- The Round-up -

Spouse is back from her week away. She's tired, I'm tired, Judu's tired. Nevertheless we went canoeing today for Father's Day. Even on the water it was hot, hot, hot. But it was a good workout. And as we canoeing about enjoying "nature," I couldn't help but think of David's dissertation, our need to get the kids—but also ourselves—out of the city and into nature and all that.

Judu's been a bit hyper and whinier than usual since Spouse got back. She's also been bossier. I assume that's just her settling back into the routine.

It's odd how kids react to these kind of changes. For instance, this morning, Judu had a bug bite that was really bothering her and woke her up. Well, normally she would have come down and awoken Spouse. But this morning she came down and woke me up. At 6:30. Woohoo. Then after I put some itch medicine on the bite, she spent the rest of the morning asking when Mama was getting up. I didn't quite know what to make of it. The whole thing struck me as more than a bit funny. In any case, I was happy that she woke me up, as Spouse really need the sleep much more than I did.

I've managed to get quite a lot of reading done this weekend. I'm working on a long book I need to read in order to write up my book proposal. The book is recent and on the exact topic as mine. So I have to deal with it in a rather substantial way. I have nothing but good things to say about the book and my project in fact takes a completely different tack on the material, but it's still going to be a challenge to write my proposal in a way that makes it clear that there is room for two books on the topic. Given the realities of academic publishing these days, that might be a hard sell. On the other hand, given the realities of academic publishing, perhaps no one will notice that the overlap between the books.

In any case, Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there.