Black and White

I've been glutting myself on black and white film today. I got hooked into an all-day I Love Lucy marathon on TV Land early on, and as I carefully repacked all my Santas and Nativities for another year, I enjoyed episode after episode of that show. I thought I had seen a lot of Lucy, but apparently, I had only sort of hit and missed at it. Today, I saw the famous one where she is stomping grapes amongst others, and I laughed until I had to sit down. It was great.

My second favorite episode was the one where John Wayne was a guest. They were trying to get his footprints and signature in cement to replace a square from Graumann's Chinese Theater that Lucy and Ethel had destroyed somehow. John Wayne fit into the screwball world so easily, and he seemed to be having a great deal of fun. Every time I see him in anything, I always think of my beloved Nana. She loved John Wayne. He was her favorite movie star. Seeing him young and handsome and in his prime on that comedy, I can see why.

I'm now watching Sunset Boulevard again. I've lost track of how many times I've seen this film. I love it. Something about the fact that this is New Year's Eve seemed to demand Norma and her sad delusions. Even though I know this movie inside and out, I'm already enjoying it ten times as much as the other film I watched tonight, Music and Lyrics.

I wonder why the old stuff is always so much better to me. Just the camera angle where Max is playing the organ and his hands are in the foreground with Gillis' angry face in the back is better than any scene in the entire other film I watched. As I look at my collection of DVDs, most of my permanent collection is vintage. Is it that they just made them better then?

Well, Norma just stood up in the flickering projector light, and I think it's time for me to get back to my viewing more in earnest. I hope everyone has a good New Year's Eve.

Survival

I made it. Yesterday's surgery is finally over, and today I can think again at last. Even going through the process of getting ready for the procedure wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be except for putting in the IV. I never do well with that. I think I do much better than I used to, but I still get so irrationally afraid. I don't know why such a tiny thing should be such a source of uncontrollable fear, but there you go. I won't know the results until Jan. 13th, but just getting through this part that I've been waiting for and worrying over for months now is a tremendous relief.

Today I joined Twitter. I am going to try it out. I think it won't be one of those things I tinker with much, especially if I can't get some of my friends involved with it, but it looks interesting. I like the idea of it. If you haven't seen it, go to Twitter.com.

I'm going to De-Christmas the house today. Now that the looming cloud of doom has lifted, I feel like going and doing again. I wish I had more of my break left to go and do in, but I'll have to make the most of what's left to me.

Laughing in the Face of Disaster

I had to play last night for our annual Carol Request Night service. My friend and fellow accompanist who handles the piano end of things came in while I was playing prelude pieces and offered me a hit of Pepto Bismol. There's nothing quite like request night when you're at best an amateur musician. I laughed and declined, but I can't say it wasn't a good idea.

Once we got started, no one wanted to make a request. My friend and I, who can just barely see each other across the top of the various instruments, just gave each other one of our long, speaking looks. Once people stopped being puzzled by the ability to choose, the requests came in fast and thick. There were at least two that I didn't know at all, and judging from the bemused gaze that my friend gave me in the few seconds that we had while rustling hymnal pages, she wasn't too familiar with them, either. We did a quick bit of sight reading and chord-fudging and got through it, though.

By the time it was over, I felt like I'd been wrung out and left to dry. That's when it was time for me to sing my solo. At least all the nerves I had been saving all day had already been expended. I didn't have much left to get nervous with, and I think "What Child Is This?" came out okay.

Despite all the nerves, it was a good service. It was lovely to hear all the carols sung, and it was wonderful as well to play all of them at once. When it was done, I felt better than I have in a long time. Some of the Christmas spirit I've been missing as I wait for my upcoming surgery flickered into life, and I am working hard to nurture that fragile spark.

After a Long Silence

I haven't written in a long time, and truth be told, I have been debating abandoning this blog. Ever since last year's incident, it's felt spoiled, and although the one responsible for all that trouble is now in the process of drinking himself into a coma at one of our state institutions of higher learning, I still feel the taint of his having been here like sand stirred up in a clear pool. I have to write somewhere, though, and I don't feel like ending this.

Life lately has been wretched. It seems a pity to come back here after a two-month absence to say that, but I can't lie. Pain and other problems I've been having lately have led my doctor to start running increasingly invasive tests to find out just how desperate my situation is, and so far, things aren't good. The radiologist told me I had "an interesting uterus", my OB/GYN told me that the fibroids have returned and that one of them is the size of a large lemon (why are these things always frickin' fruit?), and now I am in a holding pattern waiting to have a surgical procedure to find out whether the big scary C word will come into play or not.

After I left the radiology with the results of the ultrasounds, I was sure that I was about to face a hysterectomy. Even though I have been trying to steel myself for that possibility since 2001 when I first found out that I had fibroids, I just could not control the waves of grief. My doctor, who is truly wonderful, talked with me about things, and he said there is not a reason, unless cancer is indicated by the biopsy, to take drastic steps right now. However, in his estimate, I probably only have about two more years left if I want to have a family and then the situation will have deteriorated to a point where more drastic measures will have to be taken.

What am I going to do? Two years might as well be fifteen minutes. There's nobody on the horizon. I don't even know where to look. I feel like I'm just sailing through time at warp speed watching minutes of my life tick away with supernatural speed. Everywhere I look, all my friends have found someone, have children, have what they need. Why is it that I'm still alone?

My doctor talked to me about having a baby on my own. I can't say that I've never thought about it, but after a long time of praying and soul-searching, I don't think that's the right path for me. I will need someone along side me. I want someone along side me, too.

I believe that God has a plan for me. Right now, though, it's so excruciatingly hard to see how any of this is "working for my good" or where it's leading me. I lay in the doctor's office drugged and draped on a table for more than two hours two days ago for a procedure that didn't work. Now, I have to go into the hospital during my Christmas holidays to have outpatient surgery to find out whether or not I have cancer. Merry Christmas, ho-ho-ho. It just doesn't seem to end.

Now my mother is on a mission to get me married off, and she's only thinly veiling it in kidding when she starts talking to me about perfect strangers while desert is being served during a church social. I feel like one of those spinster relatives in a Jane Austen novel who the whole family is just a little bit embarrassed by. More than I have in a long time, I feel the need to pack up suitcases and move away, to a place where I don't speak the language, to a place where nobody knows me or my family, to a place where nobody knows or cares that I am a ticking time bomb.

I am trying just to take it one day at a time. If I do that, maybe I can keep this thin clay vessel from shattering into a million tiny pieces.

Simple Holiday Joy

I was in Wal-Mart two days ago, and I got sucked in by the Halloween aisle. Halloween is still one of my favorite holidays. I guess I'm always going to adore the costumes, the cobwebs, and the candy. It's still several days till payday, so I was mostly relegated to browsing, but I did find one small item I had to bring home with me, a rubber duck with a pumpkin costume on. It was only a dollar, and for the amount of laughter I got out of it, it was very cheap at that price. I threw it in the cart on top of more pragmatic purchases like dog food and milk and headed for the checkout. Sometimes, I guess what is most needed at the end of a very long and trying day is some whimsical bit of childhood, even if it is mostly yellow and squeaky.

Hiatus

I haven't felt much like blogging for the past month, and I certainly haven't had much time to carve out for it, so I've let this sort of fall into the pile of things I don't deal with. There are so many changes and of such massive types at school that they feel like they're consuming me. The revisions to our departmental curriculum are causing me to question everything I thought I knew about what it means to be a teacher and to probe my own practices deeply.

So far, I haven't liked what I've seen very much. While I can't say that I've been doing everything wrong, I certainly haven't been doing things to the level that is possible, and now that we actually have someone guiding us to know what we can achieve, I feel like I need to step up my game considerably. Just the thought of the amount of work involved, though, is staggering. Lesson plans take as long as four hours to complete and produce stacks of paper when they're done. I come home at night feeling as though I've been caught in a whirlwind all day long that has just finally dumped me back at my door so I can fall down in relative peace for a few hours before beginning it all over again.

Many of my colleagues are not taking this transition well. I don't know if they're going to stick with it or not. Some of them are really resisting the change with a vengeance. I can understand that the change is hard, and even now, there are some parts of what we're doing that I don't necessarily agree with, but for the most part, I know that what we've been doing is fundamentally flawed and broken. If it's not working, why on earth would we possibly want to keep on doing that same thing? This new way isn't some outlandish methodology; it looks like what I see coming out of other states and programs across the nation.

My main problem with it isn't the validity of what we're being asked to do; it's with my own inability to juggle everything efficiently. I keep having moments of sheer panic and weariness where I just want to fold my arms, put my head on my desk, and cry. I feel even more like Sisyphus than normal, and I know all too well the feeling of that big, gritty stone as it makes its stately progression down the middle of my back on its way back to the bottom of the hill.

If I can just keep focused on my end goal, the students, and the fact that this year will be the worst of it, I think I can endure. So much will be better once we can get through this first bad year of redesign. We'll have a clear purpose and goal, and we can begin to polish and refine. I just hope that I can get there without running away screaming. Right now, it's a very close race, so stay tuned, folks...

