Friday, 30 November 2007
I wanted to write something today, but first I had to write a report, and then I had to write a guide sheet, and then I had to write the checks to pay the bills, and then I tried to write a post about writing, but it didn't work for me, so then I tried to write a post about teaching writing, but that wasn't working for me either, so I guess I'll just grade other people's writing.
Those who can't, teach.
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Monday, 26 November 2007
From my desk, I can see the soft, warm glow of the lights on the Christmas tree. Today my children tenderly put ornaments on this tree, many of them made by their own little hands many years ago. The grandkids ooohed and ahhhed over the Christmas train as it circled the tree. The songs of my childhood provide a soothing background for a scene that could come straight from Norman Rockwell.
Except for the mess, of course.
If I look past the tree, I can see the boxes and bags and tins layered all over the floor and tables and furniture. If I close my eyes, I can visualize the new houses and figurines I purchased today for the Christmas Village, all over the dining room because I am too tired to arrange them. If I allow myself to "see" the kitchen, I will lose my mind completely because it is covered in the remains of a fiesta I made, including homemade guacamole (the best!) for our kids and grandkids this afternoon, in celebration of their father's birthday.
I told him to take the evening off and enjoy the Planet of the Apes Collector's Edition. I told him that I would do clean-up. I can hear him now, amidst the final strains of the movie's score, beginning to do dishes.
I should go in there. I will. I mean it. Just as soon as I overcome this holiday nausea.
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Thursday, 22 November 2007
When the food is finally on the table and everyone is seated, each person, one at a time, says what he or she is thankful for. Some people are long-winded, some are mercifully brief, but the food is always cold when we get to it because there are so many of us. There have been times I've wanted to scrap this tradition, but I think that would be a shame. We seldom pause in our lives to think about our blessings, and there is so much to be thankful for.
I'm grateful that our physical needs are met, that cupboards and closets are stocked, that we own our home, that our well hasn't run dry and we can still buy fuel for our cars.
I'm thankful for meaningful work, for the good health that enables us to put in long hours at our jobs, and the decent income that allows us to pursue things we once only dreamed of, like travel and home improvements, giving to our family and giving back to the larger world.
I'm grateful for the ability to pursue dreams, speak freely, and spend time thinking and talking about things that matter to us. I'm thankful for the arts and the ideas they spark, for meaningful interactions and long conversations with people whose lives and interests are both similar to and different from my own. I'm very grateful for the ability to take long walks in beautiful settings in all seasons of the year.
I'm thankful that I've come through a long and painful period of delayed personal growth with a greater understanding of myself. I'm grateful that I am still happily married to my best friend, who has grown with me, that our kids are alive and well and independent. I'm thankful for grandchildren and the way they remind us to live in the moment. I'm grateful that all the members of my immediate family are still here to share the holidays with us, and especially grateful that we can remain individuals within the family unit.
I bet my family is thankful that I can express all this gratitude here and thus be mercifully brief at the table. Bon appetit!
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Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Gobble, gobble. It's that time of year again. We watched "Home For the Holidays" again the other night to put us in the right mood. That's the one with Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr. about family dynamics at Thanksgiving. A must-see. Laughter is so important during the holiday season, even if it's only hysteria.
Crazies are coming out of the woodwork. It took three times as long to fight the traffic home tonight. Apparently the snowbirds have arrived, and the holiday travelers decided to descend two days early. To beat the traffic, I'm sure. Too bad everyone had the same great idea.
The current number for dinner at our house is 28-30. Add 7 more for dessert. We were thinking an outdoor feast, but the current numbers for precipitation are anywhere from 30 to 60% on Thursday afternoon. Yes, our house is very roomy, especially for two, but 28-37??? The only other numbers involve the time logistics, which took a week and some serious phone calls to work out.
We did not invite these people. We were informed that we are the hosts. Most of the people are family. Some aren't, and invited themselves, and I still have a hard time refusing a direct and public request, especially when tears are involved, honest or induced. Why anyone in his or her right mind would want to feast with our family at our house is beyond me, but there it is. No accounting for some people's tastes.
