of myself is all thrown out of kilter since I don't want to be who I am picturing myself as.

About how societal valuation of stay-at-home-moms is so different from the kind of professional support you get in your career. I am always irked when people say moms never get credit. I don't think that at all, there is plenty of back-patting for moms out there, probably more than they deserve. Heck, we (as a group) are more supportive of each other than most other profesions. But going to a "mommy meet up" is NOT like a professional meeting. For one, there is a lot more talk of poo. (and I would even venture to say is true when compared to a meeting of the American Gastroenterological Association.)

About how guilty I feel that I resent my new life when I thought I would love it. (Deep down I will admit I was honestly thinking "VAAA-CAAA-TION" when really I just got "BOOOORE-DOM" so I'm feeling gypped.)

Not that I don't love my role as Mom. I do. It is in fact more important to me than my role of scientist, but it just isn't as...interesting.

I think I just nailed it:

I now feel completely uninteresting.




Kinda like this whole post.

I'm seriously never getting out!

Today was the big day.. my last day on the job. Or so I thought.

I was on a roll, plowing through my last day chores:

Cleaned out the -80
Cleaned out the -20
Cleaned out the cold room
Organized my notebooks
Typed an inventory of everything I was leaving behind
Turned in my keys
Cleaned out my desk
Found out about my COBRA coverage
Set up a forwarding address for my last paycheck
Brought 5 boxes of crap to my car

Was about to say my last goodbye to the BossLady when she asks "Can we get together to go over all your notebooks before you leave? I wanna make sure I know where everything is."

*Sigh*

Of course she couldn't meet today, and tomorrow I am swamped with home selling mumbo-jumbo, so it looks like Wednesday may be my last day.

Ack! At least I no longer have keys. From here on out I am considering myself a 'visiting guest' of the lab.

Hide N' Seek with LabMom

Wondering where I am?

Well, I am currently off guest blogging for Andrea over at the mommyblog Good Girl Gone Redneck. I'm staying busy.. don't worry about me.

I would like to thank any of her readers that have trickled over this way, and I checked my page stats so I know there are some of them! Okay, lots of them.. It came close to tripling my page hits.



I will be back to my regular stomping grounds tomorrow. I have got to vent about lab going-away parties. Especially when you are the guest of honor. Blech!

Tax Freedom Day! (aka: Working for da' man!)

Today is the last day in 2009 when an average American's paycheck stops going to the government and starts to stay in our own pockets. (99 of 365 days.) YAAAY Taxes! (Pretty ironic today falls a mere week before April 15th. Maybe it is a government conspiracy!)
In 2009 we needed to work one additional day to cover our taxes, however tax freedom day is actually two weeks earlier than back in 2007. I guess that is progress.

Anyhow.. besides that bit of great news, I also thought I would update you on my last day of work. It seems that some of you were curious as to how much of my "To do:" list I actually got done. And here is the answer:

NONE OF IT!

Yep, turns out The Peanut came down with Norovirus, so I was stuck at home today with a projectile vomiting infant. Ahh, fun! I guess Monday will end up being my last day of work. I am never getting out of that place!

My final day on the job..

is tomorrow. Last day.

I have been with BossLady since the week she opened the lab. More than 6 years ago now. Leaving is bittersweet. I know she will really miss me, but I am pretty sure (8 on a scale of 1 to 10) that my replacement can keep all the balls in the air.

I will admit I am a little burnt out on the science. The lab is taking a scientific direction which I have little to no interest. Because of that I have fallen off the wagon keeping up with the latest literature and find myself only going through the motions. I am ready to be excited about my science again.

The job market is hopping in our new home-to-be, so I'm not worried about finding a new lab, but the idea of not working for a little while (while we househunt, find daycare, get our bearings) is EXTREMELY disconcerting. I am not exactly sure of what I am supposed to do with myself, and how I am supposed to deal with only having the conversation of a 4 year to fill my day.

I am absolutely confident that things will work out in the end, but I am not so sure that the transition is going to be smooth. We will see how tomorrow goes. I am pretty sure it hasn't really sunk in yet. I think I am in denial since I am not acting like someone who is about to leave forever.

For example my list of 'to dos' is pretty long, for an 8 hour work day.

1) Hand in resignation (oops, should have done that 30 days ago!)
2) Hand in Badge/keys
3) Clean out desk
4) Clean out fridge/cold room
5) Clean out -80
6) Clean out -20
7) Clean out Tissue Culture Room
8) Finish one last figure for grad students latest paper
9) Hand in procurement credit card
10) Burn remaining data off personal laptop
11) Organize lab notebooks

Uh oh.. That is a long list now that I look at it. Yep. Denial. Total denial.

I'm alive!!! Big Annoucements.

I know it has been more than a week since my last post. It is crazy here, but most of the developments are good ones.

1) We were traveling last week. We went to visit our new hometown where LabDad landed his Pharma job. It was exciting and scary all at the same time. It is becoming more and more real and I am frequently asking myself "What did I get myself into?" but I know it will all work out in the end. We have a new place to live (at least temporarily) and that is a big load off my mind.

2) We are UNDER CONTRACT! Have been for a while now (after 14 days on the market), and it is pretty much official now. Our relocation company will go though our closing for us, so we are almost completely uninvolved from here on out. Whoo hoo.

3) My last day at lab is Friday. Already had my going away party, but that is a whole other post. I can't believe it will be the last day I walk through those doors. It is hard to imagine life without the lab.


Hopefully you can forgive me for being absent of late. Pretty soon it appears I will have a bunch of extra free time on my hands, at least I hope so.

Awesome (and hiliarous) stuff I read about this week

I am traveling this week and so I was way behind on my blog reading. However, tonite I plowed through my Google Reader list and stumbled upon the BEST.STUFF.EVER!

First Up:

I almost wet my pants when I saw these:

Kittylegs!

Now I have seen the babylegs trend but I never would have dreamt up legwarmers for cats! (And even though it is only a joke, it is still hilarious and adorable all at once.) If you are interested in making your own from a pair of socks, there is a tutorial at Obsessively Stitching.

And then I saw this box in a post about a swap on ThePacheryMenagerie and immediately recognized it was from Thermo (formerly Pierce)! I know that the recipient probably has no idea where it came from.

The sender was Cherie at Quilted Jonquil. Now that means either she is another science quilter, she is married to a scientist, or she is stealing boxes out of the trash of some scientist (which I WOULD NOT recommend, since we tend to throw away lots of weird nasty stuff!)

And finally, today I saw this photo posted on NotesfromtheTrenches. If you can't read it, it says "Mom is meen" Bwa-ha-ha-ha! All of our children will think that eventually.

Thanks for the chuckles this week bloggers on my blogroll! Way to keep it interesting!

31DBBB Day 30: Check your stats!

Oh my! In order to Build a Better Blog I am supposed to look at my blog analytics.

For example:

Overall Visitors

Most Popular Posts

Referral Stats

What’s Your Bounce Rate?

Page Views Per Visit

Time on Site

New vs Returning Visitors

This may be ugly. I don't think I want to know!

If you are reading and helping my stats.. Thank you!

And if you aren't. Well, then you aren't reading this so I can say "screw you"!