The Clown and Poker

Life without glasses

2012-01-29T14:48:00.001-07:00

Jonathan is near sighted. We've known that since last summer, but I've been dragging my feet on taking him into the eye doctor, because I've read that kids who wear glasses end up with much worse vision than kids who don't -- and that matches my own experience. Anyway, we've been monitoring Jonathan, making sure his eyesight isn't getting in the way of school work or activities, checking that he can still see the board, stuff like that. At the beginning of this month, his English teacher rotated the room around so that he was at the back of the class, and he reported that he couldn't see assignment instructions anymore -- he had to wait for the teacher to read them, then quickly write down what he heard.

Anyway, so much for eyesight not getting in the way of school work. We contacted the teacher and requested that she move him up a couple of rows, if possible, and she was happy to do so within the day.

Then Thursday, I finally took Jonathan into an eye doctor, who officially diagnosed Jonathan as being near sighted (myopic). His vision is fine otherwise. The eye doctor then explained our options. He confirmed what I had understood: for kids who are myopic, wearing glasses will accelerate the myopia. That is, if Jonathan gets glasses and wears them, his vision will just get worse and worse, faster. However, if he doesn't get glasses, his vision will still probably get worse and worse, just not as fast. Contacts, on the other hand, have been shown to slow myopia, but who is going to suggest contacts for a seven year old?

In the end, the eye doctor recommended managing Jonathan's vision the way we have been: no intervention as long as it isn't affecting his schoolwork. Now that his eyesight may be affecting school, the doctor suggests either continuing to do what we've done (i.e. no intervention, except asking the teacher to please move him up a row when possible), or possibly getting a pair of glasses for Jonathan to wear only when he needs them. Jonathan should never wear them at home, for example. There's nothing good enough on TV to require glasses, he said.

Anyway, that's where we stand with Jonathan and his eyesight. But that's not really where I wanted to go with this post. Basically, the last few paragraphs are a long introduction, setting the background for the real reason for this post, which is my amazing discovery. Within the last 24 hours, I have discovered a fool-proof way to look amazing every time you walk past a mirror. I have! Read on.

Yesterday, I was exercising in my basement, dancing in front of the TV. As the rim of my glasses started slipping off my nose, I recalled what the eye doctor had said: "There's nothing good enough on TV to require glasses." So I took mine off. I couldn't really see the dancing game so well after that -- the arrows became floating blobs on the screen. But I could make them out well enough to continue. And actually, it was pretty fun seeing the world in blob form. Me, I've been wearing glasses religiously since I was about seven, and my myopia is four or five times worse than Jonathan's by now. But dancing in the basement, I could function -- no problem -- without them.

So I kept them off. All day yesterday I wandered around home without glasses, seeing the world in fuzzy colors rather than the sharpness of detail. You don't need glasses to fold laundry, or make up a batch of granola, or even to read a book in the afternoon. Who knew?

And here was the best part. Every time I walked by a mirror without my glasses on, I could see that the woman who was my reflection had flawless skin. Without glasses, I couldn't see a single mole or pimple on my face, much less small wrinkles or wide pores. Instead, I saw just these big blurry dark eyes looking out at me from my glowing skin. And my hair! My hair was smooth -- I literally couldn't see a single strand out of place. In its new fuzziness, it looked full of health and volume. And best of all, while standing between the mirror and the window with my glasses off, I looked really slim. No more belly bulge for me. Actually, if everyone had -5 vision in both eyes, I could totally be a model. A super model. I looked that good.

Today? I kept the glasses off in the morning, but I needed them in church to read the music while I played the piano. And now, I can't see my computer screen without them, so they're still on. However, I'm thinking I may take them off again when I'm done here, and go and gaze at my beauty.

Awesome.

Assorted

2012-01-25T20:44:00.000-07:00

On light.

Lately, it seems that mornings just get darker and darker. After the winter solstice, we were supposed to be having longer and longer days, right? Which should mean earlier sunrises, right?

Wrong.

Tired of the alarm clock going off in the dark, I finally looked it up. Although the length of time between sunrise and sunset has increased 32 minutes since January 1st, this morning the sun rose only seven minutes earlier than it did on January 1st, at 7:42am, in my city. The sun set, on the other hand, a full 25 minutes later. So although our days are getting longer, it's happening mostly in the evening.

Which makes it harder and harder to wake up. There are days I wish that artificial light had never been invented/discovered/whatever.

But then I realize it would be difficult to read my computer screen if it were not back-lit.

On colds and haircuts.

Tim's man cold is mostly gone, but it lingered for a long time. Poor Tim.

Very recently he cut his hair again and donated it to charity. So he no longer looks like a pirate.

I like the long-hair Tim and the short-hair Tim. He is a handsome guy. I just don't like mustached Tim.

And Jonathan got a haircut, too. From me. About a week ago. It looks good. I can't believe none of you readers have noticed.

On stuff to do.

I have lots of it.

Among other things, I've been writing letters of recommendation, which is an indication of seniority. Only people who have been around a while are asked to write letters. Time to move?

First there were the job application letters, then the grad school application letters, then the summer program application letters, then more job application letters, and now more grad school application letters. I am getting faster at writing letters. But you know what slows me down every time? Requests by various programs for me to assign some sort of a numerical value to the applicant. For example, is their "initiative" in the top 2%? Top 5%? Top 25%? And how many students are in the pool of comparison? And what others are in this pool? And has the pool water been chlorinated? Is a life guard on duty?

How do you rank "initiative" amongst your acquaintances? I think, well, the person turned in all their homework, so they must be chock full of initiative.... But where does that put them in a ranking with the rest of the students who turned in all their homework? I still can't turn that into a number. And then I start to wonder, why are they even asking me to turn "initiative" into a number? Are they trying to come up with some fake cutoff they can use to avoid reading all the letters they specifically requested? I spent the time writing the stupid letter. They'd better read every word.

Losers.

I hate admissions committees. Especially the fake ones I have invented in my head.

(Sometimes I just leave those number questions blank. What do you think happens to my letter then?)

Memories...

2012-01-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

This morning, I remember being outside, smiling at a thought in my head, and saying to myself, "I should write a blog post about that." I remember that I was on the sidewalk going into my building after biking over to work. I remember that I was still wearing my helmet -- sometimes I take it off right after getting off my bike, but that I was carrying the little reflector straps I wear around my ankles, and they were in my left hand. I remember that the sidewalk was gray and in shadow, although the sun was already up. I remember a patch of gray snow in the gutter by the sidewalk. I remember all these things.

I just can't remember what I wanted to write about.

I know it would have been a good post, an interesting and entertaining post -- after all, it made me smile -- but it's gone now. Totally gone.

And while we're speaking of biking into work, and things I do and don't remember, yesterday I was passed on my bike a few blocks away from campus by a guy wearing beige pants and a jacket. It was cold, and the sun was not yet up, and he didn't seem to be wearing enough windbreaker material to be riding a bike fast through all that. He looked to be about my age-ish, with a square jaw and light brown hair. As he passed me, and I turned my head to see who was biking past me in the cold, he smiled and said, "Hello, Jessica."

And I smiled warmly and said, "Oh, hello!"

And then as he biked away, I wondered to myself, "who the heck was that, and how does he know my name?"

And then I caught up with him at a stop light, and in fact followed him all the way to campus, where we parked our bikes in the very same bike lot (which I always park in, by the way), and he turned cheerily to me and said, "Looks like we were going the same place!"

And I smiled and nodded and turned away quickly and tried to figure out who that guy could be and where I would have met him.

And I still have no idea.

There is no point to this story, which makes writing a scintillating conclusion a little awkward. I do hope you aren't too disappointed that I forgot my original good idea to blog about. Maybe it will come back and I will write about it later. Meanwhile, I would like to say that those people who have a good memory for names and faces? They really disturb the rest of us. (Who was that guy?)

Cold

2012-01-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Tim caught a cold.

Poor little bunny.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T21:35:00.002-07:00

I have had several topics on my mind recently to discuss with you, oh Reader. But alas, each one, rather than forming a meaningful blog post on its own, is worth at most a paragraph of words and scintillating thought. So I shall here present a collection of thoughts with which to begin the year 2012.

Thought 1. This morning, while examining all the ornaments on the Christmas tree, knowing it was time to pack them away for another eleven months, I remembered the year 2004, in which we put up the tree with its lights, but then, exhausted, stopped. The ornaments stayed in their boxes. The baby that was Jonathan didn't realize that he was being shafted of the full Christmas tree experience. He still loved to sit and rock in front of the pretty lights. And come January? We had the best year ever for Christmas clean up. I did suggest we try this again early in December of 2011, but I was labeled a Scrooge.

Thought 2. I'm kind of feeling like I should start Jonathan in piano lessons. I think it's important for him to learn to play an instrument, and piano is an easy default that would actually be useful to him throughout his life, especially if he stays in our particular religious community. But I dread taking him to and from lessons, making sure he practices, adding another item to get frustrated over to our daily routine. The boy is casually interested, nothing more. But he is at a good age for starting. Is this a fight worth having?

Thought 3. New Year's resolutions. You remember, Reader, that I made my New Year's Resolutions right after Thanksgiving, rather than waiting until the traditional January 1st. I resolved to be kind, beautiful, and productive. A little over one month in, I am thinking I shall declare myself successful and move on to new resolutions. This time, I would like to make the kind of resolutions that I am guaranteed to keep, so I can feel happy as I tick them off. In 2012, I resolve to take down the Christmas ornaments from 2011. That's a good one. I resolve to floss, continuing in a tradition of flossing that stretches back to the previous century. I resolve to keep my room clean, to practice good hygiene, to kiss my family often, to write here when I feel like it, and to ignore this blog when I don't. These are all healthy resolutions that I resolve to keep.

Thought 4. I have decided to get a tablet for personal use. Then I shall no longer have to carry around movies and books or a 5 pound laptop when I travel. Plus, I can download material for personal use without having to store it on my work computer where someone might find it and question my taste. I like having questionable taste. I have picked the very particular tablet, down to the color, after reading about sizes and weights and battery life and functionality and, of course, consulting with my personal IT guy (Tim). I have also found where I can purchase my chosen tablet for the best deal. I have saved up my money and I am ready to have this tablet here on my lap rather than this heavy computer. Unfortunately, my tablet is sold out everywhere and currently unavailable. This means I shall have to be patient, or buy a lesser model. Patience???!!!

I will close with those thoughts. If you think I should be thinking others, you may add those in the comments, and I will consider them. Thank you. Come again.

Conflicted

2011-12-22T16:35:00.003-07:00

I had two free tickets to the women's basketball game this afternoon. Since Jonathan was out of school, I took him along, and we had a fun time. Our team won by 30 points. Yay team!

Women's basketball is pretty great. We got to sit up near the very front where we could see everything, and still the seats all around us were empty. Jonathan used the row of seats in front of us for a foot rest.

The part that is difficult for me, however, is the whole "team spirit" thing.

You see, I was an undergraduate at the university that is the arch-rival of the place that offered me a job. So when I attend sporting events at the university that is the job, and they play the job fight song, I only know the impolite lyrics. But when there are only 50 fans in the entire basketball arena, and our girls are doing so well, I feel I ought to cheer them on.

But if I sing *that* fight song, what does that make me?

My compromise is that I can cheer and applaud politely. But I cannot rise and shout. Still no.

Some stuff we did last month

2011-12-18T15:36:00.001-07:00

In November, we took a trip to Antelope Island, on the Great Salt Lake.

Tim decided to grow a mustache, as part of a fund raiser for work. I think he looked really scary. The mustache is gone now.

We purchased and put together a compost bin, as we've been wanting to make our own dirt for some time now. Yay dirt.

One of the doorknobs broke going into the garage, so we replaced all three with shiny new ones that don't stick and actually use the same key.

I sewed mittens. Here is the deal. When you bike to work in the winter, it gets pretty chilly on the hands. I've figured out exactly what those chilly hands need. First, they need a mitten, not a glove, so that the fingers can warm each other, rather than be insulated against each other. Second, they need a warm fleece layer, to keep them snug. Finally, they need a nylon windbreaker layer. I've been looking all over for these mittens. A couple of years ago I found something almost right in a boutique in Philadelphia. However, the outer layer was knit wool rather than nylon, and the wind cuts right through them. So finally I made my own.

Alas, I was inventing the pattern as I went along, and the outer nylon layer was a little too snug on my big bear hands. So these mittens went to Jonathan, and I will try again.

We installed a new light in the bathroom. When I say "we", I mean that I bought the light, read the instructions, watched someone else install a light on YouTube, brought in the ladder, pulled off the cover hiding the bare wires, and stared at the mass of colored wires in there. On YouTube, they said I was supposed to expect one black and one white, and maybe a copper ground wire. But we had four white, four black, a red, and a copper.

I consulted with Tim. He pulled out our little wire tester to detect hot wires, had me run back and forth to the circuit breaker downstairs for about an hour, and finally figured out that the black and white wires should be left alone, the red wire was the one that would connect the light to the switch, but it needed to be reconnected at the switch.... Anyway, it was an interesting project. But the result looks better than our camera makes it out to be.

That's all.

December oranges

2011-12-14T20:13:00.000-07:00

There are things I don't like about December, such as the darkness and the grading of giant piles of final exams.

But there are more things that I do like about December, like classes ending and building wood fires and playing Christmas songs on the piano.

One of my favorite things about December is that oranges are in season. On Saturday, we bought a 40 pound box of oranges, to eat amongst the three of us. There are things I like about having 40 pounds of oranges sitting around the house. Oranges! Any time! Eat all you want! 40 pounds of oranges is pretty much a never-ending supply of orange goodness.

There are also things I don't like about having 40 pounds of oranges sitting around the house. When you eat all you want, really, your insides can't keep up. And then that can get stinky. Hypothetically speaking here. I don't really post about stinkiness in public.

Post Thanksgiving Post

2011-11-26T17:13:00.001-07:00

I think Thanksgiving is a good time to make New Year's resolutions. You get those two extra days away from school and work, and you think you will spend just a teensy bit of time doing those little tasks that need doing. But instead you end up stuffing yourself and being grumpy with the family and going back to Monday feeling round and fat.

So this Thanksgiving, I hereby resolve not to be grumpy with the family any more. Even when Tim does commandeer the television to shout at a bunch of fat guys in skinny suits jumping on top of each other. Football. I will not be grumpy anymore because of football.

I hereby resolve to exercise 60 minutes every day until the holidays end or I freeze to death outside in the frozen winter wasteland. Whichever comes first. And thereby I shall banish all the stress that fills my life and maybe tighten up the jelly that begins to fill my jeans. Ah middle age.

I resolve to eat lots and lots of fiber, to scrape away all that extra Thanksgiving rich stuff that is clinging desperately to my insides. It will not withstand an onslaught of broccoli and oatmeal. And neither will my family.

I resolve to finish the stupid paper that I resolved to finish last week, but that I only looked at for all of 15 minutes once on Friday while Tim was in front of the television anyway and I had nothing better to do. Pacing around feeling grumpy is apparently preferable to getting the stupid paper finished.

In short, I resolve to be kind, beautiful, and productive, from here on out. And if I should fail, I will dig myself a hole and crawl into it and not come out until late June. Take that, winter!

Mustache

2011-11-20T21:24:00.001-07:00

So Tim is still growing a mustache for his company's Movember challenge. I must say, I am not really a fan. He looks pretty creepy. And when I go to kiss him? This mustache comes after me.

You know where it goes from here, right? Once the mustache is established, we move onto the mullet. Then the beer belly. Then we buy a lot of guns and six packs and move into a trailer park.

Yup. That's what the mustache does for Tim.

The following comic kind of sums it up for me. (You will have to click on the link.)

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/18

Ten more days of mustache. Then Tim will have to choose between the two of us.

November

2011-11-13T19:33:00.001-07:00

Timothy is growing a moustache for Movember. He shaved his beard, and is growing the hair back just on his upper lip, as part of a fund raising event his company is holding this month. It is an interesting look for Tim. Jonathan and I can't wait until December.

I stopped teaching Sunday school a month ago. My new job is Relief Society pianist. I didn't think I'd ever have that job again when we moved here. I'm mostly happy to have it, because in theory, this is an easy job where I show up and play the well-known hymns the chorister has chosen. But our chorister likes to choose tricky and/or unusual ones, which means I stumble around a lot. And one of the reasons I thought I'd never get the pianist job again is that there are so many more talented pianists in this area -- more talented than me. I envision a large group of women sitting at home, shaking their heads over the state of the Relief Society when their pianist can't keep up with the chorister. Tut tut tut. What is the world coming to?

The end of the semester is in sight -- so much so that I am contemplating the writing of final exams. ... In addition to the writing of a couple of talks, a paper review, a journal article, and a bit of grading thrown in there for good measure. Maybe the end isn't close enough. Maybe it's too close for all that stuff.

Chemistry week

2011-10-22T06:31:00.000-06:00

(I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but did not post, so now I shall post retroactively with the date it was written.)

Last night we got free tickets to a chemistry demonstration for National Chemistry Week. The room in the science building was packed with kids, mostly under five, it seemed, and maybe a parent in every sixth chair (we, with two parents and a single child, do not come anywhere near matching the typical family demographic in this town). You could barely hear the professor at the front of the room over the din of squirming children. But the show was still fun, and Jonathan liked it, and has decided that when he grows up, he will do his own chemistry show.

The professor up in front mixed chemicals in large flasks, unlike anything you'll ever get to do in a real chemistry class (costs too much). He made things change color, foam, burn, EXPLODE! Jonathan's favorite was when the guy burned the balloon filled with methane. It didn't explode like the hydrogen balloon, but the fireball burned longer and hotter.

And then this morning, we did morning math for kids. If everyone in a room gives a high five to everyone else in the room, how many high fives is that total? And there is a kids' play running, put on by university students in the drama department. And the music and dance departments do shows for families. And there are free museums, with animals (dead and stuffed), dinosaurs (dead and fossilized), art (nonliving), and even a planetarium, if you know where to look.

There are perks to living near a university.

Except right now, the traffic near our house is pretty horrendous as 65,000 people try to cram themselves into the nearby stadium for football. Blah!

Nebraska

2011-10-15T21:17:00.002-06:00

...in October is gold and green and gray, and very lovely. Yesterday afternoon, after I left the airport in Omaha, I drove west for over an hour. My rental car had a Minnesota license plate and a massive blind spot on the left side. I think, actually, all rental cars have massive blind spots, and hyper-sensitive brakes. These are requirements for rental cars.

But anyhow, Nebraska in October is lovely. UNL seems like a nice university, for those of you who, like me, are keeping track of nice universities.

A colleague tonight mentioned that he is trying to give a research talk in each of the 50 states. So then I had to count. Since 2004, I have given talks in California, Utah, Texas, Georgia, New York, Philadelphia, Michigan, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, Illinois, Tennessee, and now Nebraska. I don't think I will try for all 50: too far to go. And honestly, who in North Dakota would listen to my talk?

Tomorrow I will drive east for over an hour, back to the airport, and back home (late), and back to work Monday morning.

Nebraska has been lovely.

Dilettante

2011-10-11T19:23:00.000-06:00

What is the difference between da Vinci and your typical high achieving student with three majors who acts in the school play and serves as student body president? One blog I recently read argued that da Vinci's science influenced his art, and vice versa, and so he is a Renaissance man, while the student had no purpose for their scattered interests, which makes them a dilettante.

I had to look up the word dilettante. I didn't think it was as negative a word as the writer seemed to think it was. ("Nobody wants to be a dilettante", they wrote. They don't?)

So let's shine the light of my own personal experience on these ideas. I have a lot of scattered interests. Unlike da Vinci, my art doesn't influence my science. So I am not a Renaissance man. (Ignore here for a second the obvious problem with gender, and pretend I could be.)

I wouldn't say that my scattered interests therefore serve no purpose. Instead, I would say that they balance each other. For example, I like doing research at work, but my brain can only take so much cold hard logic. Then I need to switch. I can switch to do people things, like teaching. Or, over a weekend, I can work with emotions, reading fiction or personal writing. These are totally different compartments in my brain. Each little bit of brain likes to be exercised, however, even if it doesn't speak to the other bits. Balance. Physical. Mental. Emotional. Social. Spiritual.

So what about the student with three majors acting in the school play and serving as student body president? Well, there's something to be said about blood pressure. But assuming the blood pressure is not a problem, what's wrong with people having different interests? And putting in the effort to excel at different things? Balance. That student sounds pretty balanced to me, still ignoring the blood pressure thing.

Will my child be negatively affected if I sign him up for sports and art and cooking? On top of his regular school day? I don't think so. He may learn to use his brain in more ways, and learn to enjoy more of the wonderful things that make us human. Why not let our children see much more of the good in the world, from many different lenses? Physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual.

Balance.

As for me, the pendulum is swinging backwards. Those of you who volunteered to read my novel draft, thank you. I will probably take you up on that. However, you'll have to give me a while. I've decided I need some time away from it, thanks in part to a billion deadlines hitting me on the head at the same time. And especially the need to do something else for a while.

Failure

2011-10-07T21:05:00.000-06:00

While reading something else today, I encountered someone's favorite interview question:

Describe a time you failed at something, and what you did about it.

Here are some answers.

Failure 1: Last month. Two of my research papers were rejected, within a week of each other. That was a disappointment. Two disappointments. Adding up to several months of rejected work.

What did I do about it? I gave myself a week for each paper, to mourn the failure. Then I resubmitted each to another journal. Now that they're both under review again, I find that I don't care so much about them.

Failure 2: Last week. And the week before. And the week before that. My graduate students asked me questions on the homework problems I had assigned, and I didn't know how to answer them.

What do I do about it? I apologized, sent them away, thought about it overnight, then reported back. Maybe I should try to get ahead on their homework, so this doesn't happen so frequently.

But those are mild failures, both. Let's go back further and find bigger failures, with more lasting consequences.

Failure 3: September 1999. I failed my qualifying exam. I had worked all summer to prepare for it, and taken a class on similar material the year before. This was a big deal, because my graduate program would throw me out if I didn't pass by the end of a year.

What did I do about it? I started from scratch. I signed up (again) for the qualifying exam prep courses. I formed study groups with my peers. I walked through all the old qual problems I could find, and organized them into a binder. I spent the next nine months learning the material so that I wouldn't fail again. And I passed, in June 2000. But that was a painful year.

Failure 4: April 1998. I failed to get into graduate school at the university my True Love decided to attend. And he didn't seem to care about that at all. So this was a double failure. Failure at school, failure in love. Again.

What did I do about it? I went to graduate school somewhere else, and opened myself up to dating others. When True Love and I decided it was worth the work to be together, I applied to his university again, this time armed with an independent fellowship, and was accepted.

So far all of my failures have happy endings. Let's bring in some others.

Failure 5: High school, junior year. Tried out for the school dance team. Failed so badly that the judges laughed at me. They did. I was devastated.

What did I do about it? Crawled in a corner with a blanket over my head. Did not ever leave the corner. Decided dance was not for me. Ever. Again.

If this question ever comes up in an interview for me, I think I'm going with answer #5. That's the answer the future employers of America are looking for.

Biking home in the rain

2011-10-05T17:44:00.000-06:00

I've done this before. Northern California in the El Nino years. Central England in ... well ... my English year. I checked the forecast this morning, and came prepared to work, with waterproof gear and bike lights. And actually, once past the intersection where I am likely to die, the ride is enjoyable. Different. Raindrops patter against my ears, muffling the traffic noises. The gray clouds hang so low that the entire landscape has changed. Quiet. Gray. Cooler. This storm marks the breaking point of Indian summer. Autumn, which has been hanging hesitantly high above the valley on the mountainsides, will swoop in quickly now, claiming the trees in the valley. Not that I can see the mountains, with the clouds hanging so low. Not that I would see them anyway, with my chin tilted as far down as is safely possible, to keep the water from washing into my eyes. My glasses fog up, and I remember that on rainy days in California, I would wear contacts. No matter. Almost home now. My feet are soaked through. My jeans are wet where their nylon coating presses against them. Backpack wet, but it contains just a lunchbox and some notes. I park the bike, shake off the wet things, change into cozy pants, and sit on the sofa to listen to the water running through the rain gutters, muted by the traffic noises now, not the other way around. And here I sit now, trying to bury my reality in words. It will be a rough two or three days, I think.

September summary

2011-10-04T19:11:00.001-06:00

September is over. This post is written for the sake of my family, who want to know how we occupied our time over the month.

