Game over

The Empire State Building is green and red, two colors Zoe would find boring, but she is not here to complain. Instead I'm hitting the two week mark of her absence where I start really feeling it in my heart. Her pictures around the apartment, her toys still scattered a bit between the bedroom and the shelf in the living room reminding me that she was just here and will be back again. In another two months. Not for long, because her dad informed me today that he wants her to be back in Europe for at least two weeks before she starts school so she can get over her jetlag. Not like something we could talk about or agree about. "I want her back in Stockholm by x date". I am not sure exactly when this whole parenting thing turned from two people trying to agree about what is best for Zoe, to demands and requirements. It is honestly the weirdest thing. And it only adds fuel to my hurting heart, missing her, missing hugging her, chatting to her, reading long chapter books before bedtime and rubbing her back as she falls asleep. She is and will always be my little baby. And being without her is like missing a piece of myself.

If it wasn't enough that I miss her, my life is as messy as it could ever be. Having my visa cancelled out of nowhere was nothing compared to this. On top of having a major life decision in front of me, I'm responsible for coordinating some conference work that will take about 30 hours to do this weekend and be a major chore this summer. And then I have all the work at my second job, which is actually my main job at the moment since they are the only ones providing me with a salary. On top of that I pay too much attention to someone who doesn't deserve it, someone who can't help pay attention to me either, but who should know better. I just want to move on. I just want to have made this decision, to be on the other side, next to Zoe, having pizza on a weeknight and discuss how the stars were made and why her friend in school doesn't speak another language.

I keep concluding that it's game over. That I have been defeated by circumstances and really bad life choices such as who I decided to have a child with. It makes me depressed and sad and incapable of working on anything serious for a while. But then I remember my promise to myself. That I'll never give up. That I *will* one day have that professor job in the US, no matter how much I have to sacrifice. Except I'll not sacrifice any time with Zoe. And this is where I fail again. And again. As her dad satisfactory said to me last time he picked her up: "I have my research group now, this is what I always wanted". I'm so happy for him.

Happy mom, happy baby

I was lying in the king-size Chicago hotel bed, rubbing Zoe's back so she could fall asleep easily, while she asked me about my work today. "What did you work with today?" she asked, because I had been at a committee meeting while she was with her dad. "Remember when daddy brought you into that big room with all of Mommy's friends? And the big screen?", I asked. She nodded. "I was working there all day, writing on my computer and saying things such as 'No, we cannot reject that paper!'", I continued. Zoe laughed and took that as enough of an answer. Three minutes later, she was fast asleep.

The train station in Mountain View that we are now very
familiar with

The past two days have been full of discussion with my international research colleagues, something that I enjoy tremendously. I have exchanged research ideas, updated knowledge on different areas and provided my (sometimes unpopular) opinion on other's research. I found that my own academic vocabulary, talking about my own research improved highly over those days and I was able to explain a project much more elaborately to a colleague earlier today. I miss having this in my everyday life, but meetings like this partly make up for it. For the rest of the afternoon today, a colleague who had a baby invited me and Zoe over to her house and we hung out, just playing and talking. I felt very lucky to be able to spend quality time with a colleague that I respect and admire for her research and ability to juggle child and career. We exchanged a lot of experiences and Zoe said the baby was so cute she just wanted to eat it.

As Zoe lay there asleep, all I could think of was how happy I was right now. I don't need anything else right now. Not at all.

The Big Day

As big days go, something is bound to go wrong. For me it was the drop of my eye cream jar into the bathroom sink (I had my deodorant upside down, but due to its round top, it slid down, pushing the eye cream out of the medicine cabinet), cracking out a large piece of the porcelain. The eye cream was not heavy but the 15 inch fall must have transformed it into a bullet. I starred at the cracked sink wondering if I should worry about it or just pretend it didn't happen until the next day. I had two major events in front of me, a special invited talk* and participation in a panel at the royal dramatic theater the same evening. I decided to go the middle way and post a picture on Facebook, as well as texting an acquaintance of mine who might know a plumber. Then I didn't worry more about it that day. In fact I managed to forget it completely until Zoe came home the day after and yelled "Oh No", when she saw it: "how can I brush my teeth now?". I reassured her that the kitchen sink was usable for that too. But this morning I told myself that if a cracked sink was the worst thing that was going to happen that day, it was okay.


