Post new year's cheer

Three days; many activities, two dinners with friends, lots of cooking, clean-up, laundry and shopping – I’m a bit tired (again! I bet you’re tired of hearing about it, too!), and to be honest, it feels good to sit down and do some work. I haven’t worked for a couple of weeks, since I really needed a bit of rest, and you know, it was Christmas and all that, but now, I’m easing back into it with a couple of projects over the next few days. The older boys have a sleep-over tonight at a friend’s house, and I expect a quiet night with Abraham at my side, working. Prof. Husband has a deadline of sorts (as usual) but it appears that it’s only paperwork, so he should be available to manage ground services, such as dinner and clean-ups.

On Sunday we’ll take down the Christmas tree and put away all our holiday cheer for next year. I feel Christmas and New Year’s, even Advent, went by too fast this year, but at the same time, it will be nice to get all our space back and return to a routine, while looking forward to the next great events coming up: birthdays, Valentine’s day, Mardi Gras, Lent and Easter – Easter break and spring! Perhaps a bit of traveling - local exploration - in between. How exciting!

Sometimes you speed up without noticing

I finished my present work this afternoon. Early - the delivery is not due until tomorrow afternoon, or as the people I work with call it, Tomorrow EOB (= End Of Business). There was no indication I wouldn’t need every minute of my time, however I’ve been very focused and suddenly, there it was; finished. This meant I could spend the rest of today recuperating, taking care of the house, check my planner, and prepare for the rest of the week.

Yesterday morning when we discussed our plans for the week, I told the boys that I would have to rely on them working independently Monday through Wednesday (which is enough work for them but not exceptionally challenging), but now I can surprise them tomorrow morning with the launch of an extensive Viking project, involving essays, presentations, map work, crafts and a lot of reading. 

They’ll never know what hit them!

Continuously nearly falling off the line

It’s really storming again today: heavy rain, thunder, lightning; I’m constantly being thrown off line, which is very bad, since this entire day was a working day for me. As I do this specific project through a remote desktop server, my work has been lost and then recovered again more times than I can count since this morning, and I haven’t got even half the work done that I was supposed to today. I still have a couple of days left before the deadline, but I was hoping to have the bulk of my work done this weekend, so that I could focus on the boys’ schoolwork this week. Now I’ll have to work Monday and Tuesday while the boys get through their basic work, and all the big history, science, and other projects, like special papers or writing assignments, will have to be done towards the end of the week, leaving no time for review.

Sigh. How come balancing motherhood and homeschooling with a professional life never feels composed? 

Stress!

I’m having one of those moments I imagine other people perpetually experience when I hear them say that they are stressed or under pressure. I very rarely feel stressed and I can’t say I’m really ever under pressure, at least not in a stressful way. But right now I’m having a bit of a stressful twinkling, because just now, seconds ago, all the work that I did today – all the translations that I have been entering into an online database since this early morning until late evening – just suddenly disappeared, right in front of my eyes. Gone. In a moment of panic, I closed the database and logged back in. The translations are still missing.

It’s the lack of control that gets me, I think. I did nothing to cause this, and I can do nothing to fix it. A moment while I feel stressed! (And contact the database administrator to see if he can fix this.)

Do I win some kind of "Most Boring" price...?

I’m here. I spent *all weekend* working. Yes, that's it. And it wasn't even interesting work. Just normal... work. 

Now, on Sunday evening, as I sit down to catch up with the outside world via my computer, I’m having one of those “The grass is always greener on Facebook/Twitter/[insert your preferred social networking site here]” kind of moments. It seems everyone had the most amazing weekend, with beautiful nature hikes, exciting travels, partying, concerts, weddings and other special celebrations. My social channels are filled with tons of fantastic pictures and status updates to admire, moments to envy, and glorious experiences to read about. Wow.

All this while I… just worked. Sigh.

The challenges 1, Jennifer 1

Nope, I haven’t been able to post all that frequently. Almost all my computer time these days involves work exclusively (yes, with a glance at Facebook here and there). We have been planning our summer vacation – our upcoming trip to Italy – and seeing the budget that we will have to have available is a great incentive, let me tell you, to make some extra money. So I work as much as I can. Sometimes it’s exciting – I just read about something in the news that I had translated the presentation for – and sometimes it’s a little less stimulating and very technical (heavy machinery equipment maintenance manuals, anyone?) but it’s really a great job - it is! - because I can work when and where I want. Also, my new laptop is being quite cooperative, which makes everything a lot easier.