Little Bits and Pieces

Lately I feel as if little bits and pieces of me are slowly being nibbled away. As usual, I am overcommitted in every possible way and to every possible group. I spend about 12 hours of every day at school only to stagger home and fall down for a few hours and do it all over again. On the weekends, I try to keep up my church responsibilities, but I start my new week just as tired as I left the old one. How did I get this way?

I wish I could find a balance. I don't know how to regain it. I like everything that I do, and that's what makes it so hard to cut away things. I can't cut away the prep time at school, either, because otherwise I can't get my job there done. I guess I just have to live in hope that the biggest part of the hard labor there is going to settle down some soon so I can catch my breath a bit. Otherwise, I may be headed for a mental health day very early on this year or an honest-to-goodness sick day as my body forces me to take the time it's missing elsewhere flat of my back in the bed in revenge.

A Good Weekend

Yesterday, my best friend and I went to the Prairie Arts Festival in West Point. It was a great trip. She and I don't get to do much together. She lives near Jackson, and her life as a teacher with a family of husband and three small children pretty much keeps her running all the time. My life is notoriously hectic as well, so we only see each other a few times a year despite the fact that we really don't live that far apart in the global scheme of things.

We decided that despite the impending Gustav-madness, we were going to load up and go see the Prairie Arts Festival. It was an easy drive, only a couple of hours, and we were certainly both familiar with the area from our college days. Driving up, though, was like taking a trip back in time. The closer we got to the Golden Triangle area, the more it felt like we were back in college again.

We shopped and enjoyed the wonderful artists' works at the Festival, and we decided to go to Starkville when we left. I hadn't been to Starkville in a very long time, and I wanted to go see how the campus had changed. Just being there again and seeing how much has been totally removed was surreal. The university I went to is basically no longer there except in ghost images hidden under or behind other buildings. It's not that it's a bad change, but seeing huge gaping holes or new construction where all the dorms of my college experience once stood was a little weird.

The best part of our trip was just the talking. We talked about all kinds of things, some of which went all the way back to college. Old memories, good and bad, floated up, and it was a pleasure to walk through them together. We ate at Lil Dooeys as the capstone on the day and came home.

Even though the trip took the whole day, I feel refreshed. I think we're going to make it an annual thing. Maybe next year we can even get up there in time for the Howlin' Wolf Blues Festival portion of the weekend. Even if we don't get to do it again, though, it was great this year.

Waiting for Gustav

Over one million people have left the New Orleans area and the Gulf Coast. They've already shut down I-59 South and reversed it. All traffic south of Hattiesburg is now northbound. Once again, we're in that weird waiting phase where everything seems to be holding its breath.

I spent most of today preparing the house for whatever of Gustav we're going to get here in Central MS. Supposedly, we're in for heavy rains and some wind, but Katrina is too fresh in my mind, like the minds of so many others. I have everything stripped down from outside, and I bought bottled water, canned foods, and batteries. It may be nothing but a lot of water falling from the sky, but the memories of fourteen days with no electricity are vivid still.

Cruising around Wal-Mart Friday, I noticed that people were in that state of controlled panic. Carts were full of Vienna sausages and crackers. Bottled water and toilet tissue were gone from the shelves as were C and D cell batteries. Flashlights were completely sold out. Fortunately, I had bought most of my "disaster kit" a long time ago. I just needed a few AAA batteries, and I wanted a clip booklight. I remembered that one of the worst parts of Katrina was trying to read by kerosene lantern.

Today, Dad did some small repairs on my roof, and I mowed my grass. I took down all my windchimes and birdfeeders. I tucked my big lawn chair under a secure porch. When I came home, I put the PT Cruiser under my car shed. My banners are down from the mailbox and the big pole in my yard. Except for a few things on the side of my house, I think I'm about as battened down as I can get. All that's left now is to continue to pray.

Self-Reflection

I've been thinking a lot lately about my teaching, about who I am as a teacher and what it means to be one. I've been thinking about what I do and how I do it. This year is a year of great change for my school and my district, so I guess all the snow in the snowglobe has been shaken up thoroughly.

Lately, I have found so much to think about. New approaches, new ideas, new processes seem to surround me this year. It's profoundly hard to go outside my comfort zone so often, but I think it's going to be a good thing for both my students and me in the end. Things that I have done for years in a certain way I now call into question. Are those practices sound? Are they serving my students to the best of my ability?

Today our district brought Ron Clark to speak to us. I hadn't wanted to see him at all. I was expecting something totally unrealistic, someone with his head totally in the clouds, but what I found instead was that he was funny and realistic. I didn't expect that. While I won't be dancing on tables any time soon, I did take some ideas and inspiration from him. It was a good presentation.

This whole year has been like that, crazy and unpredictable. I wonder what we're all going to be like when it's done. If we can survive it, I hope we're going to be better than what we were when it began.

At Last....

...I got to hear my wonderfully-talented friend's recital. He played at the Kennedy Center, so it was broadcast and archived online. I, not having any form of network TV and no local channels through my little satellite, missed the actual broadcast, but I did just sit down and watch it online through the Kennedy Center's website. You can watch it yourself if you want to by clicking here.

I've known this friend since I was in graduate school at Indiana, and his abilities never cease to amaze me. One of my favorite things during my time there was to hear him play anything. I often said that I would have been happy living in a shoebox under his piano, even if all he ever played was "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." This recital is one he'd told me about a long time ago, and trust me, it's well worth your time to listen to it. It, like everything else he does, is truly fabulous.

I wish I lived closer to where he is so I could go hear him live. I love to watch him play. He plays with such passion. It's expressed in every aspect of his expression and his body. In a way, though, this medium had things to recommend it, too, because the camera followed his hands so much.

The music he played in this recital is all Brazilian. It was lovely, and there are a few pieces that I wish I had recordings of, or at least had recording of his performances of, anyway. I can't exactly describe what it is about those particular pieces that drew me; probably it was the melancholy nature he talked about. I tend to gravitate toward minor keys and that thread of sadness and longing in music, anyway. It is what draws me toward the blues and to many of the artists whose music I buy repeatedly, so likely it's what I find compelling here as well.

He lectured some between the pieces and gave their history and interpretation, which added a lot to the performance, but also made me smile since I haven't seen him or talked to him in any way other than by email or FaceBook in a very long time. It was good to hear his voice and see him again, even if it was just a one-way thing. I'm glad he's doing so well. More than just about anybody I know, he deserves it.

Maybe This Is The Problem With Committees

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton

Interesting Distinction

A nerd is someone whose life revolves around computers and technology. A geek is someone whose life revolves around computers and technology, and likes it!
-- as seen on a Crackberry.com post signature

I am such a geek. I always have been. Not just by this definition, either, although I do fit this one. I even have a pair of tiny studs that say geek. I found them in some accessory shop somewhere, and they are one of my prized possessions. I think they're too small for anybody to read unless they're way, way too far into my personal space for my comfort, but I get a kick out of wearing them.

An example of my geekdom came today. I spent several very happy hours this afternoon cruising blueroomsolutions.com and nancydrewthemes.com getting some very savage new themes for my beloved BlackBerry (who I have named Onesimus, meaning "Useful" and hoping it's not sacrilegious since it's a biblical name) as well as finding old friends on FaceBook and playing a new hellishly-addictive game on there called Scramble. Technology is fun. :) I don't mind being a geek. I figure everybody has to have fun somehow, and this at least keeps me off the streets and out of jail....

Machine Curse

This title comes from an old game "back in the day." I can't even remember which one. It was something you could do to another player to make everything in his army turn to absolute crap. Well, I think somebody has done it to me. I am having a run of the worst luck imaginable. I am almost afraid to go outside.

Early in the week, I found out that several things at school had gone to crap unexpectedly. I think they can be fixed fairly easily, but they were the sort of little twists that were just unlucky.

When the insurance adjuster came out to look at my roof Thursday, it turns out that the people who put it on three years ago either didn't know or didn't care what they were doing. Therefore, I have no insurance coverage for the damages inside, and I'm also going to have to have a roofer come out and redo part of the roof to prevent the problem from recurring. I just wanted to sit down and cry. Why is that so many people in this world seem dedicated to no other proposition than "take the money and run?" (No offense to Steve Miller or his band...)

The rest of Thursday was a crapfest of lost items precious to me, jamming copying machines, and pin pricks small and great. Yesterday, I mostly hid here at home in hopes that the Machine Curse would leave me alone. I went to Red Field to relax, and Mom and Dad were going to come up and bring food so we could enjoy the unseasonably cool weather with a dinner before school gets rolling. The next thing I knew, they were calling to tell me that they'd had a major tireshredding blowout on their way up. The tires were brand new. My Machine Curse is spreading. It's scary.

This morning, I got up and let Roux out for her early morning bathroom break, and as I was leading her around the backyard on her leash, I glanced toward my dilapidated barn only to see that it has finally fallen down. I don't know if the Machine Curse gets the credit for that one. The Machine Curse really wouldn't have had to work very hard for that one; one good push would have brought it down.

I am hoping that all this bad luck is cycling out or at least is getting ready for something big and good on the horizon. I keep thinking that we've got to be getting to the end of of this particular tunnel soon. Since I'm going to have to go to the bank and refinance a mortgage to take care of it, the Machine Curse should be propitiated by that. That is, after all, the modern day version of a blood sacrifice, is it not? It will be for me, anyway....

