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Monday, October 01, 2007

Why I edit Andrew's papers

This is a rather difficult semester for all of us--mostly because Andrew is so busy!

He's working at the Multimedia Lab between 20-23 hours a week and is the TA for CHum 230 (née 283--Print Publishing 1) working about 7 hours there. His class load is pretty intense as well:

Arabic 531R (1 credit) Translation--technically called "Advanced Studies"
Humanities 201 (3 credits) Western Humanities, honors
Humanities 242 (3 credits) Humanities of Islam
Italian 442 (3 credits) Baroque Literature
MESA 495 (3 credits) Middle Eastern Studies--Arabic Capstone
MES 201 (3 credits) Introduction to Middle Eastern Studies
Political Science 357 (3 credits) Middle East: Political Systems

That's 19 credit hours--and he might have to add another .5 credit hour class on the block.

Most days he comes home and does homework until midnight or one in the morning. We try to do things together, like eat dinner and watch movies for homework and edit papers. Occasionally we even find the time to do something just for fun. Imagine that.

Today we had a very short Family Home Evening lesson in which we read our chapter of scriptures for the day and discussed an article that my family discussed in FHE last night. Then Andrew asked me to look through one of the papers he is writing (one of the eight papers he has due weekly). It's a very good thing he did. He must be rather tired, for he wrote, and I quote, "...neither totally perfect, while also nor totally evil..."

While also nor? I'm pretty sure you can't say that. I'm pretty sure that if you could, you shouldn't. Ever. It's just awkward. (What happened is that he meant to change "while also not" to just "nor" since he added the word "neither" but he forgot to take out the "while also"--that could happen to anybody, right?)

We all make grammatical errors every now and then. I certainly make quite a few that Andrew catches for me. There's just something about having someone else look over your work.

I'm pretty busy myself, since Andrew is so busy. I do most of the cooking and cleaning and watch Rachel 24/7--Andrew plays with her when he can, but mostly they just play "lie on the couch and kick dad while he writes papers." I also tutor Josie in math, work on Harman, and babysit Emma three days a week. I'm also the Stake Primary Secretary which, believe it or not, sometimes takes up enormous amounts of my time. We're currently planning all of next year's calendar and getting a leadership training meeting together. In short, I'm a lot busier than I thought I would be, being a stay-at-home mom.

Today Emma's parents asked me to watch her all day--from 9 am until 4 pm. I agreed to, but it was pretty crazy. I'm glad that Josie was there to help out. It seemed that Emma only needed "help" doing things or entertaining herself the minute I latched Rachel on, and I was trying to get laundry done and do another million other things as well. I'm not used to being a mom to just one yet, so today was a little overwhelming for me.

My friend Natalie and I were talking about the craziness of parenthood and how many children we think we'd like to have. She has two and says that sometimes she can't fathom having another, but that's when she has to tell herself, "Natalie, they only come one at a time...hopefully."

And I guess that's true, for the most part. Children come at you one at a time, life comes at you one day at a time, and you just keep plugging along.

Plugging along can get old really fast though. That's why I told Andrew that when he graduates (in 6 months and 23 days), we are going to take our little family and check into a hotel, with a pool. And we're just going to relax for a few days...maybe at the Grand Canyon....maybe in Yellowstone. It doesn't have to be very far away and we don't have to be gone very long; we just have to go and forget about homework and dirty floors and laundry and tests and bed-making.

Any suggestions for a nice, little getaway?

4 comments:

  1. I love how Andrew is taking the senior capstone and the introduction to the major the same semester. Classic!

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  2. hey nanny, Billy and I once had a getaway to Calgary... we stayed at the Ramada downtown, had supper at the Calgary tower... look into it, I'm sure there's a resturaunt that you've never been to and a hotel you've never stayed at that's nice right in Orem or surrounding... It was actually a nice little break for us.

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  3. I think "while also nor" would be a completely acceptable grammatical construction, at least according to Miss Teen South Carolina USA.

    (You have seen that video, right?)

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  4. While also nor, I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our [children].

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