I have a friend that tells the most amazing stories. She's a little scatter-brained and kind of quirky about a few things, like she doesn't let her kids drink out of water fountains, and the weirdest things happen to her.
A few weeks ago she was working late at night and heard something in her fireplace, and it turns out there's a squirrel stuck in her fireplace. Instead of calling animal control, she decides to build an obstacle course/barricade a path to the door with couch cushions in order to shuttle the squirrel out. It worked, but her telling this story was so. amazing.
Today, it turns out her husband's grandfather is in the hospital because he was in a car accident. He's 95, and he really shouldn't be driving. She was telling me how her mother-in-law was telling her about the accident, (another car hit him) and that the other car was a big truck painted in camouflage. "So my mother-in-law thinks that he might not have seen the car, and I said, but it's not camouflaged to the ROAD, that's not how camouflage WORKS." She had me cracking up during gymnastics. I could not stop laughing, and I'm sure all the other parents thought I was insane.
I had a really demoralizing week. My project has hit a tough spot, I'm in a rut, a local minima. I talked with Aspen about it, and she said, "Think about something else to do, what else are you interested in?" and I, no lie, could not think of one thing. I've been so up this project's butt, that I could not think of one other thing that I was interested in, one other problem, one other question, the tiniest of experiments to do that could get me out of this rut. I went home early, and at 6:30, propped Lena up in bed with a movie and turned off the lights and just shut out the world.
I got a little bit out of my rut today---laughing about the "camo" truck helped. I also flipped through a textbook just to get some ideas, found a relevant paper to read. Then we got an offer for a play date and heels watching from some other friends.
Paul and Amy, have I talked about them here? They are going to get their own tag today because they are going to be a key part in this grad school thing. Paul and Amy both did grad school at UNC, Paul in my dad's lab. They left, did post docs, got TT faculty positions, and then came back here. Paul is now doing a project in my dad's lab. They're trying to clone in some mutation into yeast together and it's super cute.
So we go over to their house, and they ask how I am, because everyone always does, and I was just like, you know what? I'll be completely honest. I have no self-esteem right now, everyone else is smarter than me and I have forgotten how to have any sort of original thought.
And they walked me through it.
I told them an experiment I wanted to do, and they said, that's great, why haven't you done it? I said, because no one told me it was a good idea. Paul says, you can't need validation. Amy says, Paul needs so much validation. Paul says, that's true, but you still need to do the experiment.
It continues like this---I ask them a problem that Aspen has been thinking about, and Paul thinks it's doable. So I'm going to try it. Paul also expressed into words what my project needs: an assay. I don't have a good assay. He gave me a bunch of ideas about assays. I texted Aspen about her project idea and that I was going to try it tomorrow. She said, that's awesome.
This week I: cried, felt stupid, felt like I couldn't do this, went to bed at 6:30, wanted to give up.
Today I: came up with a new idea, got a couple ideas for assays, figured out what my next steps are going to be, started some cultures for a new experiment, got inspired, excited, ready to face the world again, also laughed hilariously at Belichick: "I handled the balls, we all handled the balls."
Gosh---------
How do we do this without friends? Luckily, thankfully, I will never have to find out.
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