And so my big day went well. I did a good talk, had lunch with a colleague and skipped out to get a manicure, something I have never done before in Sweden, because it cost a million here ($100 to be more exact), but I figured that I already needed to spend 2 millions on a new sink. This is the kind of logic my mom has taught me, it works well when I need to indulge myself to feel better, works less well at the end of the month. But in the end I felt like a million dollars too as I borrowed the actress' powder and hairspray in the dressing room. The panel discussion went well, I managed to voice some of my views on female researcher issues and the fact that there are much fewer female professors than female PhD students. I talked about male leadership culture (they listen to you but they interrupt you all the bloody time) and how male leaders sometimes have to "discover" female leadership candidates in order to promote them (I was myself "discovered" or suggested by a female colleague, my boss would never have thought about me on his own even though I was an easy choice). I talked about grade school gender culture and promoting research early on in school and university. In the end we all got a long-stemmed rose and we went home. I washed my face at the kitchen sink and texted the plumber acquaintance again. The sink did indeed turn out to be the worst part of my big day.

*This is sometimes code for something else. It might be the case here too.

It's cold at the top

Today I printed this article about why there are so few women in science and even though I saw it coming out of the (communal for the whole floor of offices) printer on my way to get a cup of coffee, after I had replenished my cappuccino (from the high grade espresso maker that I lobbied for and convinced the higher powers at the university to buy), the article was gone from the printer. In fact it was completely gone from the printing area, even the shelves where we place unclaimed printouts for people who can't make it to the printer immediately. The only possibility was that someone had seen it and decided to snatch it for reading himself. I must say himself because the only other women on my floor is my close colleague* who would have known it was mine and simply asked me for a copy.

After getting past the annoyance of having to go print it again, I was actually very happy that someone took this interest to read this article. I had just had a meeting with my (now immediate) boss this morning where he informed me that he was aware that there was a pay gap between female and male employees in our department and that the government here in Sweden have procedures to try to minimize the gap, meaning when suggesting a raise, I was allowed to suggest a slightly higher raise for a woman with the reasoning that I was attempting to equalize this existing injustice. There were special funds for this particular goal.

But as much as there are official attempts to tackle discrimination, sexism is unfortunately still alive and ripe, however subtle, sometimes straight to my face, even here in Sweden. When we had our first kick-off meeting in my unit and I had bought macaroons, one elderly lecturer said jokingly that he had expected me to bake myself. I was speechless for a second or two as I tried to figure out a joking response but unlike American sit-coms where everyone always has a snappy reply, reality is different and I just continued our agenda. I realize it was a joke and he wasn't really serious, but would ever had said this to a man? Was it actually funny at all? I didn't take it personal and I'm not loosing sleep over it, however unfortunately other incidents and issues are more pervasive and more intrusive. Some are borderline harassment and behavior that I know, hundred percent, would never have been occurring if I were a man. A lot of it exist within the tone of voice in emails and talk, interrupting me, 'mansplaining' things to me and simply ignoring me in important communication.Without being specific it is safe to say that there is a long way to equality in a male dominated field and an even more male dominated department like mine. The majority of people are great, nice, funny and very respectful, but the odd sour grape can really get to me.

