Two Month Update!

Well, we completely forgot about January. In fact, the whole month is a blank. (not really)

Ian turned 28 and received some wicked sweet board games for his birthday, along with snarky remarks from his darling wife. He was, and remains, utterly thrilled. Seriously, these games are pretty great, if you're into games: Ticket to Ride and Jambo.

What else, what else? Oh yeah: Ian accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the highly-esteemed Columbia University! He was the only candidate out of over 1000 candidates - we're quite proud of this fellow. It's a three year position which drops us right into New York City (we will most likely be living in Morningside Heights). This position was in competition with a tenure-track position at Wayne State in Detroit, MI. There was much deliberation over what job to take, especially when we compared housing prices and transportation costs, not to mention job security and pay. But, all said and done, could we seriously say no to Columbia? We will have to sell our beautiful little car and will end up paying 4x as much for housing (for square footage), but we're both really looking forward to the adventure of New York City. 

All of this means that I actually do need to squeak my master's degree out this summer, but I'm on the right track to get everything done on time. I had two papers accepted for presentations next month, and another nominated for a grad school prize. I also applied to the National Women's Studies Association conference next fall - we'll see how that goes (for my thoughts on research and school related things, I recently started a blog on tumblr). I've decided on a concentration on sexuality (completing coursework this semester), and believe my second concentration will be counseling, which I could finish up this summer when working on my thesis.

Ian has 52 days to finish his dissertation. He's reworking the first and second chapters, so it's quite a task. His foot has healed up nicely from his stress fracture in December. When the weather allows, my little ninja is out scaring the locals as he zips past.

Our kitties continue to flourish and purr. We've avoided all chickpeas in our stews. We are working on making our bedtimes closer to midnight (and actually succeeding at this). And we've been shoveling a lot of snow. Much snow. Tired of snow.

We also (through much hard work and dedication on our end) became aunts and uncles this week! My beautiful sister and her doting husband Jason had their first child, Josiah Paul Furrow, aka "Furrito," born February 16th.

  

Ian and I purchased tickets to visit this cutie in April. I can't wait to not only see this fine lad (a "McBaby," as my mother has designated any current and expected grandchildren), but Sarah and Jason's work on their orphanage and property. Check out their blog - neat stuff.

The Holiday Special

We're a little late posting this month, but it's been the week from Hades. Our skepticism in the "only three things can go wrong" belief has proven itself just. Merry Christmas?

Backing up, I FINISHED MY FIRST SEMESTER OF GRAD SCHOOL! Yay. Pats on the back all around. I wrote a few large papers, took an exam, ruffled and finished this and that, and managed to get a somewhat reasonable amount of sleep through it all. Ian and milk tea (in no particular order) kept me sane. Again I say, yay.

Ian has 6 interviews on the books for various positions, the bulk of which are positioned on the East Coast. He is, as I write, on a plane to Boston for some of his interviews and to give a paper at the Eastern APA. That lucky dog.

Our string of bad luck started last week, when Ian tried on his suit from the wedding to make sure everything still fit for his interviews... and it was too small. A combination of stress, stress fracture (inability to run or do any useful exercise), and certain people depending on their husbands to do all of the cooking, even when said husbands are overworked and stressed themselves, culminated in both of us gaining weight since the summer (when we were at our most svelte - glistening muscles, luscious hair, healthy glows... now we look like pasty marshmallows with bags under our eyes).

So, new suit. We spent some time at the Banana Republic Factory Store and found him some dressy duds. I may be biased, but my sweetie cuts quite the figure in his new charcoal suit. While I was helping Ian shop, six people also asked me for help. I guess I have a Banana Republic aura or something?

We started really packing and preparing for our trip to Albuquerque on Monday night. Conducted a Target run, packed our bags, fussed over how to best fold shirts and how Ian should carry his suit, etc. I went into work on Tuesday and was frantically making sure all emergencies were taken care of before we flew out Wednesday morning. And then I received a phone call from Ian. Who had just received a text from his dear mother in Albuquerque. Who was wondering: Where are Ian and Rachel? Why aren't they at the airport. Yeah. We missed our flight. Planned on flying out a day after we were scheduled to leave. Can you say clusterfuck? We did our darnedest to get out to Albuquerque, but it was going to be an additional $400 each above and beyond what we already paid to fly out, which financially, just not feasible. We're still pretty embarrassed, but more than that, really sad that we didn't get to spend Christmas with Ian's mom and family. It's one of those things that I'm sure is going to be hilarious in a few years, right? We were able to salvage my plane ticket to use at another time, but ended up having to purchase a whole new plane ticket for Ian's trip to Boston.

