Spring Break--Having a Plan

This week is my spring break. The kids are in school, Hubby is gone on vacation, and so I have lots of hours in the house to myself. It. Is. Wonderful. But, unfortunately, I cannot just luxuriate in the silence or lie on the floor, staring at the ceiling in relaxed bliss. I can't even curl up on the couch with a book. No, I have stuff to get done, including two (out of three) batches of essays*, several sets of quizzes, and a chapter draft for the dissertation. Plus, there is all manner of housekeeping, gardening, and bill paying to which I should attend.

In order to get said stuff done, I figured I should have a plan, especially for the grading which I really want to ignore but cannot. Here is the basic plan that I came up with last Thursday:

Grading:

• Sunday evening: grade all quizzes
• Monday during the day: grade paper revisions 
• Each day, M-F: grade five essays from batch one during the day, and grade two essays from batch two each evening after the kids go to bed
• Sunday at the end of break: the remainder

PhD:

• Do a lot each day

How has it been going, you ask? Well, it's Tuesday afternoon, and I have graded all of the quizzes but only two essays. Out of about 45 or 50. (Wow, typing those numbers just spooked me, big time.) And I wouldn't say I've done a lot for the PhD but rather a little, or maybe a medium amount.

What have I been doing instead of grading? Oh, I don't know--taking morning walks with the dog, cleaning out the pantry, tidying my environment, drinking tea, talking to the cat.

But unless I want to be totally screwed on Sunday, I better get busy with the grading. And if I want to have a decent chapter draft by Friday, I need to step up my game on that front, too.

I will happily accept any advice for how to milk this break for all its worth so that it seems both productive and vacation-like (rather than unproductive and not-so vacation-like).


*The third batch will just have to wait until next week.

To Scrivener or Not to Scrivener

About a year and a half ago, I bought my first Mac, and the first program I installed was Scrivener. Three friends (Amstr, Rachael, and Cleared for Flight) had raved about the program, and, being mid-stream in my PhD thesis, I figured I needed all the help I could get.

I spent last spring drafting a thesis chapter on Scrivener, and I recognized the benefits. Multiple times, I moved sections around, changing my mind about the order of the different sections. Scrivener made it easy to make those changes.

But now, for the past 10 months, I've been working on the same damn chapter, and I've had a terrible time. Although I don't want to blame Scrivener (or my use of it) for all of my woes and ineptitudes, I am throwing a little blame its way.

Here's the problem as I'm starting to understand it: Scrivener breaks my chapters up into chunks or subtopics, and, therefore, I tend to only think of the chapter in chunks or subtopics. As a result, I've had a harder time identifying the central argument of the chapter--the thread that will hold it all together.

This past weekend, the family gave me a one-night hotel pass, so I had many uninterrupted hours of work. This, in itself, was gloriously helpful, but I think what really led to a breakthrough was when I got out of Scrivener and started working in Word, when I started thinking about the chapter (and reading the chapter) as a unified thing. Granted, I had compiled my Scrivener files into Word plenty of times before, but then I kept going back into Scrivener to attempt further progress.

My conclusion? I need to write in Word. But this does not mean Scrivener won't be helpful. This weekend when I was writing in Word, I was mining from my Scrivener files, and I discovered how Scrivener might best work for me: it should be a holding and organizing place for my notes and research.

Maybe this is how everyone else is already using Scrivener. Maybe I was just doing it wrong from the get go. But I'm glad to have clarity as I move forward. As for actually writing up my chapters in Scrivener? I prefer not to.

Rearrangement

We are doing a brilliant thing here at Chez GEW. We are moving the kids' room.

We have three bedrooms, and our kids share a room, so the extra room is a playroom/office. The problem with this arrangment, however, is that it really ends up being mostly playroom and not so much office. As a result, the kids' bedroom and the playroom are, quite regularly, in full states of destruction. The bedroom they have been sharing is fairly small, and the playroom isI rather large. Recently, I suggested that we move the kids' bedroom to the room that has been the playroom, and then turn the small room into a and office/guest room in which kids do not play.

At first, no one liked my idea. Hubby didn't like it because he knew it would be tons of work to move the furniture and sort the crap. The kids didn't like it because they are happy and safe in their room, and the playroom has a sliding glass door that would be scary at night.

But on Sunday, after Hubby's brother came for dinner with his family (which includes two girls, ages 2 and 6), I said, " I want everyone to come look at the bedroom and playroom." Both rooms were destroyed.

Hubby took one look and realized that I am a genius. Well, maybe not exactly a genius, but he did come around to my idea. And somehow, even the kids became convinced.

So we have moved the furniture and steam-cleaned the carpets. Now I'm sorting through Polly Pockets, and plastic jewelry, and rock
collections trying to purge but also keep what matters. Right now, the kids' new room has no clutter. None. It is absolutely beautiful. The two room are the cleanest they have been since we moved into the house. The kids are amazed, and I think they love it.

Granted, the hallway is full of crap, but I will tackle that today. Granted, we have cousins coming to visit this weekend, and the room will be destroyed again, but with some clutter gone, it cannot end up so bad as before. And the capper? Only one room will be destroyed. The new office/guest room will be golden.

Even better? I now have a place to work on the dissertation in peace. We even have room for me to bring in a new, big bookshelf that can hold all of my PhD books. This could be huge, people. Huge.

Someday, the kids will want separate rooms--the boy girl thing, you know. But I think we have a year or to before they insist on that. And last night, as I gazed upon the beautifully clean and sparse study, I decided that maybe they will have to stay put at least until the PhD is finished.