Life Rafts and Tidal Waves

I worked registration the past two days, and it never ceases to amaze me how rude people can be to others over things that are nothing. I got "cussed at" more times than I can count because our district now requires two forms of proof for residency verification or because a student was on a list for old fees and could not therefore start registration until the proof of residency was shown or the fee was cleared. For this, people were willing to be obscene. I didn't do it. I didn't make the policy. I didn't even want to have to be the one to tell them, but they surely too it out on me. I hate that.

These were parents of juniors and seniors who have all had students at our school for years. That means that the process of registration is well-known to them, except of course for the new residency requirements. They know that getting through the entire process from Old Fees to Book Pick-Up and final form sign-off can take as long as two hours at peak times. However, every year, we have parents who come in and act as though they should be able to sail through in fifteen minutes. They act as though we have a personal vendetta against them and are trying to deprive them of their livelihood because we can't forward them to the front of a line of three hundred or so other people who have all been waiting in the heat just as they have. They get angry when we tell them that they have to be with their student to complete the forms, that they can't just kick their kid out of the car with a blank check and go. If it were the first time around, I could understand, but if your child has been with us three years.....

It's over for me now, thank God. I only work seniors and juniors. I leave the sophomores, who are coming in for the first time, and the new students and makeup day to cooler heads than my own. I need the rest of this last precious week to recover and rest up. Next week starts our staff development, and then we'll be back in harness for the long haul of our new year with all our new plans and designs in place. I'm excited to see how it goes and am hoping for a great good year.

One good thing from yesterday was seeing my friend. He'd been on a trip to see some of his girlfriend's family in California, and he brought me a gift. It was so sweet of him to think of me, and although I didn't really get to talk to him much in between the unending onslaught of people coming in the door to curse me, just seeing him and knowing that somebody in this world didn't wish me ill was a big boost. Since I've also been trying to wrangle with the insurance issues of getting someone down to look at the roof and my ceilings lately, I have been feeling very overwhelmed. It was like a little life raft put out there for me in very choppy seas. I needed it a lot, but then, he's good at that. It's nice how God works that out.

Well, I'm off to do as much nothing as I can for the rest of this afternoon. This is the last day of it, so I have to make it count.

It's Almost Time

Since that most wonderful of days, Pay Day, arrived at last, I went to do my pre-school blowout buy. As I wandered through the aisles of school supplies, I actually felt a little spring enter my step. I know that settles the Geek Queen crown ever more firmly on my head, but there you have it. There is something about the sight of piles of clean, new notebooks, boxes of unbroken, sharp-pointed crayons, and packages of bright yellow pencils that cheer my soul. It has always been so.

As I walked through the Wal-Mart aisles and watched the little children with their parents, I knew that the little ones understood this, too. Their parents, for the most part, were simply trying to navigate the sea of carts, peering confusedly at the blurry photocopied lists while pondering the relative merits of the glue stick and liquid glue. The children, though, knew. They understood the magic inherent in the crisp new folder, the necessity of purchasing Crayola crayons, and the satisfaction of finding just the right pencil pouch to hold all one's personal treasures. Their happiness was infectious.

Perhaps it is that all these things, all these tools of the education trade in their unused state, represent a kind of potential. There is a hopefulness in the clean serenity of the first blank page of a legal pad, and a great deal of satisfaction in putting the pen to the page. Anything might come from that action. Any work of greatness or triviality might spring from it.

As I left that section of the store for other supplies, I took the little lift with me. It almost made me wish I'd put a box of sharp-pointed Crayolas of my own in with the copy paper and other grown-up stuff I'd thrown in the cart just in celebration.

Walk the Line

I watched Walk the Line at long last yesterday. I've had it sitting on the top of my TV from Netflix for a month, but something kept coming up or I wasn't in the mood to sit down and pay attention to something for two hours. I'm glad I did, though. It was great.

I have always liked Johnny Cash, but I didn't really know more than the tiniest bit about his life. The movie filled in some of the big blanks and made me want to know more. I'll order his autobiography and put it on the shelf for future reading. He and his life interest me. That whole period of music history interests me, those musicians who started there at Sun Studios and became the foundation of so much that came later.

The performances in the film were amazing. Joaquin Phoenix was so compelling. I thought he managed a perfect mix of someone who was constantly fighting for the raw edges of daily control and someone who had found the one thing they wanted most. There was tremendous strength in him, but always there, just below the surface, was a great fragility in the eyes, especially when he was with June. There were scenes, especially the scenes between Cash and his father, that moved me to tears.

Reese Witherspoon was also perfect in her role. I always like her in everything I see her in. She always seems to chose roles that are "real" people, and that may be part of why I respect her so much. Her performance in this film made it clear that the love June had wasn't an easy thing and also showed her strength. It was a very complex portrayal and powerful for that reason.

I wound up watching the film twice. I may eventually buy it. I am still thinking about it. The love portrayed on the screen between Johnny and June was not an easy or a comfortable kind, but it was so true. I keep thinking about the scene at the end of the movie where he proposed for the final time and she accepted. He told her that she was his best friend amongst other things, and I think that's probably the truest secret of their love. They were the other half of each other. How else could they have survived everything else that happened? That's what I hope to find someday, my other half, my best friend. I hope it's out there for me like it was for them.

Repairs Needed

The recent rains here in Podunk have revealed a couple of problems with my roof. Dad fixed them today, but they left their mark. It looks like I'm going to have to have major repairs done on my ceilings.

Right now, my ceilings are this sort of horrible Celotex stuff from the 1970s. Since the leaks opened up, the tiles have discolored, sagged, and are in the process of falling down. I have been too embarrassed to have anyone in the house for a long time because of how ugly they are. I didn't have enough money in the big renovation done several years ago to have them done at that time, and now I'm glad. I can't wait any more, though, so now is the time.

I think insurance is going to cover the damaged parts, and really, my bedroom and my kitchen are the only two rooms without water damage of some kind because of the leaking. I will probably borrow the money to get those two rooms done, too. It's time I don't have to be embarrassed over that anymore, and I think it's better if it all gets done at the same time. Here we go with construction again...

Missippiority Complex

Today, I was talking with someone about his job. He works in a nationally-known technology company with branches in several states. The company is currently losing its "best-and-brightest" from its Mississippi location because of worker dissatisfaction. The number one complaint? A worker here in MS makes as much as three times less than a worker with equal skills, qualifications, and seniority as a worker in another part of the country. This inequity is maintained even when workers from other plants are transferred to the MS plant. The company can't understand why this is a problem or why the workers hired here in MS prefer to find other jobs. As I was talking this situation over, I thought this was just a perfect example of a larger problem here in Mississippi, a strange belief held by outsider and native alike that everything here is just a little less valuable somehow because it's from Mississippi.

Outsiders do it all the time. Mississippi, poor backwards, Southern, redneck, racist, illiterate child of the past. Mississippi, dressed in hoop skirts or bib overalls, living in shotgun shacks or decaying antebellum mansions, playing banjo or blues guitar, these elements, these fragments of a larger whole are the caricatures that seem to blind those who don't know her to the truth of a much larger, much broader whole. We're last or next to last on most of the national polls, after all, and stereotypes are comfortable and familiar.

What started to disturb me today was the fact that it seems that too often our own folks believe it, too. When I start to think of the tremendous number of writers and musicians our state has produced, I can't help but wonder why so little has been done to commemorate, honor, and stand up for that. I can name a quick handful of names that alone would be worth a state puffing out its chest in pride, Elvis, Faulkner, Welty, Wright, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Jimmie Rodgers, Tennessee Williams, and that's barely even starting to touch the surface.

While there are efforts honor these talents folks, most Mississippians, just sort of go around shuffling their feet in the dust with their heads down as though we've never produced anything of value. What's wrong with what we make, with what we do? What's wrong with Shearwater Pottery, what's wrong with a Walter Anderson print? What's wrong with a Viking range in the kitchen or a La-Z-Boy chair? What's wrong with a Peavy amp or guitar? Why do we constantly seem to be apologizing for something?

I can't say that we don't have any problems. It would be a lie to say that poverty doesn't exist here, that we don't face education issues, that we aren't trying to find our way in the modern world. But here's the million-dollar question: Who isn't? What state isn't facing poverty, education reform, and questions about how to go forward in a confusing mess of modern political crap? I wish my state would cast off its shy Southern self-deprecation and stand a little taller. I don't care if we're ever like all our sisters and neighbors. We are different, and that's okay. I just want us to be comfortable in that difference and proud of all the good things that we have here.

The Details

I'm sewing my life together with the details. I know that sounds strange, and explaining why I need to do that right now would be too complex to go into here, and quite frankly, not something I'm sure I want to do. That in and of itself is odd, because I used to come to this blog as an outlet for everything that I needed to think through. I think this somehow became too public last year when some students found it, and now each time I sit down to write about the things that are closest to me, I find that I can't do it anymore here. It doesn't really bother me for my friends to read me, but somehow, what happened last year makes me feel like someone is spying in the windows of my house with a telephoto lens waiting to catch something compromising or ridiculous.