We decided to drive to Minnesota to visit my family, which, while not our original plan, was very nice. We got up very early on Wednesday morning, packed the car, and said goodbye to our little kitties. We had a great visit - played some Canasta, hung out with family friends and extended family, ate the McCready traditional Christmas breakfast, which I love (grapefruit, pecan/caramel rolls, and summer sausage), the whole nine yards. Weather was excellent driving in and driving out.

I'd commissioned our good friend Emily to check in on the cats while we were gone to make sure they were doing alright. Emily, though not a cat person, is always willing to lend a hand if needed. We received a frantic message on Christmas Eve that when she went to check on the cats, they had been locked in Ian's study. Our landlords were to perform an inspection on Wednesday, and apparently they closed both cats in a very small room with no access to food, water, or their litter box. For TWO days. Our cats are intrepid little creatures and were as polite as they could be in the situation - they peed in a bucket and used a (previously) reusable grocery bag for their other kitty needs. Poor things. They both seem to be doing fine now, but when our landlords finally have office hours (tomorrow), we will have words.

Anyways, after driving all day, we got back last night, dealt with the cats, unpacked the car, repacked Ian's suitcase for Boston, oh-so-carefully checked his flight information for his Monday morning ride to Boston, and then Ian's phone completely pooped out. Screen gone, totally on the fritz. Ian couldn't go to Boston without a phone, so we redid our voicemails and he now has my phone. I dropped him off at the airport this morning.

Ian called a while later - his first flight to Philadelphia was seriously delayed and overbooked (they didn't even have a seat for him when he showed up two hours early), and they'd completely cancelled the second leg of his flight to Boston due to bad weather, couldn't even get him there until Wednesday night, which would mean Ian misses all of his interviews, comes into town to give his paper, and then flies out again. Ian was finally able to talk his way into a ticket (phew!), and in good faith something would get him to Boston, boarded the flight to Philly. And he caught the last flight out to Boston by pure chance. We were prepared to rent a car or have to pay for a train or bus ride to get him there. (PHEW!)

While none of this stress is comparable to having your home destroyed in a natural disaster, or losing a job, I think this week has been the hardest thing we've been through together. What I know thought is that I have an amazing partner who will be strong for me when I can't hold it together, and will allow me to be strong for him when he is overwhelmed. We will forever have neurosis about flight schedules and kennelling the cats, but we will enjoy it all together.

Jan - we'll see you this spring! We are so sorry.
Mom and Dad - thank you so much for being so flexible and letting us visit at the last minute; it was good to be home for Christmas, even if it wasn't we had planned.

It's gradually getting colder outside and time is flying by, it feels like our last post was last week, not last month!

Well, the headlines are (in order of importance): Ian's job applications are all out, save a few strays as they come up, we have a new kitten (hello, Peter!), and I completed my midterms (how successfully is yet to be determined!). We also bought a vacuum cleaner, which has both revolutionized our apartment (broom, nobody likes your style!) and frightened the crap out of the cats. Double win.

Job Applications Out!
Ian has thus far submitted almost 50 job applications for  jobs all over the country, as well as few international positions. There are many ancient philosopher openings at this time, so we have a good feeling about getting several interviews, and hopefully will have a few good schools to choose from in the spring. So, we could really end up anywhere next year, maybe even right here in Michigan!

So far Ian has one interview on the books, a smaller school trying to scoop up bright apples before the big conferences in December. We expect to start hearing from more schools in the coming weeks.

New Kitten!
Everyone say "Hello, Peter!"

Isn't he a handsome little thing? We adopted him a little over two weeks ago from Planned Pethood, a local rescue agency. He is almost 4 months old. He's had a few health problems coming in, but he's very active overall. But also a cuddle-bug, a kitty that will actively seek out pets, will gladly climb on your lap or back and fall asleep while purring. He is a sweetheart. He is a little gassy... so I guess he fits right in?

Vixen put up a major stink the first four days, but now they chase each other around the apartment and have fun playing together. At least it looks like fun?

