Yawn

So I'm trying to write some essays for fellowship applications but I just am having a hard time. First of all, I do not have any hope of receiving any fellowship that I apply for. I was lucky enough to get into Chicago, let alone be one of the handful of folks who get some sort of financial support. Maybe that's not the right attitude but I think it's pretty realistic, especially if this year was one of the strongest admit pool in Chicago's history. (As they like to tell us ...) I applied for 2 fellowships in the first batch that you can apply for and was not in the least bit surprised not to be a contender. The second reason for my lack of interest is that I am just so bloody sick of talking about leadership. Is it possible to answer leadership questions without sounding insincere? In fact I'm just bloody tired of writing 750 word essays in general. But the pain of writing another essay pales in comparison with the tantalizing possibility of getting half your tuition paid for ... sigh.

Y and I were down in Portland this weekend. I am anxiously waiting to hear the results from my soil sample tests. (The strange highs and lows of home ownership.) If the tests are clean, they decommission this week, we go down to Portland on the weekend to put the deck back together (tank is buried under the deck) and move on with life. If they aren't clean, well, life gets way more complicated. I am also anxiously awaiting news of what the buyers are going to want to ding me for after the home inspection. I've got one renter who is giving me some hassle about getting booted out of the house which has been weighing on me. (As I said before, landlordship is not for me.)

Trying to figure out where to put my mom and other assorted relatives when they visit us after the new baby is born. My mom is available to help out all we want but we have no where for her to stay! Argh. Y thinks I'm overreacting to think that I will need 24 hour support with a newborn and, of course, that depends a lot on the baby's personality and needs, but I hear that it can be pretty rough to handle basic things such as sleeping, bathing and eating with a very new newborn, let alone the many other things such as getting back in shape, organizing my files, tweaking my investments, closing the house sale, etc. that I hope to be able to accomplish post-birth. So I'm all for having my mom super on hand during this time.

Business week had a Mom MBA article that's worth checking out for those interested.

We are closing in on being done with our birth class series, which Y and I are excited about. Neither of us enjoy the class very much and it eats up precious weekday time. It's been informative but I"m not sure it gave us much more information than we already knew or were learning in our books. I think it's probably a good thing we signed up but we are always sort of grumpy each week when we remember it's birth class night. Women in the class seem to be dropping right and left as they are put on bed rest ... Last week, in response to the question about what was on our birth plan, I said I was planning on not having a birth plan which our instructor didn't think was a very good idea. I will post more on that later (my plan to stay unplanned). Not that you want to know ;) but I feel the need to spout off a bit about my philosophy there.