So, without going into details, I feel hollow lately. To combat it, I am frantically filling the time and the emptiness with work. I have spent long hours in my new classroom getting in ready, torn down the old bulletin board in the hall outside my room and mostly redone it, made a million lists of things still to be purchased or done before school begins, and fiddled endlessly with other preschool details such as handouts. I have tweaked and retweaked my BlackBerry to the point that it is radically different almost every day, and I have been on the verge of upgrading its OS to a beta version of 4.5 numerous times until the fear of bricking my Berry stopped me.

The creeping empty can be held back with furious activity. I can hold it back with tv and good books, too, sometimes. As long as the gears in my mind spin on idle, as long as they don't engage, things are okay. I wish I could purge it. I wish I could run out in the yard, throw back my head, howl at the moon, dance in the wet grass, and feel the empty go away, but instead, I fold another load of clothes. Instead of just heading my car off into the horizon and driving until I'm somewhere else, I come back up the driveway and mow the grass, endless circles going nowhere leaving ordered paths behind me.

I feel like a shadow of who I used to be, and I hate that feeling. I look at photos of myself from when I was in graduate school or overseas, and it's like I'm staring into the eyes of another person. I really miss her, too. I wish I knew what to do to get that feeling of wholeness and confidence back. I'm tired of having to fabricate things to keep my mind off the dark corners. I'd rather throw some light into them and drive the shadows away for good.

BlackBerry Addict

I love my BlackBerry more and more every day. It's really kind of sad. I have been a Gadget Geek for years, and there are so many different ways to customize my Curve and so many things it will do that it is an endless source of fun for me. Yesterday, I actually found a Hello Kitty theme for mine, and I managed to combine childhood and high tech. It was great.

I'm going to put a side panel of some of my favorite BlackBerry stuff on the blog so if any of you are also CrackBerry addicts, you can check it out. I'm also going to put in a video from YouTube (if I can figure out how to do it) because it made me laugh.

Nashville Parthenon

 
While I was in Nashville for the conference, I had a chance to go see the Nashville Parthenon. That was one of my favorite parts of the trip. According to the museum in the base, the structure was built as a part of the Tennessee Centennial celebration and is a to-scale reconstruction of the real Parthenon in Athens. While one never knows how accurate reconstructions of ancient buildings are, this was pretty amazing.

Inside, a statue of Athena was installed sometime in the late 90s. Standing there and looking up at the gilded goddess, I could see how impressive she might have been to ancient travelers who might have come to seek her favor. I've often thought that had I been an ancient Greek, I would have been a devotee of Athena. I admire what she stands for, intelligence, and I've always loved the story of her birth, Zeus and the literally-splitting headache.

Casts of the fragments of what remains of the original border the main hall along with descriptions about where each piece has wound up and what god or goddess each is thought to represent. The inside of the structure was quiet, and it was raining heavily outside. Everyone who came in spoke quietly, and except for the squish of wet shoes and whispers, there was no sound.

All that was destroyed when a stroller came up the elevator. A family of five got off and the youngest, probably only three, was fascinated not with any of the statues or even the big gold thing in the middle of the room, but only with the sound of his shrieking voice echoing off the ceiling. Ack. So much for atmosphere.

While I was downstairs, I bought a small sterling-silver owl pendant. Owls are going to be the symbol for our new small learning community, and since that choice originally goes back to their being a symbol of wisdom associated with Athena, it seemed appropriate to get one at the Parthenon. Whenever I wear it, I can think of my trip and the quiet sanctuary from the rain before the invasion of toddler kind.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

I had this on my shelf for about a year before I took the plunge and read it. There was something about the 800+ page length that just kept putting me off, but I'm glad that I read it. It was great. It wasn't a speedy read, but it was a really richly built world with well-developed characters. In fact, it felt to me like the first of many books. I really hope that the author will continue the adventures.

My favorite character was actually one who did not appear in the pages of the book. I want to know what happened with the Raven King. Bits and pieces of his story were told in the footnotes. In fact, it often seemed at though the book were two or three books put together by the time the ancient magicians appeared in the footnotes. The Raven King fascinated me, though, and his story was far too sparsely detailed.

The whole alternate universe feel of JS/MN was part of the enjoyment for me. I am a die-hard Jane Austen fan, so to have a world that is basically her world, only with magic as a common-place addition, was a wonderful treat. The addition of Lord Byron and other historical heavy-hitters was also delightful.

Admittedly, this book isn't for readers who want what I think of as "flash/bang" fiction. You are going to have to be patient for it. However, I think JS/MN is rich enough and deep enough to reward readers who wade in and swim out into the wonderful world that has been created.

Thieves Again

Our community is walking on pins and needles. Apparently, a gang of thieves has moved in to Podunk. We're rural, and our Sheriff has limited resources for a large county, so it is difficult to catch a small group of people. Since my parents were robbed, many more houses have been burgled. They continue the same pattern of quick break-ins to isolated homes taking small portable items.

There are reports of vehicles the thieves may or may not be using, so now every car that passes the house is subjected to intense scrutiny. As will happen, rumors about this particular person or group are being bandied about, and suspicion shifts. Everyone is jumpy. If this keeps up, someone is going to get killed.

This has always been a pretty safe community. Sure, we have our bizarre Southern rural stuff, some of which is pretty much Flannery O'Connor-esque, but by and large, it's a hold-over from another time. Now, suddenly, we have this bunch of people smashing their way into our homes. One of the worst violations to me was the recent robbery of my pastor's new home. While he and his family were making trips back and forth moving him in, the crooks took the chance to come in and take what they could. My pastor and his wife weren't even completely living there yet, and already they have to deal with that loss of sanctuary. It's not right.

Even though I'm a Christian, I still believe in a form of karma. These people are sowing fear, distress, and pain in our small community. I have to believe that sooner or later it's going to catch up with them. This can't go on forever.

Live from Nashville

I'm in Nashville for a conference. The drive up yesterday was a bit taxing. Most of it was not bad, but right outside of Nashville, I think every highway in the entire nation dumps in to one square mile of interstate, and at about 5:45 p.m., that was not a good place to be. My teacher friend and I made it to our hotel, ate some fairly good Mexican food and crashed. Today, we're going to see some sights in Nashville before going to the "big show" at the convention center. I'm optimistic that this conference is going to be really useful. Everybody I've heard talk about it says that it is. I need a refresher before the year begins.

Sick Days

I haven't felt well the past two days. In fact, I pretty much just lost yesterday completely. I hate that. I staggered around the house and took care of Roux, but other than that, I just read and slept. So much for a happy Fourth of July.

The animals have all been pleased with my inactivity, though. Cats have been piled up hither, thither, and yon, and the dogs have been sacked out, too. One bit of light comedy has been a cushion I bought for Roux to have for her recovery since she can't get up on the couch in the living room right now. It's cute and soft, but she hasn't shown the first bit of interest in it at all. Dillon and Yoda, however, have a running battle going over it. It's way too big for a single cat, but I guess that makes it ultra-posh for them. Yoda was the first to discover it, but now, if she gets up for any reason, Dillon swipes it. Yoda comes back from getting a snack to find a small ball of stripy fur in the middle of the cushion, much to her eternal disgust.

Tomorrow, I'll have to play for church, so I hope the remnants of this will be gone. I also need to get my car cleaned out and go buy some groceries today. I guess I'll try to fight off the last of the sick lethargy and actually get some stuff done.

A Good Tired

I've spent the last two days moving into my new room. I have entirely too much stuff. It's amazing how much too much stuff I have. I have shuffled, stacked, combined, hung, filed, and thrown away for two straight days, and when I left today, it finally looked like a classroom as opposed to some sort of nuclear site. I'm starting to feel good about it. I'm going to have a lot more space in this room, for one thing, so I will actually be able to group my students and have them move their desks without all of us hurting one another in the process. That's nice. It's also nice to think that I might even have room to put in a small table for tutoring, conferences, and group work. I've certainly never had space for that before.

The best aspect of this new space is that is has windows everywhere. There is so much natural light. I love it. I think the plants will love it, too. There's not a lot of wall space for display in this room because of all the windows, but it's a decent trade-off, I think.

I still have a lot to do. I have to put up bulletin boards and finish up cleaning up all the loose ends, but the very nice gentleman from technology set up the student computer on the desk I brought from home today, and he completely gutted and reloaded my laptop, too, so except for replacing some missing equipment in the room, I'm ready to go. The laptop is working better than it ever has, so I am so grateful for the reload! It's needed it since at least January.

I guess that's all the news, and it's not really news to anyone but me. It's nice to be settled, though.

Weekend (or Gimme the HEMI)

Roux's home. The poor baby has staples in a six-inch line up her leg, and she's getting around in painful slowness, but she's home. The vet said that upon inspection of the injury it appears that her ACL injury occurred because it deteriorated because of natural causes. He said this sometimes happens in dogs and that in the next six months to a year it may happen again in her other leg. He said there's nothing that can be done to prevent it; apparently, it's a genetic issue. As I watch her limp from room to room, I pray that this is all for her. If her other leg goes, I'll do whatever I have to by way of surgery, but it will be so much better if she can recover from this and be healthy and happy.

Friday, while I was waiting to hear about Roux's surgery, I went with my parents to go see my uncle, and we wound up stopping on the way at a car dealership instead. Dad needed a new vehicle. With gas prices going up and the reliability of his 1991 truck going down, it was time. Although I don't think they intended the purpose of the trip to be purchasing a new car, Dad came home in an 07 Chrysler Pacifica. It's big enough for him to fit in and it gets really good gas mileage. We took it north today on the rescheduled trip to see my uncle, and it was very nice. I think he's excited about having it, and I think it's about time. It's the first "new" vehicle he's had since 1981. He was way overdue.

