Regression to the mean

Without getting too nerdy, I think it might be helpful to note that according to Wikipedia, "Regression toward the mean, in statistics, is the phenomenon whereby members of a population with extreme values on a given measure for one observation will, for purely statistical reasons, probably give less extreme measurements on other occasions when they are observed."

Or, if we are to be more literary, as Flannery O'Connor would have it, everything that rises must converge. Or, if you are living in my house, everyone who rises must converge. My sweet, highly verbal Ginny o' the morning will be the wailing, thrashing Ginny o' the night. My wailing, slow-rising Baby Dan will be a triumphant wrestling machine by day's end.

And so it goes with all of life. My academic career, peaking (perhaps) with my dissertation and an academic award in 2003-04, has come to this: I am the maid of all work, the wiper of tails, the reader of Clifford board books. Forget about the Canterbury prologue--I can now recite Sheep in a Jeep from memory. I was once happy about my ability to thread together a complicated literature review from any given theoretical standpoint on short notice. I am now thrilled to be able to find a clean shirt and pants for three people on short notice.

It's not all bad, of course. Staying at home wouldn't conform to the law of regression to the mean, if there weren't some perks to go along with the inevitable downsides. I get to spend unlimited time with my kids, who do seem to be less stressed these days. I think my house is cleaner--if you don't count the things that are just too hard to do with the kids around (dirty bathtubs, for example). I think in some ways I am less stressed--I do still do my job part-time, but I'm less wrapped up in it than I was, which is probably a good thing. I'm also having a little more contact with some of the other moms that I'm friends with--which I hadn't had time to do before.

But you'll also notice that I haven't posted for a month. There's a good reason for that. I'm still trying to find time to do my own stuff, which is hard to come by. I'm hoping that I'll find some way to manage my time better, or else I'm going to do more than regress to the mean--I'm going to regress all the way to pure T biyatch.