I was hoping to have a chance to write an entry based on this fantastic word, which was recently introduced to me by elgan, for which I am extremely grateful. Alas, today has been something significantly less than a pissriot. AJ has an ear infection and its attendant fever. He is the very picture of pathos and I was up most of the night checking on him. We are heading out to the pediatrician later for, hopefully, some excellent drugs which should put him right quickly. But much of the day has been spent trying to keep AJ from bursting into tears. He hasn�t been in too much pain, but he�s easily undone when he�s not feeling well.

We did go to his play class this morning, as he was feeling better, but he careened between giggliness and weepiness. His little friend D seemed to understand he wasn�t quite himself and she spent much of the class holding his hand, which was extremely cute.

This afternoon, while AJ sleeps I�ll be working on rewriting my first chapter yet again. Yesterday I made a startling discovery of another group that falls into the movement I�m writing about. This group pushes the date of origin for the whole thing back by nearly a decade and may turn out to be a major discovery based on what the redating does to relationships with other events in the world. Discoveries like this are rare among things I�ve studied. More often as humanities scholars we�re looking on our work as new ways to interpret things that we already know about rather than new things to study. It�s a bit of a rush to get to feel like you�re treading on virgin territory.

I find this kind of academic pleasure a bit surprising, because I never intended to become an historian. When I began my academic career, I was not at all interested in historical questions, but musical ones. I worked in music analysis, acoustics and composition, trying to understand a very personal question � why some music makes something happen for me. I wasn�t interested in historical questions at first but came to understand that it was the philosophy behind the music, the context, its uses, its representation of the world from which it came that was most interesting to me. And now I find that the things I enjoy most about my work are often the least related to music itself. That may actually be why I like them. New approaches, even to something as specific as a dissertation project have a way of changing your world view on a regular basis. I find I need the rug pulled out from under me on a fairly regular basis or I get complacent.

And now, I must be off to give my rug another good shake before I am summoned to return to my momly duties.

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