Survived my first week back to classes. This semester I'm hoping for fairly smooth sailing since 2 out of the 3 classes I've taught several times before. (The third class I've only done once before). The nice thing about not having a new class is that I don't have as much prep for new lectures/tests/labs etc. Most days of the week I'm only at school for about 6 hours. Tuesday is a rough day with lab, lecture, lab. Labs are the delight of the science world and usually run 3 hours long and I only get paid for 1.5hr of that (go figure!).
So I went in on Tuesday for the longer day and did pretty well getting my work done and not thinking too much about Tam not being with me. Long about 1 o'clock and after a bout of pumping, I totally needed to call home and hear that all was going well. It was and Brian did really well with not laughing at me for being a total mom. After hearing a squeak from squeaker, I was able to get through the rest of my day ok. I've also put up a great collage of photos on my desk to peak at whenever I get needing a baby-fix. Dear gawd...he's like a drug!
For the next 7 weeks (to the end of the first quad), I have Thursday free and I get to stay with the pooh-master while Brian works. So far, I usually bring him into school with me for a few office hour time. He does really well at being quiet and content just hanging out in the carrier or sling while I'm running around the office. In some sense, I glad I have him to show my students that you can juggle kids and a science career. Even my head of the department is pleasently surprised at how good a baby he is nearly all the time. This is also because I'm uber-quick with the boob or diaper change when he starts to show any signs of fussiness. Knock on wood that things keep going well.
Otherwise, school is school and I'm getting back into the swing of things. I really enjoy teaching my microbiology lab and the students are really excited about "playing" with living bacteria. It helps that I had micro back at Westminster . . . and was good about doing everything wrong at least once. I like to tell him that we have rules for reasons like:
1 - pull long hair back when the bunsen burners are on. Yep, I lit some of my hair on fire once ignoring this one.
2 - no open-toe shoes like sandels (even if you have socks, sorry Nate). I have dropped an entire rack of living bacteria cultures in glass tubes onto my feet. About half broke open but my foot wasn't lacerated to shreads!
3 - Wash your 'scope slides well and keep things clean. I wasn't so good at scrubbing my equipment, so I got dirty slides, which meant I did poorly with guessing my unknown bacteria and lost points.
4 - Wear gloves and don't touch open wounds. This is the worst. I was wearing gloves, but pulled my hair behind my ear and touched my freshly pierced earlobe. Big infection resulted, but the ear didn't fall off :-)
Well some people just need to screw-up once before the rules sink in and aren't forgotten. I hope Tam doesn't get this trait from me :-)