On Labor day weekend, Tim and Jonathan and I traveled with Tim's mom into Idaho, to spend the weekend at Tim's grandfather's cabin, because we hadn't been there all summer. We read books, spent a day at Yellowstone hiking around Old Faithful, and basically enjoyed a quiet weekend. We found out that my parents, three brothers, and a sister and their families were spending the weekend at Yellowstone as well, but we didn't try very hard to meet up. We did, however, come home and call my mom crying that they didn't love us enough to invite us to go to Yellowstone with them. It is always a useful practice to instill guilt where possible. But it didn't seem to work.

Another highlight of September was that Jonathan got his gums lasered. Two of his top teeth fell out about two years ago, but the replacements never grew in. At first they didn't have space to grow in. But over the spring and summer, his entire top palate was pried apart with metal, and they still weren't growing in. So in September, the orthodontist ran a laser over his gums, and now the teeth have popped out. It was apparently quite painful to the little boy, in spite of assurances that it would not be. And the result was kind of disgusting, too: two mean-looking burn marks on the gums. But the teeth are now out. Free at last.

I gave a talk at the university one hour north -- put them all to sleep -- then visited my mother and sister and her family for dinner. We ate pie, and watched two-year-old Maddy stick pears upside down into Mom's outdoor swinging chair. Dinner and entertainment. It doesn't get much better than that. Except it did. My mother let me take home an extra pie, for my birthday.

I had a birthday. I turned 35.

Tim's parents brought me a cake and a super-powered stand mixer. These are the people who gave me 260 tulip bulbs for my birthday last year, and I spent the next month planting. This year, I get the gift of making cookies. Luckily, Tim likes to make cookies. He doesn't like planting tulip bulbs, so this year's gift is way better. Way better. (I am, of course, being silly. The tulips last spring were spectacular, and the neighbors can't get over them. But they won't get over Tim's cookies very readily, either.)

I spent an hour on a Saturday teaching about 12 boys and girls, ages six to nine, some fancy geometry. A few of my colleagues have kids the age of Jonathan, so we've decided to take turns running a Saturday math camp for them. So far, the first two meetings have been successful. I'm thinking I ought to compile a book of the activities that worked. Then you can try them at home, too. On your 6 to 9 year olds.

That's all I've got. What did you do with your September?

My secret

2011-10-03T21:53:00.003-06:00

Dear People who love me, and also those of you who still follow this blog out of some sort of morbid curiosity,

Recently, I did something I have always wanted to do: I finished. I finished writing my novel. Just putting that sentence down on the screen makes my heart get all swollen with pride and accomplishment. I've wanted to write a novel, but I put it off (too busy), until I started reading the inside back covers of other novels with growing jealousy, realizing those writers who were getting their novels published were people just like me. And then Letterpress wrote a blog post (long ago now) in which she said that sometimes, when we retire? We don't really want to do all those things we've been waiting for retirement to do. Like write a novel. Only she said it much more eloquently. And that chilled me enough that I finally sat down to get to work -- at least during Decembers and Junes, when I had a the time. And this June, I decided I had taken enough time, and the story had been in my head long enough, and I was going to finish. And I did. I did! I finished!

Reluctantly, possessively, I allowed the two people who love me the most in the whole world to read my novel: my husband and my sister. And because they love me most in the world, they liked it. And even better, they both claimed they liked it in spite of the fact that they love me most in the world, and they thought it was Really Good. And I should get it Published. Which is exactly what they were supposed to say, and exactly why I let those two read it and not anyone else.

So then, my beloved novel tucked under my arm, I began to do some research into how to get a novel published, now that all the hard work of actually writing it was done. And I feel like crying.

There is so much more work to do.

Apparently this hard thing that I did? This writing of the novel? Billions of people have done that. And reputable literary agents get about 50 to 100 queries per day by people like me who now want to sell that novel.

But I have begun to gather my courage around me, and I have written about seven drafts of a query letter, and one draft of a synopsis, and I have even given the precious novel to the two more people who love me next best in the whole world: my mother and my blunt sister, to see if they like it. But in two weeks, my mother has not touched the file, and it occurred to me that, realistically, she never will read it unless it actually gets published. (She does not understand that this is like another grandbaby, this project. And, yes, she would be thoroughly scandalized by that last sentence, as she should be, if she bothers to read my blog.) And the more blunt sister has not yet opened the book to read it, since I just mailed it to her last night.

But the other sister and the husband have now read drafts of my query, as well. And the helpful sister wants to run it by her writer friend and another friend who is well-read in my genre, for additional feedback, and after reading about how hard it is to actually sell a novel, I want all the feedback I can get.

Except.

Except that these people who my sister knows, who would be very helpful, live 3000 miles away where my sister lives. I could really use someone local to help me out. But I don't know if my neighbors have ever written a novel before. I've never even talked about taste in books with my neighbors. These people who read books like mine? I don't know where these people live. I could use the help of a supportive writing group. But I don't know how to find one. Or build one, whatever. And I am afraid to gather my neighbors and tell them I have done this thing: I have finished writing a novel. Because the words that make up the novel? Those are my words. My ideas. My feelings. I put myself all the way through that novel. And they may not like it.

And finally, just today, one of the blogs that I read had a long post about how important it is to find "mentors", which is code in my profession for "people to explain what is really going on". And I think that is true here, in this weird world I have entered by this weird thing I have done (writing a novel). But in my professional career, I know who to ask. Not true here.

Oh, my readers who have already finished writing a novel (and I know there are at least three of you out there): I now understand much more what you have been through, and I commiserate.

Mid-life crisis

2011-09-25T16:12:00.000-06:00

I turned 35 this week. It would have been just another birthday, except for several other events that happened at the same time.

One, after many years of ignoring my health, I finally scheduled a comprehensive physical exam, and the most convenient date for the exam happened to be the morning of my birthday. Two, around 2am the night before, I woke up with a pretty bad migraine and took the usual high dose of caffeine that knocks out the migraine for me. By the time of my appointment, the migraine pain was gone, but my blood pressure was really high, probably due to the caffeine. I had to get a follow up visit scheduled to check on that. Third, I got poked in the arms three times with needles during and after the appointment. I came away feeling bruised and mortal.

Fourth, the day before my birthday I had dinner at my mother's house. She mentioned that her 35th birthday was one of her worst. My paternal grandfather had just died at the age of 70. She had to face the fact that her life might be half over. Fifth, I've been feeling kind of low. Part of that is the migraine. But part of that is an inability to keep myself interested in tasks that I used to find enjoyable.

Anyway, I have decided the fix for all this is to have myself a really nice, big, whopping mid-life crisis, and so I've set out to plan a good one.

Unfortunately, I've already run into several snags. Many typical mid-life crises involve the purchase of large toys, but I'm not very interested in a new sports car, since I don't really like to drive and the freeway is totally torn up here. I missed the season for a boat, and frankly I don't want the hassle of getting it licensed and hauled around.

I've also considered and discarded the idea of having an affair with a younger man. That just sounds really creepy. Ew ew ew. I don't know how all those middle age men stomach the idea.

I looked into a possible career change, but apparently it will be more difficult than expected to sell my first novel. And even if I sell the novel, there's still a small chance that I won't reach the best-seller list immediately, and somehow the bills have to be paid in the mean time.

So anyway, I'm feeling kind of stuck, which isn't helping (see feeling low, above).

For now, I'm going to settle with folding laundry and then doing some homework. But meanwhile, if you have any good ideas for a fabulous mid-life crisis, I'd be happy to hear them.

Projects

2011-09-18T16:01:00.001-06:00

Tim cleaned the garage over the summer. It looks spectacular. And what do you know? It really can fit two cars. After all. The garage hasn't been this clean since it was built. No, it wasn't cleaned out by the previous owner when we moved in. In the freezer that was left for us, for example, we found steaks dated 1976. There was also a box of the former owner's photos, a box of toys with the name of his 44-year-old daughter on the outside, and some old fabric. To this collection and more, we added our stuff over the past three years, including construction supplies, boxes, bikes, windows, wood, paint....

Cleaning out a garage involves several trips to Habitat for Humanity, and a couple of trips to the dump. But when you're finally done, you can take out the patio chairs and just sit out there and gaze at the clean-ness. Wow. That was a project.

Me, I've been processing fruit again since July. This year, I tried making more jam. Cherry, black raspberry, plum, blackberry. I've also made a lot of fruit rolls, in cherry-apple, black raspberry, plum, apricot, and pear. In late July, I dried sour apples, and made some dried apricots. It's lovely to live in a former fruit orchard, but there is a price to be paid. The price is in time, evenings and weekends. Taking care of fruit is a huge project.

Oh, and guess what Tim found when cleaning out the garage? A massive fruit dehydrator, much like the one we purchased last year to deal with all our fruit. Maybe I'll clean it out and we can use two massive dehydrators in parallel, but frankly, that sounds too exhausting. I am ready to move onto other projects now.

Not remembering

2011-09-11T15:43:00.000-06:00

Some things ought to be remembered. But I don't want to be the one to do the remembering. I've been avoiding images, articles, analyses, reflections on that date 10 years ago.

I was a graduate student in California. I had been married just over two years, and Tim and I lived in a small, 600 square foot apartment. On the west coast, we didn't even wake up until the tragedy had happened. It didn't unfold for us. It had already happened. We woke up, tried to get online to read the news, but found our favorite news site phenomenally slow. We showered, dressed. The online site showed a picture and a headline, and that was all. We thought it was a hoax, and tried to reload.

I didn't sleep well that night.

Do you remember how we all wondered what to do with ourselves for many days afterwards? When would it no longer be disrespectful of the human victims to carry on our normal lives? We used to read daily comics on a website, Tim and I, and for a few weeks nothing changed -- the writers had all submitted their daily comic strips several weeks in advance. One by one over several weeks, each of the writers of the daily comic strips replaced their usual silliness with a tribute, now days late.

The skies were empty of airplanes for several days, except military aircraft. Once, within a few days, a huge military helicopter on unknown business flew near our apartment, and I worried.

I only had nine classmates in my class in graduate school, and only four were born in the US, and only three to US parents. The other woman, Yu, was from mainland China, and had recently been investigating spirituality and religion. She would go running around a campus track in the evenings, and I remember going with her one day, not long afterwords, in the light of a sunset. The moon was high and full over us as we ran, around and around in circles, and we talked about religion and God and why. She told me that in China, it was the festival of the moon that night. Her loved ones were gathered far away from her to celebrate the full moon of autumn, and eat moon cakes. It was my birthday.

When we were living in Texas, several years later, a beloved woman in our ward suffered a head injury in a bike accident, miles away. We women flocked to the relief society president and asked if there was anything we could do. The answer was no, everything had been taken care of. Don't worry. And I realized in that moment that when tragedy strikes, people want to be allowed a meaningful way of showing their love. Please don't tell me there is nothing I can do. If I do nothing, how will I let you know how much it hurts me, too? Your loss? Give me a toilet brush and some cleanser and let me scrub out the bathroom, please. I know you don't need it, but I do.

There was nothing I could do, in California, except hold Tim a little tighter and run around that track with Yu. And I still feel helpless. I don't want to think about it, being helpless. Hold my family a little closer, harass the neighbors with a toilet brush and cleanser. Hope it doesn't hurt too much, to die, when my turn comes.

I don't want to think about it.

Stress related

2011-09-07T22:03:00.000-06:00

My gums were swollen this morning. After several conversations with my dentist, I now know that for me, swollen gums are an indication of too much stress in my life. It's actually pretty handy. Everyone else has to walk around wondering if they are suffering from too much stress. Me, I just run my tongue around my gums and I know immediately.

So let's think for a minute about stress.

Has it been a minute?

My thought is that I don't deserve to be suffering from stress. How can I be feeling stress, when my country is not suffering from catastrophic famine? My family is healthy. I have a good job that pays the bills on time. I am happily married. I am a member of the dominant race, religion, and sexual orientation in my neighborhood. My accent matches their accent. My life is a model of middle class harmony. There is something selfish and deranged about a woman who suffers stress related gum disease while living such a life.

And yet the gums are swollen.

I need a therapist. (Oh, and still looking for a good hairdresser, too.)

Why?

2011-08-27T23:45:00.007-06:00

In 1906, to build school unity, a group of high school students spent six hours hauling lime, sand, and rocks up a nearby mountain. They were going to leave an emblem of their school upon the hill, three letters long. But after six hours of heavy labor, only the middle letter was finished, and they abandoned the project.

Today, the single letter still stands, about 380 feet long, on the side of the mountain, visible for miles and miles across the valley in the summer when the snow is gone. This year, it has been less of a school symbol to me and more of a question.

Why? It asks. Impassively. Uncaring. Why?

Since the snow melted this winter, I've been wondering that question a lot.

In early May, I heard that my request for early promotion had been denied at the VP level, no reasons given. I was calm and polite as I heard the news, but it really hurt. And then for the next several days, I would leave work and see the question on the mountain, calm, imposing, without offering any answers. Why? Tall and stern, it seemed to be a warning that I needed to reflect, carefully, upon my job, upon our location, upon whether or not this was really a good place for our family to be. Why? Why should it be?

One of the people who is most dear to my mother in the whole world lives a few houses away, across the street. In July, she lost a son. Her immediate family rallied around. And me, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to be able to do something, anything, to help. So I offered to walk the dog for a week. Carrying bags of dog poop with a massive animal on a chain, I walked up and down the hills nearby, under the shadow of the single letter. Why?

Today I heard, from my mother, that a second tragedy has struck the woman's family. Why? Why twice in a single summer?

It's a solemn letter, and a sobering question. I suppose no one in this valley is immune to having to ask it, although perhaps, if they don't look up, they can forget it is there. You can see it from the Empty Sea, where young people stop on their way to give up two years of their lives. Why? it asks, and they must be certain they are serious about their sacrifice.

You can see it from the interstate, where traffic lanes have wobbled drunkenly under two years of bridge construction. Why, commuters? Why do you put up with this? And they hunker in their cars and wonder.

And the college students see it from their dorms, and it haunts them as they sign up for classes, study for finals, choose a major. Why?

I wish those high school students had bothered to finish what they began back in 1906.

Park City

2011-08-21T16:49:00.003-06:00

Jonathan and I were in Park City, Utah, last week, while I was at a conference.

I have to travel a lot for work -- something about working on research with people scattered around the world. But travel gets tricky, with a family that I like to be with, and a husband who also works full time. This last week was particularly tricky, because Jonathan's summer camp was over, but school hadn't started. And then I recalled some queries earlier in the summer, and started looking again, and found that a couple of the major ski resorts in Utah have their own summer day camp for kids. The kids go swimming, ride the gondola, take field trips to Salt Lake, make arts and crafts, and do all sorts of fun things. So this time, Jonathan came with me, and we left Tim home by himself.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he was at his camp, and I was at my conference. Evenings, we went to the hotel pool, the conference picnic, and watched Sponge Bob on the widescreen TV in our room. Thursday, we took an extra day, and bought Alpine Slide tickets at the Park City Mountain Resort. We rode the ski lifts up and back, and tried out the Alpine Coaster, and roasted in the record hot sunshine. Sunburns for both of us. Phew! But it was fun to get to spend a little more time with my boy before school starts (tomorrow).

What about the conference? One important aspect of travel for work is the boring evening stuck in a blah hotel with nothing to do but work on that research you came for. I did certainly miss that this time around. And yet -- I think next time I have a conference in Park City, I'll take Jonathan along again. Maybe we'll invite Tim.

Maybe.

Beautiful

2011-08-12T21:50:00.004-06:00

Ben M. was the first person who made me think that I might be beautiful.

But not how you think.

In 11th grade English, Ben wrote an essay that was a parody of our class discussion, and Mr W. thought it was so funny, that he read it aloud to us in class.

Um. I played some part in the said 11th grade English discussion, as I decided on my own, late at night, that Lady MacBeth was the unfortunate victim of a misogynistic society, and compiled a page of Shakespearian citations to back myself up. This long list, giving detailed evidence of Lady MacBeth's innocence, I presented the following day to an unsuspecting class of 16-year-olds. Rock. Solid. Evidence.

Anyway, Ben thought the ensuing discussion was hilarious, and he wrote about it in his little essay, which Mr. W. thought was hilarious, and read aloud, to all of us.

And honestly, I have no memory of what Ben said about the validity of my arguments, but I do remember the way he described me. He said I was, and I quote, "beautiful and intelligent."

Wow.

Did he really think I was beautiful? Or did he just put that in for dramatic effect? Probably dramatic effect. Because in all honesty, as a 16-year-old, I knew which girls were really beautiful. They were the ones who were getting asked to prom, for example. Or maybe they were just getting an ice cream or going bowling, but with a boy. Because boys like beautiful girls. I, on the other hand, was spending my evenings digging references out of Elizabethan literature in an attempt to vindicate imaginary Scottish women.

But you know, it stuck.

Me. Beautiful.

Fast forward a handful of years, to me, late at night on Saturday, looking at myself in the mirror, deciding I could really use a haircut. Right Now.

So I turned to my friend Google, and asked her how I could give myself a haircut, and she helpfully pulled up a few clips on YouTube, and within an hour, I had given myself a very modern layered cut and style.

And looking at myself in the mirror when it was over, for some reason I thought of Ben M.

Wow, I said to myself. I am beautiful.

But unfortunately, the haircut looked like I'd turned my head upside down and clipped off the end of my ponytail.

I wonder what Lady MacBeth would think of that?

Late summer

2011-08-07T16:52:00.002-06:00

Technically, summer begins around June 21 and ends around September 21, so we are technically only mid-summer here at the end of the first week of August.

But with only two weeks until Jonathan goes back to school, and only three weeks for me, this is pretty much the end. I'm taking Jonathan with me to a conference in the mountains his last week, and then the following week when he's in school, I'll be Miss Meeting, so I'm calling this week my last true week of summer.

Now, I know I abandoned you back in Paris in June with this blog, and we didn't even make it to the science museum there, which was one of the best stops on that trip. And then I have a whole pile of July posts that haven't been published yet, including how my sister-in-law and I boogie boarded in the Pacific during that 4th of July week -- off the Oregon coast. I'm planning to describe how we nearly got hypothermia, but as a trade off, the beautiful pristine beach belonged only to us. The crowds were down in So Cal in the sunshine.

I also still plan to describe my brother's visit with his three kids, and how we climbed, questioning, up the front of a nearby mountain to take in a view of a thunderstorm. And how it really wasn't that great of a climb, because Jonathan whined the whole way up, and one of the other three tripped and limped, bleeding, the whole way down. But we got our thunderstorm.

And I haven't described picking fruit, walking the dog, hosting the water gun party, the weekend at the northern lake with my other brother.

The whole summer has slipped away, leaving only a long to-do list.

Paris: On the purpose of a woman's education

2011-07-29T19:47:00.003-06:00

(This post was written in a hotel room, Tuesday, June 14, 2011.)

Because of the nature of the second paragraph of this post, I would like to start out by saying that I strongly believe all people should get as much education as they can. Brains are meant to be stretched: studies repeatedly show that educated brains are happier, healthier, and lead to happier, healthier families. This is true for both boys and girls.

Now, when I was a child, growing up in a conservative religious neighborhood, sometimes I was told that girls should get an education because they would need it to teach their children. (Naturally, only girls were told this.) This really rankled, for multiple reasons. It still strikes me as a pretty poor way to convince girls to go to college. They aren't stupid, girls. They realize that 90 percent of the education picked up in school will never be used in teaching children. They know that their child will never ask them on the street, for example, to describe the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, or to compare and contrast Gothic architecture with that of the late 19th century industrial revolution.

***

We are in Paris this week. Tuesday morning we took an elevator to the top of the Eiffel tower, for a panoramic view of Paris. When it was built, late 19th century, it was the tallest tower in the world, and remained so until just before the 1920s. On the first floor, there are a series of pictures of the buildings you can see all around in Paris, and some description of what they are and when they were built.

"Do they still have a king here?" asked Jonathan, looking across at the Louvre.

"What was the French Revolution?"

From the Eiffel tower, we took the metro to Isle de la Cite. When we realized our transfer was on the Champs Elysee, we stepped out and made our way to the center of the roundabout where the Arc de Triomphe stands. This huge arc is visible from our hotel room, and was built by Napoleon to honor his grand army. Now beneath it lies the tomb of the unknown soldier from World War I.

"Who was Napoleon?"

"Who is the unknown soldier? What was World War I?"

Next stop, Notre Dame cathedral. Construction began in the 10th century, AD. They were building a tall cathedral to point to heaven, but constructed it out of heavy stone. Therefore, they used all the architectural techniques available to them in the Gothic era.

"What's a flying buttress?"

Inside, a sculpture of Jeanne d'Arc stands in a corner.

"Who was Joan of Arc?"

We were pretty worn out after these three buildings, and the crowds, and headed back to our hotel to take a break.

From there, thinking about the day, and what I did and did not remember, I wished I had taken more humanities classes in college, so I could have better taught my child.

I suppose I have now fulfilled the purpose of my liberal education.

Paris, June 13

2011-07-23T18:57:00.004-06:00

We arrived in Paris Monday afternoon. First thing after checking into our hotel,

we took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower,

and bought some crepes for dinner (in the rain).

Nothing says Paris like a chocolate and the Eiffel Tower.

Ah, Paris.

Three nights in Germany

2011-07-23T14:00:00.000-06:00

From England, we took a train to London, then to Paris through the Chunnel, because I've always wanted to do that. It was actually not a particularly interesting train ride. The part through the Chunnel was mostly just dark. You couldn't actually see any fishes swimming by or anything, as we were well under the English Channel, with tunnel walls made out of reinforced concrete, or some other such material. I think it would be much more interesting to build a thick glass tunnel straight through the English Channel, and send the train there. Perhaps it the track should spiral around a few times while it travels, upside down occasionally like at the amusement park, for the best views out the train window. That would be a very interesting ride, if a little bit nauseating.

Anyway, in Paris, we walked from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de l'Est, more quickly than anticipated, as the Chunnel train arrived a little later than expected: It had to be stopped, turned off, and then turned back on again somewhere in Northern France, due to an electrical problem. I didn't realize that the reset trick worked with passenger trains as well as computer operating systems. But there you have it.

We still arrived in plenty of time to catch our express train to Saarbrucken, Germany. Tim has friends who live in Saarbrucken: Jorg and Anja, with their two little girls ages 6 and 4. Actually, although they were originally Tim's friends, I now count them as my friends as well. Back when we were all childless and free, we toured Ireland together, and since then, we've kept track of births and Christmases and other events, stopping by to say hello whenever travel happens to take us withing a few hours distance of each other. Which is not very often.

But back to the record, Jorg and Anja speak English very well. Their girls speak only German. And I speak a handful of German sentences and an armful of French ones and mostly just English. And Jonathan, who is just older than their eldest, didn't know what German was until he was surrounded by it, at which point I realized I ought to teach him how to say please, thank you, and excuse me. However, in the end, he didn't even try communicating with language. By the end of our weekend together, die Kinder were all screaming happily and jumping off the furniture together. Mischief: the universal language.

For our weekend in Saarland, we ate extremely well. Jorg and Anja like to fill their lives with organic fruit and yogurt.

We visited a wild animal park near the university,

hiked a hill to see a boot made of stone (der Stiefel),

ate Spaghetti Eis,

and took a walk by the Saar.

We also learned the words for currant (Johannisbeere -- because Anja makes a mean currant jam), and ladybug (Marienkäfer -- say Maureen Kae-fuh), and little witch (Kleine Hexe).

We only spent three days with Jorg and Anja, which was not enough, but they have promised to come visit us within a few years.

Photos of Oxford

2011-07-17T21:54:00.007-06:00

I've been getting behind on my writing here, mostly because my life has become a giant circle of writing elsewhere. But now, safely home and ensconced in fruit harvesting during spare time, I would like to devote a few more posts to travels, and what we've been doing with our summer. Some of the upcoming posts I (mostly) wrote during the event, but I was away from internet or didn't bother finishing, and so I will clean it up and post soon. Some posts I need to start from scratch. This post must be written from scratch. However, as I am a bit tired of writing, because my life is a giant circle of writing elsewhere, I will save on writing by posting photos.

Let me remind the reader that we were in England this summer for two weeks, May 27 through June 10. I worked from 6am to 3pm, with a break for breakfast. Tim worked from 3pm until midnight. Jonathan played and toured from about 8am until 6pm. We managed for two weeks. And ended up with many photos of Jonathan. Here are a few highlights.