The phone calls keep coming. One has to have a certain stuffing, or it's not Thanksgiving. One has to have real silverware, or it's not Thanksgiving. One simply must have this pie, another this casserole.
This is where I have no problem saying no. I tell 'em, if you must have it, bring it. Period. We covered the important things, like the turkey and the wine. Both should induce a coma by mid-afternoon, and I look forward to that coma. I've worked hard for it, and I deserve it. No one can take it from me.
Happy Thanksgiving, if you're American. Thank God profusely if you're not. 
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Friday, 16 November 2007
Ah, the moments of life. Intense moments. Painful moments. Beautiful moments. Moments to breathe, moments to run. Moments seized, and moments of letting go.
There was a moment yesterday when I realized that my long dark night of the reading soul, a by-product of ten years of lit studies, is over. I can't seem to stop reading now, wanting to read, thinking about reading, reading about reading. I feel like a newborn reader, taking baby steps while I wait until I have time to walk and then to run with books. I'm interested in books I'd never have picked up before. I'm not sure what my literary tastes are, so I'm sampling. It's all so delicious, I cannot begin to explain. I'm reading!
There were lots of learning moments this week. There was a moment when I saw my own mistakes in someone else's teaching. There was a moment when I realized that I sometimes lose my humanity in the need for expediency. There was a moment that made me doubt the universe at large, and a moment when someone helped me deal with that doubt. There was a moment when another's deep pain took my breath away, a moment I realized there was nothing I could do.
The week was filled with moments, but my cup runneth over. The work load and long hours and lack of sleep tend to make them all blur together. In this moment, I take out those moments and turn them over, like beautiful rocks in my hand. I savor their smoothness, their roughness, their sparkle hidden in simplicity. I hold them, and love them, and then I put them away.
The wind blows this morning, creating beautiful music with my wind chimes. I love the crisp, cool air and the music of the wind in November. They renew and restore what the heat and humidity and sheer busyness have sucked out of me. Spirit. My spirit.
Alive and well in November.
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Monday, 12 November 2007
I took off a significant portion of the weekend. Didn't grade a paper or even check my work email for about 36 hours. It was a pact I made with a coworker. We're all driven mad with work and frustration at this point in the semester and worry at this point in our lives. I needed a break, and I took it.
I did the Heart Walk. Thousands of people with a single goal: to stamp out heart disease. Some brought their dogs, some their babies in wagons. There were heart transplant recipients, and, for a while, we walked behind a man who was a two-time transplant survivor. The morning was sunny and cool. The experience was refreshing and rewarding.
I took the rest of the day off, doing quiet, unmemorable things. It was so relaxing that it made me realize I'd forgotten how to relax. I even spent Sunday morning chatting over coffee with my mother and beginning to organize the monstrous extravaganza known as Thanksgiving dinner, once again at my house, this time with 30 or so. I've absolutely no idea where we will put all these people. But I refuse to clean or decorate. I've learned my lessons on overachieving, LITM!
So last night, I dreamed again. I dreamed that I and several other adjuncts in my department had gotten summer jobs working as hotel staff at a luxury hotel that was absolutely filthy in its bowels, which it was our job to clean.
Coincidentally, I learned last week that our department has taken away adjunct sick pay. Now if we get sick, we get docked pay. Not that any of us actually takes a day off because we will fall behind schedule, and it's impossible to catch up. It was just lovely knowing it was there if we needed it. That single "perk" made us feel almost...appreciated.
Did I mention that our department approved a substantial raise for graduate T.A.'s?
Did I mention that our offices have gnats because the trash only gets taken out every other day?
Budget cuts, you know. Thanks to our governor.
I know I'm in a job that has no future, but I'm in that job because I believe that each of us shapes this planet for future generations, and I take my responsibilities as an educator very seriously, even if I no longer take my "career" seriously.
However, my dream made me think. Lots of people have lots worse jobs than I do. Lots of people work very hard for low wages in jobs that render them "invisible," like the waiter who serves our food at the restaurant, and the woman who cleans the restroom in the same restaurant, wearing a mask.
Our economy just is not that good. But other people in other countries have it much worse. Some lack basic human rights, let alone a secure job with decent pay.
