I’m recovering from the mad rush of paper writing and conferencing in August. I haven’t read anything serious in a week, so let’s just talk about homey stuff.

The beginning of the week was all about school supplies and new backpacks. Got the kids off to their first day of school with only minor bumbs. Jonah wanted a shirt that showed off his muscles, but I feel strongly that boys shouldn’t wear wife-beaters to school on the first day. Ian went running in with a great grin on his face. He’s not so pleased about going to his twice a week daycare program after regular school; he’s going to have to get used to it.

Then I had a day of local political organizing. Wrote up a handout, passed it around, got the neighbors up to speed, and updated the local blog. I’m trying to find a good balance between striking fear in the developer and his lawyers and not losing the sympathy of my neighbors. Steve and I weren’t sure if we should add the “PhD” after our names in the letter that appeared in the local paper. Did it seem snobby or give us credibility? Were people going to be annoyed that we have different names? I’m going all suited up to the town board meetings, because if I have to go against three rows of suits, I should probably wear heels and a jacket. But then, my neighbors are in shorts and t-shirts. Will they think I’m being uppity? When Jo(e) wrote about her experience with local politics, she had to walk a similar line. Is this a chick thing? Didn’t Hillary experience the same pressure when she had to change her name to Clinton in Arkansas?

The project that I’ve got going on at the tail end of this week is organizing. I’m giving myself one week to organize the kids papers, work papers, and all the photo crap. Got a label maker from Staples to inspire me. One of the best thing that has happened to me are .pdf files. I no longer have to save boxes and boxes of academic papers. It’s all on my hard drive. I save .html files of newspaper articles. Actually, my blog also functions as my personal file cabinet. The kids’ papers are harder to organize, because I can only chuck things out when they aren’t looking. I’ll take pictures of my anal filing cabinet when I’m done.

Steve is still away and might not get back until tomorrow. Sigh.