While he and Mom were conducting their business, I was somewhat left at loose ends, so I talked to some of the salesmen, roamed the lot, and drooled over the Chargers. I was standing and staring at their curving loveliness when all the headlights started flashing. I stepped back, a little startled, and one of the salemen stepped out with a handful of keys. He said, "Pick one." I started making noises saying no because I cannot trade cars right now, even though I want almost nothing in this whole world more than a big-HEMI Charger. I didn't want to be a test-drive tease. He just smiled, and said again, "Pick one. You want to drive the red one?"

The red one was a big HEMI R/T package, and it was fine in every way, but it was not the one that made my heart skip a beat. The one that made me want to cry was a big HEMI 08 in a color called Titanium. I smiled at him, and I swear I felt like a kid in a candy store when I pointed at it and I said, "That one. I want to drive that one." He handed me the key and told me to have fun and went back inside.

Oh BOY, did I have fun. I didn't trust myself to test drive it long. Otherwise, I'd still be driving it. That was the second one I've driven, but the other one didn't have a HEMI, and oh what a difference that makes. As soon as I got it around the block and out onto the open road, I just floored it to see what it would do. I swear, it felt like the thing stood up. There was no hesitation, no pause, no sickening moment of waiting for the rush, just pure power and a purring roar from the engine. The RPMs kicked high briefly to meet the immediate demand, and I was doing 85 before I could even blink. I was giggling like a fool and furtively looking around me for highway patrol before sanity returned and I slowed down to a speed less likely to get me arrested. There was almost no traffic on the road, so I slowed down to crawl so I could hit it again to hear it roar and feel it fly. It was so amazing. All I could think was, "I LOVE this car. I LOVE this car!!!!"

The day when I have one of these for my own is going to have to come soon. When I got back to the dealership and parked it, I felt a great loss at turning the ignition off and getting out. I just wanted to keep driving it, not at daredevil, lawbreaking speeds, but at every speed. Maybe the legislature will give us a 200% raise soon and I'll be able to afford one....

Roux to the Vet

This morning, I got up early, got dressed, and took Roux for a long walk around the yard. She sniffed every blade of dew-wet grass, overturned every brown live-oak leaf, and followed every track left in the yard by nighttime animal visitor in the yard. Her poor back leg trembled with every step, but she was so excited to be outside in the cool morning air that her ears were perked up and she wasn't really paying attention. Yelldo, who'd come out with her, was dancing around, sniffing and exploring happily, getting ready to enjoy another morning of outdoor fun.

When I was sure she'd taken care of her bodily needs, I brought her back in, gathered up my purse and keys, and helped her into the car. She, as she always does, climbed right across the passenger side and into the driver's seat. Once I persuaded her that she couldn't drive, we hit the road. She is always such a good dog in the car, so peaceful and calm. She looks out the window at the passing cars, and she never seems nervous at all. She is always perfectly composed, stately almost.

Today, I just kept petting her and telling her over and over what I've been saying since Wednesday, telling her she'll feel so much better when this is all over and that I swear I'll be back for her as soon as I'm able. I don't know if dogs have memories for things like this, but I believe they do. I worry so much that she will flash back to her life as a shelter dog or to the time when she was in rescue before she had a permanent home, and that she'll think that I've given her up. I know the surgery will be painful for her during and after the procedure, but she's a pit, and a healthy one at that, so I'm not worried so much about her physically. Mostly, I don't want her great big loving pit bull heart to suffer even for one second thinking that I left her somewhere. That's happened to her before, after all.

Now, I'm just waiting by the phone to hear that she's okay after the surgery. Once I hear that, I can begin the countdown to her return to me tomorrow morning. I know all too well the pain of knee surgery, so I am ready to help her start on the road to recovery once she gets home. I just need her home. It's hard to have part of your heart away from you.

Quote on Political Correctness

While on my favorite BlackBerry site, CrackBerry.com, I found this gem as a signature file in one of the forum posts. I had to copy it and share it here....

Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end. - Texas A&M University Student

Twilight

Choke...

Part of me does NOT want to admit that I read these books..... Does it make me a mewling preteen to have read these books? Jeez....

Anyway, because of all the hoopla surrounding the upcoming release of the last volume of the series, I got curious about Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. I ordered the first one off Amazon with a bunch of other stuff expecting to be underwhelmed but at least culturally literate. When you teach teenagers, you need to at least try to be marginally culturally literate. Most of the time I fail miserably, but this was at least something I could read, so I figured I'd try it.

The first book was not well-written at all. Every thirty-seven words or so, the characters either glared, rolled their eyes, or chuckled. I felt the desire to slap the main character (just can't call her a heroine, sorry) about every fourth page in the hopes that she'd grow a spine or brain in reaction. Yet, somehow, despite all that colossally-ill-written prose, I still wanted to see what happened next. Somehow, I had to know what happened with all the rainy gloom in Forks.

So...I sent away to Amazon for the other two books. When they came, I felt embarrassed as though the UPS driver could see inside the plain brown box and knew what sort of literary crap fiction was inside. I think I would have been less shamed if it had contained an illustrated Kama Sutra. I spent the remainder of the day with Bella, Edward, Jacob, and that terrible writing watching their world fall apart in impossible ways through the two books. I finished New Moon about dinner time and Eclipse about 2 a.m. The good thing about pulp fiction is that you can rip right through it, reading-wise.

When I finished the third book, I started thinking about all the screaming prepubescent hordes who lustfully adore Edward, the vampire love interest in the books. He certainly isn't like any of the fictional vamps I've read in the past. His main personality trait seems to be "control," not something I personally find appealing. His attraction to Bella is based on some prey-drive thing, but her attraction to him is never really explained other than by saying that he's really good-looking and sexy and in to her...and the author says that about every fifth sentence. Their conversations don't ever feel real to me. They are filled with mutual worship and angst instead of real speaking and listening.

Bella does have another love interest, a best friend who shares a lot with her, named Jacob. With Jacob, she does real things (sometimes) and has real conversations. Some of the best writing in the series, some of the most believable characterizations and conversations in the series come from their time together. She seems like she's on the verge of serious commitment to him a couple of times in the course of the series, but always she turns back to the dysfunctional Edward each time he crooks a finger. Of course, all this is tossed in with supernatural stuff like vampires and werewolves, so it does get a bit muddled at times....

I decided that Edward must fill that immature "star-crossed lover" desire that so many teenagers seem to have, that craving for the guy you just shouldn't have, the relationship that is as full of drama as you can possibly make it. I was never really into that, personally, but I saw it in full effect in the lives of some of my friends. They dated guys, I'm convinced, that they never would have given a second look to if the relationship had gone smoothly. As we get older, I think most of us lose that drama urge. Love is hard enough without looking for soap-opera complications on the side.

All in all, I guess this series is okay. It's not the worst thing I've ever read, for sure, and anything that gets people to read can't be all bad. I guess I'm just a little too old to get into a bother over cardboardy control characters. I'm curious enough and OCD enough to read the final book in the series when it comes out. I just don't intend to announce it loudly when I'm done.

Roux's Knee

Roux has been limping worse than usual the past two days, so today, I loaded her up and took her in to see the vet again. I was afraid that she'd reinjured or worsened the existing injury to her rear right ACL. She licked her lips in pain and only yelped a couple of times as the vet moved her leg, but I could tell it hurt her so much. The ultimate diagnosis didn't come as a surprise. She's going to need surgery to correct the torn ligament in her knee.

Roux was so sweet and good the whole time. Everyone always remarks on how beautiful she is, and I am always so proud to be able to tell people that she's a pit because I know that too many people have too many wrong attitudes about what pit bulls really are. The whole time we were traveling, the whole time we were sitting in the waiting room, and then while the vet was seeing her, she just kept looking up at me with that same loving trusting expression. Even when the vet had twisted her leg into a position that caused her pain, when he was done, she stuck her head into the crook of his arm as though he was a refuge for her. How could anyone look at that and see a dangerous animal?

She's going to have surgery Friday morning, and I'll need to crate her up for awhile. This, of course, doesn't mean that she wouldn't be perfectly capable of doing exactly what she's been doing and turn off all the pain to run full out after whatever she wanted if the opportunity presented itself, so I'm going to have to be very careful about keeping her on the leash and watching that she doesn't dash out the door for awhile. I hope that even after Friday's surgery she'll still be able to look up at me with that same love and trust. I know from personal experience how badly knee surgery hurts.

Easy Key Lime Pie Recipe

The pie is great. If you want the recipe, check here on the RealSimple recipe page for it. I will say that because I can't seem to find an 8 oz. container of heavy cream or a 6 oz. can of frozen limeade that I doubled the recipe instead by simply buying another pie crust and another can of sweetened condensed milk and making two pies instead of one. Now what will I do with that second pie?

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

I watched this tonight with my faux Mexican, and I was reminded of why I am fascinated by the Tudors. I loved the first movie, Elizabeth, tremendously. I have it on DVD, and every time I watch it I am a little more impressed with it. I know it's not exactly accurate historically, but it's fairly close, and just to see the period come to life in that way and to gain a window in to how Elizabeth might have felt when the events of her life unfolded is powerful.