One of the interesting things is that sexism shows up slowly as you get older and rise the ranks. When I was a student, undergrad and masters student level, I rarely experienced anything other than the odd comment about women not being able to drive and that I had to pass this technical course that was apparently very difficult, to get my degree (not that I had every failed any technical courses, but the teacher just felt he needed to mention it to me personally. As the only girl in the class). I genuinely felt that my male peers treated me equally and that we worked together well, even as I did my PhD, I never experienced any treatment that could be construed as blunt sexism. In fact, I felt a lot of popular media writing was exaggerated and I truly believed that when they wrote "we are devoted to support women and majorities" in the academic job ads, they meant I had a better chance of getting the job than an equally qualified male candidate. I was dead wrong. Those words are as empty as the five Os in that sentence. Time after time I was passed over for male candidates because once, the head of the committee wanted his own PhD candidate to get the job, another time, they argued that my research was not serious enough and hired someone who was focusing on "politically correct" topics, rather than having a long publication record like mine. One of the jobs I would really have liked despite my life having looked very different now, but others I couldn't care less about; I probably didn't want to be in such department anyway. For a few I obviously just wasn't the right candidate and for others I wasn't able to sell myself right. But as I become more removed from the experiences and see how the candidates who got the jobs have done, I wonder how they did not see my potential. In relation to several old fellow candidates I now have many more publications, more funding accomplishments and am now a research director. And I can't help concluding that part of is was subtle, perhaps unwillingly, gender discrimination.

They say it is cold at the top and I believe they are right. But I was never worried about that when taking on this leadership role, because, for me, it is already pretty cold over here in my department. I get weird looks, ignoring eyes, disrespecting emails and simply get excluded from a lot of common socialization. Moving upwards is a way of formalizing this awkwardness towards me as the odd woman in an almost all-male departments. On the other hand, when people do get to know me, they tend to relax a bit more and we can talk like equals. They realize that I might be a woman but I'm not an alien. As much as I sometimes feel like one, just like many of the women in the article.

*This is not strictly true, we have a part time PhD student visiting 1-2 times per week from another department because her secondary advisor is in our department. However, she was not in today.

Reject

My work as a researcher* takes me through its ups and downs, both in terms of teaching situations and collegial interactions but particularly through the merciless part of publishing research results. Research areas differ but one thing is certain, getting a paper published is hard. Not only do you have to have groundbreaking interesting results, they also need to be written up in a clever, thoughtful way and the results need to be carefully related and differentiated from previous similar results. I fare pretty well in terms of getting my work published but it doesn't mean I don't struggle with each paper and that I don't put a lot of effort (blood, sweat and tears) into each and every part of an article. Like most other researchers I get emotionally invested in the review process, that being in a conference review committee or a set of journal reviews. Meaning, yes, I have almost cried over getting a paper rejected, I have screamed and jumped up and down by another one getting accepted and I have sympathized with many colleagues doing the same. At a committee meeting many years ago I found a colleague crying in the bathroom after her carefully written paper describing a longitudinal study that she had worked on for years got rejected. "I don't know what more the reviewers want!" she sobbed as I tried to make her feel better. Reviewers are those cruel anonymous people behind sentences such as "I really like this paper but the contribution is just not significant enough for publication at this point", and "The topic and method is great but the sample size is just too small for such study". They most often don't know the authors either and cannot see their tears, their shredded dreams and their funding slip away as they reject the papers.

I'm not saying that research papers are being rejected for no reason. To non-researchers it looks like a simple and fair process that we as colleagues check each other's research for flaws and novelty. But reality is different, particularly in interdisciplinary fields like my own. Reviewing papers is not just about checking the facts, the calculations and if this has been done before. It is also about pushing for a specific type of research that the reviewer find important, in essence trying to drives one's own agenda. Nobody is of course willing to admit that this is the case but talking privately to colleagues, it's obvious that such prejudice takes place. A classic (very simplified) argument goes that these researchers should not have used this method for this study but another method (one that happens to be of the reviewer's expertise). And they cannot claim the results on the basis of the method used. When the authors review the reviewer's research, they will argue the opposite.

