Dear all,
I have no idea whether there are people who still have me on a blog roll and so I am not sure who will see this, however, a series of conversations back at In Professorial Fashion, in which I was challenged to combing lace stockings and peeptoed shoes by Janey-Emm and in which A-Dubs requested to see some upcoming wedding ensembles is causing me to (tentatively) return to blogging. The return is tentative because I know why I disappeared from the blogging world last summer: I moved to New Job U and then, since New Job U was a 1 year fellowship position, immediately fell back into the academic job market.
Meanwhile, in my personal life, my father was in the hospital and Herr Poopsie-Poo was on a version of doggie dialysis chez mes parents. (I have no answer for why the dogs are German and the parental home is French. Deal.)
Herr Poopsie-Poo died the 3 weeks before our big interview conference, and while I was at the big conference, luckily sitting with the Academic Gay Boyfriend, I called my mom, because she had called me multiple times while I was in a panel. She was calling to say that my father had died. It turns out that, job interviews and conference papers aside, if you can’t be home when you lose a parent, an academic conference is a great place to be, because you are surrounded by many, many friends. But you can see why the blog fell by the wayside and was never quite picked up.
D-Med made me cry, however, with her wonderful gift post, when I told the IPF crowd where I had gone.
And it is the fact that they feel like friends that is bringing me back to the blog. But I was saying that the return is tentative and hesitant. This is mostly because I am about to move again. I will be returning to Grad School U, where I have a fellowship for next year. And getting back on the academic job market, for what will be my second round. I will also be defending, hopefully in the early fall. So things will be nuts. But I will try to be back and present. This has been a truly terrible year. As both the Academic Gay Boyfriend and the Knitting Angel have both pointed out, the isolation made the loss even worse than it would have been otherwise. (Also, Fraulien von Hound got cancer. Like I said, it has been a year.) And even though I have not been blogging and have only recently returned to commenting, you all have been company in my long, lonely year of gypsy scholarship and loss.
Thank you.
Away from the Keyboard 