2. I meet with my triad, and realize that this is the season for transitions: one is getting married, the other is migrating, and I am writing my thesis and graduating (such fervent hope). Our chat meanders through finding a house, finances, resolving conflict, honeymoon stage, being independent, submitting without losing our identity, future kids and ninangs, wedding plans, secondhand appliances (dibs!) and feeling extremely blessed at the love we receive from such wonderful men. And the expected blank stares when I started to talk about my thesis, but they let me vent in peace. Thank you Lord for sanity breaks.

3. I finally use a Christmas gift certificate to buy an apple fritter. Sugary crunchy fruity goodness at midnight.

2. My grocery bill has been shooting up alarmingly these past couple of months. When I voice my concern to a friend, she says that prices have been increasing, and my budget is still within reason.

3. I can so relate to this author’s principles about which to prioritize: a one-day event, or a shared lifetime? Begin with the end in mind.

2. Finally, I got to use my Christmas exchange gift. My Ian set up the router and the portable lapdesk with built-in fan. Working from home has never been this comfy!

3. I stumble across a free worksheet on an online class on dreaming big, in Feeding the Soil, and realize that I have not yet done a proper accounting of 2011. Looking forward to spending the Sabbath doing just that.

2. A kind person lends me a router, and I rejoice in the fact that I’m no longer attached to my DSL line when I work from home.

3. “Without grammar very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” David Wilkins (1972).

2. I can immediately identify three things I will not sacrifice for my thesis:
a. Intimacy with God.
b. Sanity breaks with people who can relate.
c. My health.

3. A question well asked is a question half answered. (from K. Punch’s thesis proposal book)

2. I bounce ideas and bounce off the walls with a caffeinated thesis partner. Strangely, we have more to say about each other’s topic than our own. We also share link resources, and watch a cool Prezi of how to get unstuck when writing a dissertation.

3. Relatives from Canada are here for a short vacation, so my paternal clan gather for an impromptu reunion. I am nursing serious grievances about the seemingly wasted time (thesis! dialogs!) when my two-week nephew wakes up and makes a funny face. I cuddle him in one arm for almost an hour, moving around so that the huge mosquitoes can’t reach him. Baby smell and vague eyes following the ceiling light and minute fingers clutching at the blanket.

2. Gianne offers us a unique Chinese Lunar New Year treat: tikoy wrapped in a turon wrapper. Gone in 10 seconds.

3. Things that scare me but which I hope to learn within the next decade:

a. Cook and grocery shop in a real palengke/market
b. Iron clothes
c. Do CPR
d. Drive a car in Manila
e. Swim
f. Shoot a gun
g. Stock market investment sans brokers
h. Run a marathon
i. Do household accounting
j. Be a wife and a mother

1. It is almost midnight when we finish packing up after coordinating a beautiful Tagaytay Highlands wedding. I am infinitely grateful for getting a free ride at such a late hour and how a spot of engine trouble miraculously goes away.

2. We get to Manila in the wee hours of Sunday, so the Aranetas kindly adopt us for the night. While I miss the hammocks in their UPLB home, but bunking on the floor is just as fun. Our hosts are what I want my future family to be like: loving parents, talented and capable kids, God-fearing, avid bookworms, watches TV rarely (which is probably why Jed honestly did not know who Christian Bautista is), and with a warm, welcoming home.

3. The tavern adventurers have a celebratory game for Timmy’s second birthday. The GM hatches a clever story within a story within a story plot, the newbies vainly attempt to alert the party to this new development, and we dispatch a land-octopus and a shadow dragon. And no TPK, hurrah!

4. I avail of the Smartconcepts Mont Albo massage coupon for a free 1 hour Filipino hilot with bentosa session. My aching feet and back are happy again.

1. My first ever nephew (and the second grandchild in the clan) makes his appearance before midnight of Friday the 13th. Welcome to the family, Ar-J! I have not seen him up close yet, but the photo show chubby cheeks and that he thankfully also takes after my sister in law, not my brother. The pressure to produce the next generation is so totally off my shoulders, hurrah!

2. A day of focused brainstorming means I’ll have a lot to look forward to this summer. Exciting days ahead for us passionate people.

3. I access the online resources and find a wealth of data, on top of the dozen or so studies I already have from an afternoon of digging through ten years’ worth of language journals. Now I have to read all of them. Such a happy problem.

2. I realize that I am an abstainer, not a moderator, as explained in the Happiness Project. I don’t have a middle ground or a medium setting. No blurred lines or gray areas for me. I am on or off, up or down, high or low, hot or cold, passionate or disinterested, stop or go, silence or sonic boom, all or nothing, sink or swim, do or die.
So this season, I need to abstain. I have to simplify, retreat, surrender and focus. Because I choose to be still, listen, read, think and write instead. Just until this is finished and the seasons change.

3. I can soooo relate to these thesis-related, grad student written blogs… click here, here, and here to know why.

And this might just help me get unstuck.

And the deadliest deadlines are: