"Shaking the Tree"

This has been an interesting week. Looking back it would be easy to say that I didn't get much of anything done. And yet I did several interviews for my dissertation and worked on Sunstone Salt Lake City. I spent extended time with a friend who is suffering, and with my grandchildren who are finally getting used to the idea that I'm actually their grandma (and not just a specter of some sort). And though I usually eat most of my meals out (Haji Baba's and Pita Jungle are my local favorites), I bought three months of food storage because CNN and MSNBC have been keeping me informed on the international food situation. I've also done a lot of research, continuing to find participants who fit into the categories in which I'm interested--whether they're blogging or on email lists or "meetup" (http://www.meetup.com) groups. And I spent an entire day with one of my daughters, who is chronically ill and needs help with her diet. I've been cooking more too, doing dishes, cleaning closets, and basically being a real human being. So I can't say that I've been unproductive--though I also watched a lot of TV (vampire movies rock!) and had to recover from a nasty migraine earlier in the week.

But I've been avoiding actually writing, beyond continuing to work on the introduction to my dissertation. I am surely an undiagnosed obsessive compulsive, because I work and rework....and rework again so that sometimes one or two paragraphs monopolizes several hours. Words have power. One of my main concerns, then, is "getting it right." Not that there's a "right" way to write a dissertation, but analyzing what these women are doing and how they are doing it is a great responsibility.