I’ve just been checking my calendar and booking a last few remaining flights, and it looks like end-of-academic-year craziness is going to have me gone from home quite a bit over the next several weeks. I’ll still be home more than half the time, but with one full week away and another trip lasting five days, as well as a couple of shorter trips, it feels like an awful lot. In addition, Olof is in the middle of changing jobs and working part-time at both the old one and the new one, so it’s fair assessment that things are feeling pretty hectic around here. Once mid-June rolls around, though, I’ll be home for a little more than two full months and I’m looking forward to a break from all the travel.

Travel aside, work is going well and after spending a day at the archives last week I feel like I’m on solid footing where my dissertation is concerned. I do need to put in rather a lot more hours–or days, even–at the archives, photographing documents and hunting down things I haven’t yet been able to find, but at least I have a better idea of what it is I’m looking for than I did just a couple of weeks ago. One of these times I need to plan a trip that will let me get to the archives for at least a few consecutive days, but with coursework and workshops and other sorts of things, it doesn’t look like that trip will happen before the autumn. I should at the very least, however, be able to get over there and get most or all of the photographs I’ll need to get me a good start. I’m presenting my project at a conference in Sigtuna at the end of August, and I’d like to have something really solid done by that time.

Of course, in the midst of all our own busy-ness, we’ve got the kids’ end-of-school stuff going on, meaning that there are concerts and conferences, barbecues and discos, and all other sorts of happenings to fit into our schedules. Most of it I will actually be able to attend, even with all my time away, and it’s nice not to have to deal with a whopping dose of mother guilt on top of everything else.