1. Atop Carfax tower, for a view of the City Centre.

2. In Oxford Castle, recently a prison.

3. Outside Oxford Castle.

4. Bramley apple crepes.

5. Punting boats on the Cherwell.

6. Sheldonian theatre.

7. Mind the nettles.

8. Boat trip on the Thames.

9. Chocolate cake at the cafe outside St. Mary's Church.

10. Climbing into the tower, built 1280 AD, of St Mary's Church.

11. View from the top.

12. Magdalen College interior, with map.

13. Addison's walk.

14. Fellow's garden, contemplative.

15. Magdalen college.

16. The punting dance, 1, 2, 3.

17. Pasty (rhymes with nasty) on Cornmarket street.

18. Behind Christ Church College, near meadows.

The end. For now.

Pisa, Italy, May 29, 2011

2011-06-27T21:17:00.006-06:00

Second post written about Pisa, Italy. I left Pisa on May 27, 2011, and wrote this post two days later. I'm finally uploading it now, exactly one month after flying out of Italy.

May 29, 2011

I was in Italy only once before, in 1997. I was about to begin my last year as a university student, and I was trying to decide what to do next. Grad school. But in what field? Where to apply? And there was a boy. He was in Japan for the summer. And I was in Italy. To think. Separately.

In 1997, I entered Italy by tour bus. There were sixty university students in the bus, one professor, an assistant, and a driver. Only the professor and the driver spoke Italian. I borrowed a tour book from another student, and learned to count to 10. Grazi. Prego.

First stop, Florence. Red tile roofs. I remember my first view of the duomo, towering over our hotel, only a few streets away. It was huge. Imposing. Stunning. I had seen images of Florence's main cathedral projected onto a screen the term before: Introduction to Architecture, fine arts core requirement, 6000 miles away.

In person, the building was an architectural marvel that a screen projection could never capture. The size, the colors, the history. The mobs of people, mostly tourist, hovering at its base. I remember feeling amazed, seeing the building in person so soon after memorizing its image for the final exam. It was so massive. And I learned that some things must be experienced in person. The view was unexpectedly transformative.

1997, we had a free afternoon. I couldn't persuade any of the other 59 to come with me, although admittedly I wasn't one to try very hard. And so I wound down the narrow streets on my own, bought a ticket, and climbed into the guts of the building, up narrow stairs beneath the dome itself, to the top of the cathedral.

I thought about this 1997 experience a little, here in 2011, just last week, while wandering alone through the streets of Pisa.

2011, I never considered climbing the leaning tower. It was expensive. Too touristy. And expensive. Paying the entrance fee was like willingly submitting to robbery. And too crowded. Expensive.

Until I overheard the older American couple trying to talk themselves out of climbing it. And then I made my way to dinner -- at the scuola cafeteria -- to find that a colleague had just been, and was grinning ear to ear.

Too expensive? I had forgotten that I was no longer the university student, who had saved every penny and lived an extra year with her parents in order to spend that summer in Europe. Too expensive is spending 30 million dollars to rennovate and restore a beautiful, striking building -- a leaning tower -- so that people like me could come and take a picture of all the silly tourists.

So Tuesday morning, just after a quick breakfast, I made my way back to the tower and bought a ticket. 9:00 am entrance.

I stood in line on my own, climbed to the top on my own.

Stepped out alone onto the top, took a picture, turned, on my own -- and clutched the rail in front of me with vertigo. The tower sloped away from my feet in the downhill direction, to the south. It was surprisingly frightening. My mind knew that the tower would not fall, but my heart felt that if I moved downhill, my weight would be enough to tip the scale and we would all tumble down.

It took me a moment to overcome the vertigo, and then, new courage, I made my way around the edge. I was the first in the 9:00 tour group to see the smaller, narrower stairs, going up even higher. And so I climbed again (slowly), and made it to the very very top, and looked out over Pisa. Red roofs. And listened, silently, to the languages and accents of the other tourists around me, as they saw, as I saw, the grooves in the marble, the ancient stone, the effort and care into keeping this beautiful building standing. And felt the vertigo. Amazing. Striking. Transformative?

I don't know what has become of the few souvenirs I purchased in Italy in 1997. The professor is 14 years dead. The boyfriend in Japan was married, to someone else, the following January. I lost touch with all 59 of the other students, within a year, and moved on to a new life in another state.*

But I remember the duomo in Florence. I remember how impressive the building was, and how glad I have been since, that I was willing to climb it myself.

Remembering that, this past Friday morning, I paid the entrance fee again, and climbed to the top of the leaning tower again, before flying out of Pisa that afternoon.

So in the end, I went up the tower twice. And the second time, I watched the way the thousands of tourists had carved grooves in the steps that matched the lean and pull of the building,

and noticed carvings on the walls I had not noticed before.

And stood and looked out over Tuscany: sea to the west, alps to the north, red rooftops. No regrets. Because in a few years, the building will need rennovating again, and I'm happy to be able to help, for some student like me.

(*While I can't even remember the names of most of the other students, I did unexpectedly reconnect with one of them a few years ago, two lifetimes later, here. Soul-Fusion, your most recent posts (as of May 29, 2011) have been on my mind a lot, too, in Pisa. I am praying for you from here.)

Pisa, Italy, May 23, 2011

2011-06-26T20:48:00.011-06:00

I have been back home for nearly a week, now, and I'm finally getting around to going through some photos, etc. This post was written and saved to my hard drive on May 23, 2011. I'm posting it now, June 26, more than one month later.

I arrived in Pisa yesterday evening (May 22), after several hours spent in airport terminals and several more on airplanes. The airport is only about three kilometers from the city center, and I had thought I might walk, but the bus Rossa was already waiting at the terminal, and only cost 1.50 Euros.

I hopped off the bus at the first stop across the river, and walked a few blocks, past the University of Pisa which is helping to host my visit, to a university guesthouse where I will be staying. My room is on the first floor, above the ground floor, which means 2nd floor to American readers.

How to describe my room? The ceiling is very high, and seems to be tiled with brick -- looks quite heavy. Pisa is not in earthquake country, is it? Otherwise, it is quite nice. A painted door leads to the bathroom, which is clean and large. The building itself has been rennovated in modern times, but its frame is from the 15th century. The rennovation exposed the old stone and brick architecture, but incorporated it into light weight glass and color. It has been quite well done.

Directly across from my lodgings is the Scuela Normale Superiore, which is on the tourist walk from the train station.

I have a card to use the cafeteria there. Last night, jet lagged and tired, I only took a roll, a bowl of lettuce, and a bowl of pasta. Hiding in the marinara sauce were clams and spices, and it was quite good. The roll was very hard, but I soaked it in olive oil and went away happy.

The weather is wonderful, after weeks of rain at home. My window opens above a rose garden, and I left it open all night, letting the scent of flowers drift in.

This morning, after obtaining some papers for my conference, I wandered over to the duomo and the famous leaning tower. The tower is very pretty, and has been recently cleaned and restored. The angle at which it leans is much more striking in person than in a postcard. I took some pictures.

But also just as fun as watching the tower and the duomo, was watching the tourists. There were thousands of them, all stopping at the same places and taking the same pictures.

Lining the street were booths and vendors.

I contemplated buying a hat, since the sun was shining quite brightly. But should I buy one of the ones for the Japanese tourists (complete with Japanese tags),

or one of the ones for the American tourists, with tags reading, in English, "made in Italy"?

And then as I looked more closely, I saw that I could buy a leather purse. Hadn't I been wishing I'd packed a purse instead of my large backpack? Or a leather wallet, to replace mine that is wearing out.

In the end, there were too many choices, so I left.

As I stopped to decide where to go next, I overheard an older American couple trying to talk themselves out of climbing to the top of the leaning tower.

"Think of your heart," said the woman. "All those stairs. And it probably isn't good for me either."

"But look, it looks like you can go only part way," replied the man. "We could go up to there and then decide whether to go on."

"Yes, maybe it's like the Statue of Liberty, where you can climb part way and then there are pullout places to rest."

"But not everywhere."

"No, not everywhere."

"All those stairs. What if you get tired? What if I get tired?"

And on and on, until they were met by other members of their tour group and started talking post cards; and I decided I had better see about climbing the leaning tower, since my heart is just fine, and since I've never climbed the Statue of Liberty, and apparently climbing famous tourist sites is the correct tourist thing to do.

The line in front of the tower was short. Tickets, biglettos, read a sign nearby, pointing me to north. The line to buy tickets was much longer. The next available tower tickets were for a time two hours later. How much? Hmmm... Two hour wait for 15 Euros. Not now. Maybe I'll go back tomorrow morning.

I wandered out by way of the city wall, past some old Roman ruins, down a street which an internet tour described as the "most expensive street in town", to a small gelato shop. The camera weilding tourists were mostly gone here, and the gelato cost only 1.50 euros for a cup, so I purchased ice cream rather than a hat or a purse or tower ticket. Pesca e fragola. Peach and strawberry. Today.

In England

2011-06-05T10:59:00.002-06:00

The sky is gray, it has been raining on and off, and so the weather is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from England. We're in Oxford again for a couple of weeks, for me to get some work done, and to see if Jonathan remembers anything of the year we spent here when he was 3 and 4.

So far, he remembers only one playground. He does not remember our old neighborhood, the park we walked through daily, our church, his school, or double cream. No double cream?

We visited our old church this morning, and I recognized at least half the people there, although I had forgotten all their names (and they had forgotten mine). People were very friendly. Remarkably so. Tim commented that he wished we were staying another month, to spend a little more time with people we used to know.

As I said, Jonathan pretty much has no memory of the year we spent here. So we've been reintroducing him. He is a big fan of the double decker buses, and wants to take the bus whenever possible. In one week, he has been to most of the museums around Oxford, and he has the stamina now to appreciate them more than when he was only three.

Friday, after I finished work, Jonathan took me through the Pitt Rivers museum. He and Tim had toured it the day before while I was working, and I wanted a turn. The museum website says that the museum "displays archaeological and ethnographic objects from all parts of the world." Pretty much it's a huge room full of stuff, much of it from time of British imperialism. I found it partly creepy (19th century shrunken heads) and partly truly horrifying. For example, the label next to a suit of chain mail reads something about how the mail was taken from the body of a dead soldier after a battle in Africa, in which the British, seeking vengeance over something, slaughtered about 10,000 poorly armed people. At least they are upfront about the history.

Tim has been working nights, and I have been working days, and Jonathan has been swapping parents midday. This weekend, our only weekend in England, we did that which is unacceptable tourist behavior. Instead of getting up early and taking the train to see all of London, we slept late, then slept some more, and spent Saturday reading, barely leaving the house. It isn't what we had planned, but somehow the schedule, or the jet lag, or something had been wearing us down, and we were all happy to rest. Tomorrow we'll go back to the serious business of work and tourism.

In all, it has been nice to be back in Oxford, if only for a short time.

Plaster

2011-06-04T01:30:00.004-06:00

Sometimes I feel inadequate.

Like my head is full of mostly plaster instead of brains.

I know there are brains in there, but all the thoughts have to spend so long traveling back and forth through the plaster, that sometimes I get stuck in stupidity.

And that makes me feel inadequate.

.....

I have been traveling, and writing posts, but not posting them. Sometime soon I will post my traveling posts. Maybe even this weekend, because I have a weekend. It would probably be better for my career to spend the weekend sitting quietly and trying to coax my thoughts through the plaster. But that sounds like a headache waiting to happen.

And plus, family gets first dibs on weekend anyway. Not career.

16 questions

2011-05-18T20:15:00.005-06:00

Following our narcissistic blogging theme, today we publish Artax's response to 16 questions, selected from personality and family history surveys.

1. What is your favorite color?

Probably orange, although depending on the day and my mood, I might pick any warm color.

2. What is your favorite holiday?

Today, I would say Independence day, because it is celebrated while the world is warm and green. At least in the USA.

3. Do you have a favorite number?

My favorite number is 22, because it is a nice shade of yellow. What is the color of your favorite number?

4. What is your favorite smell?

Rain on the pavement in the desert. If they made that into a perfume, I would wear it. Except that perfumes make my husband sneeze.

5. Do you remember your great-grandparents?

My mother's father's parents died in a car accident long before I was born. My mother's mother's mother died when my grandmother was a little girl. My mother's mother's father was Albert, and he and I shared a birthday. We have a very dark, blurry photo of Albert and me on my eighth birthday, and his eighty-somethingth. He lived in a house somewhere in this town of mine, but my parents haven't remembered where. I wonder if I would recognize it if I saw it?

My father's mother grew up without a mother as well, and her father was dead before I was born. My father's father's parents also died long before I was born. So I just had the one great grandparent.

Thinking about it, I'm feeling a little left out with this question.

6. Do you remember your first date?

I think his name was Kenny. I was pressured into attending Jr Prom, and my cousin lined me up. He was a nice guy, and we had some interests in common, but that one dance was the only date for us. No sparks. And I was painfully shy.

7. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I remember telling my 2nd grade friends how I would run the 2nd grade classroom when I was a teacher. In retrospect, five days each week of pajama parties probably wouldn't have worked out educationally.

In 8th grade, for a class project, I was supposed to research three careers that interested me. I chose illustrator, writer, and choreographer, classical ballet. I didn't grow up to be any of those things.

8. How tall are you?

I am 70 inches tall in the evenings. In the mornings, I am 71 inches tall. Most people only shrink about half an inch over the course of a day, but a few years ago, Tim and I measured, and yup -- my height varies an entire inch each day.

9. Shoe size?

11 womens, extra narrow. Kind of a tricky size for someone who often commutes by walking.

10. What color are your eyes?

Hazel. Dark blue on the outside, brown on the inside. Some days it blurs together to look dark green. My eyes are really cool. Wish they were a little bigger so you would notice.

11. What major illnesses or health problems have you had?

The regular migraines are the biggest problem, although I'm better now at managing those. The migraines often come with depression, which is not as easy to manage, but typically endurable, especially when I recognize it as part of a passing migraine. Most of the time.

That's about it. I'm lucky enough that I've never been hospitalized, except for childbirth and recovery. As far as I know, I haven't even broken a bone, although a doctor once suggested that my repeated sprained ankles probably started with an un-diagnosed break back in elementary school. No problems there now.

12. What do you do regularly for exercise?

I walk to/from school, and to/from work. Unless I bike to work. Then we count that. Sometimes, I like to play Dance Dance Revolution for exercise.

13. What are your hobbies?

Hobbies come and go. In a past life, I used to sew, and play the piano, and dance on my toes. I painted, with oils. I would take up oil painting again, if it weren't for the toxic chemicals and the huge mess to clean up. And the general lack of time. I guess I write this blog now, as a hobby.

14. Is there anything you have always wanted to do, but haven't?

Well, always is a long time to have wanted to do something, so I would have to say no. However, I have wanted, for example, to finish writing a novel for a long time. But lately I haven't really cared enough to do the writing. So still no. There are a few things I'd like to do in life before the end, but they aren't the always kind of things.

15. What was your bedroom like in the house you grew up in?

I shared a small room with two younger sisters. When I was about eight years old, I had the chance to move to my own bedroom, and I ruined it. I was afraid of the dark, and asked to move back with the sisters. Within a couple of years, I began rearranging the furniture to put furniture walls between my space and my sisters' space.

When I was about 12, my mother gave birth to a baby boy, and soon after I got to move into the sewing room with the baby. Within a couple of years, that baby moved downstairs and the new baby moved in. Then, when I was 16, we hosted an exchange student my age from Germany, and she and I shared a room. When she left, I kept the room on my own, all through my senior year in high school. I so much enjoyed having the room of my own that I lived at home for three more years in college. That was a mistake.

16. Is this post finished yet?

Almost. It turned out longer than expected, eh? I had meant to spend my free evening playing video games. Oh well. Perhaps there is something here for posterity. Or for an upcoming smear campaign. Whichever comes first.

On the mistreatment of spring gardens

2011-05-17T20:00:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, the grounds people at my university dug up the spring gardens. I arrived on campus to find a mob of gardeners, wielding shovels, digging up tulips roughly and chucking them into the back of a truck. Some of the tulips had begun to fade, but many were still colorful and pretty. The pansies hadn't even reached their peak. And by dumping tulips in the back of a truck, the grounds staff have prevented them from soaking up the sun, nourishing their roots, allowing them to grow back first thing next spring. And the next. And the next. When treated well, tulips give back beauty for years.

I'm always disappointed to see the spring garden treated so poorly in May.

This morning, I noticed that the summer garden has been planted. Where yesterday there were pansies and tulips, this morning there are geraniums and petunias. Last night, a cold front moved in, and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. Geraniums don't like that. The pansies would have been happy and beautiful even in the cold.

Me, I biked home in the pouring rain.

And I thought while I biked. I thought about how biking in the rain is more dangerous than biking on a dry road. Visibility is somewhat reduced, for me and the other traffic. Brakes can be slippery. Water falls in my eyes and beads on my glasses. But for all that, thought I, I was well prepared with rain jacket and waterproof trousers. I had an extra fleece jacket to keep me warm. In spite of the very small amount of increased danger, I knew I would be fine.

But that didn't prevent me from being disappointed. Sad, even. Wanting to curl in a ball and cry a little bit, even.

What could the spring gardens have done more? They were colorful, healthy, beautiful. Growing exactly as expected, blooming even longer than expected, because of the cooler weather this year. And yet they were dug up, because of some numbers on a calendar.

In July, the summer garden will have matured, and it will be beautiful and colorful. And with a head start, it will be healthier, stronger, better able to withstand the heat of the sun. And honestly, I know the spring garden wouldn't have looked nice into the heat of July. Surely the grounds people know this. They are thinking of July as they fling tulips into trucks.

But it still hurts to be a tulip.

And no, this isn't really a post about gardens.

It's raining in Michigan

2011-05-13T18:46:00.003-06:00

The card on the tack board in the hotel room reads, "It is important that you know the exact location of this hotel so you can know whether a severe weather alert will affect you. This hotel is in Lansing, Michigan, Ingham County."

That's all. No instructions on where to go or what to do during the severe weather. Michigan counts as Midwest, right? Don't you think they should have tornado shelters? Does this hotel have a tornado shelter? And where would I hear about severe weather? Clock radio? TV? I don't see any weather radios in this hotel room.

In the event that this thunderstorm turns severe, and the tornado comes plowing through my window, I will be able to state confidently that Lansing is in Ingham County, Michigan. Just in case anyone wants to know during a tornado. Do you think I could stop a tornado, by knowing something like that? It must be important, or they wouldn't have tacked it to the board in the room here.

***

Solo trips for business are very good for getting work done. But I miss my comfy sofa at home, and my own bed. And my boys. And tornadoes almost never happen in the West.

***

Last night, a woman pounded on my door after I had put my pajamas on and was settling into bed to work.

"Is there an alarm on in there?"

"Uh... No," I called from inside, peering out the peep hole.

"I hear an alarm -- a buzzing sound -- in my room. Will you turn it off?"

"Uh... I don't hear anything. Try the room on the other side?"

A few minutes later, my reading was interrupted by the hotel phone ringing.

"Hello, this is the front desk," said a chipper voice. "Another guest is complaining about an alarm going off in the room next door."

"Yes, she already contacted me. It isn't in this room."

"You're sure? You don't hear anything?"

"No."

"Do you hear it in the hall?"

"I'm not in the hall. I'm not going out into the hall to check. Maybe you should come down to see if you can hear it." (Can you tell I was getting annoyed? I have no excuses. Sometimes I am not a nice person.)

"There's not a fire alarm going off in your room?"

"I think I would notice a fire alarm."

"OK. Well thank you."

Tonight there is still no alarm going off in this room, although I hear the thunder approaching, and the rain bouncing off the window. It's actually a soothing sound, if I ignore that card tacked to the board over the table.

Ingham County.

Good to know.

I'll be back home tomorrow. I can't wait. Meanwhile, I'll try to be nice.

Migraine

2011-05-06T06:44:00.005-06:00

Syrup, grade A dark maple, has been seeping into my left ear all night long.

Oozing down the ear canal and then falling --

drip, drip, drip

against my right temple.

drip, drip.

Splattering.

Sliding downstream and pooling in my chest.

And I wake up to this sticky mess, cold black pond, and

Springtime in the garden

2011-05-01T13:09:00.012-06:00

For your viewing pleasure, I have pulled together some photos from our garden over the last few weeks. This is a musical slideshow, but you need to hum along on your own. I have interleaved the lyrics with the photos so that you will get the timing right.

Ready? Here's a note: Hmmmm.....

When it's springtime in the Rockies.....

March 12, 2011

I am coming back to you.....

Mar 12, 2011

Little sweetheart of the mountains.....

Apr 3, 2011

With your bonny eyes of blue.....

Apr 3, 2011

Once again I'll say "I love you"....

Apr 4, 2011

While the birds sing all the day.....

Apr 28, 2011

When it's springtime in the Rockies.....

Apr 28, 2011

In the Rockies, far away.....

Apr 30, 2011

... Ah, springtime.

Happiness is...

2011-04-27T21:14:00.002-06:00

... Grades submitted. Finally.

... Two days of predicted sunshine before another weekend of predicted snow.

... A student who says he sees the problem with the writing, and he will fix it. On his own. Thank you, student.

... Eight shade perennials planted in the front garden. Four to go. And who would have ever thought that I'd take up gardening as a hobby?

... Slightly sore muscles, from the gardening, but also from biking around town slightly late to everything. I like it when the muscles hurt just enough to tell you they are there, and that you've been working hard, doing good, but they don't hurt enough to interrupt regular life.

... Going to bed early.

... And waking up at a reasonable hour.

... Grant money appearing in my research account. Yeah projects!

... A clean and organized office. And only two unread emails.

... Strawberry season.

... Knowing how to spell corroborate. And using it correctly in a sentence.

... Figuring out 3 times 365 in my head, and telling The Boy the right answer. And then having him respond with, "Oh. I go pee 1095 times in a year."

What the?

Happiness. It isn't always what you would expect.

Looking around

2011-04-26T21:43:00.003-06:00

Hard freeze warning for tonight.

Yesterday I was trying to plant shrubbery, when it started to hail. So the shrubbery and I ducked into the garage.

This morning, fat white snowflakes were falling when we walked the boy to school.

And a hard freeze warning for tonight. So much for fruit trees this year.

Neighbors, family members, garden shop workers, all keep commenting that this seems to be a particularly cold April.

I shrug. I grew up here.

I remember looking forward to Memorial day -- end of May -- because we would drive four hours south, and it would be warm enough there -- in the south -- that I could finally wear my shorts and get a farmer tan on my knees. I remember that.

So cold Aprils? Not unusual.

Depressing, but not unusual.

Just for fun, Tim and I went looking for family homes in the nice neighborhoods in the cities where we used to live. The warm ones. The ones with really nice summer programs for kids. (I need to write another post about the lack of good stuff for school age kids to do here, summers, but I will save that for when I am in a better mood or I will get myself into trouble.)

We looked at moderate size houses (~20,000 square feet) in the neighborhood near the children's library, by that university where I went to grad school. Back then, those houses were over $1 million. Today they are $2.5 million. That after the burst housing bubble.

Boo.

I guess we'll just have to stick around here and endure the hard freezes.

Graduation

2011-04-23T21:19:00.002-06:00

Graduation? Already? You are asking. Yes, Reader. No spring break. Minimal winter break. Remember?

We are all graduated here at G.O.D. University. I know this, because I attended the ceremonies. Two of them. I was pressured into attending by an email message. The message said:

"Just a reminder that all faculty are asked to attend graduation exercises at least once per year. If you do not have robes, the department will pay the rental costs..."

Last year, I may or may not have attended any ceremonies. This year I felt a little guilty, so rented the gear and showed up. Twice. Once for the university, once for the college.

Graduation from the faculty side is a little different. The speakers are just as boring, but you get to wear super special graduation robes in multi colors that say "Hey! Look over here! I am Pompous!" And you get to sit on the very front row.

Sitting on the very front row is not actually much of a perk, because you can't nod off. Or start reading the paper you brought along for the boring parts.

But wearing the multi-colored robes is definitely a perk -- if you happen to own them and you didn't just do the free department rental thing.

Here are some things I've learned about faculty graduation robes. The color of the robe is black, if it's a rental, but if not, it will be in the colors of the university at which you received your doctorate, according to that university's own custom robe design. I looked mine up online, and it's pretty snazzy. Black with a red front and half red sleeves, colored lining. Nice.

Glad I didn't graduate from Princeton. Halloween stripes. Or Dartmouth, in green. Although Dartmouth has a super awesome hat. Like a leprechaun. See, the different universities choose different hats, too. And then everyone wears this strangulating thing around the neck and dangling half way down the back which is called a hood. That comes in the school colors and the color of the degree.

I have been coveting my graduation robes. I would wear them once a year. Ish. As asked. I would stand out in that pile of pompous faculty as the one in the snazzy robe with the red sleeves and the gold lining. But I looked it up online, and the official set of robes and hat costs about $1000.