So this morning as I begin another long day of work, I must remember that I am fortunate, indeed, to be able to do work of my choosing, work that I feel makes a difference. I am thankful for the good health that makes long work hours possible. I am thankful to be a professional with a paycheck, however small and tenuous. I am thankful for the freedom to voice my concerns and occasional dissent.
I am thankful for veterans, even though I disagree with the wars. I remember celebrating this day in Oxford, where everything stopped at the 11th minute of the 11th hour, and there were two minutes of absolute silence. We don't do anything like that here, and I think it's a shame.
Happy Veteran's Day.
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Friday, 09 November 2007
There was a time she thought she could do anything, when she was at her peak. But then the inevitable decline began, and the second half of that gravity clause became the operational factor in her life: what goes up must come down.
She still fights, but every Friday she knows, really knows, that this is a battle she will eventually lose. The joints hurt. The throb in her temple keeps returning. She has to write everything down, and, even then, something important will be lost or forgotten.
Worse still, she's losing her spirit, the will to work long hours at breakneck speed in a dead-end job whose invisible, intangible rewards are too few and too far between and whose challenges come rapidly and regularly, like death rays. Her defense shields are down, she's at warp factor nine, and she canna hold 'er together any longerrr, Cap'n!
Increasingly, she has begun to visualize herself as a juggler. It was simple at first, two balls in the air, going smoothly, add a third, adjust, add a fourth, keep working it, a fifth, getting a little tricky here, a sixth, ohmygosh, it's still going...what's that coming my way? not a seventh ball!?!
This is where she firmly closes the door on that vision. She cannot drop a single ball. She's in a psychotic Dantean room, six balls in the air, the seventh ball on its way in, frozen in time and space, waiting for the inevitable arrival of the end.
But she's not going there. Door firmly shut. Time to go to work.
It's Friday. She can do this.
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Wednesday, 07 November 2007
* I dreamt that I spent a morning reading a Robert Ludlum novel that was so engrossing, I got through about 350 pages in 3 hours, and then I woke up and wished that I knew the title of that book.
* That student. You know the one. Not very good at writing, but tries really hard. Emailed me early Monday, asking for an appt. that day, the only day this week I did not have to go in to the office. I refused. She approached me in class yesterday as I was setting up, and I asked her to wait until after class. But after class I was swamped with students that made me late for my next class. I wake up and can't remember: was she one of them? Did I answer her questions?
* House is a little chilly. Hot flashes. Quilt on. Quilt off. 'Nuff said.
* One of those sudden, startling revelations that something you've been researching for non-work related reasons actually applies perfectly to what you are teaching that day. So you spend 3 hours putting together a presentation that interested no one but you.
* Three mushroom jack fajitas, revisited. What was I thinking? Cool weather makes me hungry.
* An 8 a.m. appointment. I wake up, worried I'll sleep through the alarm. Can't go back to sleep until around 5:30. Sleep through the alarm.
* Have to collect all the lovely checks and cash, fill out the online and paper forms, deliver the money to a particular bank during particular hours today. Oh, and write the thank you notes and deliver them to the correct mailboxes.
* The armadillos are at it again.
* It's her birthday today. I've been unable to reach her by email or phone, and I think she's moved again but hasn't sent her new address out yet. And I waited too long to reply to her last email, which really necessitated a prompt reply. Is work destroying all my friendships?
I want coffee. It's too early to make the coffee. I'm too awake to go back to sleep. I've got more work to do than I can finish today, but this is no time to be attempting that. Am I allowed to read for fun until I go to sleep? Will the book engross me so much that I cannot go to sleep?
What's an insomniac to do?
Oh, and I posted this at 4:13 a.m., but the time reads 5 hours later on this thing, and I think there's a setting I can change, but I can't remember where, and do I really want to waste even more brain cells figuring that one out?
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Monday, 05 November 2007
Okay, so I deleted that last post, which said nothing, because I actually have something to write about now, something real, a meaningful query, and no, I'm not just sitting around surfing the web and wasting time instead of grading scintillating student projects.
Well, maybe I am. So what? I hurt only myself when I procrastinate, and it might make someone else feel good about their own productivity if I admit it.
Or not.
A bit of background to this query.