Well. Other things happen in our lives too, of course.

Prof. Husband went to Turkey for a conference for a week. Now he’s giving exams and writing a paper that is due around the time we get back from Italy (which means he has to finish it before we leave). This means he has been and will be pretty much OOO these weeks. Sigh.

The boys (and I with them) are working hard to finish up this academic year’s school work; finalizing projects, filling out gaps, reviewing. We’re of course also going over the history of Italy –covering all areas, including art and music - extra carefully, in anticipation of our trip.

Abraham has gone through a few weeks of some kind of Terrible Threes Project, where he spends a lot of time trying to make a mess, as big as possible, and then when you start cleaning it up, he takes off and makes an ever bigger mess, somewhere else. We’re not talking little spills of milk in the kitchen here, but more exciting endeavors such as soaking an entire clean and folded but not yet put away batch of laundry in the sink, or pouring out a big tub of wooden blocks and then running through them, kicking them and spreading them all over the house in under 10 seconds. Another favorite is opening as many packages of pasta as possible before mama finds out, or getting a juicebox out only to pour its entire content over the couch. I’ve therefore spent a lot of my time lately cleaning up messes and trying to entice Abraham with more appropriate activities, like painting, play-doh, duplos, peg art, or I sit with him and his toys, and show him how to play nicely, by example, and put things away afterwards. The boys are also teaching him the first pumsae, which I think is good for his body-mind connection and coordination. In all, I don’t think it’s an attention-thing (he gets a lot of attention from all of us), and I don’t think he’s bored. I think he has just been exploring his independence and testing borders, a bit, to figure out what he can get away with, what is appropriate, and what will put him in the much-dreaded time-out. Whatever it is, I hope it passes soon, because I’m getting tired out… 

The first cut is the deepest...

Dear HP Pavillion of 2008,

I found you at a Best Buy in Ft. Wayne, IN, almost four years ago, and it was love at first sight. You were my perfect match with your smaller screen, American keyboard, and basic functions.

Over the years, you have been my writing companion, social interactive companion, entertainment center, and later, my ideal colleague at work. How perfectly you adjusted your RAM to the translation software my job demanded. No matter what the installation required, you were always able to provide the most elegant solution.

Even when I didn’t handle you with care, you held out with your strong hardware, and survived a fall to the floor with just a few moments of screen connection loss, which you recovered from fully and almost instantly.

Over the past six months however, I noticed you became tired. It started with hot flashes – over heating, which runs in your family, I’ve learned, and then, your abilities deteriorated further; the DVD-rom stopped working entirely, the prt scr function vanished, and I’m sorry, but there’s no point in hiding it any more: you became senile, and forgot even the most basic things, like the fact that you have wireless LAN-drivers installed.

For a long time I closed my eyes and ignored the signs, but after a scare last week, where I had to restart you nine times just to get the essential functions to work, I accepted the reality: the time had come when we needed to go our separate ways. Although you have yet to break down entirely, you have to understand that without your memory, I can’t trust you with my work any more. “Quit while you’re ahead,” you once told me through one of those “Saying” sites; well, this is it.

You have been a faithful colleague – a companion - but it’s time for you to retire and for someone else to take over your hard work. A new laptop HP Pavillion is already waiting here on my table to relieve you of your duties, and you – my dear HP, my first - will finally get the rest you deserve after a long and faithful service.

Thank you for everything.

Your friend,

Jennifer

One bad day

Last week I took on a job that I probably shouldn’t have. I knew the end of last week and the weekend were going to be busy, but I figured I could probably squeeze in enough hours to get the work done. Then suddenly Sunday came along, and I had too much work left. I worked all day and all night, until 3:10 am, to get it sent off in time. I didn’t do a very good editing job, but I knew there would be an editor. At least I got the project finished in time.

