[Humuhumu in her lime-green bumbo, wearing a white onesie adorned with lions, zebras and giraffes.]

So, I've had...a week. It's been a tumultuous experience. The hormones are subsiding. My hair has finally started to fall out. I lost none for almost six months and I was worried that my head was going to develop its own microclimate due to the size of my 'do, so this is a good thing. This relatively minor positive is offset by the rather large negative effect, which is that the mellowness conferred by my body forcing me into the immediacy of baby needs has also subsided. I'm aware of the passage of time again, and with that awareness comes the knowledge that I'm now over halfway through my maternity leave.

Humuhumu is becoming more physically independent. She can hold her head up and control her arms and legs. She is also awake for longer periods of time, during which her need for attention is no longer solely driven by the state of her stomach. It's difficult trying to figure out what will entertain her, and when I do discover something I find I have to do the same thing (crinkle a toy, make a whooshing noise, show her a picture a book) fifty times. Frankly, it's boring. A part of me looks forward to paying somebody else to do this. I fear mental atrophy.

Another part of me feels tremendously guilty about returning to work. We paid a visit to Humuhumu's nursery last week. It looks pretty fantastic. The staff and the children come from a variety of racial & ethnic backgrounds (important to me). They're tremendously accommodating - willing to help with weaning, to use cloth nappies and to set up a series of introductory visits in March & April before she starts in May. Humuhumu herself loved the visit, goggling at everyone. And yet it did nothing to assuage my unease. It's as if Dirk Gently's fridge has taken up residence in my head. I don't want to open the door for fear of being hit full in the face by a newborn guilt god.

There is no rational basis for this guilt. It will be good for Humuhumu to be with other children, so she doesn't grow up thinking herself the centre of the universe. She loves watching older children and learning from them. The nursery staff are trained and paid to help small children develop, and they can do it better than I can. Still, I feel trapped. If I didn't return to work, I would do myself a huge disservice. Because I am returning to work, I fear doing the same to Humuhumu.

I welcome suggestions for comfort reading for women who decide not to be full-time mums and still manage to raise healthy, happy children. I desire validation for my life choices.

I recently went through a depressive episode. It was horrid, and it's over, and that's all I'm willing to say about it publicly so please don't ask about the cause. Suffice it to say it was nothing to do with the bloke or with any of my friends. Or my parents. Or the cats.

I am now capable of observing, from the side of it on which I have discovered that there is still some light and joy in the world, that the deepest pit of it lasted about 36 hours. The gradual slope down to the pit lasted for weeks before it abruptly dumped me into the bottom, but the part where I wanted to sit in a corner and sob my heart out forever was about a day and a half long. Which really doesn't seem like very much time at all, especially given what I know some of my friends have to go through on a daily basis.

[Disclaimer: This is my experience and may not apply to you, especially if you are chronically depressed.] One of the thrilling (pls note sarcasm) things about depressive episodes, is the curious effect they have on time. They manage to make all the minutes and seconds and milliseconds and microseconds and nanoseconds of that period last for ELEVENTY MILLION YEARS. This week dragged on and on and on until mid-day yesterday, when time flipped back to normal and suddenly I had two and a half days left to do all the things I had meant to do all week. I find myself perceiving what seemed like eleventy million years just a day or so ago is about THIRTY EIGHT NANOSECONDS, twelve of which I have just spent writing a journal post. And now I have guilt, which is dangerously likely to feed back into depression, so I will stop.

I think this might be my favourite self-portrait as another person. I think this may also be the first time I’ve posted something for this project & not cared at all if no one else liked it because I love it so. Things I have in common with Abby Sciuto from NCIS:

• PhD in chemistry
  
• Love for my work
  
• Fondness for chokers, wristbands & soft toys that make rude noises
  
• Being the happiest goth in the world

Things Abby has that I don’t:

• Fringe
  
• Forensics expertise

Thing I have that Abby doesn’t:

• Spacecraft operations expertise
  
• Plush Chthulu that goes “AAAAHHHHH” when you squeeze him

The lab coat is mine. Stains (not visible) on lab coat from working at JPL. Choker is from Cyberdog in Camden. T-shirt is “Stand Back, I’m Going To Try Science” from XKCD via birthday gift from becala. Dog tag is from Kontrol Faktory (RIP), the best industrial club in LA. Goggles are from the Girl Genius webcomic shop. Yes, I am a walking compendium of geeky references, even when I’m not dressed like this.

( Apolowhinge )

( (+++++) )

I'm sorry, dear internet friends, but I'm too tired to add a narrative to these right now. Here's hoping you can invent one. I've put them up because I have yet to do Carcassonne, and I'm going to Copenhagen on Friday, which will result in a whole new set of images to be parsed.

On a totally different note: I can't afford the plane fare - or the time off, frankly - to accompany the bloke to San Francisco for AGU (the American Geophysical Union meeting). It's over a year since I've set foot in my homeland. For some reason I'm finding this very hard to cope with right now.

I have a confession to make. I try very hard not to dislike, despise or linger on retributive emotions regarding fellow denizens of the planet. However.

I hate our neighbour's dog. I spent three hours this afternoon in the sunshine, working in the garden to prepare a spot for our shed. It wasn't warm, but it should have been pleasant to be doing something active, with the kittens frolicking around my feet, after two days of sitting inside and eating. Instead, my enjoyment of the affair was marred by the continuous barking of our neighbour's dog, who spends most of his days cooped up on the patio, going mental. I'm not exaggerating when I say "continuous". I mean he didn't stop for breath.

I'm not that fond of small yapping dogs to start with, but this thing is the worst one I've encountered. I can't even pretend I like it when our neighbour picks it up and holds it over the section of the fence that's only 3' high for us to pet. It snaps at me because it knows I hate it.

Naturally, because I'm a dough-faced frickin' hippie pacifist, I can't even fantasize about doing something terrible to this dog to assuage the loathing. My brain just freezes up and says, "No, it's not his fault, he's just a stupid animal." Instead, I fantasize about our neighbour moving away, or about the dog suddenly being transferred to an owner who will give it what it needs: some discipline and 15 walks a day to burn off its energy.

This brings me to my New Year's Resolutions. No, they're not "Be kinder to animals" or "Forgive my neighbours their trespasses." It is simply not possible for me not to hate this dog, nor to stop judging my neighbour for failing to care for it in what I deem to be the appropriate fashion. (Or to fix the fence panels when the dog eats bits of them. Because it's "our fence" - neighbour couldn't afford to erect a fence so the previous owners of our house did it - it's our job to repair the dog's damage to it. Grrr.)

My resolutions are:

1. Fix the fence on that side so that the entire thing is blocked off with 6' panels. Preferably made of carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer. Because it would be hilarious to see the dog bounce off of them.
   
2. Wear earplugs when working in the garden.