Our little trooper

Yesterday was a very big day, the culmination of many days of craziness (which are also the reason I haven't written in so long). I started piloting this cage study four summers ago, and have run it at least as many times, so you'd think I had it down by now. But every time, something goes wrong, and every time, it's something different than the last time. This time it was the aphids. I won't bore you with details, but suffice it to say, it's hard to run a pest control experiment when the pests you wish to control cannot be found. And as soon as I thought I'd solved that problem, another one presented itself, the day before the cages were supposed to go out. I thought I'd have to scrap the whole thing-- which, after all the craziness I'd already invested, I was not pleased about. Danny brought me take-out in the lab Friday night and we had a little strategy session wherein it was decided that I could salvage half the plants, do half the sites the next day, and then go out and do the other half a little later in the week, after I'd gotten the rest of the plants up to snuff. I was initially disappointed to have to make two trips, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it was a 14 hour day with just five sites-- I'm not sure how we would've managed ten.

I made it home by midnight Friday night, grumbling to myself as Danny took Jack home that maybe a research career isn't all it's cracked up to be, and then after I dragged my weary bones to bed we had to turn around and go back to the lab a few hours later to load up (because I couldn't bear to do that by myself in the middle of the night after I'd gone blind counting aphids all evening). But once we got the field stuff all packed neatly into the back of Suzi, I started to feel a lot better, like I might actually pull this off, and the day started looking up from there. We picked up Grandma in San Jose, so someone could sit with Jack while we assembled the cages at each site, and it kind of felt like we were just on a big roadtrip adventure. Along with our five field stops, we made three side-trips to drop off thank-you gift-boxes from Frog Hollow to people who'd served as references for Danny, and got to see some beautiful countryside along the way. He caught up with his former co-worker at Swanton, who now runs Blue Moon, and his other former co-worker at Swanton, who still works at Swanton, and we had treats everywhere we went. Sandwiches at Earthbound, strawberries at Blue Moon, blackberry cobbler and ollalaberry cheesecake at Swanton... maybe a research career IS all it's cracked up to be!

Jack was just fantastic throughout the day. There was one little episode of unhappiness, on the drive between San Juan Bautista and Carmel Valley, where he was clearly hungry and I felt helpless to do anything about it in the car, until I remembered the manual breast-pump that I had specifically bought for this purpose, that I had specifically packed for this purpose, and that I had somehow completely forgotten about for 15 minutes of tortuous crying. Out came the pump, in went the milk, and all was better. Except that I felt kind of stupid. But Jack was pretty forgiving. Somewhere in there, the Isuzu passed the 100,000 mile mark. We knew when it was going to happen, but we were so distracted and distraught about Jack, we missed it. Oh well. We still celebrated the momentous occasion with the aforementioned treats. (Grandma said 100,000 miles used to mean a trip around the block to get ice-cream in their family, but I think Grandpa would've found the blackberry cobbler an acceptable substitute.)

What started out looking like a complete disaster turned into my favorite day of field research ever, and that's saying a lot, considering I have spent some pretty special moments in the tidepools of Monterey and the rolling hills of Tasmania. But you couldn't beat the company on this trip and I was especially struck by that at the end of the day, driving along Route 1 in the evening twilight, as Jack made sweet little cooing sounds at his nana from behind his bottle (which he was holding himself for the first time!) and then drifted off to sleep in that peaceful kind of way that only babies can do that makes you feel like all is right with the world.