What!? For once a year-ish?

There's a cheaper fake imitation set, that looks enough like the real thing that I'd buy it, but it still costs $360. Even so, I would only have to attend about 11-12 graduations before making up the rental cost to my department. And perhaps I could convince my child to get a PhD at the same university in golden-yellow math or science, and then he could inherit the robes. Smelly and moth eaten.

*Sigh*.

Another reason I want to buy my own robes is that I'm convinced the department secretary ordered the wrong color. Because my degree is in math and science, the velvet lining should be golden yellow. A louder voice in the department said that the degree is a doctor of Philosophy, and therefore the color should be blue for philosophy and political science. I am sure that is wrong, and I am looking for validation here. At my own graduation I wore yellow. I have a picture of it. And yellow is a nicer color. And goes better with the red sleeves of the gown I covet. You see how right I must be, Reader? If I bought my own regalia, I could buy golden yellow and look even better dressed.

Because as a faculty member, attending graduation has got to be about looking the best. It's not about friends and family -- there's nobody out there in the bleachers waiting to take your picture, or crying over your accomplishments. All those words in the speeches about going out into the real world? They don't apply. I will stay here at G.O.D. University, and remain fake. And as a new faculty member, I don't even know any of the students graduating. Although they all look nice, too.

Therefore, I have determined that I must attend graduation so I can parade in with all those colors, like a clown. And then provide entertainment as I begin to nod off on the front row. Right?

If you would like to donate to my clown robe fund, please contact me.

Relief

2011-04-17T20:31:00.003-06:00

Last Tuesday, which seems very long ago, I gave the talk that I had been dreading to the physicists. Incidentally, (since someone asked) the location of the talk was here, on the campus of the Good Old Dude's University. There was no interesting travel involved in the presentation, except that I walked two buildings south to where the physicists have their hide out. Their building has surprisingly narrow halls, and is quite gloomy -- even compared to my building. Both were built during the 1960s, I believe, in an architectural style which I like to call "cinder block with window slits". Perhaps the builders in the 60s thought that the box bunker buildings could protect them from political protests and/or nuclear proliferation. In any case, at least the ceilings in my building are finished. Physics doesn't even have that going for them.

Anyway, the point of bringing up the talk on Tuesday, is that I returned home with a broad smile on my face, and a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. The talk went well, seemed well received, and several of the listeners were friends from my own department to cheer me on. What a relief to get that out of the way!

Then Wednesday was our last day of official instruction at the Good Old Dude's U. That's right. Finished already. We had no spring break, very little winter break, and have been working nearly non-stop since mid-August. And this week, all that break-less overwork pays off. We may be totally loopy insane from burn out, wandering around in our cinder block buildings, ducking and covering and doing our best under the constant architectural threat of nuclear war, but we are done two to four whole weeks before all of you. And all my colleagues at other universities.

When I tell my colleagues this, they all smile and nod and say "bully for you", and then cover their laughs politely with a napkin. No way would they ever trade the spring break and the winter break to spend the 3rd week of April grading finals rather than the 3rd week of May. And I cry into my elbow, because I'd rather have a spring break, too, than finals in April.

So, you are asking. What are you going to do with all this freedom, now that your Saturday finals are over? Well, I had planned to hide out 60 miles north at my mother-in-law's house on Thursday and Friday, far from student eyes, accomplishing great deeds. But instead I hid out 60 miles north sending email back and forth to TAs and trying to finish writing a final. But at least the mother-in-law's home had large windows, no cinder block walls, and the company was lovely. And this week, well, this week I shall spend most of my Monday grading. And then I shall spend much of Tuesday organizing grades. And if I'm not to the point of stomping out minor brush files by Wednesday, I'll be quite annoyed.

And then starting the next week, I shall accomplish great deeds. Four major projects, a serious grant proposal, and... (gulp)... a tenure file. You see, even though I write blog posts entitled "Relief", and proceed to tell you all about the lovely fact that classes have ended, the only real relief in this post is hiding in the first two paragraphs, where I am relieved that I have finished speaking with the physicists, and I am relieved that my building is nominally more attractive than theirs.

Luckily, I do like my job, and I like my work, and I look forward to accomplishing great things all summer long. And it's fun to switch flavors from student centered work to research centered, and the transition in and of itself is almost like a vacation. Almost. But I do believe I had better throw a couple of non-weekend personal days into the transition. Because it cannot be healthy to spend our days sequestered away inside political-protest-proof buildings. And that's good advice for physicists, too.

Stuff that has been happening

2011-04-10T22:03:00.002-06:00

...and my assorted thoughts on the stuff.

1. It has been snowing off and on all week.

Last weekend, Jonathan spent a couple of hours playing in the snow, digging it with a shovel, moving it, setting up little snow fences. The blossoms on the apricot tree frosted over. The daffodils were smashed flat. The tulips hunkered down to wait out the storm.

This is typical. They'll all survive.

And so will I, even.

2. Classes are ending, and I've been trying to write a final for my graduate class.

Boo. Poor me. But that's not the worst of it. Somehow, I ended up proctoring two final exams on Saturday. Saturday? By iron-clad university scheduling rules, I must attend one exam running from 2-5pm, and one from 7-10pm Saturday. Stupid stupid university schedule.

3. I forgot what number 3 was supposed to be. Something deep and profound.

(Stupid university schedule.)

4. I have been asked to speak to a bunch of physicists on Tuesday. I last took physics in 1995. I don't know much about physics. How does one talk to physicists? Does one need special coaching for this? Today in church a man asked me about gravitrons. I don't know what a gravitron is. I do know a little about Transformers, though, thanks to the men in my life, and I think a gravitron sounds like some kind of Decepticon. From the precious little that I know about physicists, they like to talk about gravitrons and photons and decepticons, but not so much about autobots. Why do you think that is?

So far, I haven't worked either autobots or decepticons into my talk. But now I'm getting ideas.

5. Why am I writing this post instead of a final or a talk? Sometimes I don't get the way my brain thinks it works.

I blame the snow.

Miscellaneous, mostly garden

2011-04-02T20:38:00.003-06:00

On Tuesday, I woke up with a sore throat. By Thursday, I had a head stuffed solid with mucus. Malfunctioning mucus machine. Red nose, sore sinuses, fogged in brain. Head cold. Blah. But the weather started improving. Today, I spent a couple of hours outside, thinning and weeding in the garden, burning the mucus out in the nearly seventy degree weather. The head cold has retreated, for now. Victory spring!

In news along those lines, I think we may own the wrong garden for our personality types here. Recall that we purchased our house from a botanist. How do I describe the garden? Purposely overgrown. Planned chaos. We have added sprinklers and put in paths to tame it a bit, but it is still a riot of plants. Roses and raspberries and fruit trees and other surprises. Fig. Currant. Poppy. Hollyhock. Those are some of the plants we have identified. It is a gorgeous garden. Colorful and mysterious and highly useful.

And exhausting.

I only covered a small portion of the yard that needs love and care in my hours outside. Plants must be thinned, weeds must be pulled. And what in the world are we growing behind the shed? We need a full time gardener for this.

But that would take away all the fun.

While I weeded, Tim dug some holes for new trees that should be arriving this week. We had four dead trees that we will replace with tiny new ones. The longer we live here, the smaller the garden becomes, as we thin and cut down and prune. It will grow back. Too fast.

And while we're talking gardens, we should mention the front yard. Our front yard faces north, and the garden is directly under two large trees. Full shade, all the time. What do you grow in full shade? Currently, we only grow ivy there, although we used to have a large bush that smelled like old socks. I don't really want to put back the old sock bush. I have some plans, though. They involve stones, and a bench, and probably about eight large-ish shrubs to purchase. I don't trust any local nurseries -- they're the ones who sold us dead trees. I may want to go shrub shopping up north. Kris -- do you want to go shrub shopping with me? Is April too early for planting shrubs?

Real gardeners know the answers to these questions. The botanist would have known. Me, I just like to be outside melting head colds. Pretending to be a gardener.

March

2011-03-26T20:52:00.002-06:00

When I was still growing up, not yet grown, I remember telling people that March was my favorite month. In March in the mountains, you can smell the ground thawing. Mud. And while the world is still mostly shades of gray, you know that winter is losing. Spring will come. And then summer. And then you can go barefoot indoors without cold toes. Which is perfect.

March is supposed to be the month for kite flying. My parents' house had a gate that opened into a large field, and I would take a kite out for flying nearly every afternoon, in the gray of March that smelled like mud. I was a free-range child.

Once, in a strong wind, my string unwound so quickly that I lost the end of the roll, and my kite flew off up the hill faster than I could chase it. I eventually found the end of the string, and walked slowly, winding it and winding it, until I located the kite in a tree in someone's backyard a bit of a walk from my home. I counted the houses, marked the look from the back, then walked two blocks around to knock on the front door.

"Excuse me, but I think my kite has landed in your tree. Could I go get it?"

The middle aged man at the door at first thought I must be mistaken. His house was too far from the nearest kite-flying field. Surprised, he finally let me, a stranger, walk through to his back yard, and I pulled the kite out of a low tree and went back home.

I learned to tie the end of the kite string to its holder.

After a few years of declaring that March was my favorite month, because it gave hope for summer, I decided to jump straight to the summer itself, skip the hoping. July was my favorite month, because my toes were already warm.

But this year, I think there is something to be said for hope, and mud, and March.

Less to be said for kite flying: Our nearest field is too far to be convenient. Something to think about for future home purchases.

Works too hard

2011-03-20T22:03:00.006-06:00

Tim has been away this week, taking this thing that is called a vacation. Apparently in certain lines of work, one can actually take whole vacation days. And it doesn't matter where the days land in the semester, because in these lines of work I am referring to, there actually is no semester. There is spring and summer and fall and winter, but no finals week or drop deadline or graduation ceremony. And they let their people take these things called vacation. Even in the middle of midterms. And apparently Tim has one of these jobs. And he has taken a vacation, to spend time with a friend in a warmer climate, watching basketball. And me, I sit around grading papers, with my green pen. For envy.

Saturday morning I was at the student research conference at the Good Old Dude's University. I had three groups of students presenting, starting at the unholy hour of 8:30 am.

My brother, his wife, and their three little children who are all favorite cousins of Jonathan, were fifty miles north, visiting my parents over their spring break. I drove Jonathan up Friday afternoon and spent an evening, but because of the research conference, I had to leave the boy and drive myself home in the dark, in time to be fully awake, dressed, and showered at 8:30 am on a Saturday.

My students did a very nice job, which was especially nice because the judges of their session included my department chair and my research mentor. And those are two people I'd like my students to do well in front of.

I left before the judging was over, and waited outside in the hall to see if I would be needed for the next session as an alternate judge.

And then I thought about how I could have spent the night at my parents' house with the cousins, and the morning eating the pie that my brother had baked, rather bran flakes.

And then I thought about all the projects that I keep piling onto myself, without being able to finish another project first. I have a stack of projects so high that I have to walk around the week balancing projects precariously. One wrong move and they'll all topple and shatter around me.

And then I went home to my empty house, called my parents to hear the screaming laughter of cousins in the background, and they informed me that they wouldn't be back with Jonathan for a couple of hours. So I scrubbed the bathrooms and dusted the furniture and fell asleep on the living room couch. From working too hard.

Today Jonathan and I left for church at the unholy hour of 8:50 am. And during church, I resolved not to work so hard anymore. To start by enjoying my post-church Sunday.

So we came home and Jonathan and I played video games until I felt physically ill. Now what?

"We could play Settlers," he suggested.

"Not enough people. ... We could take a walk."

"Too boring."

"We could fly a kite."

"Too cold."

"Read our book together?"

"Not until tonight."

"Then what?"

"Can I play my own video game?"

So he played games on the couch, and I sat and watched for a minute. And then maybe pulled out a project. And then maybe another one.

And now, projects strewn over the table, I sit here and feel sorry for myself. And guilty. I was not supposed to let my Sunday turn into this.

I hear that in other lines of work, they have this thing called a vacation. I want one of those.

Spring

2011-03-17T20:13:00.002-06:00

Spring is coming.

I know it is coming, because this morning, there were a million dead worms sprawled across the sidewalk, chased from their homes by last night's rain, and then frozen into brown sticky worm corpses overnight.

Worm corpses smell like spring.

I know it is spring, because the little boy who walks to school with Jonathan has been wearing shorts to school. Teeth chattering, cheeks pink in the frosty morning air, he declares that he is not cold. It is warm outside. Almost hot. And he only stopped to zip his sweatshirt because his shirt was a little wet underneath. This morning I sent him home to get a jacket.

Little boys pretending it is warm enough to wear shorts reminds me of spring.

And I know it is spring, because the heads of 260 tulips, and about 20 daffodils, are beginning to break through the cold mud in the garden. Remember how I planted 260 tulips in October? They are actually coming up! Really! They are.

See?

I am going to go outside with a clipboard this weekend, and count them all. I will make sure that all 260 are accounted for, because putting all 260 of them into the ground was a giant pain.

Tulips actually growing?

Looks like spring.

The family's other big news

2011-03-01T21:07:00.003-07:00

You need a little background in religion for this post to make sense.

Item #1: we belong to a church with lay clergy. That means if a church job must be done, an assignment is extended, and a volunteer ends up doing the job for a while. All leadership positions on the local level are volunteer positions. The typical bishop is a guy in a business suit with a day job. In all positions, someone takes their turn for a while, and then the job is passed on to the next ~~sucker~~ volunteer.

There is a lot of social pressure to accept assignments that are asked of you in this church, and almost all members have an assignment at any given time. For example, my current assignment is Sunday school teacher. We are working through the New Testament, and I teach my take on the scripture, with heavy bias from a church-sanctioned manual. Manual is important when the teacher is a volunteer, and hasn't actually had any Bible classes, unless you count the ones I took mornings as a teenager.

But this post isn't about me.

Item #2: The typical bishop is a guy in a business suit. I already said that. He is typically middle aged, white male, clean shaven, short haircut, wear a tie to work kind of guy. The guy over the bishop is called a stake president. And he is even more likely to fit the above description. And the guy over the stake president was pulled from the ranks of the stake presidents. With a few exceptions, they're a pretty homogeneous bunch.

Now, let's put Item #1 and Item #2 together. How does a leader guy in my church pick out other leader guys? (and gals)? Well, I think there may be some prayer and soul searching involved, but typically he just looks around the room on a given Sunday and tries to determine which members of the congregation would be likely to keep the ball in the air.

Person who gets a relatively important assignment should have some important personality traits: Likely to show up on Sunday, not likely to declare himself the new prophet and lead half the congregation astray, and it would be convenient if they don't have many opinions too far off from those of the business suits up a level or two. Avoid contention and all that.

It's easy to spot the people who are likely to show up on Sunday: they show up every Sunday. Spotting those who will go apostate may be a little trickier, although it's a skill that probably can be developed with practice. But those controversial opinions can hide under many skins. So, if you are a business suit, looking for a leader type, what do you look for?

Typically, clean shaven, white male, short haircut, conservative suit type of guys.

Tim only satisfies one of those four traits. In all the congregations we have belonged to in the past, Tim has been totally immune to time-consuming church assignments. And me too, by association, even though I never shave but still can't grow a beard.

Until now.

For Tim, that is, not me growing the beard. Still no success there.

Anyway, Tim has been very recently assigned the job of Elder's quorum president. Which sounds a lot like he'll supervise a parliament full of stooped over gray haired men. But actually most of them in our congregation are middle aged. The stoopy guys are called High Priests and they offer the best stories in Sunday School. I love our stoopy old men.

I do love Tim, too, and wish him luck with the new assignment. He gets to do things like clear snow if it should happen to fall on a Saturday, set up chairs if it should happen to be January or April, and attend meetings meetings meetings.

Last week, Tim dressed up all nice and neat for the first time as Elder's quorum president. Long hair, beard, blue button up shirt, white tie with lots of little red U's on it.

We wish you luck, Tim.

Chicken strips and French fries

2011-02-26T21:51:00.003-07:00

This evening, tired of cooking and needing to stock the fridge anyway, we ate out. We tried a tiny local mom-and-pop restaurant two doors down from the neighborhood grocery store.

Jonathan, for one, loved it. He ordered French fries and chicken strips, and a huge glass of pineapple juice, and it all came with a whole fresh peach on the side.

"This food is fantastic," he said at one point in the evening.

The boy always orders chicken strips and French fries. Why?

Me, I ordered the fish special, because I never get fish at home. I live with fish haters.

Now that I think of it, Jonathan doesn't ever get chicken strips and French fries at home. Nor, for that matter, does he ever really get anything deep fried. And we haven't seen fresh peaches since September.

Perhaps that's what makes it fantastic: trying something different that he knows he will love. Same for me with the fish.

Perhaps if I deep fried at home, he would think my food was fantastic, rather than eyeball every dish I make with suspicion.

Somehow I doubt it.

I must say, cooking is less fun with a small boy in the house.

And also, the food was very good. I will go back to that restaurant. Sometime when I'm tired of cooking and need something deep fried.

Its a major award

2011-02-19T16:53:00.002-07:00

I received a major award this week.

Funny, I am the same person today that I was one week ago.

But one week ago, the university PR department didn't care what my research was about. My department chair was secretly thinking I deserved a course release for my teaching work, but hadn't yet told me so. And my friends and colleagues around the country had no reason to write to me.

One week ago Thursday the astounding news appeared in a benign-looking email in my inbox. As I read, my knees started shaking so badly that I had to put the laptop on the table to read the last few lines. Instructions not to share until Tuesday.

On Monday, I met with the department chair about the teaching thing, and he offered the course release if I would please continue my reorganization of our major general education class. I told him that sounded good, except I might not be the person for the job the following day, when I had some news I would share.

News?!? I think his first guess was that I was pregnant. Then he worried I was leaving.

Funny. Back in the fall, he helped nominate me for the award I was winning. I guess neither of us really thought that I would actually get it.

Tuesday morning the news broke. Colleagues from Michigan, Texas, California wrote to congratulate me. Other universities whose faculty members won the same award posted the news as soon as possible. Tim contacted me through the day. "Berkeley has theirs up on their main website. Texas has theirs up. Where are you?"

No one from my university had won such an award since 1969. They didn't know they should look for it. They probably didn't know what it meant.

And my department chair? We met again Wednesday morning. He suggested extra course releases, not for teaching, but to devote time to my research. I could take semesters off, a full year off. If I wanted. Because I won a major award.

So here's a problem. I actually want the teaching job. I want to continue to reorganize the general education course. And to continue to reorganize the graduate course. And to have extra time for research as well. But I probably can't. In any case, I was promised the whole weekend for soul searching. Tim and I have been talking. Should we go away? Should we stay? What do I really want to be when I grow up? Or better: what do we want in just five years? And how can I use the major award to get there?

University PR contacted me Friday for a story they'll write up over the weekend. They wanted to know what I would do with the research award money. Me too.

Funny. My research hasn't changed, but suddenly they care.

I really am the same person this week that I was last week.

Or am I?

I have something this week that I didn't have before.

Confidence. Clout. Choices.

You know, once before in my life I won a major award, and the winning gave me the confidence to pursue a direction in life I thought I wasn't smart enough to pursue. (As a senior in college. Named one of two top undergraduate women in the country. Decided maybe I could cut it in grad school after all.)

Amazing. I know for a fact that I'm not the most qualified person. Somehow the stars just aligned in my favor. But since they have, the world is upside down.

If it's not about winning, then why does one major award make such a difference?

Stress reduction?

2011-02-14T20:41:00.003-07:00

I went to the dentist today.

We discussed my tramatic episode of giant swollen gums.

The dentist and hygienist both agreed that it was stress related, and that I should practice stress reduction in my life to save my poor bleeding gums.

They wanted to know what stress I experienced before said incident. I explained that the semester was just starting, that I was designing two classes, that I was finding substitutes and travelling internationally, that I was giving a pair of important presentations in a country I had never visited, where I did not speak the language.

They expressed noises of sympathy. That did sound stressful.

Then they asked where I went for this international travel.

Tokyo.

Tokyo? Wow. That sounds great. How was the trip?

Um. I just told you how it was. Stressful enough to make my gums swell up into balloons.

No, no -- aside from that. How was it otherwise?

*****

Speaking of stress reduction, I have some funds I am supposed to use on my research. But the only thing my research is really lacking right now is time. How can I use my funds to buy back my time?

Please send suggestions as soon as possible, before my gums swell up again and I die.

Death by gum disease.

That sounds so pathetic. I'm making myself cry.

Things I didn't say

2011-02-06T20:39:00.002-07:00

... to the lovely ladies in church today.

I didn't say that I have found good people and bad people everywhere we have lived. I have had neighbors who cared as much about our friendship or family, who did not wear the same labelled religion on their sleeve. Or didn't care as much, but did. Both.

I didn't say that I think grouping into us and them isn't helpful. We are all us. And all them.

I didn't say that it isn't safe to pretend we live in a bubble, safe, as long as we don't let the wrong sort inside. What does that mean? If you knew me better, would I be the wrong sort? (Probably.) Which brings up the question: how do you know that the people in your bubble are the people you think they are?

Me, for example?

Perhaps I am just sitting quietly on the side, hands down, eyes wide, viperous thoughts inside. Wondering about your thoughts. And how to protect my children from your bubble.

I think you are all wonderful ladies, and good neighbors, and trying your best to be the best women you know how to be. And I admire you for it. But some of the things some of you say make my eyes grow a little wide (and my heart a little anxious).

Do you see that in yourselves?

Which brings up the much more important question: which behaviors do I not see in myself? Where do I stand on the wrong side of hypocrisy? On the dangerous side of naive? Where am I? And how can I recognize it?

Because often talking with you, I think that if I just ignore this beam, I can help all of you with your motes.

I didn't say any of that.

Unfinished posting

2011-01-27T23:15:00.003-07:00

I keep starting posts that I don't finish, and perhaps this post will be the same.

Every post needs a reason, an explanation of its existence. This post exists because of migraine pills. Migraine pills are wonderful things. They take a head stuffed with cotton and lead, and turn it into feathers and air. They turn heavy, pained exhaustion into light, happy perkiness. They erase the migraine and replace it with energy.

My brain is full of energy. It knows that it must be awake again and full of energy in about six hours, but it does not want to go lie in the bed in the darkness while still set to "on".

And that, friends, explains why this post exists.

You may wonder what the other, unfinished, neglected posts have been about. Mostly happiness. I read most of a book on happiness in December, up until the day it was due at the library and I hadn't finished. I learned that happiness is a journey, and that we really aren't most happy when we are free of tasks, or when we have finally accomplished our goals, but that we humans are most happy while busy working towards meaningful goals.

And then I realized that I'm pretty happy most of the time. Except maybe I have too many meaningful goals, and I need to dump some. I didn't get that far in the book, actually, so I'm making that last part up. But I still stand by it.

Is it legal to admit in public that you are happy? I know it is fine to admit that you feel stressed out. That is a sign of accomplishment: busy people are important. It is legal to admit you get migraines, as long as you don't pull in a discussion about female hormones and cycles and boring medical stuff. Or is that interesting? Interesting blogs incorporate conflict. Or humor. Or how-to discussions. Or higher mathematics (kidding on that last one). If I pretend my blog is interesting, is there space to admit to happiness?

I doubt it. Happiness is boring.

To round out a boring post with other boring reasons for happiness: I only have one child, and as time passes, it becomes more and more likely that I will only ever have only one child. But he is enough, and more than enough to fill my whole soul with happiness. In the few days after his birth, his mere existence filled my heart with a rough fierceness that could only be understood as instinctual love of a mother animal. But as he grows into himself, his goodness, his beauty, his laughter and mischeviousness, himself, he makes that love soften and round out and expand, until now it presses against my insides every day. It is enough.

Migraine pills are wearing down. Bedtime.

See you in a few hours, world.

Wireless access

2011-01-20T13:00:00.002-07:00

I have a new computer at work. Time to get it registered with the wireless network there.

Tried to log into the secure wireless network, needed a password.

Plugged computer into network, filtered through old mail from IT, found password.

Connected to wireless, typed in password. Wireless was connected, but additional information needed to be entered before I could use the wireless.

Unplugged network, closed web browser. Opened it again. Got to login page. Entered ID and password. Clicked button for mandatory computer scan to be done before connecting to wireless.

Mandatory scan failed. Need to download java.

Plugged into network, downloaded and installed java (20 minutes).

Unplugged network. Closed and opened browser. Got to login page. Entered ID and password. Clicked button for scan. Do you want to allow scanner to make changes to your hard drive? OK.

Scan.

Scan failed. No antivirus software detected.

Open antivirus program. There it is, stupid scanner. Why don't you see it?