Midterms
Actually, not that exciting. But they are done. And I'm not dead from the work or from Ian slaying my crabby, weepy pants. CRABBY WEEPY PANTS. I think that adequately describes midterms week.

Thanksgiving Week
We are flying out to California this week to visit my dad's side of the family. I'm looking forward to introducing everyone to Ian, especially my grandma, who I haven't seen in several years. Unfortunately I will have to bring a lot of work with me on the trip, it will be nice to take a few days away from the office and have time to see my family. I'm especially anxious to see my parents.

Until next month - stay warm and dry and we'll do our best to do the same!

Keeping On

This month has seen our life explode in a mushroom cloud of hectic deadlines. After giving my brown bag to the department (it went fine, by the way), I had a lot of improvements to make to the "sample of my scholarly writing" (as many of the job postings call it) before I was comfortable showing it to strangers. Thus began what is always a long and painful process, and anyone who says it's not long and painful is either lying or had nothing worth saying in the first place: the rewrite.

There's a sweet spot in between composition from scratch (it's own kind of headache) and mere copy-editing that can paralyze me ("writer's block," if you will). It's that point in a project where you know a lot of it is in place, but there's a lot that has to change, and you're not quite sure if changing the stuff that has to change is going to knock the stuff that's fine out of whack, so it will all have to be redone, and opening the document just greets you with a wall of text and where are you going to start? 

I felt nothing of the sort during my undergrad years, because I knew that deep down nothing I wrote mattered. I took up a position because I had to, wrote it down because I was told to and forgot about it afterward. Grad school is different, because somewhere along the way you become an academic, responsible for the things you say and write down. Papers and arguments follow you around, and people know what you've said and expect you to defend it if they disagree with you. That's a lot of pressure, because the academic career is a long one (the only way out is death).

So that was my October, as it was lived in my head. A lot of other things happened as well, frenetic activity on the outside: the annual job postings in Philosophy were published and I set about seeing what opportunities we would have in parts unknown. I'm happy to report that everyone seems to want Ancient Philosophy scholars, because there are many plum jobs out there for a guy like me. Enough that I'm going to be faintly embarrassed if none of these opportunities come to pass.

Our CSA share dried up as well, which is sad and signals the slow decline into winter. Winter. WINTER. When I first got to Ann Arbor, a colleague from Texas said "by April, you'll be slitting your wrist just to see some color." He felt pities his fellow south-westerner, trapped with him in a frozen wasteland that for some reason people long ago tried to settle. Oh, Michigan makes up for its 6 months of frosty negligence, with its spring flowers and flourishing foodshed. You say to yourself on that first tanktop day: "You know, it's not so bad here." And thus the cycle of abuse continues.

Rachel learned that graduate school is harder than she thought. I remember her sitting at our kitchen table a week before classes started, saying "How hard could it be?" And she sure found out. To be honest, though, observing me is not the way to get a good perspective on how most people make it through grad school. When you get right down to it, I'm paid to do nothing. Sure, if I didn't work hard at my dissertation and make progress, I'd be all kinds of screwed by the end of the year, but no one would come demanding their money back.

But back to Rachel. Being challenged for the first time in several years, she went through something of an adjustment period. She has a lot on her plate: school, a part-time job, ambitions of physical fitness and dietary perfection, a labyrinthine administration which she must navigate for any number of trivial school-related requests, and her own very high standards of excellence. I do what I can to see that she doesn't have to worry about too much besides the cat poop (which is her duty), but occasionally it emerges that we have different thresholds at which clutter and sloth cross from background noise to the whole of consciousness. Putting someone in charge of the housework who does not really consider the tidiness of any space but the area immediately surrounding his desk is not the way to run a tight ship, but we get by.

Rachel's been spearheading the effort to get us some new transportation. We've learned that October is a great time to buy a car, because dealers are getting their new year's inventory in, and our faithful Grand Prix isn't getting any younger (it hit 113000 miles recently). We're thinking a nice compact, like a Fiesta, but God almighty did they have to call it a Fiesta? Might as well have called it a Ford Swirly or a Ford Wedgie.

When you hear from us next, we'll be on Thanksgiving's doorstep and I'll have crossed the job-search Rubicon, all applications out and away, hopefully flying with the angels into the grateful arms of a philosophy department somewhere it doesn't snow half the year. One has so little control over one's fate in the academic job market that any hope is too much to hope for, but I'm pretty accomplished and as entitled to a measure of optimism as anyone.

