Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Chewie Lives

Yesterday, I got mostly through a faculty meeting when a headache waylaid me.  I staggered upstairs through disgustingly-glorious sunlight to my Maxalt.  I took one and, per our usual routine, called to let my Mom know I'd had to take the big drugs.

She was out-of-breath, and once I managed to make my broken brain and her frantic speech connect, I understood that Chewie had gotten injured on his afternoon walk, and she was taking him to the vet.  I got off the phone and managed to drag myself home.  (Once again, recitations of "To Be or Not to Be" helped me focus.)

When I got home, I fell down.  Then I was unconscious for three or four hours.  When I woke up, Mom was sitting on the foot of my bed.  She had just gotten home from the vet. Chewie hadn't just been injured.  He'd been bitten by a snake.

He was just out doing his usual big fluffy white dog thing, and Mom said she saw him spring sideways in a giant leap.   By the time she got him back to the house, he was dragging his front paw and moving with great difficulty.  Mom never saw the snake.

The vet kept him overnight for medication and observation.  Roux walked around the house with huge eyes looking for him.  She kept coming over to me and hugging me as she does when she needs a little extra comfort.  Even the cats (who do not like him, even a little) searched for him.  When I put Roux up for the night, she seemed so sad sitting next to Chewie's empty crate.  This morning when I walked her and Yelldo, they were both very droopy.

I had another migraine today, but by the time I got home, Chewie was back.  He will need more medicine and more care.  He's restricted as far as his level of activity.  There will be no deep-woods foraging for him for a couple of weeks.  He's exceptionally lucky, though.  Mom told me that our vet had two dogs brought in yesterday with snakebite.  The other one didn't make it.

I am looking over at him right now.  He's lying in the floor being Chewie.  He's had pizza crust (one of his favorite things) and as many hugs and pats as he desires.  Even in my current state of semi-incapacitation, I am so happy to see him.  My big furry white dog child is going to be okay.  Everything else in the world can rock on however it wants to.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Rain

I woke up to the sound of rain, the gentle susurration of water slipping across the leaves of the live oak, falling down from the shingles of the roof, cascading onto the little wooden staircase leading from the south porch.  The pearl-grey half-light of cloud-shrouded skies made every shade of green outside the window somehow more intense that even full sun.

I wanted you to be there.  I would take your hand, and we'd walk out across the sparkling new-mown yard, heedless of the cool rain coming down.  Under tulip poplars still carrying their yellow-green and orange cups, you'd pull me into your arms, and I am quite sure that the tears slipping down my cheeks would mix in with the rain and go unnoticed.

I'm so very tired, and I've missed you so very much, you see.  I see you everywhere.  You hide in unexpected corners of daily routine.  You are in most of my books, just waiting for the unwary turn of a page.  You're in the big black crows that I see everywhere, clever-eyed and beautiful.  You're in the lyrics of every other song.  You're in the rumble of the thunder.  You're in the rain.

And this is maudlin, sentimental and overdone.  I dislike it even as I'm writing it.  Tomorrow, the sun will be out, and I will not be so full of that all-pervasive greyness that makes me wish.  Tomorrow, the armor of routine will insulate me, cut me off from everything not necessary to survive.  This does not mean, however, that if you were to appear on my doorstep right now, broad shoulders and hair dampened with this rain, that I would not step outside to meet you with open arms.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Busted Mainspring

I'm literally shaking.  Little shivers are running through me from time to time.  I suspect I've just finally hit the bottom of the well.

This week has been one of the most challenging I can remember.  Little crisis after little crisis, responsibility after responsibility, need after need have piled up with feather-like touches.  Feathers should be harmless, right?  It's worth noting that enough feathers can kill, suffocate, crush, just like any other thing.

There's more to write, but I don't feel like typing it.  I think a bed and some cats are what is called for here.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

The Weekend in Review

It's almost time to end this weekend, but I'm clinging tenaciously to the last few minutes before I'll be forced to let it go.  These days slip away so quickly.  I swear time moves differently on Saturday and Sunday.