Today I got the review back, and the editor wrote about me to the project manager, “...the translator shows an immense lack of respect for […] writing rules” and, “…he/she has no knowledge whatsoever of […] punctuation rules and poor knowledge of proper grammar.” I looked over the changes that had been made, and although there were more mistakes there than there should have been, there certainly were not enough to warrant this kind of assault. (You’re just going to have to take my word for it – it wasn’t that bad - really!) I have edited far worse translations myself, without feeling compelled to attach any comments, and certainly not launch a personal, offensive attack. In fact, when I am paid to edit, this is what I think I should do – correct other people’s mistakes – and not spew patronizing insults about someone I know nothing about. The only thing that would make me say something to the project manager would be if the translation was incomplete, or made absolutely no sense at all. (Unfortunately, this has happened.) But then I would state this simple fact, show some examples, and leave the rest to the project manager. I would certainly not generalize or try to defame the translator. One mistake I had made in the text was followed by the comment, “This is unacceptable!” I mean, really, what kind of person does that?

I was hurt, put down, and professionally discouraged. I’m thinking that maybe I’m not skilled enough for this job.

And then the taxi driver called me a whore when I wouldn’t pay him an extra $5 for the taxi ride home from the store. The official rate set by the City of Beirut is 10,000 Lebanese pounds, which is about $7.50. Usually taxi drivers will still try to get more though - at least from me, a foreigner. This taxi driver was no different, and asked for $10 initially. I followed protocol and negotiated the fare before getting into the taxi. After just one exchange, the taxi driver agreed to 10,000, and we took off. Then during the five minute trip, he said that he wanted $10 after all. Since I’m “so wealthy,” and since he took the wrong turn in the beginning and had to drive further than he should have, and I really should pay more. When we got home I handed him a 10,000 pound bill as originally agreed. He threw the money on the ground, and continued to call me names – at least I think so, although my Arabic class has yet to cover the section “Insults by taxi drivers,” so I might be wrong.

Oh, and school didn’t go so well today either. The boys are tired and in need of a break. I feel however that we really need to push through these next couple of days until Easter so that we don’t fall behind. This makes me feel stressed, tense, and the boys frustrated.

So there; I’m no good at my job, I’m a rich and selfish whore who is not welcome in this country I live in, and I’m a stressed, bad homeschooling mom.

Well. Thank you, dear reader, for watching me roll around in my own self-pity for a while. You can go do something more pleasant now, while I get up and brush off my clothes, wipe my tears and take a deep breath. I promise tomorrow will be better.

Summer plans

OK, that’s it for the weight loss blogging. I won’t bore you with it for a while. In the meantime, let’s talk about this summer.

For a young professor with ambitions, the summer is normally the time to write papers or books – publish – and to visit conferences. Every summer for the past four or so years however, Professor Husband has taught extra summer classes instead to earn extra money so that we could visit our family in Sweden and in the US. Eight weeks of hard work has been enough to – together with savings - cover the cost of our tickets and give us enough to travel and spend a few weeks with our family.

This year we have decided to put career first however, and Professor Husband will not be teaching the summer, but spend the time getting publications out and finishing his book instead, which is due in September. This means we will not be able to visit any family, which is sad, because two years, not to mention three years, between visits is so much longer than one year, and far too long in general. We miss them.

As not to be completely stuck in our apartment all summer though, we are thinking about using what little extra money we have to travel to Italy; go on an actual family vacation, like a normal family. Not that traveling to visit family isn’t fun, but it’s not exactly a sightseeing, culturally enriching, educational, vacationing kind of experience.

Italy will tie in very well with our current studies, and to be completely honest, it’s the closest destination (cheap tickets) we can think of that will grant us a bit of a break from the Middle Eastern culture. Don’t get me wrong; I love the people here and in Egypt, and the culture is fascinating, the politics interesting, to say the least, the food not bad, and art, history and architecture captivating. It’s just that it’s very different, and challenging, and I feel I can appreciate it better if I get an injection once in a while of the familiar, western life that I am more accustomed to. Just that. So we are thinking about going to Italy for a couple of weeks.

