Boh and I basically sat on the couch like this all weekend, formatting my dissertation.

I made up new rules for myself, like when you’re working on an enormous bibliography, it is okay to eat avocado, sriracha, and cheese broiled on toast for dinner. (I think it’s a great rule.)

Even though it is supposed to be spring, we had a bit of a relapse…

Boh shared my enthusiasm for the shift in weather. See?

But yesterday, I filed my dissertation. (Well, I hit the button to submit it, and I’m still waiting to hear if I managed to screw up the formatting.) But I also did something else, something I’ve been daydreaming about for years. I got my dissertation tattoo, a downy woodpecker, beautifully drawn for me by a woman who owns my favorite coffee shop and works at the tattoo parlor in the back.

(Ignore that bruise; it’s from a blood draw earlier this week.) I knew I wanted a bird, but I picked this bird, specifically, because there’s a female downy woodpecker who regularly comes pretty close to the house when I’m writing on the porch. This bird is about a lot of things: she’s connected to my research, but also to the home I’ve built here, to these last seven years of graduate school, and also to the movement (migration?) ahead of me. Isn’t she beautiful?