Weather

As I type, the sky is yellow. Literally yellow. It's scary. I know the rhyme about red skies, etc., and I know to run like heck when they turn green (Indiana education), but yellow is new. I think I'll turn over to the Weather Channel for a minute and see if there's something I should know....

Oh wait, I forgot. The Weather Channel is now so busy running Voice of Doom programming and voyeuristic replays of the misery of others that you can't get a weather forecast from them anymore. Does anybody else find this disgusting? Why are there so many shows like It Could Happen Tomorrow? Why do people watch them?

One of the best things I gained from my time in Japan is an attitude about weather and earthquakes and so forth. In Japan, especially in the region I lived in, they are basically living on borrowed moments before a tidal wave obliterates everything that stands. Do you know what they do? They prepare the best they can AND THEY GO ON. They don't broadcast endless disaster scenarios. They don't show footage of computer generated people floating and flailing. They strengthen their buildings as best they can, they make evacuation and relief plans, they teach their children what to do, and they go on.

I don't think this preoccupation with disaster that America has developed in the last ten years is healthy. At any time of the day or night, you can find a show about the supervolcano just waiting to explode in Yellowstone, or the San Madras fault that runs down the Mississippi River, or another hurricane like Katrina. Who watches this stuff? Why? What can any single one of us do if that volcano opens up? What good does knowing how big a hole it might make if it does do for a person? Don't we have enough to worry about with the day-to-day struggle to live?

I really didn't mean to get up on this soapbox tonight, but here you have it. I guess I'll have to get my weather forecasts online from now on since the source with the word weather in its title has forsaken the real now for the worst case scenario.

Latin

This is a random thought brought on by today's "Quote of the Day", Julius Caesar's famous "I came, I saw, I conquered." I want to learn Latin.

I don't know why exactly. Maybe it's because it's one of those huge root languages. Learning it might give me insight into its children. Learning a language helps you to understand what a people values, what they think heinous, how they speak to one another in love and in hatred. It's fascinating. It would be interesting to see how much of the values of Latin crept into Spanish, Portuguese, French, and the other descendants.

Maybe it's because Latin in everything I read. Especially in the Elizabethan and Enlightenment literature, Latin is everpresent. It gets tiring to have to go to the footnotes when I can't reverse engineer from Spanish, which is most of the time. Latin at the time of those compositions was considered to be a part of a normal education. Needless to say, rural MS has different ideas on what a normal education consists of compared to those times and places.

Maybe it's just because it's another language. I love languages. I love the sound of the words and the shapes of the different symbols. I love learning the proverbs and idioms. I love the fact that language is the heart of a people distilled into the articulation of tongue and teeth, into the movement of hand commanded by heart and head.

I think we too often take for granted the miracle of being able to tell someone we love them or even read badly written technical manuals. Language, communication, is something we are born learning, and we do it with such incredible skill that we can't imagine not having it at our disposal, yet just the learning of the grammar as infants and young children is a mental task on par with the construction of the pyramids or the cathedrals of Europe. Just learning to call things by their proper names, just the infant cataloging of cat, dog, ball, momma, and daddy, much less the training of the hand to reproduce the symbols in the correct order to make a physical representation of those names should bring us to our knees in awe.

Latin isn't the only language I want to learn. I want to learn Portuguese, enhance my pitiful Japanese, and toy with Russian or German. Portuguese, especially Brazilian Portuguese fascinates me. I can hear bits of it that I recognize from Spanish, but it has a music and a lilt that are utterly charming. It's lovely, and if it were possible, more expressive than even Spanish. I suspect it's a language for poetry.

My Japanese is truly sad. I was there for two years, and it's still a struggle for me to carry on a baby conversation. I was a bad student there, and although I understand the psychological reasons for it, I am still sad that I wasted that chance because Japanese is also a language for poets, restrained, elegant, every spare syllable echoing with the strength of deep and fast-moving channeled emotion.

As for German and Russian, although they are so completely unrelated to one another, their difference from English appeals to me. Learning the alphabet for Russian will probably be a wooly bear, but I've had a love for puzzles and secret codes since childhood. German, too, is a distant cousin of English, and finding those similarities would be an exploration of culture.

I woke up with a linguistic hunger this morning. It's a shame I can't just go back to school forever and learn language after language. I don't really think my family or my current employer would be too impressed with that goal. Latin is really hard to find around here, so I don't know if I could even take courses in it locally. Maybe I'll pull out my Japanese texts and see if I can't assuage the appetite that way.

It's That Time Again

If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers. ~Edgar W. Howe

My response to this quote is simple: what about the wing of the asylum dedicated to the teachers?

After going to the dentist this morning, I went back to school today to work on preparing the room for the start of the year. The building was mostly empty, and I cranked my stereo, rolled up my sleeves, and started trying to dejunk. I had cleaned up at the end of the year and put away all my doodads to prevent summer school and maintenance from destroying them.

I threw away two trash cans full of last year's papers, got my turn-in table set up with the tablecloth, stacking paper bins, staplers, and other tools of the trade. I put about a million erasers in the student supply drawer. (It never ceases to amaze me how many of those I go through in a year.) I unshrouded my bookshelves from their protective white paper coverings and organized the big blue shelf in the back of the room.

The best part of the day was pulling out all the 10th grade materials so I can give them to whatever unlucky soul is the new 10th grade teacher. I kept finding stuff and stuff and more stuff, so I am now prepared to totally overwhelm him or her with a big old rolling cart of books and supplementals. I will try very hard not to do a jig as I push the cart down the hall, but I make no promises.

I also looked at my class rolls, at least in their pre-first-day-of-school incarnation. I know it will change at least three times before it settles. The first day of school is always insane. One of my AP classes only has 7 kids in it, but I know at least 3 names are missing that should be in there. I don't know if they decided to run away or if scheduling is just messed up.

The projectors are up, but I couldn't connect to mine with my laptop. I did manage to get it turned on, but I suspect the projector needs the wireless card I saw in its case. Theoretically, I could have gone down the hall and swiped one of the wiring crew's big ladders, but ladders and I don't really do well (think cat up a tree -- up is fine, down is very bad) and since there was no one there to hold it, I decided I'd let Technology get to it. However, if they don't have that done by Wednesday, I will be caught hanging from the ceiling trying to get it to work. I am a bit impatient when I have a new toy and I can't play with it. :)

I have a quiet optimism about this year that may very well get smashed flat on Friday. I don't know why I should feel this way when I'm going into two new preps, but maybe it's just the unusual feeling of starting my third year somewhere. I was thinking about it, and this is the first time ever that I've spent three years anywhere. All my other jobs have been two year deals, either contractually or by coincidence. It's nice to feel like I have a place where I belong. Maybe that will be enough to help me face the inevitable cynicism and apathy that will be rolling in on big yellow buses the morning of the 4th.