A weekend to breathe

Yesterday I finished a fairly long translation on injection fuel systems in cars – I know, I really hit the jackpot this time as far as interesting subjects go! - and when I looked around me (kids and house a mess) I decided to turn down any further jobs this week. Although I don’t like turning down the money, I need a breather. I need to restore or even improve the house and make some organizational rearrangements, I need to recharge my energy (physically and emotionally), focus on the boys’ education and general well-being, blow some life into my husband who seems to be stuck in a kind of vacuum, and potty-train Abraham (none of the other boys were wearing diapers at his age, and although I’m all for individual development, enough is enough!).

Taking a post-work recovery day

I walked outside today and was almost blinded by the sun. I realized that I had not been outside for a couple of days and felt ashamed. I’ve been working – every moment that I was not doing urgent housework or teaching – on translations and editing jobs, and since we’ve had a sufficient amount of food and other necessities, leaving the house has not been absolutely necessary. 

(When I have deadlines and big jobs, like this past week, ‘absolutely necessary’ or ‘urgent’ are the only criteria that will put an activity ahead of work.)

Today, having finished all my job assignments for the week (and turned down a number of jobs), I am going over the house doing things that are just necessary (and not ‘absolutely’ necessary – I bet you have no idea how many days your kids can wear the same pair of jeans!), slowly working my way through a long list of chores, to where I can do something I don’t have to.

Boy, do I have plans! (If I get there.)

Welcome back! It's a new year!

A bit of a lapse on the blogging there. First we went crazy with the holiday preparations, with more elaborate recipes, complex food preparation sessions, happier activities, bigger presents and other magnified celebratory undertakings than in the past few years. We also hosted house guests for close to a week, took care of a neighbor’s guinea pigs for over three weeks (never, never again!!) and survived a stomach flu from hell (which we so generously shared with our house guests of course).

And here we are. A little over a week into the new year and I am desperately trying to regain the money spent by taking on more jobs than I can handle. The boys are getting back into their routine with a new schedule (it usually takes us about a week to start following it exactly, and another couple of weeks to completely abandon it again ,but the boys like schedules and lists, so I indulge them), and Abraham is going along with it in his leisurely way. The professor is - as always - in work-mode, with the additional end-of-the-semester exertions disrupting his thought process.

While trying to get over the hump that is January, our post-holiday recovery – pre-spring 2012 interlude, which encompasses mainly dull things like work, diet, and cleaning, I’ve set out to make the best of our daily routine and spice up little moments here and there when possible. (The other day, for example, instead of going to Spinneys in Jnah for our usual weekly shopping excursion, on a whim, we asked the taxi driver to take us to TSCPlus instead as to try something new. The store was really quite horrible and we soon left, however, while trying to figure out how to get to our regular Spinneys and estimating if we could walk, we walked into a different store we had never seen before or even thought of visiting, Monoprix, and boy, oh boy, what a find! More on this in a blog post tomorrow.)

So, if you have any tips or ideas on how to spice up those less exciting parts of life, like grocery shopping, grading, exam proctoring, long hours of translation work, Tuesday night dinner, school-lunches, laundry marathons and hours on the treadmill or around the track, then please, do share!

Work struggle

Although it’s always a bit of a struggle to find sufficient time and more important peace in this house to do the translation jobs I’ve been taking on, I’m enjoying the work. That is, I’m enjoying the translating itself. What has made the entire venture a struggle is the software scheme that surrounds the business of translating. It is based on extortion, really. Almost all jobs require translation in a specific program, SDL Trados, and it costs a fortune. There’s no competition, no way around it, no alternative programs or methods. If you want these jobs, you have to use Trados. The program costs $895!

I’m sure that using a translation memory speeds up the work significantly, and that using a termbase helps companies with consistency and improves the quality of their publications. But for someone like me, who has time but no money, this system is excluding.

So far I’ve managed to get by, by using the company’s so generously offered 30-day trial period. It has caused me a lot of trouble though, and I’ve spent significantly more time on trying to set things up, install, uninstall, download, transfer, etc. than I have spent translating. This week I was in the middle of a big job when a couple of days ago my trial version expired. So I had to download a new trial version to a different computer and transfer all the files. Turns out the new SDL Trados’ trial version doesn’t contain the old Trados version though, and that the files I’ve been working with are useless in my new trial version. The downloading part is very complicated because of our horrible, horrible internet situation (it requires me to stay up at night, for one, because that’s the only time I can even attempt such a download, and it takes time), and with this additional complication, along with some other problems, I’ve had to turn to my commissioner for help. Again.