I've been outside a good deal the past two days, not really doing anything but enjoying the rare bright cool weather we've been having.  The temperature was delicious.  Lying in my hammock or sitting in my chair and staring up into the shifting light of the tulip poplar canopy seemed to be the right way to spend time.  I have done a lot of reading lately; I'm on a Harry Potter kick and reread three of them this weekend.

Today, I was the sole form of music for the morning service since everybody else was gone here or there, and after that, I didn't feel like doing anything else complicated.  So I didn't.  I did a little light laundry, a lot of reading.  I refilled bird feeders, petted dogs.  I studiously ignored the wreck and ruin around me.  After the hell that was last week and the dread of the one to come, I needed time with no one making demands on me, no job to be done, nobody to support, just me.  Sooner or later, it will all catch up to me, and I'll have to spend a lot of time putting everything to rights, but today, I just couldn't face it.

So maybe it's no real wonder I'm resisting the inevitable.  I wish there were a job somewhere that involved reading and sitting in the sun for fantastic amounts of money.  If dogs could be thrown in, then I think I'd take it.  As it stands, though, I've finally overcome inertia and forced myself to take care of the last bit of procrastinated work that had to be done tonight, and I guess it's time to brush my teeth and turn out the lights....

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Sing to the Moon - Laura Mvula


I stumbled over Laura Mvula last week when her album was on NPR's First Listen.  I have more or less become obsessed with it since then.  The whole album is in every way fantastic.  Right now, though, this is my favorite song.  The words are beautiful as are the images.  It touched me very personally, so I wanted to share it here.
____


(Verse)
Hey there you, shattered in a thousand pieces
Weeping in the darkest nights.
Hey there you, try to stand up on your own two feet
And stumble into the sky.

(Pre-Chorus)
When the lights go out and you’re on your own
How you’re gonna make it through till the morning sun?

(Chorus)
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

(Verse)
Hey there you, looking for a brighter season
Need to lay your burden down.
Hey there you, drowning in a hopeless feeling,
Buried under deeper ground.

(Pre-Chorus)
When the lights go out it’s a waiting game.
Never gonna see a day when your world will change.

(Chorus)
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, lead you to the other side.
Sing to the moon and the stars will shine
Over you, heaven’s gonna turn the time.

Friday, April 19, 2013

A Week Full of Crap

This week started with the tax debacle on Monday and continued to roll right over me until it was gone.  I won't detail all of it.  There's just too much.  Today alone is worth three or four blogs.  The crowning event happened this afternoon after school.  

I took a necklace of mine that had broken to a jeweler for repair.  While I was there, I had them look at my rose of sharon ring.  It has been catching everything lately.  When the lady looked at it, she started pointing out problems and finished by telling me that I needed to put the ring in a drawer and not wear it except for "special."  It's too fragile and too old, apparently, to withstand repair.  

I'm heartbroken.  I blogged about this ring earlier, so don't want to repeat, but it's so much more than a circle of metal to me.  My grandmother gave me money, my parents gave me money, and I used part of the paycheck from the first job I ever had to pay for the rest.  It represents my family as a whole.  I have worn it every single day (barring international travel) since I got it.  It makes me happy each and every single time I look down at it.  Now I have to put it away, and it's like something I loved has died.

My finger itches from not having the ring on.  I keep feeling it with my thumb, probing for the band that should be there.  But there's nothing.  Each time I realize why, it makes me sad all over again. 

I am sure that there are other rings in the world, but none of them will be *mine*.  It is also true that it is just a little thing, not earthshattering at all, but nevertheless, to me it matters.  It's just one more thing of mine that I love but cannot do anything to heal or better.  It's just one more precious piece of me that has gone bad and can't be reclaimed.  

I am rapidly losing the ability to hide everything under a neat curtain of positive thinking and Noh smiles. The lost and the broken are destroying me.

Monday, April 15, 2013

It's Tax Day!

(insert the obscenity of your choice here.)

About 3:45 today, I still hadn't heard from my tax service, so I made one last phone call hoping to get through during what is the busiest last-minute dance between simple serf and federal overlord.  I finally got something other than a busy signal, was told everything was waiting, packed my bags and headed to pick up my taxes as fast as my little car could carry me.

