Little to report

Here's how it looks outside:



That's about how I've been feeling for the last couple of months, too (gloomy and weatherbeaten and disappearing into the fog) as my partner limps through the last pages of his PhD. It has been an all-hands-on-deck situation in my house since about October. My job is to cheerlead and proofread and write "tell me more" in the margins and be the first source of resistance or enthusiasm to new lines of thought, and to ask to hear the rundown of the whole project a few times a week. This consumes most of both of our waking time and energy. It is too bad that departments don't award PhDs to partners of PhD candidates, because now that I have seen some of the abusive ugliness that academia enables and encourages, I am never signing up for one myself!

The last chapter got sent out to the committee in the wee hours of the morning, though, and now the end is in sight. I have been knitting a thousand swatches and imagining the beginnings of new things. And I am putting the finishing touches on an appropriate sampler. (Pardon the wrinkles.)