Things are getting better. Partly because my hormonal roller coaster is leveling off a bit. Partly because the Monkey is allowing us to sleep more (a whopping 7 hours last night, piecemeal of course, but with a nice 3 hour block in the middle of the night). And partly because I'm taking back what I consider normal. Which brings me to the title of this post: "How to do it all". Notice it doesn't say "How to do it all well" - I'm not making strides to be a domestic, laboratory or blogging goddess (even Isis admits you can't whack all the moles). I'm just looking to return to my old familiar self, for at least an hour or so a day. While I can't do experiments (my northern will have to wait until the week before Christmas when Hubby takes more annual leave), there's plenty of work that can be done from home in between feedings and laundry loads. On the plate for this week:

1. Yesterday, I spent some time browsing the job search engines and identified two more positions for which I'm preparing applications, bringing my total number of TT job applications to 22.

2. Today, I'm going through the summary statement for my K grant, which I received a few days before Monkey was born (I was working on a post about the summary statement as I went into labor - maybe I'll actually finish it this week). I'll be emailing my PO today to set up some time to talk about the likelihood of it getting funded.

3. If I find the time tomorrow, I'll drive into work and get our grad student to bring down the stack of literature I've collected for the review I started working on months ago.

In addition to work, I've started preparing a few meals (way more difficult than you'd think when keeping to a newborn's erratic feeding schedule), and I'm making time to get out of the condo at least once a day. I credit these activities more than anything else for my improved state of mind, and they've reminded me of how much I love my job. In turn, my improved attitude has made it clear how much happiness the Monkey is bringing into our lives. It's becoming obvious that my life will never be the same - I have so much more to love than just a couple of weeks ago.