The Golden Age had many of the same qualities. The romance element from the first movie was largely absent, or at least highly sublimated, but the history was so rich. Mary, Queen of Scots made her fateful decision and lost her head, Philip II schemed his megalomaniac schemes, cloaked in religious zeal, and the Armada sailed. Just seeing the Armada being built and then the later battle with the fire ships was incredible. Seeing Elizabeth deliver her famous speech to the troops as the Armada approached was also very well-done.

I think, though, the very best moments of the film revolved around the conflict with Mary, Queen of Scots. The actress who played her played Jane Eyre in the BBC/A&E production. I can never remember her name, but she's very good. I never would have thought of casting her into that role, but now that I've seen her in it, I don't think I will ever be able to think of anyone else in it. She carried herself with such perfect composure and regal grace. She was a wonderful foil for Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth, and let's be honest, that wasn't going to be easy to do.

When Mary's plot to assassinate Elizabeth was discovered and she knew her life was basically forfeit, she still maintained her dignity. She went to the block like a queen.

Just as moving was the reaction of Elizabeth. It humanized that whole part of the story. Elizabeth was torn in making the decision to order Mary's execution for many reasons, and even when the decision was done, in the film, she could not watch it. Again, I'm not sure of the historical accuracy of any of it, but it was compellingly played on screen.

I'm glad I finally got to see it. All in all, I liked the first one better, I guess. It would have been hard to live up to it, too, all things considered. I will want this one to show bits and pieces of for the Armada scenes, especially, and I'll definitely want to watch it again.

Reengineering Wireless and Key Lime Pie

After a long night of really bizarre dreams, there's nothing like checking your bank balance prior to going to the store and finding that you have $0.76. Really. Seventy-six cents. After I took care of that, I squelched my trepidation, kissed my dogs, and went to town for the first time since last Tuesday's robbery. I was out of practically everything.

My wireless network here at home has been spotty since I moved the router to the back of the house to get it out of the living room, so in an effort to continue yesterday's office cleaning and revamping, I decided I would fix the problem today. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems, though.

The room roughly in the center of my house has very high ceilings. It's the room that joins the two houses that make up the house as a whole. There is a display ledge that is formed by the ceiling of one of the rooms, and that is where I decided to put my router.

I got my ladder and climbed precariously up. I managed not get the router up and myself down without killing myself, a minor miracle, and then I fought with the cords for fifteen or twenty minutes. When I finally got them all hidden behind doors, under rugs and along crevices, I plugged everything in, turned it on, and was pleasantly surprised that, so far, everything works.

This was pleasing, but was by no means the best part of my day. The best part of my day was the easy key lime pie recipe I made with my Kitchen Aid. Mmmm-mmmm. I love key lime pie, but making the real thing is a pain. I love any pie you can dump the ingredients for into a mixer and then pour into a pie crust. I haven't had the actual end result yet as it's still chilling, but I did, um, "clean the bowl" before I washed it, and I have to say the prechilled mix was fine in every way.

I am now going to go make some faux Mexican food and watch a movie. It's been a good day.

Cleaning Up

I decided that today is a cleanup day. I am going to tackle the office today and see if I can't bring some order to the chaos. I want to have some people over for dinner one night, and I certainly need to clear stuff up if I'm going to reach that goal. It never ceases to amaze me how messy one person and five critters can make a house. I hope I can at least get this one room cleaned up today. Here's hoping.

Nothing to Say

I could have just as easily not posted this, I suppose. Since the robbery, life has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. I didn't sleep more than a few hours the first two nights after it happened, and I didn't want to leave the house at all. Gradually, I was able to get past that, and now, I can almost feel okay again about leaving the house. I still expect to come home and find the front door standing wide open every time I do, but I know it's going to take a long time for that to dissipate back to my usual level of livable "what-if" again.

Mostly, I haven't been writing because what I'd write would just be more of what I've been writing, and I see no reason to inflict that on everybody again. More and more, I want to be somewhere else. I don't even care where now. Out west somewhere maybe? That would be wildly different. Maybe up towards Seattle where L. is? I'd know somebody there. Back on a plane overseas? It's the midsummer doldrums which I know will go away, but I'm not blogging about it more than this one last entry because writing about it doesn't actually seem to help. I feel more and more like an actor waiting in the wings here for a cue that never comes, and I don't know exactly what to do to force my way onto stage to take part.

Anyway, I'm sure there's something more productive I can do that this, so I'm off to find it. If all else fails, there's always a house to clean and a yard that always needs mowing, clipping, pruning, and so forth.

Thief

There is nothing that destroys the sense of safety every person is entitled to in his or her own home like a robbery. Today, for the second time in my life, that sense of safety has been stolen.

Mom took her dog to the vet this morning, and she called me on the way. I was up, but not active yet, so although my dogs were out, I had all my doors closed to prevent the UPS man from sneaking up on me in my pajamas. She was calling to tell me that there was a strange vehicle in my yard, and in fact, I heard the dogs going crazy outside as she was talking, but I figured that either it was UPS running very early, or it was one of the utilities checking something, so I didn't worry about it because I heard the vehicle leaving. I got up, got dressed, and got ready to start my day. I don't know that this vehicle slowly cruising through my yard has anything to do with what happened next, but some gut feeling tells me that it does.

Mom called me again about an hour later on her way home to tell me something, and we chatted briefly. When the phone rang again moments later, I figured she'd forgotten something she wanted to tell me, but she was out of breath and upset. My first thought was that she'd been bitten or stung by something on her way into the house, but she told me that as she'd walked up to the house with her dog on the leash, she'd noticed that the front door was open just those few ominous inches that every heart fears to see. She paused long enough to take in that the hall closet doors were also wide open, something they should never be, and that the light in the hall had been switched on, and she grabbed her dog's leash and ran back to the van.

As soon as I could tell that she was okay and safe back in the van, I got off the phone with her and called the sheriff. One of my friends is actually the dispatcher, the joys of living in a very small area, and he calmed me down and sent the cavalry while I shut down my own house to go up to Mom and Dad's to wait with her.

I kept flashing back to that horrible afternoon in high school when we came home and the house had been broken into. The thieves had pulled everything out into the floor, torn things up, and taken things that could never be replaced. I didn't sleep well for months, and every time I left the house, I expected to come home and see that same horrifying three-inch gap in the door.

This time, though, we were really blessed. If a house had to be robbed, I guess this was the way you'd want it to be done. The thieves took a jewelry box of my mother's, but they didn't destroy the house. They didn't break things and make a mess. They didn't hurt the two cats who we finally managed to coax out of hiding places deep under and behind things where they'd apparently gone when the intruders started coming in.

Truly, the only thing that wound up being irretrievably lost that matters is that sense of safety. How long will it be now before I leave the house again without being afraid to come home, even with a pit bull in the yard? I know that there is no deterrent against a thief, and that what they want they will take, but even before this happened, I was already coming home afraid of the open door. How much more will that fear be with me now, and how do I overcome it?

Even now, I'm pausing like a deer in the woods at every sound, listening for danger, trying to decide if the sound of the engine I hear is on the road or in the driveway. Is that somebody turning around, somebody pulling into my neighbor's drive, or somebody casing my house? Why are the dogs barking? Is it the full moon, is it distant coyotes, or is there somebody outside? I know it's irrational, I know I'm as safe as I can be behind very thick heavy deadbolted and chained doors with large dogs, but this is truly what the thieves take: confidence.

Somehow, I'm going to have to find the courage to go to sleep tonight without waking up every five minutes to twitch at every noise. After all, I'm sure the sheriffs are out and about. More importantly than that, though, somehow, I'm going to have to get the courage to leave the house, to lock the door, and leave it in the hands of God.

Too Funny Not to Share

This is from I Can Has Cheezburger....


more cat pictures

That Trapped Feeling

The wanderlust is so strong in me today that I could throw a change of clothes and the rudimentary toiletries in a bag, point the PT Cruiser in a random direction, and drive until I found something...else. It's a strange restlessness that crops up in me every so often, a need to see something new, a change of scenery, a change of mind.

Podunk is starting to close in on me, and there's no hope of escape this summer. I am way too broke to go anywhere or do anything other than take mental vacations, so I keep having to pretend I don't notice the fact that that the walls are getting closer together, that the "sameness" of Podunk that I normally find so comforting and charming is becoming almost painful. I don't need a jumbo jet to another country, although that would be nice. I just need to get out of here for a few days, to see something that's not here. I got out my Mississippi: Off the Beaten Path guidebook two days ago when this nagging little ache began, and I found the perfect place to go, but since all my friends were eaten by their children and I'm flat-broke, I have no one to go with and no money to use, anyway. I wish I had somebody to travel with, somebody who enjoyed going and doing.

It's not that I hate living here. I love Podunk, otherwise I never would have come back home. Coming back was a choice I made, and I knew when I did it that there would be times like this, times when I'd miss the other life I had. I knew I was sort of giving up my wings to come back home. Sometimes, though, especially in the summer, I miss them so much it hurts. I guess it's because I'm not busy, so I actually have the time to think about it.