Plugged in network, clicked "update" button on antivirus software.

Wait.

Antivirus software is up to date.

Redo scan.

Scan failed. No antivirus software.

Email department IT guy.

His quick response: Click "update" on the antivirus software. If that doesn't work, call his assistant or, last resort, campus OIT.

I reply that I did the update.

He replies: make sure the computer is plugged into the network when you click update.

I plug in network again, click update. Yup. Did this. Up to date.

I unplug network. Try to scan again.

Scan failed. No antivirus software.

I call department IT guy assistant. No answer.

Call campus OIT.

They look up my scan. Scan says I have no antivirus software.

While on the phone, I open my antivirus software. Why is the scan saying this?

IT guy asks, when did you download it?

About two days ago.

Which version are you using?

Find "about" button (hint: it's hiding under the help ?). Version 2.0.

Please hold.

(Elevator music.)

Ma'am? Version 2.0 is not yet supported, and won't be supported for at least a month. Maybe you can download a less recent version of the antivirus software?

Um. Doesn't that defeat the purpose?

You could uninstall yours, and install the campus supported antivirus software.

Um, no. That one messed up my system last year. I'll just go without wireless for a month. (I obviously have a cable.)

Hang up.

Back to work.

Phone rings.

Ma'am? You could uninstall your antivirus program, install ours, register your wireless device and get it into the system, then it's good for four months. Now uninstall ours, reinstall yours, and you're good to go for four months.

Um.... Thanks. I will keep that in mind.

Hard boiled eggs

2010-12-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

In this post, we would like to share an important reminder:

One must not reheat a hard boiled egg in the microwave.

Because if one should try to reheat a hard boiled egg in the microwave, one might hear a loud pop as one moves the egg out of the microwave, and suddenly find that the egg has exploded all over the kitchen. Then, rather than calmly prepare for the morning with a breakfast of egg and toast, one will get to spend the next half hour cleaning egg off the cabinets, floor, table and chairs, and scraping it off the ceiling. Then one will have to change clothes and even wipe off one's glasses.

Hard boiled egg: Not for the microwave.

This public service announcement has been brought to you by your clueless friend Artax.

And meanwhile, we hope you are enjoying the holidays in the way you love best. Here, that would be a Final Fantasy marathon.

Homesick

2010-12-20T19:47:00.002-07:00

I like to travel. Or at one point I used to say I liked to travel. And I like my job. I really do like my job. But five days in the cold in a gray city in the eastern US, rushing from sidewalk to subway to sterile university building, eating too much restaurant food, working... I would like traveling more if I could relax and enjoy it. But then if it were really about relaxing and enjoying, why would I travel? The people I love are back at home.

Two more days, loved ones.

A passing shadow

2010-12-05T21:08:00.005-07:00

Age is a funny thing.

I've been looking around at work and in my neighborhood recently, at all the elderly people and those at the gates of retirement. They have worked long. They are a little more feeble. A little less sturdy on their feet. To me, they look Old.

And then only very recently it occurred to me that these feeble old people are the age of my parents.

To me, my parents are frozen in time and personality in about their late 40s or mid 50s at the most. Sure, they are winding down the family rearing years, but not without a fight.

My dad has reached retirement age, and he will very soon be retiring. Grandchildren are coming and growing.

How strange that is. How strange it must be.

I have a picture that I love, of the ten of us -- my family -- in a field in springtime. I must have been about 13 years old, and I am holding the baby and smiling, my siblings crowded around me smiling as well. And since then every one of those little siblings has grown up and been a teenager and fought against curfews and chosen a college and moved away. Permanently. And now they post pictures of their own, smiling families.

And all the pictures stack up. All the families. All the smiling children. But the people in the pictures no longer exist. They only existed for an instant in time. Light on film. Scattered and captured in a single moment. The moment long gone. But the pictures are still there, oblivious to the emptiness behind them.

What will I look like soon when I am old? What will the middle aged woman think of me, she in the thick of family and career? Will she wonder, too, how I happened to grow wrinkled and gray? And will I recognize her, watching me?

Balancing blessings

2010-11-26T22:26:00.004-07:00

This year we are working on a theme of holiday traditions one day late, and so I begin with a list of expected and some unexpected things I am thankful for.

A little boy whose hair is a bit too long, which makes him look extremely cuddly.
Mario.
Magical migraine medicine, because otherwise I would have spent the day huddled on the tile in the bathroom. Bouncing off walls is so much more enjoyable.
Dance Dance Revolution. Even though it is no longer a fad, it still helps drain that extra bounciness.
Health.
True Love.
Leftovers.
Two more days to procrastinate grading those exams.
Clear vinyl tablecloths. Otherwise, my white tablecloth and decorative runner would not be able to see the light of day.
Apples.
Internet.
Five hours of ice skating Wednesday: the boy's first time. He didn't want to leave.
Words.
Fairy godmothers and dreams coming true.

***

Do you ever look at the richness in your life and wish good times could be packed in plastic and saved in the refrigerator? There is surely enough for leftovers. And when the house is warm and the bills are paid and the family is tucked in safe and full of health, and childhood dreams have aged and flowered and now bear fruit, do you sometimes wonder how long it will last? Does happiness come with expiration dates?

Is there a balance somewhere? Somewhere in the cosmos, does someone watch the scale and notice that life is weighted far too heavily toward happiness in the Artax household, and it is time to add a little pain and suffering?

Please not yet.

How about we please wait until I have finished my novel.

So where is it??

2010-11-24T08:45:00.005-07:00

Starting about a week and a half ago, we have been expecting SNOW! Snow overnight. Snow in the afternoon. Just wait -- the snow is coming! Two to four inches. Four to six inches. Up to an inch. But only above 6300 feet. Or above 5200 feet. Or above 4500 feet! That's us! It is coming. Get ready!

From Sunday onward, expect the worst. Tomorrow! It's coming! Until Monday morning: well maybe not today. But Tonight! And then by the evening: On Tuesday! A Blizzard! Just like in Seattle! Blowing snow. Six to eight inches.

By Tuesday morning: 100% chance of snow overnight. One hundred percent! Two to four inches this afternoon.

By midmorning: well, no snow today, but still 100% chance of snow overnight! Three to five inches! A storm as hasn't been seen in years, with snow and wind and chill.

And so the University Police sent out warning messages which bounced around my email and off my cell phone. Students skipped afternoon class, eager to be on the road out of town before the Blizzard! And then the entire University shut down.

Wandering home just after 3pm, to a gray sky but no sign of snow, the cynic that I have become thought it was a nice excuse to quit a few hours early just before a long holiday.

But the National Weather Service persisted. Still 100% chance of snow!

So we hit the grocery store with the rest of the world, deciding we'd better buy our foods for Thanksgiving before the Blizzard! trapped us inside for three days without power.

At 7:00 pm Tuesday evening, Jonathan peeked out into the darkness. Had it started yet? No.

By 8:00 pm. No sign of it. Bedtime for little boys.

By 11:00 pm. Still no storm. Bedtime for me.

At 7:00 this morning, I awoke with visions. Snow! Sledding! Holidays and snow! And so I peeked outside to see our marshmallow winter wonderland, with three to five inches guaranteed by the National Weather Service.

Nada.

A skiff of snow lies over the grass, where it is cool enough not to melt on contact. Nothing on roads and sidewalks. So thin that the individual grass blades poke out of its shell, mocking.

Today's weather report: Slight chance of snow. Maybe half an inch? Maybe? Then sunny all week -- but Cold! It will be Cooold!

At least a few university employees got to go home early for their holiday.

Size B

2010-11-15T22:31:00.003-07:00

In August, I did some shopping for some unmentionables. After trying on every small sized bra in the store, from AA to A to almost B, I found two that fit quite well. One was a size A as usual, but one was actually a size B. I have never been a size B before. I've always been much smaller, except for a few months when nursing an infant during which I skipped over B entirely and was quite pleased to be a C. It didn't last. Anyway, now in one particular brand in one particular bra style I am a B.

I know you are sitting there, Reader, thinking, that is more information than I needed, thank you very much. But that's not true. You need that information, as It is relevant to this post. I promise. Be patient.

Last Thursday, in a span of less than 24 hours, I was mistaken for a student three times.

The first time was at a banquet to honor our best students. I had invited five of mine -- excellent students, all. I was sitting at their table, chit-chatting, when a student employee wandered by and offered me a chance at the door prize.

"I don't think I'm eligible," I told the student helper.

"Oh no," he insisted, "Everyone is eligible."

"Are you sure? That seems strange...."

And then he paused. "Unless... you're not faculty, are you?"

I am, actually, faculty. So I wasn't eligible.

After the banquet, I went to introduce myself to the guest speaker. His research had been in an area related to my own, and I wanted to thank him for his words and chat a bit about research. We had a lively conversation; he answered a couple of my questions, and I described my interest. He concluded by asking, "Are you a grad student then?"

Nope. Faculty.

And then I had an appointment for undergraduate advising, and after a chat about classes to take and things to try and places to go, the student asked, "So are you a student, or grad student?"

No. Not either.

In all three situations, I smiled politely and let the persons involved know that, in fact, I was faculty. And they smiled and stated that I looked so young it was hard to tell....

Which is odd. I'm not really very young anymore, and I think I look my age. Mid 30s now. Definitely older than a student.

Anyway, I was pondering over these three events, wondering why they should all happen within the same 24 hours, when nothing like this had happened for a long time. What did these three events have in common? What made me appear so youthful so suddenly?

You know what it was, don't you, oh Reader?

For the first time in a couple of months, I was wearing the size B bra.

Young and attractive. That was me. Ten years removed from my appearance by the increased cup size.

Dude. In ten more years, I may be ready to consider implants.

Yogurt again

2010-11-13T22:52:00.002-07:00

Let's talk about our food again. Specifically, I'd like to follow up on my yogurt post from last March.

Back in July-ish, Tim and I bought a serious food dehydrator, to handle the bushels and bushels of apricots we were picking off our tree, as well as apples and raspberries and currants and whatever else we were harvesting.

The food dehydrator has a temperature control. It is able to maintain low, warm temperatures consistently.

Which is perfect for yogurt.

It also came with its own yogurt recipe: Milk. Some powdered milk to thicken it. Yogurt start. Keep at 115 degrees for 3 hours. Voila. Perfect yogurt.

We have made yogurt three times now, to rave reviews. It has been thick, smooth, creamy. Not at all lumpy or sour. Especially good when made with whole milk.

Tim, who is a bit of a yogurt snob, compared it to Landliebe yogurt. Natural. Creamy. In a jar. As a family, we spontaneously broke out into singing all the German songs we know at the first spoonful. Luckily,we don't know any German songs as a family, and so instead we could concentrate on eating.

Yogurt.

Good stuff.

Chopped

2010-11-11T21:34:00.003-07:00

Subtitle: On giving up.

In March, Tim donated his long hair to charity. What a cool idea. What a handsome husband. I decided to do the same thing. Only I didn't want to cut my hair quite as short as he cut his. So I decided I would let mine grow a little longer.

Fast forward to late last Saturday night. I had just come out of the shower, and was trying to straighten the tangled, dry, scraggly mass that was my hair, and it was not cooperating. Looking at the wadded hairballs in the mirror, I realized that even a poor diseased child would not want this hair. No one would want this hair. Especially not me.

So, egged on by my six year old, I pulled out the scissors and cut off the messy tangled split ended bottom four inches. Then spent 15 minutes trying to cut it straight to hide the damage. It's still a little jagged along the edge -- probably should go to a professional hair cutting place to get that fixed -- but meanwhile I really like the slightly shorter hair. I don't sit on it anymore, for example. It doesn't tangle as much. I have gone two days without wearing just a ponytail. Life on the edge.

But part of me is still sad that I didn't donate to charity. It would have been such a good cause. Such a lovely idea.

I started this semester with grandiose plans. My two classes were going to be better than ever before. By revamping the entire homework system in one, and by building up a course never offered before at G.O.D. University for the other, I would develop smarter and stronger and better students than ever before.

Sometime in the last week or two I have had to stand back. The students don't realize how much better the homework is -- it's still homework to them. Many skip assignments regularly (*gasp*)! Or are inattentive when they try it. In spite of my great ideas, in practice my students are still just students, and ultimately make their own choices on whether or not to learn. And the other class? While they sympathize with the need for the whole new course, I don't know that they care much whether I'm two weeks ahead or I just finish planning the day's class with 20 minutes to spare.

Needless to say, while the ideas for the courses were beautiful at the beginning of the semester, in practice the ideas have turn into tangled wadded masses of split ends. And this past week, I have been cutting myself away from the beautiful ideas, at least emotionally, and turning back to other important tasks that need to be done.

You know, faculty who are able to step away from their teaching, keeping a healthy emotional distance, have been proven to be more successful in all areas of their career. Including their teaching. That means faculty do better if they spend less time worrying and planning and revamping homework and resuscitating ideas, and just relax and enjoy the journey. With my new scissors, I feel like I've been able to take a step back and enjoy myself more.

And it's so nice not to sit on my hair anymore.

Of course, the edges are still a little jaggy -- probably should go plan tomorrow's graduate course rather than write this. And honestly, analogies really only go so far....

Carving pumpkins

2010-11-01T22:21:00.002-06:00

November 1st. We carved pumpkins tonight.

I know, you are saying, aren't we a little late on the pumpkin carving thing? That was supposed to happen in October.

Walking Jonathan home today, I reminded him: "Monday night. What do you want to do for FHE?"

"Carve pumpkins!"

"...Why not?"

So we hauled in the two pumpkins we bought on sale last week, and cut them open, emptied their guts, and carved them.

When I say we carved them, what I mean is that when I turned my back to dispose of pumpkin guts, Jonathan picked up the knife and declared he was going to cut out an eyeball. Thus followed the most frightening event of all of October and November so far: a six year old wielding a knife.

"Jonathan don't hold the knife like that! Watch your finger! Don't jam it in with your head there! Be careful!"

"Mom, would you stop saying that?"

"No! Are you sure you don't need my help?"

He did an excellent job. No blood. No severed fingers. After carving the little pumpkin, he decided it would make a nice head for the big pumpkin, which would serve as a body. Then he carved four arms in the big one, pulled out the carved pieces and stuck each back in sideways, along with a foot and a belly button.

I was floored. Where did he get the idea for carving such a pumpkin? Sure, the technique was not that great, for a kid who is not allowed near a carving knife on a typical day. But the vision was amazing.

Perhaps we will make an artist out of this boy after all.

After carving the pumpkin, Jonathan declared he wanted to put candles inside. So we found the candles and took them outside. Jonathan also wanted candles next to the pumpkins, like in a "spooky haunted house." So we lit candles and put them next to the pumpkin. Then the boy stood on the porch and in his spookiest voice, welcomed the backyard world to our haunted house.

Me, I stood on the patio watching the show, partly proud at my little monster, but especially relieved that he still had all his fingers and eyes. Thank goodness Halloween is over.

Next Monday he's going to ask to make pumpkin pies, I know it.

Blah.

Halloween timing

2010-10-31T19:50:00.003-06:00

Wednesday night, 7 pm, we drop off Tim at the tip of the mountain, at a corn field maze. Tim was going to New York City for his cousin's wedding (congrats AdamAndAmanda), and his early morning airport ride would be at the corn maze Wednesday night.

Jonathan was most excited about the corn maze -- which made the late hour on a school night particularly problematic. We promised we'd come back Saturday, and headed home to bed. Kind of. Except for that quick stop to pick up a birthday present. 8:30pm, half an hour after bedtime, we were back and in pajamas. Late.

Thursday, with Daddy away, at 3:30 pm sharp I got a message on my phone. "Don't forget McKay's party," said a little voice, near tears.

I was on my bike, heading to pick up Jonathan to take him to McKay's party. For the record, I had not forgotten, nor was I anywhere near late. I picked up the boy, wiped away the tears, and we headed up to the birthday party. We were the first ones there. Happy birthday, McKay. 3:58 pm. Two minutes early.

6:00 pm sharp I was back at McKay's house, waiting for Jonathan to finish his ice cream. We hurried home, ate a quick dinner, then headed back to school for the Lights on After School program. Jonathan was displaying artwork. After a bit of song and dance by the six to twelve year olds, starting at 7pm, we got to wander and see the artwork, eat a cookie, drink blue punch, and head home to bed. 7:45 pm back at our house, into pajamas. Almost on time to bed.

Friday, 11:38 am. Two students walk into my office, asking for help on one problem. I glance at my watch. I have seven minutes before I need to leave for home if I'm going to make it to the Halloween parade on time. OK. We go through the problem. I pack the students out the door. 11:49 am. I can still make it. I have to pee really badly. 11:55 am. I can still make it. On my bike, cruising up the hill, I pass my mother about half a mile from my house, walking and running on her way to the same Halloween parade. She'll never make it. I get home, pull out the car, swing back to pick her up. 12:08 pm. Parade starts at 12:15. Will we make it?

12:13 pm. We park near the playground on the back side of the school, and dash to the gymnasium. All the seats are taken, but there is plenty of space standing in the back. We made it!

12:24 pm. No sign of the kids. Are they coming? The woman standing next to us teaches at the high school across the street. Her lunch ends at 12:44 pm. She hopes her kids will parade through soon. 12:35 pm. Here they are! Each class marches past. I hardly see my boy as I'm fumbling with the camera. And then he's gone, before I get a chance at the photo. Oh well. He saw me, which I suppose is most important.

12:55 pm. I leave my mother the house keys and drive back over to the university, arriving by 1:10 pm. I teach at 2.

4:00 pm. I pack up and head home. Jonathan and Grandma are painting in the kitchen. 5:00 pm we head out for an early dinner, so Grandma can make it to a funeral at 6:00 pm.

Saturday morning, 8:00 am. Jonathan is up! Can we go to the corn maze? Um... do you want to watch TV for a while? 9:30 am. I stumble out of bed. Drag the boy away from Johnny Test, and we eat breakfast. 10:10 am, head toward the corn maze. 10:30 am. At the corn maze. As well as a corn maze, there are hay rides, pig races, bouncing pillows, inflated dinosaurs and a haunted house. I do not believe it was worth the $18 entrance fee (we got $5 off with a coupon), but as I start to get annoyed I remind myself that we are out running and doing things. Playground. Jumping. Walking through corn fields. This is a lot better than TV all morning. We stay until 1pm.

5:30 pm. Rain is coming down in torrents. We were supposed to go trick-or-treating. Jonathan can't wait until 6:00 pm.

6:00 pm. Still raining hard. No kids on the block anywhere. Maybe they decided not to come out on Saturday after all? We put on raincoats and pack umbrellas. The Jedi robe goes over the rain coat. 6:25 pm. We head out into the storm toward the quiet neighborhood streets. If we don't see any other kids, we'll head home. Meanwhile, it's time to be out.

6:48 pm. Rain stops.

7:20 pm. Streets are packed with neighborhood kids collecting candy door to door. We pass several neighbors and friends. Note to self: next year, see if we can't join Jonathan to one of their groups.

7:45 pm. Back at our house, bucket full. Jonathan gets to answer the door and give candy to two people total. 8:00 pm. We turn off all our lights and head downstairs to watch Scooby Doo and Zombie Island. Perfect Halloween movie.

10:00 pm. In sleeping bags in the basement. I tell Jonathan he'd better go to bed now or we're never having another late night Halloween party. I wonder if I will laugh at those words in 10 years?

Sunday morning, 7:30 am. Jonathan bounces my air mattress. Mommy, can I watch TV? Yes, please, just go away!

Happy Halloween. I would like to do Thanksgiving without the clock. Is that possible?

Autumn rain

2010-10-23T11:34:00.002-06:00

I planted about 10 more tulip bulbs this morning. After planting about four, it started to rain a little bit. I thought I'd finish up the one I was working on, and then come in. But instead I put up the hood of my rain jacket, and kept on digging and planting. When I reached the corner of the flower bed, I had to dig up three rocks, and my jeans were soaked, and the dirt had become mud, and the light rain shower had become serious rain, and the project wasn't very fun anymore. So then I stopped. But just because I'm not digging in the mud in the rain doesn't mean I don't appreciate it.

Snow is predicted for Monday, and remember, Dear Reader, how excited I am for winter and snow this year. Meanwhile, I like the rain.

Jonathan went over to the church this morning to practice with the other children for their program for Sunday. We walked him back home with our umbrellas. And an umbrella for him. And I could see that I was not the only one who likes the rain.

Let's talk dirt

2010-10-15T20:00:00.000-06:00

230 tulip bulbs have been buried in our yard. 230. Their 30 remaining friends wait to join the others in the north east patch of dirt on our property. 230.

And there is a crater in my trowel-yielding hand the size of Yellowstone. Broken blister. Dirt caked. 230.

The landscapers left us a mountain of dirt, by request, just in case we needed extra wheel-barrows-full to fill in holes. It sits near the curb out our front door. A neighbor took a truck load to fill a hole the size of a tree in his yard. Another neighbor hauled shovel and barrow up and down the street, back and forth, over and over again. And we have been hauling and spreading, shoveling, wheeling, dumping, spreading, filling the large holes in our yard, and 230 other small holes. And yet no matter how many loads of dirt we take, the mountain does not shrink. It is a miracle. It stands there, miraculous, unchanged and unchanging. The miracle dirt that does not fail or diminish.

It eyeballs us. Sinners. Waiting for the snow plows. Waiting. In majestic miraculousness.

And now I have a Yellowstone-shaped crater in my right hand. Trowel blister. From digging 230 six-inch-deep holes. Six inches apart. Exactly. Ish.

Only 30 more to go.

A few random things

2010-10-05T20:25:00.003-06:00

Today I taught logarithmic differentiation, and my students laughed. I know that last sentence means nothing to you, but it was a personal goal of mine, and I'm happy to have checked it off.

We have been getting some things fixed up around our yard. To start, we got a whole new sprinkler system that does not leak around our foundation. We also got a beautiful gravel path through the overgrown raspberry patch. And we tore out the box bush in front that was starting to smell like old socks. I will post pictures, someday. I cannot post the before and after smell, but you try to imagine. Times like this, when projects are finished and look great, I love owning a yard.

I got 260 tulip bulbs for my birthday, to plant this fall. I spent a few hours Saturday, and planted about 50 of them. Only 210 to go. Times like this, I hate owning a yard. (But just think how lovely everything will look with the tulips in the spring!)

Since the semester started, I have been finding that lunch is not necessary. I wouldn't have believed it. I have colleagues who don't ever eat lunch. They can't eat lunch. When they eat lunch, it puts them to sleep in the afternoon. I was falling asleep during the afternoons. So I decided to take a shot at skipping lunch regularly. I figured if I could do it, I would also save time and money during the day. And you know what? My workdays are so busy that I pretty much don't miss lunch. When I remember, I eat an apple or two, but that's all. And I have been staying awake in the afternoons, even during research seminars! This seems great. Doesn't it seem great? I try to eat an extra large dinner to make up for those missed calories. I suppose if my weight starts changing one way or the other, then I may have to go back to lunch. Meanwhile, I like the new schedule.

Fall has been spectacular so far. The mountains are orange and yellow, the valleys are green and yellow. We've had rain in the last two days that has cooled things off and made the world smell wonderful. Or maybe it just smells nice because the stinky sock box bush is gone. But either way, October has been lovely. I am determined this year to have a positive attitude about the cool weather, in preparation for picking up a positive attitude about cold weather. And then colder weather. I am going to be so super excited about winter this year that you will have to stop reading this blog because of all the lovey-dovey mushy posts about wonderful winter. And then once I have picked up this positive attitude thing, I will trick myself into enjoying the winter. The bitter cold, lack of color and smell and sound... I will love it. Love it, I say! Love! Until I have to stop reading my blog.

Some pictures from Tokyo

2010-10-02T20:41:00.009-06:00

Tim took most of our pictures in Tokyo, because he was the tourist, and I was working. Here are a few pictures that I think look nice, as well as my personal interpretation of what was happening when they were taken. Sometimes I was there, and sometimes I wasn't.

This is a picture from our first Sunday in Tokyo, and I was there for this one. Tim and I decided to find our way to the Meiji shrine, a huge shrine in the middle of Tokyo. We carefully looked up the trains we needed to take, where to transfer, etc, then headed out on our own into Japan. Alas. We took note of the train stops written out in our Latin alphabet. When we arrived at the train station, the signs were in kanji. Uh... ? It took us some time wandering the train station, and a stop by the information desk, and some hand waving and penciled writing to figure out where we were going. But we got there.

We got better at the train system very soon.

Here is Tim at the same shrine, in front of a huge wall of Japanese wines. I like the decorations on the barrels.