Vows

I was just working through my files on this computer and found a copy of them mixed in the files of pictures of flowers and other wedding frivolities I've gladly placed aside. Of course I stopped what I was doing, opened, and read them. And of course I got all got all googly-eyed and squishy-hearted.

We took a lot of time writing our vows. We talked about some essential promises we both agreed were essential, but wrote them separately. I thought it would be fun to throw them up here!

Rachel's Vows to Ian

Ian, thank goodness I accidentally asked you out (or rather, thank goodness you thought I asked you out and ran with it). Thank goodness you had the tenacity to ask me out again after our first date didn’t go so well, and thank goodness I agreed.

Now, after being together for over two years, I cannot imagine my life without you. Our relationship has blossomed in the small moments - shopping at the farmers market on warm summer mornings, making dinner together after I get home from work, laughing together at some silly antic or song. I have grown to love you - your knowledge, your wit, your conversation, your touches, your thoughtfulness and kindness, your goals and your strong work ethic.

You are tender and good to me, and knowing your love and experiencing your love is the absolute best thing in my life. I am blessed and privileged to share each day with you, and cannot wait to grow old with you.

On our wedding day, these are my promises to you:

I promise to encourage and support you. You are my partner, and I will always work with you instead of against you.
I promise to respect you as an individual, to never try and change you, but to love you exactly as you are, as an independent person.
I promise to always try and assume the best of you.
I promise to be completely honest with you.
I promise my faithfulness, in thought and act.
But most importantly, I promise to love you every day, and in this love, to choose you every day, no matter what life my throw at us. I promise to love you and to choose you in the good days and the bad days.

These are my promises, as long as we both shall live. 


Ian's Vows to Rachel

It feels strange, making a life-long promise. Promises are wards against neglect: you ask someone to
promise something that they wouldn’t do otherwise. And it feels strange because our relationship has
been pretty much an uninterrupted stream of joy and belonging.

Even before it was really anything serious—before I would consider, say, dropping everything to spend the day in a damp basement department giving you head rubs to distract you from your migraine or feel I knew you well enough to stop trying to impress you (which never really went away, let’s be honest: your praise still brings out the peacock in me)—before all that, I knew this was the real deal, you and me.

Day after day the delicious meals, quiet evenings, loud evenings, sexy dances, little moments, secret
language and shared affection piled up to the point where I had to see that life without you would be a pale imitation of one spent by your side.

So it feels strange to ward against mistrust, hurt and all the demons of an endangered union. What could we possibly have to worry about?

But, of course, that’s the exaggeration of a love-struck fool. We don’t always click, and there has been tension and hurt and misunderstanding. We’re in this for the long haul, after all. Friction is a fact of life and we’re going to see plenty of it, over where to live, how to raise our children (oh, so you assume we’re having children? For example) and whether we’re going to put chickpeas in the
stew.

Hence the promises: to remind us that we know what we’re doing, we’re at our best when we’re together than that there is nothing we shouldn’t do to share this life. So in that spirit, my darling Rachel, I make you the following promises, cross my heart and hope to die:

1. To lift you up and believe in you, and help you achieve all the great things I know you can;
2.To show you I love you, even if it’s just by washing the dishes you thought you would have to when you got home;
3. To choose you everyday, and always be aware how lucky I am that you’re in my life;
4. To be faithful to you, and be someone you can put your faith in;
5. To respect your decisions and value your input on everything we do together;
6. To assume the best of you always;
7. To keep it fun, even when our lives make it so it isn’t always easy to have fun;
8. To make wherever we go together a home and someplace you’re excited to come back to;
9. To put you first and build my life around you, rather than try to fit you into my life;
10. To continue doing all of the aforementioned for as long as we both shall live or be viably cryo-frozen.

Rachel:

I can't believe September is almost over. Looking outside, some trees are already nearly bare, yet it was in the upper 80's earlier this week.

It's been a month of transition and schedules. I was promoted into a new position at my company at the end of August. I'm still a financial counselor, but instead of working in a call center completely over the phone with 60 other counselors in a cubicle farm, I work in a cozy little office in Ann Arbor with three great coworkers. My drive is 15-20 minutes now, instead of the typical 50 minute commute I had before. And I'm part time, working anywhere from 20-30 hours weekly depending on appointments.