I'll find a way to break out of this, I guess, and everything will go back to normal, but for now, I so wish I could just get away from here for awhile.

That's the Smell of Fear

I was minding my own business, watching TV and contemplating tomorrow's errand run through town (something that, because of high gas prices, has become as precisely choreographed as any tactical military attack) when my mother called me on her way home from choir practice. It seems the ladies of the church have been conspiring against me. Well, that's inaccurate. It seems the ladies of the church have been conspiring for me, at least one of them. One of the ladies of my church believes she has found The Man for me, and she's given him my phone number. Yes, that odor that assaults you is the smell of fear....

From what I've been told so far, This Man sounds interesting, which is more than I can say for about 98% of the unmarried male population I run across in my day-to-day life. Granted, I have been given only the briefest of thumbnail sketches. For all I know, he's got a great big new axe, shiny and waiting to be used in the trunk/bed of his vehicle. You just don't ever know, do you? That's the horrifying part to me. You just don't know. I thought T. was normal, thought D. was normal, and look at how that all turned out. Fear, fear, fear...mind-numbing, house-cleaning fear.

Worse yet, it's not like I'll get to email this person first, use words in writing where I might stand a chance of coming off like a person with some fragment of intelligence, grace, or wit. No, no, no. I have to use the PHONE, a medium in which I will undoubtedly sound like a vacuous sixteen-year-old in need of an IEP.

Who knows whether or not this person will even call me? Right now, I'm voting for no because I'm too scared to vote for yes. I have already scrubbed every pot and pan in the kitchen sink, and I'm going to sit down and fold all the laundry that's accumulated. Hopefully, by that point, I'll be something like a sane person again, or at least as close as I ever get. I wonder if there are any copies of that brochure "So, You Want to Date an English Teacher" laying around anywhere?

Bad Pet Parent

I took Roux to the vet today for her regularly scheduled shots, and while I was there, I asked the vet to look at her back leg. She's been limping again, and I figured she'd pulled something again. She leads an overly active life, and as you may know from previous posts, she comes in scratched up from too much dog play on a pretty regular basis.

He lay her down on the exam table and started probing her back leg pretty firmly. Anything done on a pit bull has to be done pretty firmly. They sort of ignore things that aren't. I've never, ever seen her show pain. Her greatest pain response ever has been to lick her lips repeatedly when something like a major cut was being probed. Whenever she had that deep wound that caused me to rush her to the doctor before, she only licked whenever she was moved. When he cranked on her leg and she actually yelped, I wanted to cry.

Apparently, at some point, Roux tore one of her ACLs. The vet told me that it's begun to stabilise itself and heal now, so he's not recommending surgery yet. He sent me home with a huge bottle of dog pain pills and orders to put her on chondroitin, but I still can't get over the shock of it. I didn't know. How is it possible? She's been running flat out like a beefed-up greyhound with a blown-out knee? How is that even possible? Except for favoring it slightly, she hasn't even lessened her activity level. She roams around, she runs, she chases, she jumps, she plays....every time I thought of her active life, I felt more and more guilt. I just kept stroking her head and trying not to cry.

The vet said that it was because she's a pit. Again, that pit pain tolerance kicks in, and when she decides that she wants to do something, she shuts down the pain and she just does it. Having torn my own ACL and been through this whole process myself, I cannot imagine having that kind of pain and just getting up to run again.

If she responds well to the treatment he prescribed, then she might not need corrective surgery, but she will have arthritis due to her injury. I am a bad pet parent, and I didn't take care of my baby when she was hurt, but I'll see to it that she's taken care of now, whatever it takes. All afternoon, I've been sneaking her extra treats and loving on her even more than usual. I know it's not enough to make up for not knowing, but maybe it's a start.

Yard Work

Today was a day of little chores outside. All the birdfeeders were empty, so I cleaned them out and refilled them. The squirrels, or furred pigs as I've come to think of them, keep dumping all the seed from the feeders, so that has become a full-time job. There comes a point when squirrels stop being cute....

Several pots of caladiums had been sitting on my porch since their purchase last week, and I potted them up in their new home near the metal shed I keep my gardening supplies in. I put the petunias I got at the same time in the pots around front, and I sure hope they fill out some, because right now, they're horribly spindly and unpromising. I cleaned out the lantana bed near the garden shed, and watered everything in well. I also watered my porch plants and the two pots of tomatoes I am trying to grow. Right now I have four little green tomatoes on the two plants. They're not big enough to pluck yet, but I'm already dreaming of fried green ones. After that, I moved around front to tackle the rose bed.

It amazes me how fast stuff grows in that bed. It can't have been that long ago that I did a full weeding on it, but I pulled a huge double-armload of grass and weeds from it. It's a job that I have been putting off, but now that it's done, the roses look much happier. If I can just get some mulch down before it all grows back in, maybe that work won't be in vain.

Frosty Shake

I was seduced by the commercials for Wendy's Frosty Shakes, so I decided to go get one after church tonight. When I pulled through the drive-through, there was only one vehicle ahead of me, and I congratulated myself on what I was sure would be a quick trip. Ha-ha-ha-ha.....foolish, foolish assumption. Fifteen minutes later, I was still sitting behind the same white car waiting or my strawberry Frosty Shake.

I don't know how many thousand things that person ordered, but three large white sacks of food came out of the window, one at a time, several minutes apart. I also don't know why the employees didn't ask the driver to pull around and park for an order that large. I thought that was standard procedure. Instead, cars just kept stacking up behind me, and I could hear teeth gnashing.

By the time I finally got my shake, it was very melty. That was okay because I like soft ice cream, but it certainly wasn't the speedy trip I had imagined. Oh well. The best-laid plans of mice and men and all that.... It was really tasty for all that.

Quote Irony

As I was complaining about my inability to bend Moodle to my will, this was the quote of the day.....

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden

Spoiled by a WYSIWYG World

Today I've been playing with Moodle. I think my school is going to get it, and I downloaded it to my machine here at home to start playing around with it to get a feel for it since it seems it can do everything but make coffee for you in the morning. I've been at it now for about eight straight hours, and my eyes feel grainy and hot, as though they might explode. It's been a long, long time since I've spent this long in front of a computer and accomplished this little.

I feel like I used to back in the old days when I built my very first webpage and I had to write the HTML by hand. It's been TOO long since I did that, and too much has changed. I am spoiled by WYSIWYG editors, and I desperately wish that some enterprising soul would craft one for Moodle. GOD, how I wish there were one out there for it. It took me the better part of two hours just to change the background color, the text color, and get a logo up on the test page I'm running here at home because I had to locate all the files, look up all the stupid codes for the colors, scan through the massive coding on the color file to find the fragment that codes for the background and text, resize, relabel, and relocate the logo, and rewrite the code that tells it where to look for the logo. When I finally loaded the main page and the background was a sort of turquoisish blue with the little reading cat in the corner, I wanted to cry with happiness. This is coming from someone who can put together an entire "web universe" on something like Google in an afternoon....

I don't see how people do this all day long. Don't they just want to fling themselves out windows? Granted, I know that people who do this professionally know how to do this much more efficiently than I, and they probably don't have to stumble around with the ineptitude that I did, but I very much missed the visual element of what I was trying to do. I think Moodle would become a great deal more user-friendly than it currently is if someone would just do that one little thing for it. Why can't someone help it be visually appealing? And I don't mean by that charging an arm and a leg for a professionally-made theme, BTW....

However, since it's a creature of open source, I'm sure nobody cares. It seems that open source stuff seldom gets the user-friendly touches. The people who craft it always rather seem to expect you to get "hard core" or get out, and making things visually appealing is always low on the agenda. Right now, I really don't know what to think about this experience. I don't really have the time to get "hard core," and apparently I'm not hard core enough right now to make it look the way I want to. I can make it do most of what I want to functionally, but it looks just awful.

Coyote

Today, I got cabin fever very early. I wasn't in a mood to wander aimlessly around Wal-Mart or to go junking, and as I've said before, there is no place for me right now at school, so I grabbed a big bottle of water and The Count of Monte Cristo and headed to the Red Field. It was a typically-hot Mississippi summer day, but the smothering blanket of humidity hasn't descended yet, so it was still tolerable. A strong, dry wind blew all day long, and under the deep shade of the porch it was quite comfortable.

I was reading when I became aware of the sound of something moving in the edge of the field. I expected a deer or maybe even a stray dog to emerge, and I sat still to see what it would be. We have all kinds of wildlife up there; one Saturday my family and I were up picnicking and we saw a wild turkey tom come strutting out of the woods calling for his hens.

I wasn't expecting what I saw, however. A largish canine form came trotting across the clipped pasture in front of the porch, and I almost whistled to it before realizing that what I was seeing was no lost dog. It was a coyote. That was as close as I've ever been to one. I could have thrown my book at it and hit it.

It was alone, and it didn't ever seem to notice me. I must have been upwind of it, and I certainly wasn't making any noise sitting still in my chair reading. There is so seldom anyone at the Red Field that I suppose the animals no longer take any notice of the construction there. For them, it just is.

The coyote slipped through the grass and paused at the edge of the woods to look around, and my phone chimed three times, the noise it makes when I get new email. I saw the coyote prick up its ears and look around, but it never looked towards me. It continued into the woods and down the hill toward the stream that runs at the foot of it. A little later, I saw it through the trees on the other side of the stream and heading away.