Soon, after I’ve got paid for those first jobs I’ve done, I will be able to buy SDL Trados. As much as it hurts to have to spend such a huge chunk of money on a program that is so clearly over-prized, I don’t think I have a choice. And it’s kind of an investment, right? I just hope my contractor’s patience doesn’t run out before then.

Full-time, full-time, full-time = full-time?

Pheuw. The past ten days or so have been something! Although it has been fun to work, it has been hard to combine my new assignments with two other time-consuming events that occur every year around this time: the university exam period and the last homestretch of schoolwork before summer break. Add to that the opening of the beach and the fact that Abraham is at a very difficult stage developmentally, and you have a recipe for – if not disaster, then at least – difficulty. To survive, we did what we had to do. We rented some all-right educational DVDs along with a couple of “carrots,” and instituted some extra hours of screen time every day. We also included a lot of play time, and Abraham was not kept from his day-time naps (something we’ve tried to avoid lately as it totally destroys our evenings). Healthy, balanced meals were replaced by “easy and quick,” and for one night and one day, mama was “off limits,” meaning I could not be disturbed unless there was an emergency. Do you think that worked? [Listen to the irony in that question.] He, he. Not a chance!

Fact: I got the job done.

Fact: It was really, really hard. Not the job itself, but the circumstances, and I fear that the quality of my work suffered because of it all. In fact, the whole thing made me wonder if it’s really possible for me to work while teaching full-time, AND being a full-time stay-at-home mom AND supporting my husband’s work AND being a person at the same time.

However, this is not a time for wondering. I need to work because we need the income, and if I need more time or effort put into it, then that simply has to take priority, one way or another. I know there must be other homeschooling families out there that deal with this kind of question already, and in between assignments, I’m trying to find inspiration, and to figure out ways to solve our problem in a more efficient way. How do you juggle all your duties? What does your day look like?

Challenge: How many words a minute can YOU translate and type with a child at your breast?

I got a job!

Following a call for work sent out to family, acquaintances and friends, thanks to a friend in Cairo, I started receiving some really great translating free-lance jobs last week, and have reclaimed my role as a working mother. It’s not entirely without complications of course, as this means an adjustment for everyone, however we are all happy and able to make changes to our day-to-day-life in order to improve our living conditions.

Although linguistically the jobs I get are easy, I have been spending a lot of time trying to learn how to use Trados, the program I need to do the translations with. And I mean a lot. I’m good at this kind of stuff and never had trouble working with new software before, but this one is a little different, and getting started hasn’t been as easy as it may look. One of the problems is that the user guide sucks. If we had a sufficient internet connection I would watch an on-line tutorial or something like that, or try to find an alternative instruction manual, but instead now I’m stuck trying to follow the user guide that comes with the program. I always thought of myself as a patient, calm person, but whenever I sit down and try to start my work a wave of irritation and frustration comes over me, and I imagine a giant wall standing between me and my translation job. I think I feel this way because of time pressure - with all that’s going on right now I have time to do the translation work, but I don't really have time to sit down and slowly learn an entire software. Instead I try to set everything up quickly so I can get to the work without a thorough learning session, mess up, get frustrated, search through the user guide for what I might have done wrong, start over, and mess up again. Sigh. Just writing about it makes me stressed.

The good news is though that once I’ve got the translation going, it’s easy, fairly fast and fun. And I know that eventually Trados and I will come to terms with each other. I think I might have missed working a bit. I mean working for money on things that I normally wouldn’t think about working on by myself. Because I’m almost always working, just not for money, and when I want to do something academic or professional, I choose that something entirely by myself, usually on a topic within my comfort zone. Now I get paid and I get to do new, interesting things.

Speaking of which… After a big cooked breakfast, morning exercise, two loads of laundry, a morning filled with school work (Math, English and Science), home-made pizza for lunch, a few hours on the beach with a big snorkeling excursion, showers all around, taco dinner, and a big clean-up, the boys are now sitting happy in front of Tangled, and - it’s time for me to get to work.