Mr. Bluesky, ever the do-it-yourselfer, has found a passion for working with wood that surpasses all his youthful endeavors, including the do-it-yourself motor home and hovercraft. Don't ask.
This past weekend, he made a fantastic picnic table from plans he drew himself. It's unique and beautiful, and, after a few alterations, The. Best. Picnic. Table. Ever. And I'm not lying! It's an octagon, and he stole the idea but not the plans, hence the alterations I spoke of.
Because this was the prototype, we get to keep it, and he plans to make 3 more for Christmas for our kids. His original cost estimate was under $100, but these will end up costing about $150 and every spare minute he has over the next few weeks. But it keeps him happy.
There was a project we were going to do last Christmas for our granddaughters, a wooden house for 12 inch dolls that would last forever. However, once we researched it, we found that it would be a horribly costly and time-consuming job, far surpassing these picnic tables and even the playhouse he built for our kids when they were little that very nearly drove me out of my mind.
So we shelved the plans.
I've just looked online, and all pre-made dollhouses (that fit Barbies) and kits for the same are outrageously expensive and will not last. They just won't. But I'm afraid that building one ourselves will put us both in our graves (or one in the grave, the other in jail).
The Barbie Dream House just looks better and better. Granted, it won't last. Granted, it's crassly commercial and cheaply made and takes way too long to assemble.
But it's under $100. Furnished. With all the flashy stuff, like doorbells, toilet that flushes, washer and dryer that tumble. It's just what our daughters always wanted and never had.
Of course they will tear it up in no time. Of course a dollhouse we build would last a lot longer and be more sensible and unique. But I remember never getting anything but homemade or generic substitutions for all the toys I really wanted as a child, and I have a strong urge to throw caution and money to the winds and buy this thing.
For them. Of course.
We could still build the other one, for our house, and perhaps finish it before the girls are teens. And we might even still be together instead of in jail, the grave, or divorce court.
Anyone who has a take on this and the experience to back it up, please advise.
The life you save may just be my own.
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Friday, 02 November 2007
The desire to escape has never been stronger. My house is a mess. The laundry piles keep building up again before I can whittle them down, and if I didn't throw my dirty clothes on the floor, I'd be tempted to wear them more than once; it's that bad. I cook about one meal a week, and I need to get groceries, but I haven't the slightest domestic twinge. I can't find anything I'm looking for anywhere. It's still hot and humid outside, although the weatherman promised something different for this weekend, and I'm still having hot flashes. I'm almost keeping up with my workload, but not quite, and I've never worked harder at keeping up. I'm totally out of touch with good friends. My good habits, the ones I worked so arduously at in September, have gone by the wayside as I've been overwhelmed by life. Mr. Bluesky is suffering from the same malady.
So I've been looking for escape routes. Of course there were the two weekends away, which were wonderful, but that sort of thing is expensive and fleeting. There's TV, but the only series I can keep up with are House and Gray's Anatomy because they are on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, when I am so exhausted I couldn't work if I wanted to. I haven't had time to read since summer, so I picked up a novel when I was waiting on a prescription, but that was a week ago, and I haven't picked it up again.
Here's the thing: I want a good romantic novel, but it has to have an actual plot and characters that can hold my interest. I used to read Harlequins and Silhouettes like crazy when I was stuck at home with little kids, but the grad degree in lit ruined me for all those. I nearly gag when I read the back covers. And they're always about young people or mothers.
I have news for publishers: older, intelligent women want some romantic escapist reading too! I have this fantasy. I'm sitting out on my deck. There's a cool breeze and no mosquitoes. There is a tall, cool, delicious drink and a plate of warm, calorie- and fat-free, yet tasty, chocolate-chip cookies next to it. I'm so engrossed in my book that I hardly notice the afternoon passing, and it doesn't matter anyway because my papers are graded, the house is clean, the laundry put away, the kitchen stocked, the floors cleaned, and there's a delicious meal in the oven.
Then the tall, dark stranger walks around the house, and the breath catches in my throat.
Hey, I never said I could write 'em. I just want to read 'em. Just one. One really good romance novel that will hold my interest.
Really, though, at this point, I'd love to read anything...anything that is not a student paper.
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