It was a strange encounter, and the only time in my life that I've seen a coyote alone and that close. I've heard them in the distance at night more times than I can count, and seen packs of them several times crossing open fields, but this lone encounter was a first. I wasn't afraid of it, but I have to say that after that, I became more aware of the rustlings in the woods that I had always just assumed to be deer before. Who knows what else might slide out of those dark green depths into the edge of the pasture?

Chesterton Quote

This is taken from the Anchoress' wonderful blog, but it's something to think about as Election '08 and the inevitable circus o' crap start warming up.

“Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.” - G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News 9/11/09

Chaos

I went to school today to take care of some business, and I went by my room for few minutes while I was there. I really shouldn't have. It's so depressing to open the door and see the chaos of all my stuff everywhere. The walls are bare, all the little personal touches that I've put up over the last four years are down, and there's nothing anywhere but boxes, crates, and mass confusion. It's horrible. I had planned to box up a few more things or pull down an old bulletin board, but all the drive I had was completely sapped, and I wound up simply sitting behind my desk staring at the piles and piles of boxes.

Adding to the mess are the boxes and furniture of the teacher who is supposed to be moving into my room. He's gone ahead and moved his stuff in so his room would be open for the person shifting into his old space. I feel really bad for him, too. He can't set up anything or finalize his move until I get out. He's stuck in the same limbo as I am. I had told him to go ahead and bring his things in because there was no reason for everybody to be stuck waiting on me, but I know just bringing his things in and dumping them in the middle of the room probably wasn't his ideal solution. Fortunately, he's a very easy-going person who doesn't seem to have a lot of personal doodads the way I do, so there's room for both of us in the space, just barely, but we've managed it.

I still don't know exactly when I'm going to be able to get in my new classroom, maybe some time next week. I know it's going to take me several days just to get everything back out of boxes and on shelves again once I get it from the old room to the new room, but maybe I won't feel so sad and frustrated once that process begins. Right now, I can't even think about anything related to school without a feeling of deep futility. I'm trying to focus on good things about the move, like the decorating (getting new shower curtains to cover the tall shelves) and finally being able to have space enough to have a student computer station instead of having that set up on a corner of my own teacher's desk, but whenever I go in my current classroom, all the things that are to come fade in the face of horrid mess of what is. I guess I'll just keep telling myself the old cliche, "Patience is a virtue."

The Dragon Painter

I just saw a 1919 silent film on TCM called The Dragon Painter. It was from Japan and only an hour long. It was altogether lovely. The story reminded me of many of the folktales I've read from Japan, and it might in fact be an adaptation of one of them. I'll have to go back and look. I wish they'd do a later showing of it so I could go back and watch it again.

Of course it made me wish for Japan again. It never takes much, but the gardens, the houses the characters lived in, and the Meiji costuming really pushed all the buttons. It's summer to boot, and I always feel the need to take a plane then a train in this weather loaded only with a Nikon and a guidebook.

I won't dwell on it. I won't dwell on incense-filled temples, leaf-shaded fox statues, bright cotton yukata, and summer fireworks. I won't dwell on oppressive summer heat, the smell of bus exhaust, or crowds in the train station. I won't dwell on any of the thousand little details that I miss, the thousand little shards of daily living that make the whole. Instead, I'll just dust my pottery cats, have a bowl of instant miso, and pretend the discovery of this beautiful film didn't just rouse up my sleeping need to see Japan like a careless kick to an anthill.

Nothing Days

It's amazing how much nothing one can cram into a summer day. I forced myself to get up about 9:00 this morning because I'm expecting a delivery just any day now, and I hate for the UPS driver to find me in my pajamas. I know they neither notice nor care, but there's just something about going to the door in my robe that bothers me. It makes me feel decadent and scuzzy at the same time. Whenever I know UPS is supposed to be coming by, I always want to be up, dressed, and doing something productive. It's an OCD thing. I try not to examine it too closely.

Today, however, after I got dressed, I just ran out of go juice. I wound up here in my office cruising eBay looking at old tablecloths. After that, I started reading a new book. I talked to a couple of my friends on the phone about various things. A little brown and white dog strayed into my yard and was a distraction for a couple of hours. Midday melted into afternoon. I had chicken salad with my parents. Afternoon dissolved into evening. I paid my bills online and almost had a heart attack at what my new BlackBerry and its first month activation fee had done to my mobile bill. Evening disappeared into night. I find myself here, and none of the grand plans I had for today have been done. I've checked nothing off the master list of indoor or outdoor "To Do." Hmm.

Oh well. As Scarlett says, "Tomorrow is another day." Maybe I'll get more done tomorrow. Then again....

The Collectors

I had a moment of epiphany recently thinking about some guys I have known. There is a certain type of guy who lives to collect women. Not in the icky, "girls I've made out with" chart-on-the-wall way two guys I knew and studiously avoided in high school did, mind you. Not in the "Women of the World I've Wooed into Bed" way that my devious ex, T., did, either. What I mean is that there are certain guys who seem to need an entire fleet of women around them all the time to survive, so they studiously collect different types in different places to make sure they have the complete set.

I'm still not sure about the exact driving force behind this particular type of guy. I'm pretty sure it's not a libido-driven thing. Maybe for some of them it comes from growing up with lots of sisters. Or does it come from not having any? I feel like I need to do field research and find out. I've only known two confirmed Collectors in my time, and I don't think that's a broad enough research base to make any firm conclusions with.

All I know is that I keep winding up as a collectible for this type of guy. I guess I'm enough of an oddity that I'm like a limited-edition trading card or something that has a flaw in it and became collectible for that reason. I'd love to know what label I allow them to check off the big mental list, maybe it's something like Traveling Teacher Geek or Chick Who Likes Science Fiction, Old Movies, and Reading. Maybe it's She Who Might Edit My Writing.

I think that coming to this current working thesis about Collectors is going to be a good thing. I think that knowing they're out there, gathering up huge numbers of women to surround themselves with is useful. It doesn't really mean that you're not a friend to them; it just means that you are only a certain type of friend to them in a certain type of situation. As long as you remember that you are only one of the "village that it takes to take care of a Collector", then you should be okay. The trouble I got into before with D. was that I didn't know this about him, didn't understand that I was only one of the shiny objects in his showcase rather than someone he felt that he could love. I knew he didn't love me, knew I couldn't ever make him love me, but I never could figure out why he was around me. I think the Collector theory might just cover it.

Of course, this might all just be a lot of crap...

Lightning Storm

Tonight after church I had the craving for fast food, so I took the drive down the two-lane highway to the only place with a burger joint some eight miles away. As I drove, I saw the storm that had passed through Podunk earlier in the distance. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. The lightning was in constant motion, dancing from cloud to cloud in flashes of hot pink and pale orange against the flat dull blue of the darkening evening sky. Jagged little spears of it would flicker in and out of the clouds like needles trying to sew the tears back together again. I wanted to just pull the car over to the side of the road and watch it gather and roil. It was the kind of weather and night that made me feel like something surreal was going to walk out of the deep gloaming of the wet green-black Mississippi woods and onto the cracked and pitted blacktop. Eventually, I accomplished my fast food mission and drove home drinking the milkshake I decided to splurge on while watching the sky simmer and explode. It was wonderful.

My Fair Lady

I'm watching My Fair Lady on TCM, and the scene where Eliza sweeps down the stairs in that unbelievably wonderful white ballgown has just come on. Every time I see it, some innately female part of my heart just sighs with envy. God, I wish I could look like that once in my life. I guess probably every woman who's ever seen this movie has had that thought. Audrey Hepburn is always so lovely and chic, but to me, that moment, that dress, is the ultimate princess fantasy. Of course, what follows not long after isn't very princessy....

I have very mixed feelings about MFL. I always have. I love old movies, and I really enjoy some of the older musicals, even though they are full of cheese, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers being a prime example of this. In MFL, though, I have to say that I absolutely loathe Higgins. I know you're supposed to dislike him or at least find his exterior gruff, but I find the ending, Eliza's return to him, totally unwarranted. After all, she's the one who has changed herself. She's the one who has been declared worthy of being a Hungarian princess. Why does the woman who is capable of walking down those stairs in such radiant loveliness that generations of little girls and grown women wish to be her wind up shackled to a man who makes his own mother shudder in public situations?

I know love is blind, but the story has always been so one-sided to me. It ends with Rex Harrison sitting in the big leather armchair asking for his slippers and Hepburn standing in the doorway staring in adoringly. Yes, he's been caught listening to her voice on the cylinder, for him an admission of emotion, but honestly, after everything else, is that really enough? After his repeated verbal cruelty, has anything he's done balanced that out? I've never thought the movie adequately showed that he redeemed himself enough to deserve her or even make her feelings for him credible. When was he ever kind to her except for actually taking her in off the streets?

I know, I know, it's only a movie. Let it go. Focus on the lovely dress and the songs that get stuck in the mind for days. (Even now, I am mentally humming "I could have daaanced all niiight....") But I have to say that as I'm adding DVDs to my collection, I pass up MFL again and again and will continue to do so. Something about my twenty-first century sensibilities can't quite let the dress and sparklies blind me to the jackass in the tweed standing in the wings.