A Series of Unfortunate Events

The hour between picking N up from preschool and getting the kids down for nap tends to be the most stressful of the day. Today it was so bad it was comical.
A few minutes after N gets in bed, I hear a crash. I go upstairs to discover that he has knocked over his tall halogen lamp. I smell burning, but there is no sign of danger, so I open the window, take the lamp out of the room, and tell N that he has to stay in his bed for nap today (usually he's allowed to just be in his room playing quietly).
I go downstairs and start refilling the tanks on the humidifiers, when I hear N out of his room and something like glass clinking. I go upstairs and he has brought the bulb and the glass cover to the lamp into the hallway. He then shows me where the carpet is singed which explains the smell. Apparently we came very close to having a fire. Oh, and B was crying the whole time not wanting to nap.
I go back downstairs, where I have left the water running in the humidifier tank, which has now flooded the counter top and is dripping copiously onto the floor. I mopped that up with just about every towel in the place. Then I ate an ice cream sandwich and read a chapter of Wuthering Heights, and let N's nap go a little longer than usual.

Can't Dress for Texas

Baylor is flying me out for an interview. Yay! But here's the thing: how in the world do I dress for this? So it's an interview, which means professional, but for a PhD program which might mean a little less than a job interview, maybe. It's in Texas, but a college town in Texas, with a department head from North Jersey. And I'm female and not old. So I need to look like a young, professional, intelligent, feminine, scholar . . . in Texas. I bought a skirt suit (black A-line skirt just below the knee and matching jacket with one button) and about 5 tops to choose what to wear with it, and shoes (black mary jane heels), and some makeup. Luckily my hair is really long right now, so I don't have to worry about what to do with it. In the midst of it all I need to keep reminding myself that while the overall impression I make is important, I am interviewing for a faculty of all men and they just don't notice/judge clothes the same way women do. Somebody hit me with a reality stick already so I can focus on the aspects of preparing for this that will actually make or break my chances at getting in to this program. And while you're getting out that reality stick, consider whether I should wear a collared shirt.

Application? Check!

At 7:30 this evening I officially became an applicant to the JM Dawson Institute of Church-State at Baylor University in (gulp) Waco, Texas. I've had the application done except for my personal statement since, oh, September. The deadline is February 15th, so I didn't cut it nearly as close as I could have. Now all that's left is emailing my writing sample to admissions lady, which I might do this evening. I have to decide whether to proofread my paper yet again. It's one of the 7 papers I wrote in two weeks last Spring, and considering that it took maybe 72 hours to produce from research to submission I think it's pretty darn good.
I think they should admit based solely on my wide-eyed excitement over the two books I purchased from Labyrinth, the only bookstore I have found with Eastern Europe Studies and Historiography sections, while I was in Princeton on Saturday: "A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989" and "Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies." As soon as I finish the chapter on Bulgaria I get to take a break from "The Columbia History of Eastern Europe in the 20th Century" to read the latter of the two. What can I say? It's good to have a niche.