Zoe sometimes helps me write papers

I just spent two days in a committee meeting where we decided on a set of 75 papers to be presented at one of the main conferences in my field. Committee members were ruthless in their slashing but also occasionally compassionate. I got convinced of accepting one paper that I initially felt was not good enough but I also argued for rejection of another one due to its lack of serious contribution. My own paper** was also out of luck. After three rounds of discussion (where I of course had to leave the room, this is customary) it was rejected by a committee member who felt the theory we had used was not developed any further but simply used to illustrate our data. The positive part this time around was that the particular committee member identified himself to me and offered a bit of advice and a suggestion to what to change and where to submit it (a second tier conference with deadline in 8 months). I nodded and took a few pointers but I'll be ignoring most of his guidance, for a variety of reasons. What I didn't tell him was that this time the rejected paper has direct consequences for me: because I don't have any research funding in my new job yet I depend directly on published papers for travel funding. This rejection very likely means that I will not get any travel funding next year and cannot attend any conferences or committee meetings unless I get some research funding (I have applied for several grants but they take 6-8 months of review time). So although I have yet to cry over this rejection, I am utterly stunned and perplexed over the random and person-centric system of reviewing yet again. I am running on borrowed steam because of my sh**** job situation where I am just building up a research agenda and a research group, and this was a tie-over publication based on research in my previous job. Luckily I'm a very driven person and as soon as I get over this (probably by tomorrow), I'll use my annoyance to motivate my next writing efforts. I will do this. I will continue to publish interesting, novel and relevant research. And I'll continue to get rejections but hopefully also at one point accepts.

*Technically my job title is associate professor but I like to refer to myself as a researcher because research is the core part of what I do. It might not be the part I spend the most time on but it is the most important and interesting part of my job. 

**Like most other research papers, this is a collaboration paper with several coauthors who did an amazing job contributing to the paper, in fact two coauthors did the majority of the work in this case.

Harassment

I'm very happy with "what I do for work" in a broad sense; I generally get to set a research agenda myself, define my own interests in both research and teaching, and work extremely flexible hours (although I agree to a certain extent with my former US professor colleague who says "we are so lucky, we get to schedule our 80 hours* of work per week, whenever we want!"). What I'm less happy about is my work place. Most of the time my day (or week) is saved by a few amazingly nice and reasonable people, as well as my next door neighbor who is always available for discussing the less reasonable people in our department. But other days my inbox overflows with toxic and uncooperative replies to simple requests. Today was one of those.

If there is one thing I'm allergic to it's people insinuating that I don't do my job properly or that I am not a good teacher. I have pretty amazing teaching reviews throughout my 12 years of teaching experience, and I do a pretty good job as a researcher and colleague. I might not win the nobel price any time soon or get the University's teacher of the year award but I'm above average, particularly at the university I'm at right now. And why do I even need to point this out? Because I have a colleague who is making it his quest to belittle me and counteract the work I do with advising and teaching students. Without going into details, this is the guy who wrote to me, when I ran the seminars that were supposed to be question and answer sessions, more like extra lectures going through the material again, that "I made the other teachers look bad and I could not run them this way". All I knew was that the students didn't understand all of the material solely from the lectures and that I was happy to go over it again. The communication soured even more through the semester and I was happy not to collaborate on any teaching again with this guy until now. Today, however, I was told that the final bachelor thesis I had advised could not be accepted for final review because it was not using the standard template. In reality this would mean that the students could not proceed with related activities and basically would be delayed with their graduation until September. For missing out on a template. But this was not the main issue to me (because there is no way in hell I would let anyone do that to my students), the issue was the structure of the communication: from me asking a favor, telling him that I knew I hadn't followed the procedure to a T, but also giving a reason why, to him sending several emails explaining again exactly where I had gone wrong, copying in directions from the internal website(which I am obviously intimately familiar with), to claiming that I had failed numerous times to receive get-go from reviewers (here professors are not allowed to advise bachelor theses without reviewing) because I had not used the useless web-system for this. All in all his aim was clearly to point out clerical errors that would reflect badly on me and prevent the students from graduating any time soon.

At this point I had it. I turned him in to the director of studies for harassment and said I am not willing to continue working with this guy. Getting accused for not doing a proper job when I know I do my best is detrimental to overall work ability and mental health. Nobody has ever made me feel inadequate in my job like this, and this guy certainly should not have the right to do so. I might have overreacted but this ticked me off like nothing before.

