Highs and lows, hills up and valleys down. These are the things which make up a life, and we’ve had our share lately of good and bad. Stress has a way of making tiny things seem momentous, and we’ve struggled with feeling like we’re riding down a landslide. So much is going on! It feels like none of it is in our control… and, none of it is. We suspect that the minute a person accepts that life just sort of happens without their input, the happier they are…! We’ll become happier any moment now…
The opening photograph looks like the entire cast of Upstairs/Downstairs or Downtown Abbey ought to come out and line the drive, appropriately costumed in 1911 outfits of dark suits and black dresses, white aprons, mob caps and the works, doesn’t it? This is Mar Hall, where our friend Axel is getting married in June. D. is shooting the event and may even avoid shooting himself when all is said and done. It’s a stately venue, and the event looks to be quite posh (T. saw these pictures and wondered aloud if she’d have to get one of those huge feathered fascinators so she’d fit in with the well-heeled crowd) but unfortunately as you can see from the smaller inset photograph, the inside of these oooold buildings tend to be quite dim. Photographer D. and his stylishly-chapeau’d assistant will be dragging along all manner of lights and hoping to get some good shots of the couple during the ceremony… which will be backlit by a massive window. We don’t hold out much hope, and plan to take the pre-wedding family and bridal party shots OUTSIDE. Except if it’s raining, then there will be a switch to Plan B.
How do wedding planners around here cope!?
On the plus side, after a dampish Easter, today the weather is fabulous — and it turned beautiful the MINUTE we were on our way OUT of St. Andrews this weekend, after pouring down buckets on us all day.
It’s ironic that the train station was where D. got a slight sunburn.
Winter gives way to spring, and we are close to The End of All Things – well, all things academic, anyway. We got our snazzy Senior portrait and announcement from our graduating Little, and are still a bit miffed that his graduation day was moved up – but he’s so excited about the pomp and circumstances he actually doesn’t really care if we’re there or not. (We keep telling ourselves this.) Meanwhile D. is driving himself to finish his dissertation, and has a long list of “questions for further study,” which translates to, “things I don’t have the space to talk about in this paper, and if I don’t quit bringing up questions related to my research I am never going to finish this @!*&%&*#@ thing.” He is beginning to really hate the concept of word counts.
Sunshine and shadows, the good and the less so. The sunshine: we’ve heard that our old Uni friends are pregnant – well, one of them, anyway. The strikingly tall redhead with the massive beard whom we once called Thor (his real name is Joel, which is much less exciting than our moniker), and his lovely wife, Frieda (er, Heather) are going to be parents. They are over the moon. We’ve imagined him losing his child in his copious facial hair, which said child will later enjoy pulling. Tee hee. The shadows: D’s stress is eating up the lining of his stomach, and he’s having some twinges, no appetite, and a complete inability to sleep, among hypotension and some other things. There is a statistically high number of people who succumb to all sorts of ailments during their PhD programs and don’t finish. We continue to pray that D. is not among them. We press on toward the goal…!
Meanwhile, T. has ninety pages of her revision left before she’s due to call her editor and chat. The changes, her agent assured her, were small, only superficial. However, owing to the author, the changes have now become a bit more than expected, and T. is once again rewriting a novel from the ground up. In two weeks. She wishes she could quit doing this. Her editor at this point likely wishes the same. But, one little change is a great deal like pulling on one little thread in a sweater… sometimes, it’s just easier to see how much it takes to make the whole thing unravel.
While we’re not stressing out and unraveling our work, we are, for the most part, dealing well with our frustrations and setbacks, enjoying the newly rediscovered sunshine, which is still a bit liquid-y most days, and just trying to hang on to the tail of this beastie we call our lives, as it runs along.
Well, that’s us. What’s going on with you lot?
That wedding photography would all be too much for me, talk about nervous.
T the book changes I understand how small changes can lead to very large changes over all, that is no small thing to do.
Your weather looks better as you are much farther along with Spring than we are in the Central South of Alaska. We have NO green up yet, not until way into May and June. I’m wondering if you had any news yet about moving? Nan
Love that last photograph–so beautiful!
I feel you on word counts. I’m t-minus 1-week to having to turn in the thesis. At least they’re giving me some space for the “well I would have done this but I ran out of time argument.” Going to be so glad to get it done with! But first to write a seminar paper on Chaucer. hmm.
Good luck with that final push, D, and good luck with that revision, T! Can’t imagine! Hang in!
Having already mentioned what’s up with us, I’d just like to share that from our experience, word counts are a lot more flexible than they seem. Thor’s PhD was like thousands of words past the word count, and him and his supervisors just decided all the words in charts and things like that didn’t need to be counted. They may have even not counted some of the longer direct quotes. As such his is probably much thicker than ‘allowed’. I think they didn’t count all the appendixes too. 🙂
~Frieda