In spite of appearances (and Dr. C's very kind concern!), I am not, in fact, lost in the thickets of Ch. 4, wandering around and trying to tell north from south by the position of the sun overhead and the location of moss on the trunks of the trees. (At this point, all those readers who know me in real life are saying, "I didn't know she knew that much about orienteering! or that she'd in fact ever SEEN moss!" But they forget that I'm from the noble western wilderness, a place so outdoorsy that the semi-rural brew pub where we went to dinner last night featured several rows of bike racks and special shelves for the helmets of the many patrons who did, in fact, arrive by bike.)

So yes: I'm making progress, though my work schedule isn't making me very happy. When I'm at home back east, I often don't start working until 3 or 4 p.m., or sometimes not even until after dinner. Which is okay, since I live alone and when I start work at 8 p.m. I can still put in a solid four or five hours of writing. But at my folks', with my retired dad and my mom getting home shortly after 5 p.m., it's been difficult to find the uninterrupted blocks of time that I prefer; most days I start working around 1 or 2 p.m., but what with interruptions and going out to dinner or needing to look at a whole bunch of old vacation photos from Las Vegas featuring people I don't know, I usually don't quit working until 10 p.m. Which leaves me feeling that I've done nothing all day but work. . . and at the same time that I haven't been particularly productive.

All that being said, and after some nasty episodes involving my family's inexplicably fucked-up printer, I'm now halfway through a first set of revisions to Ch. 4. Most of the revisions I plan to make are in the second half (and all these revisions will take another couple of rounds of editing before they fit smoothly into the existing material), but I'm still reasonably happy with what's taking shape. I've ended up not really doing what my advisor suggested, in part because I've come to the conclusion that one of her suggestions just doesn't make sense, but in expanding a couple of sections today I think I've figured out what I do need to do when I return to the manuscript, post-dissertation. It's irritating that I can't do it now, but really investigating this particular context for my author's early works would require more research than I can conduct in the next two weeks--and in the interests of my sanity, I think it's best just to tiptoe past that particular sleeping dog for now.

Otherwise, being home is nice. Seeing the folks is nice. Sleeping is nice. Reading the New York Times and doing the crossword puzzle every morning is nice (couldn't quite finish it today, but I did all of Thursday's!). And as for the magically-refilled pantry, and the free washer/dryer? Verrrry nice indeed.