I also started my Graduate Assistant (GA) position, which is 10 hours a week. Currently, I'm helping with an honors intro to women's studies course, planning a retreat for the winter for scholars in different Women's & Gender Studies departments across the country, and helping out with a research project.

On top of this, classes started three weeks ago. Let me say this: 9 credit hours of grad school is not 9 credits of undergrad, especially when you are maintaining two part-time positions. I will also admit that there is more work and the work is harder than what I was expecting. It's true, it's a whole lot of theory and philosophy. And if you've ever read any serious feminist literature, it's full of (ridiculous) jargon, such as "othering," "utopic," gendernormativity"... and LOTS more.

Since my starting school, the apartment has fallen into greater chaos than usual. Anyone who knows Ian and I well understand that we're not neat freaks. While we're not what I would call 'dirty' people, we have and maintain a constant flow of clutter. I now have almost no time to help out with any cooking or dishes, let alone other household tasks. Poor Ian is taking on the role of househusband, but with a cheery disposition and a whole lot of love. I am forever grateful I married such a giving, kind man.

Ian:

All of September has been leading up to one big day: September 24th, which is the day I'm supposed to give a "brown bag" talk to my department. We call it that because it happens over lunch time. It'sa practice job talk, the kind we'll be expected to give if any of the departments to which we job-seekers apply like us enough during our interview to fly us out to their campuses.

I've given plenty of talks before, and had even given a version of the paper I'm going to present, but there's a special kind of fear that creeps in when it's your own department, the people you've spent years around but who have, in all likelihood, a minimal idea of the kind of work you do or whether you're any good. I've spent a good deal of the last 5 or so years around many of these people, but it still feels like I'm some kind of debutante (which I am: 6 years of school or no, I've yet no career to speak of).

Well, let's hope it goes well. It's still the calm before the storm: October 10 is the day that the big job posting hits and we all start feverishly scrambling to apply to as many places as possible. Until then, it's like preparing for a siege; ordering envelopes, polishing application materials, and hoping against hope that the market is not as dreary and despondent as the two years past. These things which I have no control over: why must they determine the whole course of my life?

Comin' at Ya from Ypsi!

…and within a single month we jump from the height of Summer to its death throes. Three weeks ago we pulled up stakes and moved 10 miles down the road to Ypsilanti. It's a hobby to compare the poor place unfavorably to Ann Arbor, which isn't fair; there are more outward signs of trouble, true—more homeless scouring the neighborhood for glass bottles, empty storefronts all in a row, more broken glass in the street—but the rent's cheaper, local brew is $2.50 for 22 oz, Ian has a lovely bike commute under broad trees, and it's been scientifically proven that Ypsi is 85% less completely full of itself than AA. So the trade-off is closer to fair than not.
Ian has started to get serious about putting together the materials he'll need for the job market. As with most things, he should have gotten serious about this a good deal earlier, but he'll be none the worse for it. To the casual observer nothing has changed; he still spends long stretches at his computer, still tries his best to produce good prose about Aristotle day after day—but now he's a product and has to think about the packaging.

This kind of thinking is not foreign to him; he has an ideal advisor who has at every chance ushered him toward presentability, and the lessons will serve him well. Ian has an ambitious plan for drafting and redrafting the chapters of his dissertation and the numerous documents that philosophy departments across the nation will want to see from him (teaching dossier, writing samples, CV; it's not so different from applying to any other job that requires one to show something for the time one has spent preparing to apply for it)—ambitious and perhaps a bit insane, but he's only ever done what's expected of him, and the key to his success was always his unreasonable demands.

Today to celebrate our three months of marriage, we cleaned! Well, actually we cleaned before we rewarded ourself with a fun day. We traversed to Ann Arbor to eat at Zingerman's Road House for a late lunch. We've been talking about doing BBQ there for ages, and really, after such a yummy lunch, we shouldn't have put it off so long! After lunch we ran a few errands, then went on a lovely long bike ride on the patch between Ypsi and Ann Arbor. And how nice to come home to a lovely, sparkling apartment—with the cat lolling on the rug by the door—to some refreshing iced tea.

Anyone wishing to see our new place: your long and frustrating wait is over!

The Office, Where Ian Spends Much of His Time

Our Lovely Little Kitchen

Rachel's Chaise, Just to the Left of Ian's Desk

Our New Dining Table

Our Bedroom