*This is probably an exaggeration of numbers but I am quoting him verbatim

Toy essentials

Zoe and I boarded the small Dash 8- 200 that would take us out of the tiny college town where we had spent the past five days. Walking through the bitter cold wind from the gate exit, the noise from the engine scared Zoe and I had to get down on my knees and comfort her as I awkwardly twisted the top part of my carry-on off the small roller suitcase that Zoe still thinks is hers. "We are almost there, Zoe is such a good girl, let's get on the plane", I said and we walked hand in hand to the five-step entrance. Entering, Zoe looked at the stewardess and then as we walked down the aisle asked me "get something?" I didn't understand at first and we had to swap seats because we were not seated together, not even on the same row, but at last I got it. She was so used to get something from the stewardess, a sticker book, a little stuffed animal or a car, that she now expected it on each plane ride. But US airlines don't do that and I had to explain that to her as she tightened her belt. I had a sticker book that she then was happy enough to play with until takeoff. Then, completely unprompted, as the engine fired up, she put her head on my lap and before we reached the clouds she was fast asleep. I definitely had a pro-flier with me.

Our US journey was transitioning to the second part of the three. The first part had been successful in every way: I had been visiting a friend and colleague for some potential collaboration and to give a talk in one of his graduate courses. He had generously offered that we stay at his house and that the nanny of his twin toddlers could look after Zoe for the two full work days that I needed. Zoe immediately liked the twins, as well as the older daughter, so although she cried for one minute when I left in the morning she apparently had a blast. I got several hours of work done including meeting interesting colleagues and got myself involved in another (exciting) research project.

The last afternoon, however, we got a call from the nanny. Apparently one of the twins had broken Zoe's doll stroller. Was it okay if the nanny took her to Target to buy a new one? I agreed because Zoe had gone through lengths to convince me to actually bring this one in the first place. It was not a small doll stroller. It was the size that almost fit a toddler, which in turn broke it in the end, because the twin girl had sat in it, tearing the fabric. The night before we had left for the US, Zoe had packed some essential toys and included the stroller. I had hid it in the closet for the night and hoped that she would forget about it because bringing it would limit the number of shoes I could take. In the morning, however, Zoe went straight to the closet and picked it out. She eagerly put it back in the suitcase where I then attempted to dissuade her from bringing it: "Look Zoe, it doesn't fit", I tried and showed her that it couldn't get into the suitcase. She promptly turned it on an angle and proceeded to sip up the suitcase. "Look mom, it DOES fit!" she happily exclaimed and I realized I had lost.

At Target she got a new stroller and it still fit into the suitcase if you angled it from one corner to another. Next Stop: another little northeastern college town where a really good friend of mine lives and where we will be relaxing and having fun for three days.

Mommy's high heels

This is Zoe's favorite book. I bought it directly from the author when Zoe was just a baby so it even has a little handwritten greeting inside "To Zoe with cupcake kisses". It has provided references to Zoe's world since she was old enough to realize that I go somewhere else when I'm not with her: I go to work. I went back to work when she was 4 months, a generous maternity leave in the US where we lived at the time (however, it was obviously without pay) but a very short maternity leave from a Scandinavian perspective. To me this was ideal, I would do it exactly the same way again if I got the choice. The book has provided Zoe with the logical perception that when I put on my high heels (okay, more likely high boots here in the cold Stockholm winter) it is because I have to go to work. When I take them off I have been to work. When I wear flats it is a Zoe day (=weekend).

Recently though we have started talking more specifically about my work. Zoe has been with me to work. She jokingly asks if she can go with me to work in the morning. ("Zoe not daycare, Zoe go mommy work") Today we were especially in a hurry because I overslept a bit, hitting the snooze button for half an hour without really realizing, and I had a funding proposal deadline in the afternoon. Zoe was not corroborating and kept repeating that she didn't want to go to daycare. It doesn't always work just rushing her and in my attempt to practice positive parenting, I try to reason with her rather than ordering her. But how do you explain a funding proposal to a two and a half year old? I went down on my knees and looked straight at her. Then I told her that I had a lot of letters to write to ask some people for money. This money would mean that Zoe could go and visit grandma more often and that we could travel for example to see her friend Milly in Paris. Essentially, this is exactly what research funding will enable me to: I will be able to travel to see co-workers, often dropping Zoe off in Copenhagen, and research funding will enable me to go to conferences, for example in Paris. It will also help me get research students but there seemed to be no direct benefit for Zoe. She thought about it for a moment. Then she said "Ohhhhkay mommy. Zoe go daycare". And so I put on my high heels and managed to submit my funding proposal later in the afternoon.

