Saddle Sores

We’re just barely keeping up with Kate. Considering her brother moves at Mach-4, this is saying something.

She rolls to her stomach, pushes, slides, and grunts herself around the floor. It’s all fine until she tires out, loses control of her head, and lets her noggin hit the floor. Ouch. We’ve tried to tell her that it’s okay, no one expects her to crawl for at least another 3 months. It hasn’t slown her down. Next step: bricks in her diapers.
As of this morning, I am TA-ing a graduate course on Health and Nutrition in Complex Emergencies. Don’t ask how it happened; the other doctoral students are giving me enough grief. I thought it was a good way to get me back into Tidewater on a regular basis and to connect with some faculty that I hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know. Plus, the course is a good one. But it’s also a lot of silly organizational details and lab work for little pay. What can I say… if my decisions were based on finances, I would not be in a PhD program. So, it’s a learning experience.
Along with the “paid” work, things are finally happening with the various projects within the exploding Latino communit(ies) in the greater New Orleans area. (These include a Latina Prenatal Care study, translation services in clinics, and designing a violence program.) This week and next are filled with meetings. Oh, and then that pesky dissertation! I’m meeting with my committee chair tomorrow.

Oye! What’s that feeling? Saddle sores!