If Tim is looking particularly hot in this picture, it's because he is a pretty hot man. Also, it was around 95 degrees and 90% humidity. Hot hot hot. We weren't as prepared for the weather as expected.

The above picture is me, later that day, trying to figure out exactly what we might take from this street....

Moving on:Deeper in the shrine we saw these traditionally clad women. I like the fact that the one is talking into a cell phone. Our trip was a mix of the familiar (young women on cell phones) and the unfamiliar (in kimonos).

Above: Unfamiliar. Tim took this picture sometime later in the week. It must be something famous and important.

Below: Familiar. Tall buildings. Probably also something famous and important in there.

So Monday, I headed to the Tokyo Institute of Technology to talk research with Japanese colleagues. That was the day of the raw egg lunch, but you can read about that elsewhere. Tim decided to head to the large park that contained the Tokyo zoo, and some other shrines and things. Like this Buddhist temple:
But unfortunately, he reported that pretty much everything was closed. So he headed back on the subway to the electronics district, Akihabara.

You can buy new electronic stuff in Akihabara. Perfect for a guy like Tim who likes electronics and stuff, right? Except he didn't want to go shopping. He found his way to one of the huge multi-story video arcades to play Street Fighter like a local. Kinda. He couldn't use their stick controller thing as well as his controller at home. So he stayed a while to practice with it.

And I was working and eating red bean shaved ice. Yum.

Which brings us to Tuesday, on which date a Japanese colleague took Tim and me, along with another American couple there for the conference, on a sightseeing tour! We started with the Edo-Tokyo museum, which was nice. But we didn't take many interesting photos, so we'll skip ahead to:

...The Imperial residence. We couldn't actually see the imperial residence. Apparently Imperials live there. But we could see this nice looking house near this nice looking bridge and take a nice looking picture. And a long drink of water. It was still 95 degrees with 90% humidity.

This sign says no bicycling and no running. Something looks wrong with those runners. Something will be wrong with you, too, should you go running around the Imperial residence.

It was too hot to do more outdoor things, like running, so upon the suggestion of the other American couple, we headed over to Akihabara to take in the cool sights at the electronics district. Oh hey. Tim was just there yesterday. We split up for some shopping, and Tim took me into the deep, dark abyss of an arcade.

It was creepy. Totally smoke-filled, full of Japanese males. As we went deeper and deeper into the arcade, I pointed out to Tim that I was the only female in sight. Maybe there were signs all over the place that said "no women allowed"? Maybe. We would never know, since we didn't know any Japanese. Tim didn't care. He showed me how you could pay 100 yen and play Street Fighter. Um... Cool? And so he played Street Fighter, and I sat at the machine next to him, and looked around nervously, and tried not to choke on smoke. And started getting a headache. And within a few minutes Tim started looking around nervously, and assured me he was almost done.... And as we left the arcade many minutes later, he commented that it wasn't much fun to take me to a Japanese arcade.

Sorry?

I don't know what the above picture is of, but I like it.

Wednesday I spent the day at the conference. And a tropical storm blew in and the sky opened up in rain. I purchased an umbrella for walking around campus. Tim was in Kamakura. Which is an outdoorsy location with a giant Buddha and a lot of temples and shrines. He also purchased an umbrella -- our two most useful souvenirs. His pictures from that day look pretty cool. Above is the giant Buddha from a distance. And then he got closer:

And even went inside. But his picture from inside is darkness with a big white hole where the door is. Not so interesting.

Anyway, the location looked pretty neat. Here is another picture Tim took that day:

Lovely, eh? Unfortunately, the pounding rain washed him completely away by the afternoon. Soaked, he hopped on a train and ended up back at the hotel.

Thursday, Tim went... somewhere else. And took some more pictures. Like this one below.
Hey. Isn't that Akihabara again? Wait a second. More Street Fighter?

Friday, while I was still at the conference, Tim wandered over to the Ginza shopping district, which is famous for being a pricey shopping district. You can buy pricey things there, like this car:
But Tim didn't buy a car, after considering our carry on space.

That evening, after the conference, we decided to find a nice restaurant for some very nice food. But then we wandered past a little Ramen shop and changed our minds. This was Tim's favorite meal of the whole trip. Except for the one where we ate steak. But close second.

See. He even photographed the food he was so excited about it. And here are his dinner companions.

Nice.

And that's about all that I have, except this photo from inside the little grocery store near our hotel:
Fresh octapus for you and me.

The end.

Family TV time

2010-09-23T20:52:00.003-06:00

We don't actually watch TV much. But Tim wanted to see a show last Monday just before Jonathan's bedtime. So Jonathan wanted to watch it too. Alas, Jonathan does not watch TV like an ordinary couch potato. Jonathan watches TV like a potato in a frying pan -- crackling and popping and jumping around the couch.

This particular exchange happened near the end of the program when Tim was a bit frustrated.

Jonathan: *Gasp* "He just said a Bad Word. Did you hear him? He said a Bad Word."

(Silence.)

Jonathan: "Why did he say a Bad Word, Daddy?"

Daddy: "Jonathan, hush. I'm trying to listen."

Jonathan: "But he said a Bad Word! Did you hear him? He said a Bad Word. Why did he say a Bad Word? That was a Bad Word."

Daddy: "Jonathan, not now. Be quiet, please."

Jonathan: "It was a Bad Word. Why, Daddy, did he say a Bad Word?"

Daddy: "Jonathan! Shut. Up."

Jonathan: *Gasp*. "Now Daddy said a Bad Word! That was a Bad Word, Daddy. Why did you say a Bad Word?"

Daddy: "AAAAARRRGGGHHHH!"

And that, my friends, was the end of all of our family TV time for the next seven years.

The dentist

2010-09-18T22:00:00.002-06:00

I started this post a couple of weeks ago, soon after my gums suddenly swelled up. Decided to finish it up and post it now.

Tim's best friend from high school is now a dentist.

A dentist seems very respectable. Whereas Marcus always struck me as a little wild. He played the drums in Tim's three man band.

Now he is a dentist in Oregon.

We called Marcus Sunday night (August 29) for dental advice. I had spent the day in bed, in pain. It was Tim's suggestion to call Marcus. No, said I. We can't mix business with friendship. Why not? said Tim. Marcus called him all the time with computer questions.

Tim is in the computer industry, and works remotely. That makes more sense for a guy who used to play the electric guitar in the basement. Grew his hair long because his mother wanted him to cut it. A remote-working computer scientist seems a much more appropriate career choice for this personality type than a dentist. But that's just my bias showing through.

So we called Marcus, and told him about our week, and let him ask questions that are easier to ask as a dentist. (You guys aren't pregnant, are you?)

I believe Marcus's mother thought Tim was a bad influence on her son. But Marcus never struck me as the kind of guy who would be affected by peer influence. Maybe that helps explain the dentist thing, too. He and Tim were both smart, different, unexpected. No wonder they became friends and stayed friends.

So Sunday, Marcus listened to my dental woes and offered his opinion. He suggested that a change in diet (too many tomatoes), combined with a heavy load of stress (classes starting, international travel), depleted my natural defenses and led to canker sores. And once the skin of my gums and cheeks was breached, perhaps a secondary infection moved in. He listened and gave some suggestions, and prescribed a power mouth wash and second antibiotic to attack it.

And then Marcus the dentist talked to Tim for a while.

The day after starting the new prescriptions, the swelling was way down. By the end of the week, when I left for Japan, the bleeding was mostly gone. By the end of the trip, the gums were almost back to normal, just like Google predicted.

Thank you Marcus.

This has made me realize how important it is to find a medical doctor friend and car mechanic friend. I am taking applications.

Fall introspection

2010-09-16T19:36:00.004-06:00

Fall is almost here again, and the mountains are splotched in red again, and the nights are colder again, and the apples are almost ripe.

We picked plums on Tuesday. The tree that, last year, rained down its bounty in bushels and bushels, this year produced only two large bowls of plums. Although I loved eating the fruit last year into the winter and spring, I am full of thanksgiving this year that I will not be spending every evening for the next month at the kitchen sink, gutting plums.

***

This morning, I taught the Intermediate Value Theorem. At one point in class, the students were all roaring with laughter. Over the Intermediate Value Theorem. The Intermediate Value Theorem? I looked at them, perplexed. Who were these people? It wasn't that funny.

Less than an hour later, I was waiting for a faculty meeting, while a colleague of mine was trying to get out of giving a presentation. He said he was unsuited to give the presentation because he was not as funny as 'Bob', who had given the presentation before. Then he looked around and saw me, and said, "Jessica is funny. She should give the presentation."

And then it hit me. I am funny. That is why the students were laughing at the Intermediate Value Theorem. They weren't drunk, because it was 10 in the morning at G.O.D. University. I must be funny. Not the Intermediate Value Theorem. Am I funny? Maybe I am funny.

I politely told the colleague that alas, I was busy, and then turned my rapt attention to the faculty meeting.

(Those students really were laughing pretty hard this morning. I must be funny.)

And contemplated a career change.

(How do you think the Intermediate Value Theorem would work as a stand up comedy routine?)

And focused on the future.

(Oh no -- Horizontal Asymptotes next time. There is no way I can make that as funny as the Intermediate Value Theorem.)

And my career in comedy was over before it began.

At least I know my colleagues think I am funny.

Wait.

Is that a good thing?

Adventures in food

2010-09-12T21:09:00.002-06:00

Our plane, returning from Tokyo, landed on the tarmac yesterday morning around 10:00 am. Since we left on the same date at 4:15pm, and were airborne for several hours, we actually gained time. Kind of. If time on an international flight counts for anything.

I can do a travel blog type post later. The weather was hot. The city was crowded, but clean. And Japanese is completely foreign. But we had a very nice trip.

On Monday, I first visited the woman who invited me, and her Japanese colleague, at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. After a morning of work, they took me to their favorite soba shop near campus. Soba is a kind of noodle. It was served with dipping sauce and a bowl of rice and topping, along with miso soup and various pickled vegetables. On our walk over, I confessed that since arriving Saturday night, I hadn't really eaten any good Japanese food. They told me that for lunch, we would change that.

I never would have known the tiny shop was a restaurant. I think the flag-like banners hanging over the door indicate this fact to those who read the language. The menu was completely in Japanese, which is somewhat unusual -- usually the prices are written in familiar arabic numerals.

My hosts tried to translate the menu for me. They would look at a dish, begin translating, then read a few words back and forth in Japanese together, trying to decide on a word that would help me understand what I might choose to eat. After they had given it their best shot, I told them I would trust their judgment, and have what they were having.

The woman said she would have the dish with... what was that? ... Sardines eggs. Very good. I cringed a bit.

The man said he would have the dish just above it. Some sort of fish and vegetables with rice. That sounded a little more tame for my American pallet. I asked him to please order the same for me.

When the meals came, the woman had her bowl of rice stacked with small pink balls. Sardines eggs.

Mine, identical to my colleague's, consisted of some sort of flaked fish around the sides of the bowl, surrounding a beautifully raw egg. Staring up at me with its giant yellow eyeball.

Um. He didn't mention the raw egg.

My colleague stirred his up into scrambled eggs and fish and rice. I copied. Scrambled like that, stirred into the rice, it wasn't quite as slimy and inedible as a single raw egg eyeball. I was able to eat most of it. And it wasn't bad. And I do like miso soup. Yummy.

Later that afternoon, after a few more hours of hard work, the woman suggested we try a new sweets shop near the train station. That sounded like a nice break, so we followed her there.

This shop was very clearly selling food. Like many Tokyo establishments, they had pictures of their menu items outside the entrance, so one could see what one could purchase before entering.

It was a hot hot day, 35 C and very humid, and so I said I'd like a shaved ice. My colleagues recommended I try the traditional Japanese flavor. Red bean and sticky rice balls. A little more skeptical, but still willing, I ordered the red bean shaved ice. The woman ordered the same thing, only with extra green tea flavoring. The man ordered fruit and ice cream.

When I received my shaved ice, it was a small bowl filled with beans and a sticky rice ball, with plain shaved ice stacked twice its height on top. Plain shaved ice. So a big pile of snow, on top of red beans and sticky rice balls. I wish I had a camera. But I did not. So you will have to imagine.

Imagine me, eating plain snow down the side, scooping a bit of red bean to go with it. And it tasted just like ... red bean. I know the Japanese think red beans are sweet. But to me, they are an ingredient in savory dishes like chili. Or Mexican food. And they are not eaten plain.

The sticky rice balls were made of rice flour, but did not resemble rice. They were very very chewy. I popped one in my mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed. Very slimy. Unsweetened, except for the red bean. And so I chewed and chewed and chewed.

After about four more bites of the red bean and rice balls, I realized I was going to begin gagging if I ate any more, which is not polite to do in front of your wonderful hosts. And so I finished eating all the plain snow off the top of the dessert, and picked at the beans while I could.

"You don't like it?" asked my hosts.

"Oh, it's very good," I said. "It's just very filling."

At which they smiled at each other and said something to each other in Japanese. ("She totally hates it." "Oh well, it was fun to watch her try.")

Dear traveler, watch out for red beans in your sweet food in Japan. It's very disappointing to think you'll be eating chocolate chips, and then biting in....

Aside from the red bean shaved ice, I found the food to be good. I ate sushi, sashimi. Ramen from a ramen shop. Rice bowls and chicken and a very delicious steak one evening. Very delicious. Something that ended up tasting just like beef stew another lunch hour. Tempura -- deep fried fish and eel and vegetables -- with rice. And lots of miso soup. Soup with every meal. Salad and rice for breakfast, along with western choices like yogurt and bread at our hotel. Once a very fishy breakfast fish. Hm.

I was always the last to finish, among my Japanese colleagues. I am not quite as expert with chopsticks as they are. But I survived.

You hear? I survived.

How long do you think it takes for symptoms of salmonella to appear if they are to appear? I'm assuming that after nearly a week, I'm safe.

Ill in the time of Google

2010-08-28T15:13:00.002-06:00

Lisa gave me a large bag of garden grown tomatoes, and I had been devouring them voraciously, with no concern for consequences.

By Thursday, I had developed a canker sore on my cheek. That night, it hurt when I brushed my back tooth. I decided I'd better lay off the tomatoes for a while.

Friday morning my gums were swollen double their usual size, my body was wracked with chills and aches all up and down my legs and back. I tried to go to work as usual, but found myself curled into a ball on the floor while speaking on a conference call. I gave up.

After sitting on hold for five minutes with the dentist, I scheduled an appointment with a doctor. Then looked up "swollen gums" on Google.

Possible causes.
1. Allergic to toothpaste. No. I've been using this brand for years.

2. Poor dental hygiene. No. I floss religiously.

3. Diabetes. Oh no. I will never get to eat sweets again. How will I survive?

4. Mercury poisoning. Aack! It must be my new steel water bottle. Soon my hair will start falling out!

5. Leukemia. Goodbye cruel world.

I got to the doctor's office, and an annoyed looking assistant weighed me and took my blood pressure, ignoring all my attempts at small talk. She put me in an examining room. And I sat there. For 45 minutes. Aching, headache, chills and fever. Just an examining table and hard wooden chairs. After 30 minutes, I decided I'd leave. After 35 minutes, I decided that was enough, I'd leave. After 40 minutes, I was going to leave. After 45 minutes, I stood up, hesitated in front of the door. Should I leave?

Just then the doctor entered.

Looked at the swollen gums. Let me talk about symptoms. Felt my giant tumor of a lymph node.

"Since it's the weekend, I'll prescribe an antibiotic to kill off any bacteria affecting your gums. If you aren't better in five days, call your dentist. I'm sure you'll be better in five days."

And that was it. Less than five minutes.

Got my antibiotic, came home and went to bed.

Got up around dinner time and tried to eat bland mash. Body ached too much to sit for it. Took Advil and went back to bed.

This morning the body doesn't ache as much, but the gums look worse. And hurt. A lot.

Back to Google.

Consequences of severe swollen gums.
1. Loss of teeth and bone. Oh I will look ugly. And have to eat bland mash forever.

2. Heart disease.

3. Death. Goodbye, cruel world.

Or -

Maybe -

Maybe I have something called gingivostomatitis? Fever, swelling, aches, giant tumorous lymph nodes in the neck and jaw. And sores all over the mouth and gums. Hey, that kind of sounds like me.

"In healthy individuals the lesions heal spontaneously in 7-14 days without a scar."

Healthy aside from a giant swollen mouth and the aches and fever, apparently.

In two days I'm supposed to start teaching again.

In six days I'm supposed to get on a plane to Tokyo.

In fourteen days I'm supposed to be back home.

I can't think of a better way to spend the next 14 days than with my friends the lesions.

And the very very worst most miserable part of all this? All those extra delicious garden ripe tomatoes, now in my fridge, which I cannot eat. *Sob*. I will have to can them.

Modified lessons from church

2010-08-22T16:34:00.004-06:00

Think of the word Satisfaction.

I would like more satisfaction with my life. Who wouldn't?

What do I need to do to get more satisfaction?

Look at the last six letters of the word Satisfaction. They spell Action.

Now throw those six letters away. Throw away three more letters while you are at it.

What are you left with? That's right. Sat.

I think if I sat around more regularly, I would feel more satisfied with life.

****

While we are playing with letters, I want you to note that there is no I in Team.

But there is me in Team. In fact, without me, the team would just be ta. As in, ta ta, team.

Which, I suppose, must mean that I am the most important part of the Team after all. Which is what I suspected all along.

****

What games do you play during church lessons?

Concert in the park with loopy parents

2010-08-17T17:54:00.003-06:00

Actual excerpts from conversations that occurred between 6:35 pm and 8:30 pm on Monday, August 16, 2010.

The cast of characters: My father, whom we shall call Earl. My mother, whom we shall call Ace. My son, Jonathan. Myself.

The event: A concert in the park that my parents read about in the newspaper, and decided to invite us to attend. Basque dancing and bagpipes. One issue: It didn't start until after Jonathan's bedtime. I initially told Jonathan no, we weren't going. But then Earl talked it up so much, and got so excited about it, that Jonathan begged to go. So we went.

**** Excerpts from Earl ****

Earl (in the car): I'm not actually that excited about the dancing. It's too bad they have dancing first.

Earl (listening to announcements): They do this every Monday? Why haven't we come before? This is really neat.

Earl: I don't actually like bagpipes. Don't you think they all sound the same?

Earl (minutes later): Should we go now?

Earl (next song): Let's go. We should go.

Earl (next song): Let's get out of here.

Earl (next song): Let's go. Don't you think we should go?

Earl (while packing up at the end, speaking to unknown lady next to him): I hear they do this every week. Have you ever been to one of these before?

(Lady: Every week.)

Earl: Oh yeah? This is really neat. We should go every week, too.

Earl (lady has left, now packing up his chair): Bagpipe songs really all sound the same.

**** Excerpts from Ace ****

Ace (walking toward the park): Do you hear the bagpipes? Isn't this fun?

Ace (as we arrive, dancers are dancing to the melody of a whistle and drum): Are those the only instruments they use? It's going to get a little old.

(We watch the dancing for a while. They finish.)

Ace: Let's have the bagpipes now. It's time for the bagpipes.

(Pipe band arrives and starts playing a tune.)

Ace: Oh! I know this song! Hum hum hum hum... something about the moon. Oh it's too bad Daniel isn't here. He would know all the words... hum hum hum ... on the moon... hum hum.

(next song)

Ace: This song isn't very interesting. Why don't they play something more familiar?

(next song)

Ace: I wish they would play something familiar.

(next song)

Ace: Oh a march! This should be better.

(later)

Ace: I don't like this. Why don't they play something we know?

Ace: This isn't very pretty.

(...)

(Last song)

Ace: Oh this is more like it... hum hum hum... This is the one they played in that movie. Ooo this is really pretty. Hum hum hum. Isn't this nice? Hum hum hum.... It's too bad they didn't play more familiar songs the rest of the concert. Hum hum hum....

(Packing up afterwords)

Ace: Isn't this neat? Let's go next week. Won't it be fun?

****

Me (walking back toward the car when the event was over): Do you two ever listen to yourselves talk?

Recent events

2010-08-12T20:21:00.004-06:00

On Sunday, Jonathan gave his first talk in primary. He did a very nice job. He was fearless, needing no help from mom and dad. He spoke clearly and carefully. But listening to him speak with his little lisp, I kept thinking about how young he really is. He is so tall for his age, and so clever, with his own funny little personality, that I sometimes forget what a little guy he is.

*Aww* Tender mom moment.

Spanish is over for the summer as of today. Jonathan loved his Spanish class all summer long, and he learned a huge amount. He was putting lots of words into sentences, communicating with friends and teachers all in Spanish all after just 2.5 months. I am super impressed. In fact, I keep going back and forth on the idea of taking him back to their after school class twice a week to maintain what he has learned. But then I remember I would have to leave work early twice a week, pick him up in the car, and drive north a long ways. More commuting by car in our lives. So I think we'll go without, at least for a little while.

This means, of course, that I will no longer be spending my afternoons in the public library. I'm out of afternoons. I have a research conference next week in the city over the mountain, and then university meetings the following week, and then classes start.

*Sigh*. What happened to the summer?

It is melting into a blur of raspberries, apricots, and apples. And a new, massive, food dehydrator that we bought online a couple of weeks ago (which has been running pretty much nonstop). Apricots make yummy fruit rolls.

On buying and living in a home

2010-08-07T09:46:00.002-06:00

Letterpress put up a post on her blog, directing to a New York Times article, that I found so fascinating I have decided to turn my comment into a post.

The article argues that until very recently (this year), homes seemed to have been built and remodeled solely with resale in mind. Which appliances will attract the buyer? Vaulted ceilings and granite countertops. And bigger is always better.

Maybe that's why we had such a hard time finding a house. We were looking for a house to live in, not to sell. Of course, those of you who know our home buying story will be surprised. We bought our house sight unseen off the internet. What do we mean, hard to find? But it was one of a kind.

When we were looking for a home in 2008, we were looking purely for "livability" factors. Top priority: within walking distance of the places we need to be. By 2008, Tim and I had lived five years in campus housing, where everything was walkable, followed by three years in a beautiful newer home in commuter land, where I found myself stuck on a freeway for 30 minutes at a time, mornings and evenings, listening to children's music ad infinitum with a toddler in the back seat. From there, we moved to England for a year and did not buy a car.

Going a whole year without a car was tough. There were days when it was raining diagonally, I had a massive migraine, and yet Jonathan was at school a mile away and needed to be picked up. Bundled in my coat and overcoat, I grumbled to myself that these were the days that everyone else gave up their exercise routine. We didn't let ourselves have the choice.

But in spite of those diagonal rain days, we found we were overall healthier. We ate all the double cream that we wanted with no affect to our waistlines. We spent time together. Every day Tim and I walked and talked and laughed. Down the hill, through the park, to the preschool. Back across the park, and up the hill. Thirty minutes of walking rather than 30 minutes on I-35. What a difference.

We needed a home within walking distance of the places we needed to be. Number one priority.

The second thing we were looking for was a relatively small home. About half way through our year in England, we were shocked to realize that our house there was about the perfect size for our family. Permanently. There was a medium sized kitchen on the first floor, a master bedroom and living room on the second, Jonathan's bedroom and an office on the third. It was a typical mid-row house in a working middle-class neighborhood. It was all we could afford on my postdoctoral salary and a brutal pound-dollar exchange rate, and significantly smaller than working middle-class homes in Texas. But halfway through the year, we realized the space was perfect. Each room was used regularly. No space was wasted. No space was too tight. Cleaning took a couple of hours. That was it.

Looking for homes here in the mountains, the newer homes with the better wiring were over 40,000 square feet. Each. One. Of. Them. There are only three of us. Who was going to clean those extra 30,000 square feet? Who was going to heat the vaulted ceilings? While we really wanted the most modern electrical systems that money could buy, we couldn't justify purchasing all that wasted space. In the end, the house we found had all those England rooms on the first floor, plus a bonus basement. The basement has been nice. It's nice to have a guest bedroom for the occasional guest. It's nice to have a large playroom and a separate laundry and storage room. But we really don't use it as much as the first floor. I can't understand why families like ours would want 40,000 square feet.

Location, size. Price. And a garage was also a make or break deal here where it snows a lot.

We found a house that was perfect. It needed new electrical work, some modernization of the windows and decor, a new kitchen, new bathrooms. But we bought them for ourselves, for livability. Solid surface in the bathrooms -- no more scraping black out of tile grout. Solid surface countertops in the kitchen -- no sealing granite or stone, or chipping formica. Extra lighting in the living room where we would be reading. French doors opening to the back yard where we would be... um... apparently picking fruit.

And I love it. I really really love living here in this home. The colors, the lighting, the ease of cleaning. Riding my bike to the library. Walking to work. Dropping Jonathan off at school on foot. Neighbors and fruit trees and community. I hope it is years before we need to find out the resale value of this home. Because I want to live here longer.

Making jam

2010-08-04T21:13:00.002-06:00

I am making jam.

Right now I am making jam.

Na-now-NOW! I'm making it.

The instructions said let it sit for 30 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. So I set an alarm for 5 minutes. When it goes off I get up and stir and then reset the alarm. When I have gotten up 6 times, the 30 minutes will be over and I can add the sugar.

That's what the instructions say.

Only they didn't say 6 times. I figured that out myself.

That's mathematics, by the way.

I have already gotten up to stir several times.

I think maybe 4 times?

Actually, after the 3rd time I forgot to reset the alarm, and I read two email messages and sent one to my mom before I realized I had no timer.

Do you think reading two messages and writing one to my mom took five minutes? I am thinking it probably did.

Probably.

Which means I'm almost done?

Actually, I have lost count on how many times I've stirred the jam.

What do you think happens if you stir too many times?

And what does a "finely chopped" apricot look like?

I guess I'll figure both of those things out by the end of the night. Or at least over the course of a year when eating jam.

One thing about jam, it doesn't really use that much fruit. You add 3 cups of fruit, but 5.5 cups of sweetener (sugar and corn syrup). So that's nearly 2/3 sugar, 1/3 fruit.

Which means even after tonight, even after making jam, I will still have a tree full of apricots --

'scuze me -- 5 minute alarm.

I'm back. I'm calling this the 6th alarm this next time, so I can finish.

Cousin Lisa came and helped pick three grocery bags of apricots. You can barely tell. So my offer still stands -- come and pick and help yourself to apricots.

My jam-making relatives bailed on me. They were going to come today and pick and then make some jam, but Peggy looked in her freezer and realized she already had more jam than she could use from the same tree, two years ago.

So I'm making my own jam.

Right na-now-NOW!

(Making jam is kind of boring.)

Apricots!

2010-08-02T21:55:00.002-06:00

I picked apricots off our tree for 15 minutes this evening. My big bowl was full. So I came inside, washed the fruit, put the mushy ones into a bowl for fruit leather, put the greener ones into a bowl for ripening, and put the rest into quart bottles for processing.

15 minutes of picking. Total yield: 7 quarts now in the canner. 4 trays of fruit leather. One medium sized bowl of greenish fruit still to go.

You can't even tell I pulled anything off the tree.

And Tim picked for a half hour earlier today.

This is a major problem with fruit trees. The apricots are all ripe Right Now, and there are a billion of them. Last week they were too green. Next week they will be too soft and rotten. Oh what shall we do with our evenings this week, friends?

PS - anyone local - you are welcome to all you want. Come and pick them. You can borrow our ladder, but bring your own bowl.

Housework

2010-07-27T21:57:00.003-06:00

A while ago, I was pointed to this article by another blog I read. Although the article talks about dads struggling with work/life balance, the sentence noticed by the particular blog was the following:

"When both husband and wife work outside the home, the woman spends about 28 hours a week on housework."

28 hours a week = 4 hours per day, 7 days per week on housework. The blog asked, Where do they spend all that time?

Now, most people think housework is cleaning, but re-reading the article, I think they're lumping cooking and child care in there with those 28 hours. When we do that sort of lumping, I easily spend more than 28 hours on housework.

Take last weekend, for example. After cleaning the kitchen floor, I played in the basement with Jonathan. He wanted to drive his trucks around, and I wanted the plastic lions to attack the trucks, which was only fun for so long -- for both of us. So after a half hour or so, I continued to supervise from the couch while he pulled out the space ships, and an hour later I woke up to Star Wars toys all over the basement, and one happy little boy still playing away. Child care. Quality child care by me, the mom. That plus the floor mopping adds up to nearly 3 hours that morning alone.

And I also get to count afternoons. Lately, Jonathan and I come home and play video games together in the afternoon. I resurrected Dance Dance Revolution, in my continuing quest for my 22 year old body. I play a round, he plays a round, I play a round. I get stars for housework and exercise at the same time. I think I count as a super parent.

And then Sunday. Sunday we all went to church as a family. If church doesn't count as housework, I don't know what does. And I've been making fruit leather. Each batch takes about 6-8 hours to dry. Three batches over the weekend and woah! I'm spending way way more than just 28 hours per week on housework. I'm spending way more than 28 hours per week on housework in just a single weekend.

Who are all those lazy moms who spend less?

Irrelevant fruit update: (for my own future reference)

I am still picking raspberries. Huge patches of them have dried and shriveled on the thorny bushes, but there are enough juicy ones still out there that I'm hauling in multiple pints every other day. But we're all pretty tired of raspberries, which means, I suppose, that there is an end in sight: We will simply abandon them very soon.

The cherries are done. All picked and dried and stored. Yes! Accomplishment.

The apricots are turning orange, and we've picked and eaten a few, and they've been really really good -- far better than anything I've found in a store recently. However, the tree is still covered with enough green fruit that we can't strip the thing yet. I'm guessing that will be this weekend's project.

However, lest you worry that with cherries finished and raspberries abandoned we will have no projects until the weekend, it turns out that a tree in the corner of the back yard produces summer apples. Last year it was empty, and so we thought perhaps it was decorative only, but no. This year it is covered in fruit. The fruit has grown large, turned from bright green to pale green, and has started falling off the tree. It is kind of a sweet-tart, and definitely ripe. And so we get to do apples now. Tim and I (mostly Tim) picked a huge cooler full of the fruit this evening, and he's really only removed about a third.

What are we going to do with all those summer apples?

To make the whole fruit compulsion thing worse, I've been reading a novel in which the moon is whacked out of orbit and the tides wipe out all coastal cities and volcanoes choke out the sun and kill off all crops and everyone is starving to death. Which makes me even more eager to pick and process and preserve all those apples so that we don't die when a giant asteroid really crashes into the moon. Except that if we only eat apple sauce for a year, we will surely suffer death by diarrhea. But we will be ok up until the bitter end, because recall we've got large quantities of apocalyptic toilet paper stored away for exactly such an event.

Irrelevant fruit update ended somewhere back there. (In case you were looking for that clue to pick up reading again.)

Anyway, picking apples and raspberries definitely counts as housework. We're up past 37 now since Friday. All this housework is exhausting. Off to bed.

Adventures in fruit

2010-07-21T20:43:00.000-06:00

As my dear followers know, we have a garden. It's actually a relatively small plot of land, but it's nearly completely covered in raspberry bushes and fruit trees. Now that it is July, and the raspberries are in season, I am in a desperate fight against time to save all that fruit before it rots away.

Why, you ask, do I bother?

Because all that fruit is good! And expensive if purchased elsewhere. And honestly I don't know. But for some reason, we are compelled to harvest and freeze and dry and store, in preparation for the long cold winter in which nothing grows for months and months and months. I actually think it's some sort of biological compulsion. The longer you live in places with miserable winters, the more your genes tell you to gather food like mad in the summer.

Perhaps?

At the very least, I can post our efforts here, and you may mock us from a distance. Ah blogging.

So the fruit season is in full swing here at Artax Orchards. The black raspberries have been ripening in shifts since the 4th of July. We've spent hours picking them. Each hour yields about 2 to 4 pints.

The red raspberries, which are hiding in and around the black ones, have been ripening for a week, but they're really just taking off this week. For future reference: Red raspberries one or two weeks after the black ones.

So far, we've been eating them and freezing them. Alas, we cannot get double cream in this country, and so we have been making due with plain old whipping cream on our berries. Still very nice, even if not perfect.

What else do you do with about 10 pints of raspberries? I am not inclined to make jam. Especially raspberry jam, with all those little seeds to stick into your teeth. I'm thinking lots of smoothies.

Aren't they pretty looking? Who wouldn't want to collect all those? Especially given those hunter - gatherer genes?

For your further edification, let me tell you about the two major downsides to picking raspberries. The first is the fact that the average daily temperature is between 95 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I realize that my Arizona and Texas friends are not impressed, but let's just say those temperatures are not conducive to fruit harvesting. The other downside are the thorns, and the scratches.

Isn't that an ugly hand? It's mine. The scratches will fade away in just a couple of days, but I am stuck with the hand. It will grow uglier and uglier until I die.

Anyway, for future reference: Raspberries from the 4th of July through the 21st, still going strong. Some of the smaller ones have shriveled and dried on the vine. How do you get all your berries to be the big, fat, juicy ones?

Topic #2. Sour cherries.

For future reference: The sour cherries just began to ripen around the second week of July. We are trying to pick them early this year, before the cherry flies find them. Our tree is smaller -- we have been trying to prune all the fruit trees down gradually to manageable sizes -- but we've still hauled in several quarts.
What do you do, you ask, with sour cherries? Well, Jonathan eats them. The rest of us extract their pits:
And then try to come up with some other ideas. As we are not bakers, we are not going to make pies. Actually, what we've found that we like is sour cherry fruit leather.

For future reference:
Recipe (which I made up, so I am going to write down for next year):
2.5 cups sour cherries, ground in blender.
Add about 2 tablespoons sugar or more, to taste (these are really sour)
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 can applesauce, for texture.

Pour immediately onto fruit leather tray in food dehydrator. Do not think, "ah. Now I am done with cherries. I will put this mixture in the fridge until tomorrow and then dehydrate." For future reference: ground up sour cherries contain a lot of natural fruit pectin. If you put them in the fridge, you will have lumpy jelly the next morning rather than smooth fruit for drying.

So dry overnight. Then wake up early to check them, and realize they still aren't dry. Give them another hour. Keep checking on the stupid things every hour for the entire morning. Finally give up and wrap them up still sticky. Remember that this happened last year -- even if the manual says 5 hours of drying, it will be 10. Remind yourself not to wake up early just to check on the dehydrator. Stupid thing.

Topic #3. Currants.

We have picked the red currants, dear Reader. But we don't have an excessive amount of these. So we don't know what to do with them. I asked Google, and apparently the only thing you can really do with red currants is make jelly. My friend Lena, who knows these things because she has an honest English accent, suggested a bread pudding recipe. So maybe we'll go there. Meanwhile, the currants are keeping themselves company in the fridge.

Now, you are saying that this is an excessively long and boring post about fruit.

Reader, you have no idea how long and boring our fruit has already become.

Stay tuned for next week: the apricots are beginning to turn yellow.

Spanish class

2010-07-15T20:23:00.001-06:00

In case you were wondering, and why wouldn't you be? Jonathan loves his Spanish class. They do all sorts of fun stuff in there. Snacks and food, drama, exercise, art. They move from room to room playing games, thinking they are just having tons of fun, when secretly they learning all sorts of Spanish. The teachers are brilliant.

And then, when those kids thought they would just slip away home to normal life after school was over, the teachers presented each child with their very own CD full of Spanish language tunes. And now even I am singing in Spanish, all day every day.

This means, dear Reader, that I can now converse with you in Spanish. I can say useful things like, "I am a pizza" with "lots of cheese" and "no bologna". In case you ask, I can tell you that "this is the dance of the colors." Also, "we are all like the flowers in the garden of life." Or, just to shake things up a bit, I also learned how to say "everyone eats the flowers in the garden of life", in case that becomes important.

As the primary taxi driver between home and Spanish, I am more involved in Spanish than ever before. And not just music.

Yesterday, Jonathan's teacher asked if I would participate in a parent survey to help the school attract more students. I agreed. I assumed she would ask me questions like, "why did you decide on our school?" "Why is a second language important?" That sort of thing. And they kind of did ask the second one. But rather than find out why we chose Spanish summer school, given all our options, the questions on the survey ended up being a sort of psychological profile of me. The parent.

Seriously. They asked me to describe myself in a few sentences. They asked me to tell them whether the world is a safe place or a scary place. Whether good things or bad things typically happen to me. How people who don't know me treat me. What things are important to me.

I thought it was a little weird. Oh my psychologist friends out there, why do you think the Spanish school wants to know these things about the parents who select their school? Perhaps they are envisioning some clever advertising campaign. Since most of the parents who enroll are optimists rather than pessimists, they can increase exposure to their target audience by posting their signs on the sunny side of the street.

No really. I ask because I don't know. Please someone explain to me what might have been the point of the survey.

Meanwhile, please do not step on the flowers in the garden of life. "No pise las flores en el jardin de la vida."

A random summer post

2010-07-09T22:11:00.003-06:00

I love the summer. I have already explained that. But I shall tell it to you all over again. And then again.

I love the summer. I love that my toes are always warm and that I don't shiver uncontrollably upon exiting the shower. I love that my skin doesn't crack open. I love the smell of the air outside. I love that my yard is green and my trees are growing and I have flowers in front of the house. I love having a yard and a house in the summer. You can take them in the winter. You can shovel the snow and spread ice melt along the driveway and sidewalks. That is fine. But in the summer, they are mine.

Don't look, but the summer is more than half over. AAAH! NOOOO!

I was going to be out and active all summer long, torturing my body back into its 22-year old form. How has that been going, you ask? I feel guilt. I get about 20 minutes of biking in each day. Commuting. That does nothing for my Michelle Obama arms. How, I ask you, am I going to get Michelle Obama arms on a bicycle? I will just have to wait until the fall, when I begin commuting by foot again. Oh wait --

Another thing I love about summer is having more time to read novels. Unfortunately, this summer so far, I have not done enough reading of novels.

Nor have I written anything on my own novel.

Speaking of novels, if one wanted to write a novel, where would one store one's draft? Particularly if one's husband is always in front of the home computer? And one didn't want to put the draft on one's work computer because, um, one does not want one's boss reading it? And one has considered Google docs, but decided upon reading this article that one would not like Wal-Mart reading one's novel either before its advanced release date, in case one decides to sue Wal-Mart.

If one is going to sue Wal-Mart, one must have an impeccable Google footprint. And Facebook footprint. Since I keep forgetting to see what all my Facebook friends are doing, I am pretty clean there. But the Google docs thing would totally ruin my case. Who can take seriously a law suit by someone who writes that kind of drivel? Of course, those Wal-Mart lawyers would be all over this blog as well, but that doesn't bother me. Knowing my secret yogurt recipe would not actually affect my case. No, no. The purpose of this blog is to prevent me from ever running for President. Oh, and for the record, Google also reads my email, but I also keep that very boring. For example, when siblings email about birthday presents for my Dad, I suggest socks. Nothing is more boring than emails about socks. I hope Wal-Mart enjoys reading them.

Let's talk about summer and what it means at work. Summer means I get to spend all my time working on projects and finishing up those projects I didn't have time to finish during the school year. But alas, I have not finished as many projects as hoped for. Boo. They keep expanding. Like the Blob. I try to contain them in my fist like a ball of playdoh, but they leak out between my fingers and grow and grow until they eat me in a terrible display of 1958 movie special effects. (Did you ever watch that movie? I don't think I ever sat through it, it was so bad. But that doesn't mean it doesn't make an apt comparison for summer research projects.) But I love my job in the summer. It would be much more painful to take on the Blob during the academic year.

What else? Recall that we live in an orchard here? People keep asking when we expect certain fruits to be ripe. Then Tim and I scratch our heads and look at each other and ask, "Now when did that happen last year?"

For future reference: The first raspberries were ripe over the 4th of July weekend. A week later, the first sour cherries are ready to be picked. Apricots are still a few weeks away.

I will try to update as necessary. Of course, sometime next spring someone will ask me when I expect the cherries to be ripe, and I will scratch my head and look at Tim, and he will say, "Didn't you put that in your blog?" and then I will look back through the archives and find this post and read it a little ways until I realize it is all about Wal-Mart, and then look somewhere else. So, buried this deep in pure text, this information is actually lost to the world. Lost.

Like summer in just a few more weeks. Boo hoo. I love summer. Ah. Warm toes.

Local 4th of July -- For future reference

2010-07-05T21:20:00.004-06:00

1. The fireworks won't start until after 10pm. There will be plenty of time to leave the store, drive home, put the groceries away, gather blankets and jackets, and walk up the hill to see the fireworks. Plenty of time.

2. No matter how hot it was at 3pm, when the sun goes down and the wind comes out of the canyon, it will be cold. Cold, I tell you. This is the mountain west. We are not in Texas anymore. Bring a jacket and an extra blanket to put over the legs. And a few dollar bills to buy glow sticks.

3. Just because you park the car in a quiet neighborhood doesn't mean it will be quiet later, after the fireworks.

4. Indeed, quiet neighborhoods are full of stop signs, and not the four-way-stop kind. Stop signs, as opposed to traffic lights, turn roads into parking lots after major events such as fireworks.

5. My own street is separated from the nearby larger street by a stop sign. It will be a parking lot for an hour or so after the fireworks. Therefore, do not even think about driving, even if the sun has already set and you are already in the car returning from grocery shopping. See number 1.

6. The hot air balloon launch is definitely worth seeing. If they launch at 6:30 am, be in the field by 6:00 am. That means be near the field looking for parking by 5:45 am.

7. If the balloon launch happens three days in a row, pick a day to attend besides the day of the parade and the 5K. The day of the parade and 5K, there will not be parking. Even at 5:45 am.

8. No matter how hot it is predicted to be at 12pm, at 6:30 am it will be cold. This is the mountain west, not Texas. Bring a jacket.

9. Although the hot air balloon launch is worth seeing, the parade really is not, even if it lasts two hours, with floats and marching bands. Two boring hours.

10. But if you want to see the parade anyway, and you send someone with a few blankets at 6:15 am, you still have a chance to get front row seats. For the record, Janice found places for our blankets near the very end of the parade route, even as late as 6:15 am. Thanks, Janice.

11. Of course, front row seats will be in the direct sun on the asphalt. And no matter how cold it was at 6:30 am, after two hours in the sun on the asphalt, you will be too hot.

12. Bring sunscreen. Send Earl to buy popsicles. Thanks, Earl.

13. And for goodness sakes, get the kids to bed on time the night before if you really plan on finding a parking place at 5:45 am.

Because I should write something

2010-06-30T22:18:00.002-06:00

I got caught in a thunderstorm today. A loud one. It takes me about 30 minutes door to door to walk home from my office, and the wind was blowing and a few drops falling just as I left my building. By the 10 minute mark, the thunder crashed and the rain came down hard, diagonally. By the 12 minute mark it was lighter. Hard again at 15. Over by 25.

When I walked in the door, my dad said, "You don't look all that wet." That's because the wind blow-dried me dry in those last 5 minutes. And plus, it really only rained for 10 minutes all told. Not enough to cancel the sprinkler cycle.

My dad has been staying at my house. Tim is away for the week, so Dad has been helping out. My dad and I do not see things the same politically or socially or ... we can probably just stop with not seeing things the same way. He wanted to have a "heart to heart" talk Monday night, meaning he wanted to ask a lot of personal questions and then give me a nice lecture about how he sees the world and how it must, therefore, run that way.

I tried to be calm and polite, but I think the lecture bothered me more than I thought it was bothering me because I woke up at 3am later that night and couldn't sleep. My dad has some truth in his head, but I don't think it's quite taking him in the right direction. And I don't think he cares to see that.

In similar news, I was interviewed about my research for an article for a college newsletter. The interviewer had no background at all in my field, or in any field of my college, in fact, so I tried to give her a basic picture of the very broad types of problems I look at, and relate these problems to things she might understand. I got a copy of the article today, and it's kind of on the right track, but she was missing a lot of key details.

That's the connection to my dad. On the right track, but missing some key details.

One word that he used in our conversation: "abomination".

When was the last time you had a conversation in which the word "abomination" was used? You've gotta meet my dad.

Anyhow, I have now written something.

The last time I wrote, it was still spring, but now it is summer. I love the summer. I love the way my toes are never cold. I love that I can open the windows a bit at night and breathe fresh air while I sleep. I love that the garden explodes into green pandemonium. And then I have to weed. I love having to weed.

And I love the summer thunderstorms, and getting caught in a thunderstorm (without getting struck by lightning). Which brings us back to where we began, and so here we shall end.

Love and the library

2010-06-14T21:43:00.003-06:00

One city north of mine, there is a public library near a public park, around several other public buildings.

Reader, I am falling in love with this library.

Tuesday, I dropped Jonathan off at Spanish lessons in this city 15 minutes to the north. Rather than drive 25 minutes south to my office, I drove 3 minutes to the public library and found a well lit table all to myself. Spreading papers and laptop, I worked in peace for nearly three hours, occasionally resting my eyes on the titles of the books nearby.

"Exploring Norway." "Lands of the north."

And I wondered about the people who wrote those books, nonfiction, and if they ever spent their afternoons in well lit public buildings contemplating other writers of nonfiction. Thinker and writer, I went back to work invigorated, needing no additional break to take the time to drive to my office.

Thursday I returned, and found a new table in a different corner. There was a man across from me, periodically standing and then returning. And I could hear the occasional child whining in the aisles, and I suspected I would whine, too, if my babysitter brought me into adult nonfiction. On the way out, I looked over a wall of photos of former beauty queens: Miss City-15minutes-north going back to the 1950's. Stylist and dreamer, I silently laughed at the dresses and hairdos, and was glad I could look at them rather than the cinder block walls of my office.

Friday I was back, to find an art fair set up in tents just outside the library door. I wandered through the exhibits briefly before finding myself a table inside. They made me want to paint again. Critic and painter, more culturally aware, I entered the library ready to take on the day's academic project, still long before I would have arrived in my office on campus.

Back again today. I found a table upstairs, next to a plug outlet. I let my phone quietly recharge while I worked on a paper revision. Then stood to rest my back and found myself near the paranormal section. Standing, I flipped through two ghost stories. Believer and skeptic, more psychically aware, I returned to my next paper having lost only a fraction of the time I would have spent driving back from my office on campus.

Oh library, this is love. You can give me the time that I need, the peace and the freedom, and yet each day something new and exciting. I long to be with you more often and always. I dread the campus meetings that pull me away. I miss you. Do you miss me?

I love you.

Thursday, I'm getting a library card.

Eat dessert first

2010-06-12T20:22:00.001-06:00

Two quick thoughts:

1. This morning, I observed Jonathan gently tucking his light saber into bed, whispering "nighty night", and then cuddling in next to it. Who says little boys aren't nurturing?

2. We had caramel fondue for dinner last night. It's supposed to be a dessert dish for about six people, served with fresh fruit and cake. But when there are only three of you in your dinner party, there is no reason to cook something else. Start and end with dessert! Only halfway through the pot of caramel, we all started feeling slightly queasy, and a little overwhelmed with the sweetness of it all. I guess we'll be eating boiled cabbage and potatoes again tonight.

Blogging is evil, and other thoughts

2010-06-02T20:49:00.002-06:00

In one of my favorite novels, set in nineteenth century England, a certain Mr. Collins is appalled that his relations would ask him to read a novel to them. Apparently at the time, novels were considered evil, or at the very least a disappointing way to occupy one's time. One could be doing something useful instead, I suppose, like higher mathematics.

These days, if a kid is reading a novel we celebrate. Hooray! The boy will grow up to have a mind and a job and be clever and thoughtful!

I have heard, or heard of, much backlash recently against new and modern ways of occupying one's time. Apparently at this time, blogging and other forms of social media are evil. Or at least a disappointing way to spend an evening when one could be doing something useful.

I disagree.

Yes, just like reading novels, blogging can suck up all one's time and leave little left over for other important aspects of human life. Like going pee. (My bladder hurt a lot after reading The Hunger Games.)

But like reading novels, blogging can improve the mind and make one clever and thoughtful.

Or something like that.

I don't get many opportunities to write for pleasure, but I can blog. And (a few) people even read my blog. Now. Not in the distant future when I am dead and they are sorting through my things trying to decide what to keep and what to throw away. You can tell me immediately that yes, that is a good idea, or no, that is totally wrong, or even point out that I have repeatedly used the incorrect spelling of "role". Whereas I read the words written by my grandmother, who is dead, and wish I could ask her why she didn't fight Grandpa harder about living in the cabin as a newlywed. Did it not occur to her that it was her right and her duty to negotiate living circumstances with him? Or did she only learn that after fifty years of marriage when the memoir was written?

Not that I'm only writing here my memoirs for posterity, or anything -- just like I don't always read 19th century English literature for pleasure, although it makes me sound smarter if I pretend I do.

Certainly blogging is healthier than reading vampire romance novels, for example. And I can say that, because somehow in the last several months I have read more vampire romance novels than you. And one werewolf romance novel too, to boot. (In my defense, I have recently moved myself off of that particular book recommendation list. But before doing so, I did read all those novels. I did. And then I pictured Mr. Collins reading them to me. And I felt some empathy for the man.)

Blogging. You put in the work. You get something out. You write to make yourself a better person, to deal with stresses of life, and just to think about something else for a brief period of time.

OK. That's enough mental stimulation for me. I'm going to go play video games.

Hello summer

2010-05-28T23:11:00.002-06:00

Today was the last day of school for the boy. Which is crazy. I believe that school should end in June, and start in September, rather than mid-August to late May. I don't know why no one in the school district asked me my opinion on this.

We now start our crazy summer schedule, in which I wake up early and work mornings, pick up the boy at lunch and deposit him at his new afternoon Spanish class. My workday is over at 3:30. Tim's workday starts around lunchtime. We both work into the evenings.

Why, you ask, are we torturing ourselves with this schedule? And will it really work? We worked similar hours six years ago (that long?) when we had an infant and had just moved to Texas. We wanted to optimize family time -- we couldn't bear the idea of leaving the infant with someone else eight hours a day. So we hired a part time nanny, organized our schedules to take turns working from home every other day, in overlapping shifts. I taught on campus Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Tim went into his office Tuesdays and Thursdays. The time constraints and stress of new jobs made us both focus and use our time very carefully. And it worked for us, for that little while. I still look back upon it as one of the hardest things I have ever done.

But we're trying it again. Tim feels strongly that a kid should get to play at home all summer long. I feel strongly that a kid should take swimming lessons all summer long. And we both thought Spanish immersion would be more interesting and useful than generic day camp. I suggested hiring summer help, and I suppose that's still an option. But Tim wanted to try it on our own first. So here we go.

Hello, summer.

Goodbye, non-essential personal time.

Nostalgia

2010-05-22T23:27:00.002-06:00

Wednesday I wandered around the campus where I was a graduate student. It has been six years since I graduated. I only spent five years of my life there. So I have been away longer than I was a student there. It was inevitable, but still seems strange. Am I really that old?

As I walked into the campus, I was remembering. I passed so many landmarks, and thought about how they were so important in my life. We used to drive up that road to go shopping. I went running along that path -- there is a garden hidden at the end. And there is the table where friends and I would eat lunch on a nice day. They've replanted the tree that had died. Tim and I used to laugh about that tree. -- Wasn't it nice when I used to belong? I missed that.

I met with a few people, said hello, talked a little shop, worked for a while in the library, and then left, walking back to catch the bus.

As I walked out of the campus, I was remembering. I remembered how I failed my first qualifying exam. How I hated having to find an advisor. Afraid I would never do dissertation-quality research. The pains of teaching assistantships and grading students with a high sense of entitlement. Never able to rest. Never being good enough or finished enough. The angst and insecurity, among myself and my peers. -- Wasn't it nice that I no longer belonged? Can't miss that.

Five pictures

2010-05-19T19:26:00.005-06:00

I have been hiding, trying to get some work done. Maybe I will write more on that later.

For now, I offer instead the following images. These are the most exciting things to happen to us this month so far. You may invent your own captions.

What's up with us

2010-05-10T20:29:00.002-06:00

Jonathan participated in a 5K fun run at school on Friday. His time: 56 minutes and 50 seconds. Yup. He pretty much walked the whole way, and was near the very last to finish. I've been thinking since then that maybe we should put the boy in soccer. Perhaps then he could keep up with his friends. Of course, he didn't care that he didn't keep up. He just wanted the promised popsicle for completing the race. And his dad thinks running is boring and painful, so why push the boy? Why indeed? I just feel like he's missing something when he can't enjoy being out on a nice spring day feeling his legs move. Two against one. I won't win this one.

Tim got a beehive. He has been saying for a while that he wants a beehive in our backyard -- as long as they were someone else's bees and he didn't have to take care of them. Turns out that the uncle of a neighbor up the street is that kind of a beekeeper. On Friday, this man brought over our very own beehive to go in the back corner of the garden. Tim is giddy. He goes outside a few times a day to see how his bees are doing, and checks for them in all our different flowers. The owner will come check on the hive every couple of weeks. Meanwhile, they seem to be settling in nicely.

Me, my biggest recent development is a pinched nerve that makes my neck and shoulders ache. I've had it for a couple of weeks now. Some days are worse than others. I've scheduled an appointment with a doctor, and maybe I'll hear something that will help. I haven't been to see a doctor for a few years, and while I'm at it, I've been thinking that I ought to ask about all the other aches and pains and ills that I haven't asked about for a few years. But then I will come across as a hypochondriac. Can't wait.

Songs for my grandmother

2010-05-05T20:18:00.005-06:00

Mother's day is coming up. In our house, it has never been a big holiday. I remember hearing when I was growing up that some women couldn't stand the day. They boycotted church to avoid it. I wondered what the big deal was? Show up, get a flower, watch the kids sing. Gotta be better than your typical Sunday.

One year a woman explained publicly why she hated the day. Apparently she had spent the morning yelling at her kids, trying to get them dressed nicely and out the door. They arrived at church frustrated and angry. Then the children promptly went up to the front of the room and sang:

Mother dear, I love you so
Your happy smiling face
Is such a joy to look at
It makes home a lovely place.

Said mother explained that this was not her reality. She felt ashamed to accept her flower, as she was obviously a failure.

Meh. I'm pretty confident that the words to the song are not anybody's reality. At least not all the time. In fact, all those songs -- about flowers reminding us of mothers, and mothers being tender and kind and true, and having beautiful shining eyes like glistening stars -- they weren't written for you or me, or even about you or me. I sang them when I was a kid, so clearly they were written for a completely different set of mothers than the set I now find myself in. Actually, I think they were written for a different set of mothers than the one my own mother was a part of.

They were written for my grandmother. And not both of my grandmothers, although Geneve was a wonderful lady. Those songs were written just for my Grandma Alberta (yup -- the one lucky enough to be named after her dad).

My Grandma Alberta married a soldier near the end of World War II. While he was on leave, she got pregnant. At the end of the war, my grandpa returned home to his wife and a baby boy he had never met before. They went on to have six children. Thus my grandma was a mother -- a new mother -- in those years following World War II. The more I learn about those years, the more I think they were very very strange years in the history of the U.S. I am not a historian, and so I do not completely understand. But I do know that expectations for women seem to have been turned on their heads and focused to a very narrow ideal. An ideal in which mother was a "joy to look at", and "tender and kind and true", and made one think of flowers.

I wasn't there, but somehow I envision my grandma as trying to live up to this ideal. She definitely put up with a lot more from my grandpa that I ever would have, especially in those early years of marriage. Grandpa wasn't abusive or anything; he was just a dreamer with very unconventional and uncomfortable dreams, many involving lack of indoor plumbing. He dragged his family along as he fulfilled those dreams. I assume that Grandma put up with so much because she was a woman of her times. Women of that time put up with their men, cheerfully. While singing of flowers and meadows and clover.

Thinking about mother's day, and songs about my Grandma Alberta sung in primaries world wide, and the strange post WWII world in which she lived, made me think of the following words which I read in one of my academic journals very recently. The quote is from a book review by Margaret A. M. Murray, of the book Pioneering Women in American Mathematics, by Judy Green and Jeanne LaDuke.

"... over the years 1920-1939, approximately one out of every seven Ph.D.'s in mathematics in the United States was awarded to a woman.

"In the years following World War II, owing to complex sociopolitical forces, women's share of the Ph.D.'s dropped precipitously. An oft-cited statistic ... asserts that, among the mathematically talented, boys outnumber girls by approximately 13 to 1, corresponding to a presence of women of just over 7%. Perhaps one reason this statistic has gained so much traction is that it matches so well with the proportion of mathematics Ph.D.'s awarded to women during the first three decades after the war. Indeed, it was only in the early 1980s that women's share of the U.S. mathematics doctorates rebounded to their pre-World War II levels. To those who assume that American women are just now attaining critical mass in research mathematics, statistics on the pre-1940 women Ph.D.'s often come as a bit of a shock."

I think Grandma Alberta was affected by these "complex sociopolitical forces". Although I'm positive she never wanted a Ph.D. in mathematics, I do wonder how my world might have been different if she hadn't been quite as willing to follow my grandpa around the world on his wild adventures.

While I was growing up, my family lived quite close to these grandparents -- at least while they were in the U.S. I identified with the dreamer who was my grandpa. In fact, he may deserve the credit for many of my dreams. He ran off to graduate school at Columbia University on the GI bill -- the other end of the world as far as his parents and siblings were concerned. With that experience in his background, he always spoke to me as though graduate school would be part of my future.

But Grandma was quieter. I remember deciding once to make an effort to become better acquainted with the homemaker who was my grandma. We didn't seem to have as much in common as Grandpa and I. I vaguely remember working on sewing projects with her. She wasn't convinced that my grandpa's dreams for me were appropriate for a young woman. But she yielded to my grandpa.

Soon after I was married, now in graduate school and vaguely nervous about qualifying exams in my future, I visited my grandparents' home over a holiday. They both sat me down in their living room to talk. My grandpa gestured to the photo of his first great-grandbaby, a dark haired, dark eyed beauty of a child. He and Grandma both pointed out to me that while dreams and education were important, there were things that were more important.

Me, I just smiled at them, with my lovely shining eyes (just like the stars that twinkle way up in the deep blue skies).

Beauty and me and high school

2010-05-01T18:52:00.006-06:00

Earlier this week I was directed to this article, which talks about the huge advantage strikingly beautiful people enjoy in life. For example, two people apply for a job. Their experience is the same, their resumes are the same, a consultant even trains them both to have similar interview skills. After the interview, the average looking person is not called back. The highly attractive person gets the job offer.

I shared this with Tim, and his response, as a strikingly attractive (if somewhat hairy) male was, "Yeah, but what kind of job?"

Well, rereading the article, the men both had "corporate experience" and had "run their own companies." The women both had been "secretaries and saleswomen." So ok, maybe these jobs weren't about living in a cave and writing code, with all meetings conducted by phone, as is the job of the most highly attractive man I know. But Tim's quick question made me wonder, and then flip the question. Are there jobs out there where the more highly attractive person would actually be discriminated against? And that made me recall a story from my past.

When I was 16, I interviewed for a high school program that involved knowing a little bit about government and social science. Just before the interview, I had been taking one of Mr. Talbot's notorious AP Biology exams. You know, the kind of exam where you get one hour with the test, and you write as fast as you can as much as you can, dumping everything you've been memorizing for weeks onto the paper, hoping and praying you put in the right key words in there somewhere, and then your arm aches from writing when you're done. That class was brutal. Anyway, as I said, my interview was immediately after the exam, and my government and social science brain waves had been buried by the more pressing biology ones.

I was dressed up nicely in a neat shirt and skirt. I had put in the time to carefully type and prepare my application. I was interested in the program -- my older brother had enjoyed participating in the boy's program the year before -- and I was motivated to do my best.

But the interview was a flop. A total joke. The interviewers consisted of about five professionally dressed older women. They were representatives from government and the Larger Community, taking seriously their charge to find the best candidates for the summer program, believing that the future of our government and community was in their hands.

To ensure they made no mistakes, they asked basic questions like, "Who is the vice-president of the United States?" and "Who signed the Declaration of Independence first?" These were questions to which I knew the answer, even at age 16, but for which I could not recall the answer without first a long, embarrassing pause as I waded past the biology facts. And then the answer came out with a big question mark at the end...?

Even more damning, they asked "Aside from your mother, what woman do you admire the most and why?" I think they were looking for an impressive stateswoman, although perhaps they would have accepted a highly regarded businesswoman or artist. Someone with name recognition. But for me, since the question was started with a reference to my mother, the only woman who came into my brain was my dead grandmother. I had recently found her old yearbook, from the 1920s, in a chest in our basement, and I had been amazed to find that she was well liked, an athlete, and a writer, and very involved in her Duchesne, Utah, community back when she was 16 and in high school. So grandma's name came out. Very wrong answer.

Interestingly, the program was not able to attract many applicants in my school. I don't think there were enough applicants to fill the slots they were supposed to fill. But when the results came out, I was definitely not on the list, or even the alternate list. I had obviously shown these important older women of the community that I was pretty much a complete idiot.

Anyway, how does this relate to the original topic of the post? Because those older women from the community, after I had completely tanked it during the interview and was standing up to leave, all commented on how pretty my skirt was and how nice I looked. I remember being a little surprised at that, but thanking them politely.

But doesn't that strike you as odd? These women, these power women of the greater community, were secretly thinking, "This girl is a complete and total idiot," and publicly they were complimenting me on my looks.

Why? Was it because they hoped to soothe my disappointment and my ego by letting me know I was pretty? Did it help them feel better about themselves as they scraped my name off my list? "Not much going for this one in the way of brains." Or were they just trying to end something that was all around a very embarrassing experience on a positive note, and the fact that I was wearing a nice skirt (it was nice, by the way -- one of my favorites) was the only positive thing they could think of as I stood to leave? A consolation prize?

You know, all these years later, I think the reason their incongruous last comment about my looks bothers me is that it seems to imply that Pretty is a lesser species. They had interviewed me and found I was definitely not Smart like they were, but I could be Pretty. As they sent me away, they tried to point out to me that I was interviewing out of my league. This position was for a Smart, and as a Pretty, I didn't have enough brains to realize it, but I was not in their class.

Probably I am reading too much into that bizarre comment. But still. I wonder.

And for the record, my label was definitely not Pretty in high school. Pretty's got asked to dances and calls by boys. I was a Smart. And most of the time, prom season being an exception, I could live with the Smart label.

Anyway, I still laugh about the interview when I think about it. But reading the article about beauty, and wondering about its effect upon where we end up in life, made me wonder again about those women.

If the interview had gone well, would they still have complimented me on my looks?

Or, going with the theme of the first paragraph of this post, if I had been strikingly beautiful, would it have mattered that I couldn't remember the vice president?

Ten years ago

2010-04-28T21:41:00.004-06:00

One hurdle facing almost all graduate students is the dreaded qualifying exam. For me, there were three required qualifying exams. Two of them were six hours long, one of them was three hours long. I had to pass them all by September of my first year, or I would be thrown out. The exams were only given in June and in September. I tried to pass one when coming into the program -- I worked hard all of the summer before, and learned more material than I thought possible. But in the end, I failed. I entered my program with a failure, and three qualifying exams still to go.

By the end of April in the year 2000, I was studying nonstop, at least 12 hours each day. I had copies of all the old exams going back years. Exams were supposed to take only six hours. I spent much more time than that on the old exams, hunting down and thinking up solutions, taking careful, detailed notes, and storing them away in a binder. I labeled the problems according to topic or trick used. I memorized everything I could memorize. Unfortunately, I knew that in the end, each year's problems were invented anew, and pure memorization would be little help. It would be me and my pencils and the blue book, and whatever I could pull out of my overflowing brain.

Tim and I had been married less than a year, and he was a graduate student as well. He was studying for comprehensive exams at the same time, but in a different department. Newly wed and deeply in love, we spent evenings gazing into each others' eyes... and then back to our notes. Studying.

We were living in a 600 square foot apartment on the eighth floor of a student housing complex to the east of the main campus. We were up above the tops of the eucalyptus trees, with a great view of sunsets over the famous campus tower. Tourists paid money for a view like ours. I guess we paid money, too. Our rent was more than twice what I had been paying for a similar sized apartment in Ann Arbor the year before. And we were lucky to be in student housing, where rents were significantly less than in the yuppie neighborhoods surrounding campus. We had entered and won a lottery to win that eighth floor apartment. The floors were gray tile and the ceilings were asbestos, but with a nice rug and the windows open, blowing the eucalyptus scent in with the sunlight, we were in heaven. No better place in the world to spend 12 - 16 hours per day studying.

There were nine of us starting my program that year. Two of them were on a different track, taking a different set of qualifying exams. One of them had passed that exam I failed in September. The rest of us met regularly in basement classrooms to review problems we had tried. We put our collective brains together to try to solve the worst of them. We dug up solutions from binders of more senior grad students when all else failed.

Did I feel stressed out and anxious? Yes. But the anxiety has faded, and I remember more the sunlight and the eucalyptus, and the fact that I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing exactly where I wanted to be doing it. I might fail, and then the dream would be over. Meanwhile, I would do what I could to pack my brain as full as possible.

Would I go back to those days? The sunlight? The eucalyptus? The view of the famous campus tower?

Never. Life is much better ten years later.

Planting

2010-04-25T20:43:00.003-06:00

We planted two more trees over the weekend: a nectarine and a peach tree. Those two both grow well in our area. In fact, many of the houses in this county were planted on land that belonged to peach orchards just 50 years ago. Tim and I decided we needed a peach or nectarine to round out our collection. The only other fruit tree missing would be a sweet cherry tree (we have the sour variety). However, thinking about our friends the maggots, Tim and I decided to go with two from the peach family instead. So they are planted. We now have two more skinny sticks reaching six feet into the sky toward heaven.

In April, we love our fruit trees. We watch them tenderly, and exclaim over every new bud and blossom. Last October, I was so sick of our yard I couldn't stand to look at it. I had been picking and processing fruit in my spare time since July. That's four months of fruit production. Eight trees (only counting those that produced last year). And just three of us. It was exhausting. We gave up and let a lot of it rot on the trees. But by January, that plum fruit leather processed in September was sooo good.... We have decided to spend every minute of free time this upcoming September making more. It's easy enough to say that in April.

I also planted rocks this weekend. That is, I'm putting together a nice path through our own little orchard. Since we have buckets of pale gray rocks dug up from some construction work 1.5 years ago, it seems reasonable to put them to decorative use. So I've been digging little holes for them, and planting them gently into the ground, where they can settle in and grow some roots. Maybe in a few months I will also plant some Pictures! here on this blog. But not now. I'm in a verbal kind of mood.

Today my shoulders ache. It could be because of all that planting yesterday. It also could be because I did 35 push ups yesterday. Did you hear that? I'd better say it again. I did 35 push ups yesterday. OK, so they were the wimpy variety where I bent my knees under me. And I rolled away crying when I was done. But I finished. And I did 135 crunches, in sets of 15. This is because a week ago, I decided I wanted my 23 year old body back. I think the 23 year old body is hiding somewhere inside this 33 year old one. My thought is to torture both bodies with push-ups and sit-ups, and especially lunges, until the younger one cries uncle and comes out from hiding. Maybe sometime mid-June. That would be good timing, as we have some family pictures scheduled then. Anyway, maybe I'll let you know how that goes, too, and whether those muscles I am planting actually grow to fruition. In case I forget, ask me about it in June.

Could this really be spring?

2010-04-20T20:37:00.003-06:00

In the last two days, the weather has been acceptable, and the plants have exploded into life. Two days ago I was wandering around a few dead-looking sticks in the back yard, wondering if I had been a leetle too aggressive with the rosebush trimming (never done that before). This afternoon all those sticks had sprouted leaves. So I guess they're growing back in spite of my clippers.

Our fruit trees are flowering, all hundred billion of them. Well, ok, not really all of them. The apple trees apparently grow leaves first and then flower, so no blossoms there yet. The apricot tree flowered first, trying to get the honeybees' attention while they're still crazy with spring fever. So that tree is done. But it appears that the plum and pear and cherry trees can't decide whether they prefer leaves first or flowers, and so they've grown them both in the last few days.

We did something crazy, Tim and I. Remember our overwhelming apple harvest from October? We went months and months with apples. We only just threw out the last of them in March (they were molding in the garage). But yesterday, we planted another apple tree.

Yes! I told you we were crazy. The thing is, we learned to love Bramley apples after being introduced to them by a colleague in Liverpool while we lived in England. These are true baking apples. When you bake them, they stay tart and turn light and fluffy. My mother says "ah yes, like Pippin apples". NO! Pippin apples turn rubbery and don't keep their tartness under baking. There is nothing like a Bramley apple for baking. They don't need sugar. They don't need cinnamon. Of course it doesn't hurt to drizzle them with toffee sauce, but that's true of pretty much anything in this world.

So, Tim did a little research and found a nursery in New York state that sells Bramley apple trees. He mail ordered one. One for us, two for our English friend's family. The trees arrived, about 3 feet tall sticks. And so we planted ours. Maybe within a couple of years we'll get our first Bramley apples, if the thing survives being shipped in a box with its roots merely wrapped in plastic. And if the tree can survive our brutally long and cold and bitter and long winters (did I mention it is way past time for spring?), and our hot and dry summers. This climate of ours does not have much in common with that of England. Except possibly April.

I'll let you know how it goes in two years, I promise.

And then I wanted to close with one other story. Yesterday it was warm enough that today I decided to wear shorts. Or at least, I pulled an item of clothing out of my closet that is the closest thing in my wardrobe to shorts, my wardrobe having felt the influence of my employment at G.O.D. University.

I biked over to the university this morning, and it was just lovely to feel the spring wind rushing through my hair. Only I'm not referring to the hair on my head. Yes, it has been a long winter, and my leg hair has grown long. And it was lovely to wear shorts and let it blow free in the wind.

Did I just post that on the internet?

Reconnecting

2010-04-18T18:22:00.002-06:00

Every now and then you need a good excuse to reconnect with people you love. Today, it was my cousin leaving on a mission to Brazil. The cousin, age 19, has been living with his parents, four houses down the street. My extended family descended upon our city and we had some good catch up time.

In attendance were my aunts and uncles who don't live that far away, but far enough away in our busy lives that we don't see much of each other. In fact, time and busy-ness seems to separate my family even from the aunt who lives four houses down, and we go months without reconnecting.

My aunts and uncles are the same crazy people they were 20 years ago, only a little grayer and maybe just a bit thicker around the middles. And they don't have as many children and teenagers attached to them as they did 20 years ago. Today they all came as couples, the children having grown and moved away and disappeared into their own busy lives. The 19 year old must be the last to go, although I lost track of that when I grew and moved away and disappeared myself years ago.

Six of these relatives came to my adult Sunday school class, and offered comments and jokes and made it a happy place. And then we all moved a block west to where the cousin gave his talk, and finally finished up the afternoon with piles of food the relations brought from from their parts of the state. We sat in the shade in the spring and talked and laughed and reconnected.

We need more excuses to reconnect. I love these people.

Three random facts about me

2010-04-16T20:23:00.003-06:00

1. I like to write short (usually 1 paragraph) reviews for all the books I add to Goodreads. Every one of them. Because for me, it's much more fun to read about why you liked/disliked a book than just the fact that you liked or disliked it. And if it's more fun for me to read the whys for you, then it's probably more fun for you to read the whys for me. And I think all of that last sentence was written with English words, but somehow on re-reading the words aren't sticking together into anything that makes sense. Unfortunately, those are the kind of reviews I typically write, too.

Oh, and I'm happy to be your friend on Goodreads, but if you become my friend, then my secret will be out. Then you will learn the sad fact that I read mostly escapist fluff and very little that is deeply edifying and enlightening. Because I like my books to be about two hours long. (There are exceptions, of course.)

2. Concentrating really hard on something usually puts me to sleep. I will close my eyes to better picture some sort of complicated problem in my head, and the next thing I know the problem has turned purple and is dancing across the sky. This is my usual indication that I am now asleep and I need to wake up and concentrate on the problem again if I'm ever going to solve it.

When I talk to my colleagues, most seem to confess to have the opposite problem (meaning in two of two conversations I have had where this has come up, my colleagues have confessed to have the opposite problem). The one guy today says that when he is really concentrating hard on a problem, his eyes open wider and wider and he can't sleep at all. And then the problem will invade his dreams.

He said he thinks my reaction (falling asleep) is probably healthier, and he may be right, but this guy also is a very good problem solver, famous in his tiny world of expertise. And I am not famous anywhere.

3. And speaking of falling asleep, over at Feminist Mormon Housewives, there has been a recent post prompting about a billion comments, many of which deal with getting kids to sit through a 75 minute church meeting. Apparently some parents can just tell their six year olds that they are expected to sit quietly with no distractions through that entire meeting and these beautiful children will do so.

But you know, I'm not one of those kids. If I try to sit quietly, I will fall asleep and start nodding into the lap of the person sitting next to me, provided I am sitting next to a person who is not in my immediate family. I sometimes start nodding into the laps of immediate family members, too, but they are much more likely to poke me back awake when this happens, whereas the random stranger is a little too creeped out to touch me.

Anyway, I have learned from experience that I will listen and absorb much more if I am doodling, drawing, coloring, doing anything with my hands. It was true in school, too. I had to take notes or I would fall asleep. No one has brought this up in the comments I have read over on that post (and I admit, I haven't made it through all 217 of them). But my physician friend has admitted to the same problem. She knitted through medical school. And now she knits in church. Some people concentrate better when their hands are busy.