In the wake of my miscarriage last spring, I decided, with the support of my adviser, that I would finish my thesis over the summer rather than in time for May graduation. On the one hand, this decision was incredibly easy: I had spent six weeks (or half) of the semester in serious hormonal upheaval, and at the end of it all, I experienced a sadness that swallowed me whole unlike anything ever has. So no. Writing a thesis on culinary metaphors in Persius was simply not going to happen. On the other hand, this decision was a very difficult one: watching my classmates graduate without me in May was hard, and to be frank, I'd LOVE to have the summer free to do things other than work on my thesis.
Turns out, however, that there are PLENTY of things to do that aren't my thesis. For example, in the last few weeks, I have rearranged all of our storage units, cleaned out my closet, taken two trips of purged items to Goodwill, deep-cleaned the bathroom, polished the silver, and organized study shelves and drawers that had gone rogue. This is in addition, of course, to keeping the apartment neat and relatively clean (i.e. going through mail, filing paperwork, fluffing pillows - seriously, WHO FLUFFS PILLOWS? - picking up dog toys, watering plants, and even my least favorite chore of all: dusting, etc.).
Preston and I have taken the dogs to the dog-park nearly every day, and sometimes, I've even offered to take one of his dog walks FOR FREE (i.e. I haven't bartered away my walks, but instead have been a Good Samaritan/Procrastinatory Monster and taken his out of selflessness/an intense desire to avoid Persius).
I knew it was getting really bad when I did my hand-washing this week. Y'all. Hand. Washing. This is, at most, a biannual event, and each of those two times I hate doing it. This Wednesday, however, when faced with the decision of thesis v. hand-washing, suddenly I had all the energy in the world to hand wash my delicates, tights that I haven't worn since March, and my three hand-washed dresses that get washed, um, twice a year.
Avoiding one's thesis isn't all housework and hand-washing, though. Oh no. Preston and I have seen both of our brothers graduate, been to two weddings, hung out in Kennett Square for an awesome day with RA and JG, and celebrated my birthday in style. I visited my best friend Margaret in Virginia a few weeks ago, and last weekend I even visited my friend Keenan in New York (a trip that has been in the works for MONTHS).
The Not-My-Thesis project for which I'm most excited, I think, is the DVD I created for Preston's grandmother's 85th birthday celebration. Although I've created slideshows before, I'd never produced my own DVD, and I was SO proud when I put the finished DVD in our TV and it worked. Like a real DVD! Squeal! The slideshow itself, however, took forever. I spent days at the computer scanning and cropping and editing and enhancing and photo-shopping and oh my goodness seriously FOREVER. But I'm really pleased with the result.
In spite of all the things I have been doing that are not my thesis, my thesis has actually gotten some face-time this month. Not as much as I had hoped, but it's getting there. And in the end, when I watch this slideshow, and think about how much I love the people in the photos, and how much life they lived before I was even a gleam in my father's eye, well...perspective is always a good thing, yes?
In Celebration of Helen Cordier Johns from Mary Frances on Vimeo.
P.S. This isn't actually the final slideshow that went onto the DVD, but it's pretty close.
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