The price we pay

Yesterday I had to finalize our plane tickets to our next big upcoming trip: I have a conference to got to, Zoe's dad is also going and we therefore decided to bring her rather than trying to drop her off at Grandma's. The conference is in the US so I am also making it into a visiting trip where I go to see a colleague/friend for some quality research time (he has kids Zoe's age and a nanny who can look after all of them during the day) and then seeing an even dearer friend in-between for some relaxation and red wine while Zoe sleeps at night. The plane ticket turned out to be insanely expensive and this is even without the internal return flight over to my first colleague (which his university is generously paying because I will be giving a talk). The problem is that we live in a not-so-well-connected city with few direct flights to the US and I had a few constraints (which could have saved a few hundred dollars but not more than that): I am not taking a 6 am flight from Stockholm. The airport is far out of the city and we need an hour and a half to get there. Getting up at 3 am with a two year old is just not an option. Flying through Frankfurt is also not an option; I have only bad experiences from there, cancelled flights, late flights and the airport is the most unpleasant one I know. Munich okay, Frankfurt not. I am also not having a five hour layover when we land and our body clocks are 9pm. That is way beyond Zoe's bedtime and she would not be able to walk from one gate to the other without crying and screaming. In the end we got the magic tickets: A fairly late start from Stockholm, direct to the US and only one more leg to the destination. On the way back I convinced my friend, whom Zoe adores, to take the same flight. I might be traveling on my own with her, but there will be somebody else to take the edge off if things get out of hand.

So I paid $1500 for Zoe's ticket. I tried to do a comparison and basically I am paying the equivalent of two new iPhone 5s for Zoe's ticket. Okay, her dad and I are sharing, so I guess we are paying an iPhone 5 each. Kids are expensive, but traveling kids are extremely expensive. I keep thinking of the saying "travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer". Not entirely sure of the sentiment but it reminds me that Zoe and I get richer on experiences at least.

Working overtime

This autumn has been the first time in several years where I have had time-consuming teaching obligations again. On top of my research. I knew it was going to be hard but I have so far dodged things by working at night after Zoe is asleep and doing certain tasks to a minimum of satisfaction. To my surprise, few have noticed this lowering of my usual work standard apart from myself. On top of my over-ambitious level of travel, I have been exhausted from just thinking about things. But this November is taking me into overdrive. I wrote down the hours I need to complete my obligations, that include a paper that I have already received a 3 week deadline extension of and a funding proposal that is a once in a lifetime opportunity because I don’t qualify next time it comes up. I need to spend 95 hours of actual concentrated work before November 22nd, and with other meetings cutting out quality day time hours, I need to work 9 and a half hours per day. If I was young, without family obligations, this would be tough but totally doable. However, I have a daughter who needs to be put in daycare and be fed at night and well, I also like to read her a bedtime story and actually spend some quality time with her in the evening hours. A normal work day gives me 6 hours during the day, realistically and extra hour at night after Zoe is in bed. I could try to get up even earlier, and put Zoe in daycare at 7.30 to get another hour, but this just gives me more guilt feelings and makes for a stressed morning.

In the end I managed to make a schedule where I 1) work 3 hours every Sunday while Zoe is with a babysitter and 2) cut student project grading into skimming instead of reading and doing this on the train in the morning. I am optimistic that I will make my deadlines but there is no possibility for margin of errors here. My gym has to be visited Saturday mornings while putting Zoe in the kids club and the rare morning she is with her dad (who is traveling again, leaving me with Zoe 3/4 of the month). If I make this, I swear I will get better with treasuring and controlling my time. I might be a university *teacher* but my big ambition is to do research and for that I need research funding. If I don’t take time out to apply for this I will end up in the eternal lecture trap that I see so many people succumbed to here: Lecturing and teaching, having a research career that ended with one's PhD.