Midweek reflections - towards Mid-November 2010

…on work

My husband, the Professor, is literally working night and day for the moment. A teacher and a department colleague by day, an author by night, and a travelling conference speaker in between (although there really isn’t any time in between right now), he has no time at all for family, household or even sports. He’s not getting enough sleep either. I am left to manage everything: the boys and their schooling and activities, all our meals, all the cleaning, cooking, washing, laundry, you name it. I don’t even have a tennis partner. It’s an unsustainable situation; we’re all getting really, really tired and I find it absolutely unbearable at times. I constantly have to remind myself that it is only for another month, and it’s really going to give us a huge push forward. “Come mid-December and we can relax. Come mid December, and we’ll relax.” Deep breath.

…towards an education

As August finished Spelling Workout E this week, and since the next book, Spelling Workout F, is supposed to be for sixth graders, I decided to hold him back a bit in the spelling department and focus on perfecting his writing instead. It has always been hard to get him to write. When he does, he doesn’t do it half bad, but he has such trouble coming up with ideas, and he really, really doesn’t like the actual physical work involved. “Do I HAVE TO write a final draft? Can’t we just pretend that all these insertions, corrections and edits ARE the final draft? We know exactly what it will look like now anyways! Pleeeease, mama?” I am determined to get August to where he will not make these kinds of complaints or requests any more, and now is as good as a time as any. I’ve designed a curriculum and set out a method. Let’s all hope it works!

…on the food we eat in Lebanon

Ever since that horrible food poisoning week earlier this fall, we have practically been eating all our meals at home. A couple of times we got take out Chinese from Chopsticks, and a couple of times we ordered pizza (Dominoes – there’s no Papa John’s here L), but that’s about it. For the rest, we’ve [or I guess it’s just I have] done weekly menus with a big shopping, and our five major meals - breakfast, snack (usually fruit), lunch, snack, and dinner - take place around our dinner table. It’s a lot of work, but at least I know we’re eating well, we run a much smaller risk of getting sick, and we can eat food that we know is good and that we like. I let the boys choose one meal every week. Not only do they feel like they have a say, but it also helps me come up with things to cook.

…on our home

Our home is perpetually messy! I live with four males that have no sense whatsoever of order or tidiness, and I can make all the chore lists, threats, pleads, and cleaning sessions I want; they just don’t think the way I do about leaving socks on the floor, cups on the coffee table, empty toilet paper rolls in the bathroom, toys and books EVERYWHERE, or shoes in the middle of the hallway. With all these meals, and with our family spending so much time in our apartment, you can thus imagine that there is a lot of cleaning that is constantly required. Today I ran into one of the owners of our building, who also is one of our upstairs neighbors, a very friendly lady, and she said she knew of someone who can come by and clean our apartment once a week. What a help this would be! I hope it works out (I will find out next week).

…on the upcoming holiday

Our first Eid Al Adha in Egypt was amazing, in that I studied and discovered a lot about [Christianity and] Islam that I actually didn’t know before; things that make these religions very different - and not so different. I found the Muslim community I lived in encouraging, in that people really worship, and encourage worship in the society, even if it’s not to Allah. Religion is an important part of everyone’s lives, and this feast especially, which is a celebration of faith, was a demonstration of this. I am very glad I got to experience it, and our decision to name our son who was born in Egypt, Abraham, was certainly influenced by this inspiring holiday. A lot of people complain about the killings, the blood and stench, but these things don’t really bother me. I can think of several equally gross things elsewhere.

This year I’m looking forward to the experience of Eid Al Adha in Lebanon, and I’m excited to see if it’s anything like in Egypt.

…on the future

Today we – the boys and I - walked over to Mothercare and bought a couple of no-spill cups for Abraham. We made a big deal out of it so that he would get excited, and I think it worked. My idea is to get him to seek out his cup (containing milk or vitamin juice) whenever he gets thirsty or snacky, instead of tugging on my shirt and asking for “nam-nam.” Am I weaning him? Not really. Just encouraging alternatives, now that he is getting older, and imagining a future where I don’t have to buy my underwear in the maternity/nursing section.