And in the meantime ... 2013-14

And in the meantime ...

            Where to begin after my hiatus of four years … which, I must say, was not much of a hiatus at all.  

By the end of 2013, I was in the US recovering from a rotator cuff surgery (right shoulder of course); but shortly into 2014, I could use my arm well enough to travel back to the UK. I had my work cut out for me as I’d started as the committee secretary and wound up taking the organizational lead for the Aberystwyth University English Department’s annual Post-Graduate Conference on Literature, The Stories We Tell Ourselves. Fortunately, the students who stayed on the team with me were amazing and should all receive medals for their hard work.

   

Somewhere between flying across the Atlantic, recovering from surgery, physical therapy, classes, answering emails, putting my foot in my mouth (more than once), extracting it with as much grace as I could muster (admitting to being an American helps), setting up a budget request and defending my line items, I felt a little off one afternoon on my walk  up the hill from campus (that’s the Irish Sea in the far-ground). A phone call home to my medical husband and I found myself in an ambiwlans (Welsh for ambulance) on the way to a diagnosis that brought my husband across the sea tout suite. Initially thought to be a heart attack, I was nonetheless pronounced (gratefully) without any heart damage or blockage. Now the incident has been rediagnosed as a stress related event! Feels like a get-out-of-jail-free card to me. Oh, yes, and the Conference was brilliant if I do say so myself. (I was allowed to attend under protest.) It would be six months before I was cleared to fly home for the holidays.

My work space at Lon Hendre in Aberystwyth.

As it was the Spring of 2014 and I had my husband with me. Life was good as I was forced to take it easy and as he was willing to drive, we visited the local sites: Devil's Bridge, the Old College, and Snowdonia (see below), as well as Swansea and the castle at Oystermouth (You cannot throw a stone in Wales without hitting a castle. Lovely!). Too soon he had to return home and I was faced with catching up while trying to avoid stress. I learned to walk to the gym 3x per week and to practice Mindfulness which I highly recommend. My son came to visit while on a business trip. It wasn't till I returned the favor and met him in Oxford that I found that he'd traveled 10 hours from London by train to see me for four hours! Now that's love. 

                                                                                          Snowdonia

2015 arrived. My Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship only paid for full-time students. As the University would only count me as part-time during my write-up year, I needed to finish my Ph.D. and prepare to stand my viva now! 

Stayed tuned for the further Adventures or The Perils of Pauline, er, um, Jan!