How do I get to Berlin?

With Zoe being two, I have not flown by myself for two years apart from the occasional short trip (I can count them on one hand) and then of course the big conference trip two weeks ago. Today I flew down to Berlin for a 4-day research meeting and some differences in flying habits became apparent.


When traveling with Zoe:

1. I leave on time with a plan for how to get to the airport and who can help me. I have bought the airport train ticket online the day before.
2. I know exactly how long the flight(s) are and the duration of the the layovers. 
3. I know how to get things out of my bag quickly for security and I wear shoes I can take off without hands. 
4. I know what is in my bag. 
5. I have a window seat so Zoe can't get out. 
6. I turn off my phone before I board.
7. I know how to get from the airport, that being train or a taxi that I know has a car seat.

This is how I traveled today:

1. I left and realized as I boarded the subway train that it would have made more sense to take the "pendel" train because the platform is much closer to the airport train platform.
2. I knew when my flight left and what airline. I had no idea when I was arriving.
3. I had to drink half a bottle of water in front of the security guy to get my bottle through (I religiously recycle bottles because I am a firm believer in the ecological value of tap water). I had to rummage through my bag to actually find my computer.
4. I managed to sneak in toothpaste and lip gloss that I had left in my bag (this happens a lot though, I believe airport security is actively ignoring small liquidy items to save time and because we all know there is no actual danger in liquids like this)
5. I was surprised to find that I was actually in economy extra where I got a meal, wine and help with placing my carry-on suitcase. The travel agency had booked my ticket according to my inflexible time requests and I hadn't noticed before I boarded.
6. The stewardess (not the nice one) had to tell me to turn off my phone because I was still texting a friend while we taxied out to the runway.
7. Last, but not least, I had no idea of how I was getting from the airport to the hotel. All I had was the hotel name and a firm belief in public transportation. I found a friendly face at the pharmacy where I bought a pair of nail scissors (that I couldn't have flown with due to no checked in luggage) and he pointed me to a bus that took me straight to the Zoo, 200 meters away from my hotel. Only with a little help from my iPhone and my Danish sim card that gets me online everywhere in the world for no subscription fee.

Calming down

Things are calming down after the conference trip that I looked forward to and dreaded at the same time. Zoe of course did amazing at my mom's place for a week and we celebrated her (belated) birthday at a brunch party when I got to Copenhagen. The flight home was a breeze and Zoe is now such professional traveler that she takes off her coat when she sees the security line and waits patiently for me to be padded down and turning around before going through the metal detector. Did I say she is two? She continuously surprises me with how much she understands especially because her spoken language is still rather garbled and it is a hit or miss if I understand what she says. Today she had a rant at Mark who dared to ask her if she wanted to go for a walk with him, a rant that none of us understood any words of but one where the meaning was crystal clear (and hilariously funny). We both had to bite our tongues not to laugh at her "ba de hu bachi jubu NO da da", all said in a very loud, serious tone. She is a kid with stark opinions about things, that's for sure.

After coming home last Sunday I have tried to catch up having a normal life, taking Zoe to daycare and going to work. It is nice having a normal everyday life again but of course it is only for a short time, next week I am going to Berlin for 4 days for a review meeting. Zoe is staying home with Mark and this will be the first several nights she is alone with him. I am confident they will have fun but I will miss her terribly. So much for calming down. At least we should be used to it by now.

Mom on a Mission

The month of April for some reason has ended up being crazily filled with travel and deadlines, for both me and Mark. I had a funding proposal due yesterday which I hadn't really been able to start on until two weeks ago. Mark is away this week (don't ask where, I think Ireland and Brussels, not necessarily in that order), which means that I have exactly 7 1/2 hours to work every day due to both drop off and pick up of Zoe. As I have described before, our mornings can be rather long and chaotic and it is not easy to get myself ready when she is roaming around. With such limitation to my working hours (normally around a deadline I work more like 12 hours per day) I had to be extremely efficient, not just having lunch at my desk but explicitly turning off my email, phone and Facebook while working during the day, just hoping something important didn't happen (it didn't). But I surprised myself; with the determination that is normally reserved for the subway commute, I managed to work effectively and although I still needed to actually write several appendix documents yesterday morning, I had a funding proposal at 4pm. I submitted it and Zoe was not even the last kid to be picked up.

Tomorrow we are going down to Copenhagen for a bit of R&R, seeing mainly my parents and brothers. This is the last trip before I am leaving Zoe for a full week with my mom (and two days with my best friend who stepped in the days my mom couldn't). We are flying Norwegian, the discount airline that won't let Zoe sit next to me on the empty seat. The big question this time is if I should finally let her walk to the train station instead of bringing the Beco carrier? She is big enough to walk that far but I also like to have a way of securing her. In the airport there is also a quite long walk but they have luggage carts I can put her on for that trip. In will report back how it goes.

Accept

Today I got a piece of really good news: an academic paper that I wrote based on thoughts I have had for a long time, actually since I did my first empirical studies during my PhD, has been accepted to the prime conference in my field. They have a 23% acceptance rate and although I have had papers there before, this is my first 'solo-author' paper. It shows that my rather controversial thoughts on the topic are valid and I now have the opportunity to presents these issues to a larger audience. I am obviously already nervous if I can defend them well enough during question time, but so far, this is overshadowed by my excitement.

This also means that I am going to a conference in Texas in May, leaving on Zoe's 2nd birthday. Alas, she will be a full fare ticket and since there is no childcare at this conference, and Mark is going too, I have decided to leave her at home with grandma. It will be the first time I am away from Zoe for more than one night, but she loves her grandma and I know she will be fine. May is still 5 months away.

Fried Brains

One thing that happens when you become a mother is that your brain gets fried. I’m sure there is a logical, evolutionary reason for this but for an evolved career woman like me it means that it is now impossible to focus on any intellectual task for more than a couple of minutes, if at all. This is why I am sitting at London's finest Harvey Nic's 5th floor restaurant drinking lattes and blogging about traveling with a baby. Or should I say blogging about not working, because this was what my life is all about at the moment. I have managed to get child care for Zoe, at least 5 hours every day, I got my library card to the British library where I have all the quiet, all the electrical outlets and all the lunch I need for a good work day. Yet, I keep finding excuses to go somewhere else, either because I really do need hair conditioner (I squeezed the last drop out of my travel bottle this morning), or because I am not entirely sure which research project to work on yet. Today I needed to go to the Danish Embassy to vote in the Danish general election, something I haven't had the opportunity to do for about ten years and therefore prioritized. (In fact the last election I voted in was the Scottish regional election in 2006, which I was eligible for as a European citizen, opposite the Danish ones which I haven't been eligible to vote in for many years. Don't ask, it is complicated.)

One of the problems with a fried brain is not that "they didn't tell me this would happen", because I sort of knew something like this would happen through reading about motherhood, listening to other mothers and simply realizing how much energy would go into a child. The problem is that I thought that I, with my amazing drive and great ambitions (ha ha), would be able to work past this quickly and get back in the grind or that I would at least be able to focus on work in little chunks of 1-2 hours. How could I not? I have always been hard working and master deadlines like the pro researcher, working 12-14 hours the last week, with focus, with attention to details. Yet, I find myself so overwhelmed with the back trail of projects that all need my attention, quickly getting older, outdating the empirical data and making me forget why I was studying that phenomenon in the first place. Not only do I feel the obligations of my research projects slowly unraveling me, I am also weighed down from my students' expectations of my involvement and for some a definite need of my involvement. I am letting them down by not working on their project, yet, I know I don't have the time to polish it enough for the deadline, so why does it matter?

So I end up going Harvey Nic's for breakfast on a Monday instead of working on my research, wondering when I will get my brain back.