My Personal Theory on Interesting Men

Here it is. Get ready. You'll want to write this down. All set? Pencils poised?

All men who I find interesting will be one of two things: about to move far, far away or totally fictional.

Proof One: Right after I moved home, friends of mine introduced me to a very handsome, intelligent, wonderful guy from Cuba. We clicked, gently flirted (which almost never happens to me), and hung out with our group of mutual friends. He was the first guy I'd been interested in since Proof Five below, and I was determined not to move too fast like I did with P5. Suddenly, he had to move to take a job near some of his family in Florida. I will never forget the night he told me that. I was torn between crying and jumping up and down like a two-year old at the cruelty of fate.

Proof Two: Last summer, I met an interesting guy whilst I was schlepping twenty teenagers around the U.K. and Ireland. He was cute, sweet, very smart, and a lot of fun to talk to. Needless to say, the trip ended, and that was that. He's in grad school somewhere in New York. Sigh.

Proof Three: While I was in Japan, I went on a trip to Thailand to work with Thai English teachers in rural areas. On that trip, I met a great guy from Ireland. Unfortunately, he was headed back to Tokyo and then back to Ireland. Crap.

Proof Four: The only interesting guy I've even seen in the last twelve months is fictional. If you've read any of my previous postings, then you know I'm smitten with Det. Goren on Law and Order: CI. I know people like him don't exist outside of screen plays, but...sigh...he's just so darn cute and scruffy and tall and smart....

Proof Five: The odd combination of moving and fiction....I met a guy at IU right before I left there and fell HARD for him. We started going out and things were intense. Then, of course, I moved away to Podunk and later to Japan. This is a variation on the theme. The fictional part comes in quite some time later when I found out what a grade-A jackass he was. Things between us ended. (This, ladies and gentlemen, is known as litotes, the gentle art of understatement.) I don't know if he's alive or dead, but can very proudly say that I'm no longer actively rooting for the latter possibility.

I've got to wonder at the psychology of this. Am I only attracted to people who I know there's no chance of my having permanently? I don't really think that's true, especially since I didn't know Proof One was moving when we met. I can see that Proof Two might have been a conscious thing, but I really tried hard not to pursue that interest since I knew it was a three-week thing after which I'd probably never see the guy again.

As for Proof Four, I suppose one can say that's the level to which I have sunk: the fictional. None of the men I know right now interest me at all. I find them all weak, childish, wallowing and reveling in their own ignorance, rednecky, slightly creepy, or some combination of these qualities. Mostly, I just want to run away from them, or barring a valid means of escape, smack them upside the head.

Who knows? Maybe our school will have hired a smart, interesting math teacher or something. Maybe the handsome gentleman from Cuba will come back to visit, or more delightfully, to stay. Maybe the planets will all align and I'll meet somebody from the same weird world in which I dwell. It would be nice to prove this theory wrong for a change.

Country Girl

There's something very satisfying about barreling down dirt roads in a giant four-wheel-drive pickup truck. I was helping my father move some farm equipment from point A to point B this afternoon, and I got to drive his farm truck.

I call the farm truck Sherman because it's about like driving a Sherman tank. You don't steer it as much as sail it within the banks of the road ditches. It's old, beat-up, and has a million stories linked to each dent. One of them was created by our old bull getting mad and rushing the driver's side door. It put a huge dent in the door. I don't remember the bull being even mildly unsettled.

Sherman also has a HUGE engine built for pulling cattle trailers and so forth. When it's in 4WD and you press the accelerator, it almost stands up on its rear tires. Driving it gives you an attitude. Suddenly, all bets are off and the urge to roll over those who offend becomes strong. After all, there is very little that can hurt Sherman. It's the only vehicle I feel safe going up to our farm in. My little Cruiser just isn't made for the types of rutted trails that Sherman can handle.

While Dad was performing the magic rituals that are required to get our oldest tractor to crank, I walked over to the pear tree that stands at the edge of the burned-down house where my mother grew up. It's ancient and was damaged by the fire, but it still bears hard, round pears every year. I love those pears. I don't know their specific type. They're not anything fancy like D'Anjou, but they are our pears from a tree that my grandmother and grandfather, that my mother and uncle ate from. The tree needs care and fertilization, and next year I'm going to go up and see if I can't get it to bear better. I ate two of the tiny apple-like pears while I waited. They were firm and juicy.

I also checked out the fig tree that was nearby. I haven't had fresh figs in years and years, but the tree was bearing. I picked them into the tail of my shirt to take back to the truck and ate a few standing there.

It was a moment of perfection. The constant sound of wind, the clouds skidding across the horizon, and the sweet rich taste of the figs all combined. Moments like this are the reason I moved back here. Moments like this are "home" for me. I suppose that no matter how much my mind lusts after the art and activity of larger places, in my deepest heart, I am just a country girl.

Dillon Photo

 


Just a quick photo of Dillon. The glowing eyes in the background on top of the piano belong to Yoda. 

Dillon Sees the Vet

I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. ~Jules Verne

I took Dillon to our vet today to get her healthcare started. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. She is just the sweetest cat I've ever seen. Even the vet commented on her gentle patience as they took blood, prodded, and probed her. She didn't even meow. She just looked up at me with those huge golden eyes and, whenever they let her go, climbed up my shirt to be held.

The vet took her to the back to take the blood sample for viral screening, etc., and all the doctors were called in to look at her shoulder problems. They said her shoulder injury could have happened anytime and that there's really no need to try to do anything for it. She goes everywhere she wants to go, including straight up things (mostly me), and she's not in any pain, so there's nothing that needs to be done. That was a relief. She's so tiny that I would be afraid of them trying to do surgery on her.

She's about eight weeks old right now, and in a couple of days, I'll know more about her bloodwork and general health. She'll go back for her first shots once the bloodtest comes back, and then we'll be well on our way.

When we got back from the vet, she and I curled up on the couch and the next thing I knew, we were both asleep. It was one of life's simple pleasures, and I think we both needed it.

Tomato Funny

In light of the previous post, I thought I'd just add this. Got to love the 1940s....

In Praise of Tomatoes

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can't eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as 'progress', doesn't spread.
Andy Rooney

Is there any single thing in this world better than the taste of a homegrown summer tomato? The most perfect ones are slightly sweet at first taste and then follow with a wash of wonderful acidity. You can't find them in the grocery store; no hydroponic outfit can produce them. They only come from somebody's back yard, from some patch of pasture reclaimed, tilled, fertilized with cow manure, and carefully defended from marauding white tails.

One of my dad's friends brought him a sack of tomatoes from his garden. For those of you who have never been privileged enough to live out here in the sticks, you may be unfamiliar with this ritual. Mississippi gardeners frequently have "eyes that overload their stomachs", and instead of planting two or three tomato plants or a couple of cucumber vines, they suddenly have a half acre of producing plants and far more produce than any family of ten could consume.

A famous example of this from my own family involves my grandfather's predilection for watermelons. Every summer, even after the raccoons and deer took their share, we were always hauling melons to friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. We did draw the line at leaving them on doorsteps like abandoned infants, but just barely.

Sometimes people sort of wander around their communities with the abundance of their gardens in the backs of their cars and veggie swaps occur. A husband leaves for work with sacks of collards and comes home with a sack of tomatoes or okra he was pressed to take in exchange. The riches are divvied up among immediate family members and extended families and everyone enjoys.

There's a sort of desperation for the biggest gardeners. They frantically fling bags of vegetables and fruit at any passersby as their gardens quietly produce more and more. It can get to be a little sci-fi after awhile.

The excess bounty often appears in the parking lots of Wal-Mart in the back of people's pickup trucks. You can buy Smith County Watermelons (no, I'm not sure why their being Smith County Watermelons makes them more attractive), peaches, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes from people sitting in folding lawn chairs for a pittance. The better the produce year, the more weekend merchants appear until it's almost like an impromptu farmers' market outside and shoppers sneer in contempt as they pass the pale, mealy tomato poseurs and tiny watermelons inside.

The sack of tomatoes my father's coworker sent were the very best type: rich, red, firm, juicy, acidic, and small enough to be eaten by one person. These summer tomatoes never need the assistance of any form of dressing. In fact, salad dressing would be an insult to the process of soil, sun, and hand labor that produced them. They are slicers, begging to be quartered, salted lightly, and devoured. One can eat them like apples while luscious juices drip from the chin. It becomes a hedonistic celebration that involves finger licking and a garden hose to clean up afterwards.

Summer is also the only time you can get green tomatoes. There have been times when I was abroad in the summer that just the thought of green tomatoes, sliced and fried, has made me discontent with all other dishes available. In Japan, I had my own little tomato plant out on my tiny balcony just so I could have fried green tomatoes.

These perfect summer tomatoes don't last long. Perhaps the very ephemerality of them is part of the flavor. Soon, the bearing season will be over, the plants will be tilled under to enhance the soil, and all of us will have to settle for whatever poor cousins might appear in the produce department. Until then, I'll enjoy every messy, delectable bite.

The Cell (or, The Celluloid Albatross)

USA had this movie on this afternoon, and I watched it because I wanted to see D'Onofrio's performance. I really, really wish I hadn't watched it.

I started not to. Long ago, I decided it was a "Film I Don't Want to See." Friends of mine went to see it during its theatrical release, and I distinctly remember them saying how disturbing they'd found the film at the time. I try to avoid stuff like that. I don't like movies that linger because of blood or evil. There's a surfeit of evil everyday in the news and in the things people to do one another in the real world.

I decided that I would only watch enough of it to see what it might be like and to see why my friends had warned me about it. I'd only peek in to satisfy my curiosity. That, of course, is the classic mistake. The next thing I knew, the end credits were rolling and I knew I was stuck with it, a celluloid albatross around my neck.

Of course, I didn't see the whole film. It was on USA in the middle of the afternoon, so chances are I saw less than 2/3 the original film. There were really obvious omissions and cuts, including the ever-popular gloss over of profanity. I think, but have no way to know for sure, that they cut out most of the most profoundly disturbing parts. What was left was sort of a hodge-podge, but it was enough to do it for me.

D'Onofrio was, as always, very good. The more I see of him in things, the more of him I want to see. I think he'd be a very interesting person to talk to. I want to ask him how he does what he does.

That's probably one of those questions that can't be answered, like when people ask me how I write about this or that. I don't know how I do it. It's an automatic response, like fish in the water.

I wonder if it's that way for him. I wonder if that ability to slip into another person is comfortable. I wonder how he can bear characters like Stargher, or if they stay with him at all. I would hope that they don't. After awhile, I think it would get very crowded inside if they do.

I don't see how that particular role could have been played better. The character evoked an odd mixture of loathing and sympathy. Even though the character was a serial killer, a monster, it was also possible to see in him the damaged child. Maybe that was part of what makes it linger. If there hadn't been something almost pitiful and so desperately in need of protection under the surface of the demon, I think I could have turned my back on the whole thing and not thought about it again.

In any case, I can say that I've seen it in some form now. I still wish I'd left well enough alone. Oh well, so I'll probably have a few bad dreams. I might have done anyway, to be honest. This is a small price to pay when compared to all the other less scary interesting places my curiosity has led me. This time, the thing I had to know about was unsettling. Next time, it might be something shiny and wonderful. As long as that option is open, I know I'll keep following that itching need to know.

Truth

"The search for truth...it's not for the faint of heart." -- Det. Robert Goren, Law and Order: CI

Truth is a major preoccupation of mine. I want to know what's at the heart of everything. I always try to figure out what makes people do the things they do. Maybe that's why shows like CI appeal to me so much.

The search for truth is probably what drives most writers. Some of us are looking for truth in the outside world. Some of us are obsessed with digging the truth from the deep wells and hidden spaces inside ourselves. I think both are equally dangerous. Sometimes the truths are things with which I find it hard to live once they've been uncovered. I find that people weren't who I thought they were. I find that I have spaces of darkness inside.

Those truths take on a life of their own. They shuffle their feet and leave fingerprints on the windows. They perch on the bookshelves and trail dirt on the clean floors. There's a lingering smell of them like the rancid odor of spoiled milk that floats in at odd moments once these uncomfortable truths have been unearthed. They slide across happy moments like a sudden stormcloud across the sun when you're not expecting them.

There's a line in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" that says, "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' —that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." I have always believed it to be true, at least in the aspect that truth is beautiful, and that nothing can really be beautiful that is artificial. However, lately, a question has been warring with this old axiom. How can I reconcile the shambling ugliness of some of the truths that emerge with Keats's declaration of beauty?

The only way I can resolve the paradox is that not all beauty is comforting. The glaciers of the frozen north are beautiful, majestic, pure, but I don't think anyone could ever label them as safe or tame. Arenal, in full eruption and framed against the velvet of black sky, stirs the soul with its powerful beauty, yet every time the earth moves with its rumbling, a primal shiver runs through the body and there's no doubt that there's no safety in its presence.

These dark truths come to me from the world in general sometimes, but more often, and more persistently, they come from my analysis of my own character. As I have often said, I'm really not a very nice person when you get right down to it. As long as I know that, as long as I am honest with myself right down to the bone, right down to the marrow, I can use that to keep myself in line. I can use that uncomfortable truth to force myself to do better, its sharp edges a blade to remove everything that I know should not stay. If I can use them to make myself stronger or better, then there is a beauty in that. If they can become tools for change or for increasing my understanding of the world around me, then there is a beauty in that, too.

It's a harder beauty. It's not the beauty of a summer meadow or a butterfly lighting on a dewy rose. It's the turbulent beauty of the sea before the storm, the austere beauty of shifting desert sand. While this kind of truth may bring me pain when it is revealed, if it can make me stronger, then it is worthy of pursuit.

Preaching to the Choir

Modern cynics and skeptics... see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing. ~John F. Kennedy

Every education conference I go to always contains some form of the following condescending "motivational" topic: loving our students. People who don't know my students, people who haven't been in a classroom in the last ten years if EVER wish to tell me what it is that I'm doing wrong and how to become the super teacher for whom kids will jump of bridges if asked. They all have an activity or a game or a magic classroom procedure that will spark love in my heart and the hearts of my students.

We are told that if we just "love" our students enough, they will perform past every standard and expectation. If we were just "loving" them enough, they'd all make Advanced scores on state testing. If we were "loving" them as we should, they'd all be on honor roll and choirs of angels and winged horses would float up and down our halls. Peace on Earth would reign, lions and lambs would lie down together, world hunger would end, and the planets would align in perfect harmony.

There is such a superiority in these speeches. The double-edge of them is that, apparently, since none of these great Nirvanas have been reached, we as teachers are not doing our jobs. We as teachers have failed our towns, America, and the universe in perpetuity through our lack of "love."

These ivory-tower experts have good intentions, I think, but so few of them seem to have any idea of "love" that is going to be helpful for a student. If a student has always failed, and you continue to pat that student on the head like a wounded dog and say, "Baby, that's just the best you can do. You just go right ahead and don't even try. We'll pass you anyway," you are not loving that student. You are not trying to correct what's going on with that student to allow success to come. Instead, all you're doing is hammering down the notion the student has that he or she will never amount to anything and is doomed for failure.

We as teachers have to be worried about more than just whether or not the student "feels happy" all the time in school. There are times in life when you feel great frustration as you struggle to overcome an obstacle. That temporary challenge leads to the satisfaction of mastery, and I think it's a lot more valuable than any saccharine, manufactured, patently fake, frou-frou praises. Our purpose, the way we truly love our students, is to help them hold the course through the frustration, through the first steps, until they can begin to appreciate that the struggle leads to lasting gains.

Today, over and over, we were told to be our students' friend. There's a line here and it's a tricky one to walk. I believe in building relationships with students, but they are not my friends. I love my students and I want the best for them, but I am not going to text message them for kicks. I don't want them to think of me as "one of the gang." I am not. That is one of the prices paid to do this job. A teacher has to be other and should be other. A teacher has to correct and sometimes grab by the collar and shake when he or she sees a student headed down a path leading to pain and destruction, and these are things that friends can't really do.

Teenagers and younger children know when something is a lie. They have come to expect sugary platitudes delivered in a sing-song voice from their teachers. They know it's not genuine. They tune it out and lose all the knowledge about life and our subject matter that we have to pass on. As teachers, we have to move away from that. We owe it to them.

Love our students? Alright, but love them with real love, love that holds them to high standards and helps them get what they need to reach them, not love that only looks glossy on the outside but has a secret center of silent prejudice and apathy inside. The type of love I am talking about does involve holding the hand when life, as it does for teens and adults alike, goes to pieces. However, this love also involves kicking the butt when needed. This is the love that you never hear about in lectures and conferences. My guess is that none of those exalted experts want to get down here in the trenches with us and dirty their hands on the realities of what true love for our students involves.

The Love of a Kitten

It is impossible to keep a straight face in the presence of one or more kittens. ~Cynthia E. Varnado

A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It's a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys. ~Barbara Holland

Dillon is a she. I figured that out about a week ago. She's filling out nicely and developing her cat attitude. Yoda doesn't know what to do, and Pearl is very, very hacked off. She growls low in her throat and runs away from Dillon. If you could see the difference in size, you'd understand why I think it's so funny. Pearl is approximately 3 times larger than Dillon. Yoda watches from a distance, and I swear I think she's laughing. I suppose this is a cat revenge for her after Pearl invaded her space when she came in.

Since Dillon is still tiny, I keep her in the guestroom whenever I'm not here. She has started galloping out the door whenever I open it. She enjoys the space in the rest of the house.

She's become a great comfort to me. She's the only cat in the house who seeks me out for affection. I am just a glorified butler and maid for the other two. Tiny as she is, she climbs up on the couch to be petted and to purr.

Today, I needed it a lot. I am tired. Today was my third straight big driving day. I have two more to go, and then I get a bit of a break. The conference I'm in right now isn't as far away; it's only about 85 miles. That's become chicken feed.

It was so nice to come home at the end of the day, microwave a potato, curl up on the couch with Dillon and watch Law and Order: CI. Dillon and D'Onofrio. It's pretty good living.

Live from Stark Vegas

Coming back to the college town where I did my undergraduate was surreal. I left Podunk about the same time I used to when I went home for the weekends when I was in school. Just making the trip, seeing the turns, made me feel a duality of time. I was myself, but I was also that girl who used to go to school here in Starkville, and holding both of those people within me was not altogether comfortable or nostalgic.

Starkville and MSU were good to me. I made friends here I still treasure. There are parts of campus that I saw as I drove through today that triggered memories both rich and trivial.

That being said, I went through some very intense and not always pleasant things here. I guess it would have been the same anywhere with any college student. College, by definition, is a time of change and transformation. It's where the last of our childhood is shed, and sometimes that shedding isn't strictly voluntary.

Driving past the place where the dorm I stayed my sophomore year used to be (used to be because they dynamited it and built something else), I remembered standing downstairs folding laundry when my friend came down to tell me my grandfather was dead. Passing the on-campus apartments, I remember late nights trying to finish an insane course load my senior year and almost going next door with a cast iron skillet to beat my loud-music-playing neighbors to death. Those apartments also triggered memories of the night I found out my grandmother had pancreatic cancer and my friend came over and let me cry on him until I could pull it all together again.

There are lighter things. The Tin Gym still stands where two of my friends and I used to go to an "abs" class to work on our waistlines and ogle the instructor (mmmm....Greg....). The Drill Field where we flew kites in the spring still shines like a green jewel, if you can figure out a way to get to it through the endless and ubiquitous orange construction mesh.

The carillion and the Chapel of Memories still sit at the center of campus, playing songs on the hour. It holds the piano that other angst-filled night denizens and I used to politely, but with no contact or conversation, share. One of us would arrive and play. For that time, the chapel belonged to that person. The others slipped in and out through hidden side doors like shadows, always making sure the door made no noise to distract the one who was purging whatever had driven them from their dorms long after the prudent had gone to bed.

Tomorrow, I'll spend my day in the new, space-age-looking Hunter Henry Center working on rating and refining items for state testing. I hope I'll have some more time to walk around campus some to see if I can revive or lay to rest some of the memories that have arisen.

Poetry Site

Sorry, everyone, no platitudes, diatribes, allegories, or fantastic voyages tonight. At least not from me. I did want to share this website, though, for those of you who might not know about it. If you're interested in poetry, it's a good place to go poke around. My favorite part is being able to hear the poet read his or her own work.

I am in a productive phase myself right now, so the work of others is feeding me in that, too. When I was in the workshop, I was having a crappy day and a poem from Emily swooped in like words from God. Maybe they were. Maybe he was using her words to slap me "upside the head." Anyway, I'm trying to scrape up a couple of entries for a regional competition coming up, and I may try to shape up a few essays for entry or something.

I hope you enjoy the site. It's a source of great joy to me. With that, to bed. Tomorrow, I'll be writing to you from the land of Stark Vegas....

Southern Woman Guilt

You sometimes see a woman who would have made a Joan of Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces over all the mean worry of housekeeping. ~Rudyard Kipling

Ah, how I love this quote. Good old Kipling....

I went to the last day of the conference, and it was blessedly uneventful. I did see the skid marks from yesterday, and they were as impressive as I'd been afraid they would be.

After the half-day wrap-up, I came home, let in dogs, hauled in the treasure trove of books and materials I'd garnered during the seminar, cleaned away the debris and misplaced items from yesterday's car problems, and ran out of energy. I crawled to my bed and was asleep in moments. I suppose this was my body's not-so-subtle way of telling me it had had too much lately.

When I woke up, I was suddenly seized by an urge to get the house in order. It's so depressing to walk in and see the clutter, unfolded laundry, and half-finished projects that accumulate when I get busy. I always feel the stab of what I think of as Southern Woman Guilt that my house is not spotless and sparkling like a household cleaner commercial and I'm not in a 50's outfit (complete with bouffant and bow, apron, and heels,of course)with a meal of fried chicken, various vegetables (which I grew myself), and homemade pie big enough to feed the masses simmering on the stove.

The simple fact of it is that it's just not possible for me to live that way. I have often wondered if I could do more at home if I wasn't a teacher. I am always so drained by giving all day at school that when I come home, dragging out my ponderous and complex vacuum cleaner, lugging the laundry around to fold it, and mopping the kitchen floor are very, very low on my list of priorities. I'm in survival mode for most of the week, doing loads of laundry, sweeping up, running the dishwasher and not much else.

That leads to cleaning sessions like the one I've got on tap for tonight and tomorrow, massive, epic, Herculean stints in which every possible implement of crap removal is dragged from closet, cabinet, and drawer, music is cranked up loud enough to get the cops out if I lived anywhere except the sticks, and cats and dogs flee in terror.

It's going to be a good thing. I will feel better in the busy weeks to come if I don't have to come home to a messy house every evening. That way, I can sit down and watch the captivating Mr. D'Onofrio do his thing without guilt. ;)

Blowout

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. ~Author Unknown

What a lucky thing the wheel was invented before the automobile; otherwise can you imagine the awful screeching? ~Samuel Hoffenstein

On my way to the conference today, I felt prepared. I had set up my MP3 player and was riding and daydreaming to the sounds of the Rolling Stones. Traffic was getting heavier, but it was moving at a good pace, and the herd was calm.

The closer I got to the airport turn-off the less I was daydreaming and the more my mind was on the Stack Tiers of Doom that I was about to have to navigate. I was in the left lane doing 75-80 (just keeping up with traffic, officer, I swear) when I became aware the car was pulling really hard to the left. Then I heard that horrible friction-thud sound from the front left part of the car. It sounds like lots and lots of little people in combat boots running in circles in the wheel well.

This is an experience I have had before. The first time I was driving the Evil Jeep after I bought it, I was returning to college after Thanksgiving holidays. It blew a tire about 30 miles away from home, and it sounded the same way. That, of course, was just the tip of the iceberg with the Evil Jeep, but I didn't know it then. I've never forgotten that sound, though. If you've ever had it happen, you know it's very distinctive.

I knew the tire was shredded, but I was moving very fast and there really wasn't much of a roadside to pull off on at that point. There was, however, a vast median of grass, so I put on my flashers, my blinker, and pulled hard left. I managed to stop before I flipped or tore up too much grass. Fortunately, I was on the left side of the interstate and so was the damaged tire because nobody in the increasingly dense traffic could slow or even move over.

What I saw confirmed my suspicions. The tire looked like something my cat Yoda might have gotten really irritated with. Tiny bits of steel belting glinted through the ripped surface, and that acrid smell of overheated and burned rubber overpowered even the diesel exhaust smell from the traffic beside me.

My first thought after this was exceptionally vulgar. Fill in with the word of your choice. My second thought was how in the world (also edited for TV) I was going to get my limping Cruiser from Point A on the left-hand side of the interstate to Point B, an exit about a half-mile down the road on the right side of the interstate through the morning rush hour's growing tides. I got in the car, made a panicked call to Mom and Dad to tell them the situation (because, since I am sans husband, they get all the oh crap calls), and cranked up.

By the grace of God, there was a sudden huge lull in the traffic. Doing about thirty, I managed to cross over and creep toward the exit without getting mangled. The little men with combat boots were running around again, and in addition to them, the high-pitched shrill of metal on asphalt sounded. About the time I managed to reach the safety of the off-ramp, the forerunners of the next traffic wave blew past me with enough speed to rock the car slightly.

I pulled off in a Ruby Tuesday's parking lot, locked everything down, took my life into my own hands, dashed across a five-lane thoroughfare, and hid out in a Starbucks until Mom and Dad could come to assist. I don't hang out in coffee shops much. Podunk isn't exactly on the cutting front of popular urban beverage chains. It was mostly nice. I had something called a Green Tea Chai Latte. It had enough caffeine in it to make every synapse in my brain fire and hum at an almost audible pitch. I cut its bitter goodness with the sweet from a danish, staked out a comfortable chair in a sunny corner near the window, took out a Greg Iles novel, and sat down to wait.

As I read, I also surreptitiously listened to some wonderfully absurd conversation from the prissy tyrant behind the counter as he ordered his minions to sling coffee faster, with more accuracy, and with greater flair. He was overgroomed and his hands flew through the air in complex arabesques that make even my most grandiose gesture seem pale and tame. His voice, while well-pitched, had a cadence I usually associate with sorority girls or the stereotypical intonation of the "dumb blonde", and it rose at the end of every single sentence leaving unintentional question marks hovering dangerously, even sinisterly, in the air around us all.

The last bit of orders I heard before my cell rang to tell me help had arrived was him saying that nobody was going to be allowed to go to the bathroom during the morning rush, which, as I understand it, actually comprises several hours. He was also telling some poor "managerial trainee" that "you'll only be getting, like, 20 hours on the clock, but you'll actually be working more like 38 or 40..." It was great. If I were a fiction writer, I could have mined that coffee shop like a lode of silver.

Nothing in my family is ever straightforward or easy. We tried to change the tire, but after removing the lugs, the offending wheel simply would NOT come off the car. We wiggled, kicked, jiggled, swivelled, cursed, and tugged, but it stayed where it was. After we exhausted our options, I tried to get a to a phonebook from the Ruby Tuesday's to find the nearest dealership to get some advice. Since it was too early for RT's to be open, the little guy inside merely stared at me from the kitchen and walked away. I'm not kidding. He couldn't be bothered to find out what was going on even though my car had been stranded in his parking lot with people buzzing around it for the past hour. I'm still irritated about that. I don't think I looked like a homicidal maniac or a teenage job hopeful, so would it have killed him to at least come to the door?

Anyway, Wendy's next door was much nicer and I got the information. They weren't open, either, but the ladies inside handed me the book through the drive up window. This was the dealership's august and sage advice: "Yeah, sometimes they get stuck a little. Just kick it hard at the bottom til it comes off." Right. Great. Thanks. We wound up calling a friend of mine's father who came with a very large hammer and he and my dad finally got the wheel off.

We followed my friend's parents to a local tire service center, Dad went home, and Mom and I sat to wait to get everything taken care of. Much of the rest of the afternoon is a surreal blur of eating, shopping, and sitting in the lobby of a Kroger near the tire shop as they enacted a French farce in which they ordered a tire from another location across town, received the wrong size and sent for the correct one, and finally installed it four-and-a-half hours after the initial accident. I'm not blaming them, btw. They were very nice people. It was just one of those stupid days.

I was so worn out that I just loaded Mom up in the car and we came back home. Sometime during our Kroger time, it occurred to me just how close I probably came to having a major wreck. At the time, adrenaline had me too occupied to think much, and the ensuing crapfest of trying to find help, etc., continued it. I am just grateful, even though I missed a day of the conference and forfeited the CEU credits, that I am safe and my car is still okay.

Tomorrow, I'll head back to Jackson for the final day. I'll probably have the radio cranked up and be trying to brace myself mentally for the Stacks. I can guarantee you, however, that I will be looking for those wheel marks in the scrubby heat browned grass on the left margin and that I'll continue to be thankful that today wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Miss Eudora's House

Today at the end of our session, our conference group went to the newly opened Eudora Welty House Literary Museum. I had heard about it in February when I went to Milsaps for the Eudora Welty Workshop, and I was really glad to get a chance to come back and see it.

I didn't really know what to expect. I knew it wouldn't be ostentatious because she wasn't. I didn't expect it to be so much a home. I think there's always the risk for those of us who are free from fame to forget that those people, even those who become literary giants, actually live somewhere. Maybe it's that so many of those who become successful and well-known decide to live their lives in an epic manner that seems unreal to outsiders.

She had a wonderful home. It was a good-sized house with wonderful gardens. They have restored the house to reflect the late 1980's, Welty's last creative period before the decline of her health. The gardens are being restored to a 1940's state including the reintroduction of endangered and heritage plants that would have been common at the time, but are currently in danger of disappearing. It was lovely even in an unfinished state. Twenty-foot-tall camellia bushes surround the front and one side of the porch. I want to go back when they bloom around October. It will be breathtaking. There are roses, crepe myrtle, heritage irises, and gardenias. It's a Southern heaven, the kind of yard that could stir the soul to poetry just by walking through the dewy evening grasses.

The preservationists want to house to feel as if Miss Welty just stepped out and will be back in a moment. It gave a really charming picture of what her day to day life must have been like in the house. It also made me feel a bit like an intruder prying into someone's private space, especially when we went into her bedroom where she wrote. Overall, though, it was a very special place filled with the spirit of a great writer. I kept expecting to turn around and see her slipping around the corner. To me, that's the best indication that they have succeeded in their goals.

If you have a chance to go, please check it out. It's open odd hours, and right now, you need to call for a reservation, but you can click here for more information about it. If you should go, let me know what you thought about it. I'd be interested in your comments.

Socially Inept

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
Jean Giraudoux

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde

This is not a post to which I expect response. It's another one of those where I just need to say something "out loud" to work through it and get over it. Watch out, here there be dragons....

I have no social skills. Meetings like the one I've been going to this week always bring that particular aspect of my personality back to slap me in the face with it over and over again. I am deeply uncomfortable in situations where I don't know anybody and am happier just sitting in the corner and working by myself.

Today, I got crammed into a group activity in the meeting, and I couldn't wait until it was over. The people I was working with were fine. They weren't overwhelmingly arrogant or irritating. They were intelligent and friendly. I don't know what my problem with things like this is.

I do okay in small groups even though I'm uncomfortable. The place I'm worst in is with small talk. I do not bubble or effervesce. I lack every Southern female wile. I can, if necessary, force myself to do it, but the whole time I feel like I'm lying or acting. I wish people well, but for some reason, I am reluctant to be drawn into the chatty trivialities that are so much a part of these things.

I know I come off badly. I don't know what to do about it. I develop permanent foot-in-mouth syndrome, so I frequently just use non-committal noises or nod, smile, and laugh. I just don't know what to say.

I miss being in Japan during these times. In Japan, there wasn't this incredible pressure to make social small talk. Nobody thought you were snotty or snobby if you didn't float from group to group with witty repartee. It was okay to be the shy, quiet person in the corner. Here, I just feel like a lumbering freak. I want to run away and hide with a book.

As I said, I do not really look for comments here. I just had a bad day and needed to vent.

Conference Exercise

I wrote this today in a 3-5 min. quickwrite at the conference. We were asked to write about a time we'd been "other". This was an activity to tie in to the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which if you've never read, you really, really need to go find. I was a little hesitant to pick my time in Japan for this because this being "other" is not my strongest memory of my time there. However, I'm posting this because the people in the meeting really seemed to like it. It's still a little rough around the edges, but...

When I went to Japan, I was the quintessential other -- Caucasian, tall, female, too big, too loud, moving my hands in an alarming fashion. I felt like a curiosity in a freak show sometimes. Children were pulled away by their mothers, old women moved down the train seat, and dirty old men ogled me from far too little distance.

It wasn't all bad. Often, I felt a renewed sense of myself in a positive way, especially when I managed to break through the culturized stereotypes of the dangerous, semi-domesticated gaijin.

Of course, I also changed during that time. As all pack animals do, without conscious effort, I adapted in the small ways I could. Nothing could be done about my size, but my voice quietened and my hands stilled some of their more dramatic flights.

Coming home was always jarring, like an overhead light suddenly switched on after hours spent in the twilight. I like to think I learned a lot there.

Revved Up

I went to day two of the AP conference today, and I am buzzing with energy. I have lots of new ideas and I want to get started making some handouts right away.

However, I made a mistake when I got home. I sat on the couch to check my email. Dillon has come and curled up on my shoulder and is knitting and purring. The 5:30 morning this morning is starting to catch up with me. I feel a nap sneaking up behind me, I think.

I have to get revved back up and accomplish some things. Uh-oh....it's almost time for CI and the exquisite Mr. D'Onofrio. All will to switch off the TV and move forward progressively is leaving me....

Road Trip

There's really no trip or task so onerous that a good loud sing along with the Rolling Stones can't make it better. The Stones, ZZ Top, and Led Zepplin got me through the painting and helped me stay awake on the way home from the first of many, many conferences tonight.

Although I love the feeling of powerful vehicles under my control, I am not a long-distance driver. The interstate, depending on my mood, often brings out something feral and dangerous in me. I hate rudeness on the road. So few people will move over to allow cars to enter from the on ramps. Even fewer will move over when somebody has broken down or stopped on the side of the road. It's such a little thing, the movement of your hand less than a full inch to give safety. I don't know why people won't do it. Don't even get me started on those who block lanes, go fast and then slow, and tailgate.

Tonight was wonderfully free of idiots, though. Fighting my way through the traffic in the capitol city was not fun, especially since the DOT has decided to play "hide the exit" again. We have two major highways that split in the capitol city, and the DOT has been making getting on, off, or even staying on them into an increasingly daunting task for years. The system they started with was not good; it stacked up like crazy for rush hours. Their new system is in a state of constant flux with curving ramps that sometimes suddenly go nowhere. From trip to trip, your exit may have been completely revamped and moved across five lanes of traffic. It feels a lot like a child is playing with toy cars.

The best part of the evening was that I also got to spend time with my best friend. She lives over that way, so I was able to stop by after the conference. I don't get to see her nearly as much as I should, and sitting in her living room was a real treat. I stayed probably later than I should have seeing that we're all grownup and we have to get up so early these days, but I enjoyed it tremendously.

On the way home, I found a good rock station and happily sang my way home. It was a good trip, hopefully the first of many as I go back and forth to this conference. As long as I have my music, maybe the idiots won't get to me so much when they make their inevitable emergence from the calm streams of traffic.

Prime and Paint

Geez, I hate painting. Words fail me. I can't come up with an adequate analogy to express how much I hate it. I don't paint stuff very often. I suppose I wait long enough for the horror to fade out before I get the silly idea to do it again.

Yesterday, I primed everything. It took FOREVER. The Kilz I used got gloppy toward the end and it left ridges in places. Today I put the wall color up. Tomorrow, I have to sand down the ridges, retouch the walls, paint the cabinets and trim, and finish up. As I said, I hate it.

The biggest part of it that I hate is doing it alone. When you have somebody else there to help, you can enjoy conversation or at least get all stupid and "accidentally" dab them with paint. Somehow, just being clumsy and covered with paint all by yourself isn't as much fun.

I'm still waiting to finish the cornice/light shade. I'm doing something tricky with some of my stained glass to try to get more light in there, and it's requiring woodwork as well, so it's slow going. When that part is done, I think the looks of the bathroom are really going to change.

I do have to say that it does look much better even with just this first coat on the walls, though. The bathroom is starting to look like something that wasn't accidental and thrown together. Hopefully, it will all be done by the end of the weekend. I can't take much more of my house being in tatters and trying to scrape paint off various portions of my anatomy.

The Big Changes

A friend of mine is about to go through a huge change as she moves back to the land of her birth. She's in the process of boxing up odds and ends, giving away those little pieces of her life here that won't fit in storage or a suitcase, and saying her goodbyes. It's the ending of one life, the last few moments before her new life begins.

I've been where she is. There are no moments as painful or hopeful as these moments before one of life's big changes. So much is wrapped up in them. We live like Janus for a time, one face looking forward and one face looking back.

These ending/beginnings come in all shapes, I suppose. My students from last year are going to orientation, planning out their dorm rooms, trying to find the buildings where they'll spend time in the semester to come. They are ending the last summer of high school and stepping into the new lives ahead of them on their college campuses.

I have friends who ended their child lives and stepped into the roles of parents with the past few years. That's an amazing transition to watch.

I have friends whose children have finally moved out and they're just now having time for themselves as a couple after many, many years of marriage. It's sort of the opposite transition the friends with the new babies are making. Still others I know are changing jobs or going back to work after retiring. Changes, endings, beginnings.

It seems we're always in the process of putting away one chapter of our lives and turning the page. It's a constant cycle of spinning a cocoon and emerging in a new form. Sometimes this unsettles me. Sometimes I crave stability and sameness. Mostly though, I salute life and enjoy the changes. Not that it's easy or comfortable, but thank God there can be change.

I hope my friend can end her time here beautifully and then move into her new life back home with enthusiasm and no regrets. I hope she will emerge from the cocoon with bright, strong wings and make her place there for as long as that chapter of her life is designed to last.

Happy Birthday

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism. ~Erma Bombeck

Sunday, we had our patriotic celebration at church. We pulled out all the songs we only sing once a year: "God Bless America", "My Country, Tis of Thee", and "America the Beautiful". We didn't sing the national anthem, and that surprised me, but it's so difficult that most of us would have had to have squeaked and shrilled through it, so it's probably just as well.

Sunday night, we had fireworks, prayer, and an ice cream social, and as I was sitting there watching men I've known my whole life acting like little boys with the fireworks, I was overwhelmed with love for my country. It wasn't that fireworks were the best I've seen. They certainly weren't comparable to the big displays in large cities, or even the city festival shows I saw all over Japan. It was that unity that we all felt sitting in aging folding chairs on the cracked asphalt of our defunct tennis court. There were four generations of people sitting together, locked in innocent fascination at the colored lights in the sky.

One of my friends from abroad was talking about the Fourth celebrations. He said there was nothing like that in his country. People didn't get together in a big celebration for their country the way we do here. He commented on the fact that the pride his country was currently displaying over the World Cup would fade, and then nobody would want to wear anything with their flag again.

After our conversation ended, I started thinking about how I as an American feel about my country. When I was little, it was simple. I loved my country. Everything was idyllic, red-white-and-blue perfection. It wasn't until college that I started to realize that other people didn't necessarily feel the same.

When I went abroad, I experienced out-and-out hostility because of my nationality for the first time. Too many people had an assumption of who I was, what I liked, and how I was going to behave because I came from the States. The expectations, by the way, were generally not flattering. I was expected to be the epitome of imperial arrogance. When I didn't live up to those expectations, one of two reactions happened: I was asked if I was Canadian or the hatred continued unabated. I had old women move away from me on the train, war protesters single me out as I was walking through the center of campus, and mothers grab their children who were too near the scary foreigner.

I have to admit that this was a time of deep soul-searching for me about my feelings for my country. I had never realized how other people perceived us. I also saw some of my countrymen fulfilling every negative stereotype, and I remember wanting to make a big sign that said things like, "The creepy perv hitting on the high school student isn't your average American, I swear." My own feelings about things our leaders were doing became deeply mixed as I watched the beginnings of Afghanistan and Iraq through the lenses of foreign media and opinion.

I also felt angry quite frequently. I got mad every time I was in a meeting or on a trip and I saw that darned Canadian flag on somebody. Actually, it wasn't the flag that was enraging. It was the fact that I kept hearing them say, and in situations in which NOBODY asked them, things like, "Oh, well, you know, we're NOT Americans. We're Canadian, aye? NOT nasty Americans. See the flag, aye?" I just wanted to walk over, tear the offending patch off, stomp it, and walk away.

Because I was American, people felt comfortable saying the most abominable things about my country to me. I suppose they felt like we deserve it. I was in Japan during 9/11. I watched it happen on TV in the middle of the night, and the other US profs and I were in a state of shock just like everybody else during that horrible time. An Irish professor from the upstairs department caught one of my coworkers to express her sympathies, but immediately afterwards, she said, "But you know, you really brought it on yourselves with your foreign policy." My coworker was too shocked to say anything in return. She just stood there with her mouth open and the other woman walked away.

Even though going through this period was difficult for me, I think it was extremely valuable, too. It made me examine my thoughts about my country and pass from a blind allegiance to a thinking admiration. No matter how much Europe gets mad at us, no matter what stupid crap the so-called leaders of our nation put forth, I still believe in America. I still believe that the vast majority of us are dreamers, and that we want not only what's best for us, but that we truly have good will toward the rest of the world as well.

I believe that we are unique. Not better, not worse, but unique. Because of our past, because of the incredible mix of nations and languages and peoples, we are something wonderful and experimental. I worry about us, too, because as with all experiments, we're fragile, too. The slightest change in temperature, the slightest fraying of our Constitution, and I'm afraid the experiment will fail.

Today is a day for thinking about our country. Today is day to be grateful for what we have. Today is a day for sitting with our friends, family, and neighbors, and staring up at fireworks bought from a decomissioned school bus or a colorfully-striped circus ten. Today is a day to renew our commitment to sustain the experiment that sustains us. Today is a day to shake out the flags and hang them with pride, no matter what others may. Happy 230th Birthday America. May you always be the land of the free and the home of the brave.

An Alternate View

For those of you who enjoyed my posting Fear, for a lighter view of the root of all our problems, check out the Anchoress' July 3 posting found here.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Not in the suicidal, existential Hamlet way, though....

I can't sleep anymore. For about three weeks, I've had horrible sleeplessness. I stay awake, almost preternaturally awake until sometime between two and four a.m.. I usually go to bed long before that, but I can't seem to reach deep sleep anymore. Every little cat shift and dog whuffle wakes me up.

When I do finally doze off, I have horrible dreams. For those of you who know me, you know my run of the mill dreams are odd and vivid. These are the wake-up-yelling type. One night a couple of weeks ago,I dreamed I was trapped in a hospital or school on fire. I won't go into more of it than that, but even thinking about it makes me profoundly disturbed even after all these waking hours have passed. I have dreamed about those who are gone, people I don't know, places I've been and places I hope I never really see.

I've tried all kinds of remedies: taking long walks, reading, listening to quiet music, taking hot showers before bedtime, keeping the room cooler or warmer, and avoiding caffeine late in the evening. Nothing seems to work. That's why I'm still awake right now blogging when I would be much better served by sleeping.

It's getting worse, night by night. Right now, I feel so wired that I could do laps around the pasture. I don't know what's causing it and I don't know what to do about it. I just keep getting more and more irritable in the daytime with things that don't matter because I'm not getting enough rest or real rest at night.

I go through periods like this every once in awhile. I suppose everybody probably does. I just don't understand why it's so intense this time or where the dreams are coming from. Just for tonight, I'd really like to have a night of pleasant dreams where no monsters come out and nothing that's innocent on the surface turns horrible on closer inspection. Just for tonight, I'd like to get some rest and not feel sick in the morning.

Staples Continued

I didn't get the bathroom primed. I did finally get most of the ceiling tiles down. It took a pry bar, a bill hook, two screwdrivers, a hammer, and a pair of needlenose pliers. I don't think it should have taken all that hardware, but there you have it. By the way, celotex, when raked with a bill hook, dissolves into a cloud of potentially toxic particles. Just FYI, should you find yourself in a similar situation.

I ran out of energy about four and went to the home improvement store to get paint and primer. I am officially ready to paint if I can ever get the energy up to get after it. Maybe tomorrow will finally be the day that my bathroom comes out of the 1970's.

Well, I've had my Goren fix for the evening, and now I think I'll gather my energy for the fun, fun, fun that will be a day of painting tomorrow.

Staples (Not the Store)

I have been trying to get my bathroom prepped for painting, and I'm removing the old celotex ceiling tiles in part of the bathroom. Of course, nothing is ever easy. They'd been stapled REPEATEDLY to the ceiling. I've spent the past hour pulling individual staples with a pair of pliers.

May I just say that this isn't my idea of fun. A fine grit falls from the ceiling every time a tile comes down. I am wearing some of my oldest and rattiest clothing, a dust mask, gloves, safety glasses and a do rag for this job. This, of course, is one of those stylish outfits sure to bring out an emergency trip to somewhere with no time to change or a really cute guy.

I decided to take a break from the crap falling from the ceiling and eat some lunch. How long can one linger over potato soup? Dessert, anyone? I will have to get back to it soon to make sure I get it primed today, but geez, I hate this.

Money! Money. Money?

Today was Shopping Day for July. I dragged myself into town and fought the crazy battle to provender myself for the next 30 or so days. It made me more tired than it should have, and I don't think it was because of the giant Sam's Club refugee cart I grabbed at Wal-Mart.

This constant struggle to keep my head above the quickly-rising financial waters is making me tired. I found myself looking at an item in the home improvement store today that wasn't really expensive and telling myself I couldn't afford such a luxury right now. When I got home, two different doctors and my monthly credit card statement were in the box. That precious paycheck, the one I had waited so long to get, is already gone, gone, gone.

I shouldn't complain. After all, I have all I need, and I'm really lucky to have as much as I have. I just wish I could reach a point where I didn't have to worry every month about paying everything.

I know this isn't something unique to my situation. I read in Time the other day that at least 41% of middle class working families can't afford health insurance. How did we get into this situation? When did it become so hard for people who are working non-McDonald's full time jobs to remain financially solvent?

Well, that's enough of that, probably. I just have to focus on the positive and keep my nose to the grindstone. Maybe once I can get through with this second MA, I'll be able to stay afloat without so much frantic baling.