I hadn't had the courage to ask what the damage would be on the phone.  I didn't feel that I could stand it if I owed much.  I have no money right now, debts everywhere and only tiny trickles of income.

When I sat down, I knew from the expression on my accountant's face that the news was not a return.  And it wasn't.  It really wasn't.  The amount would have been negligible for many people I know.  For me, it started those little shivers of full-scale panic moving under what I was desperately trying to remain a calm facade.

I held it together long enough to  write two checks which I had nothing in the bank to cover.  I held it long enough to walk across the street to the local post office where the register was locking up and causing delays.  I held it together long enough to get back across the street and into my car, to get my vehicle pointed toward home.

Then all those steel rivets sheered away, and I fell apart.

I cried so hard that I couldn't see the road.  I was shaking so hard that the only thing keeping me from falling over in the seat was the white-knuckled grip on my steering wheel.  All I could think of was that I was working so hard, trying to meet all my responsibilities, and the result of that was....nothing.  No forward motion.  Nothing gained.  Only a big finger waggling smack from the government at the end of the year.  Only a request for money I don't have.  I passed a cemetery during that trip and saw a sign on its chainlink fence advertising the cost of a plot.  I remember thinking, "My God.  It even costs money to die.  I don't even have enough money to die..."

I managed to get to Mom and Dad's, and I sat with them a long time.  I moved money from the account intended to pay for my plane ticket to Turkey, very nearly emptying it, and I felt my stomach turn over.  The debt to the nation is paid.  As to how I am ever going to find the money now to go to Turkey this summer, I have absolutely no idea.  Right now, it seems more remote than the face of the moon.

Now I'm just waiting for a night of nightmares, and all will be complete.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Little Things

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys.  If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.  ~Fyodor Dostoevsky

Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the way of the best happiness.  ~Frederich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Be happy.  It's one way of being wise.  ~Colette
_______________________________________________________

Little things make me happy.  I'm pretty sure this is the best way to be.  Here is a list of some of the small things that have brought me joy lately.


  • indigo buntings - I looked outside my window yesterday to see a small sea of brilliant blue birds.  I thought they were bluebirds at first, but as I looked at them, I realized they were something quite different.  All of my feeders were empty, courtesy of my usual contingent of feathered and furred friends, so I went to Walmart to buy 40 lbs of seed to refill everything.  I don't know how long they'll be here, but I want them to have food while they are.
  • buttermilk - Mom brought me a carton of buttermilk the other day.  I always forget how much I love it.  Glass by glass, I've been enjoying the tartness of it.  I need to get it more often.
  • shiny nail polish - If I have a retail weakness, it has to be for shiny nail polish. Every time I go by a display, I stop and look.  It's not like I don't have more than enough to last me the rest of my life.  Somehow, though, there's always another cool color.  
  • my cast iron Lodge pizza pan - I've made homemade pizza for years and years, and I've had tons of different pans.  A few months ago, I decided to splurge on a cast iron one made by Lodge.  I love cooking in cast iron; nothing makes better fried chicken or cornbread than a cast iron skillet.  I didn't know what to expect from it, but it makes some of the best pizza I've ever turned out.  It does something to the crust that makes it fantastic.
  • waking up to rain - Even though it can be really horrible when I know I have to get out and do stuff in it, waking up to the sound of rain is soothing.  This morning, I woke up at 4:00, something that's not unusual.  Hearing the rain and knowing I didn't have to go anywhere made that thing that tenses up in me every morning when my eyes fly open in the darkness unknot.  I rolled over, smoothed a hand over Dillon (who stretched and purred), and pulled the covers up a little higher.  
  • new greenness - As I've been driving lately, I've noticed that incredible show green appearing again.  Every shade of green from the palest and most delicate silvery-green to rich deep dark green spreads over the hillsides.  When the sun is out and the skies are nearly cloudless, something about the combination makes my heart surge.  It's like it wants to fly away into all that glorious color.  
Little joys.  These are the things from which larger happiness is made.  I'm going to keep looking for them.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

One of the Freakiest Things I've Ever Seen

I'm watching the 2010 Macbeth with Patrick Stewart.  It's good, for Macbeth (I'm a Hamlet-ite).  I guess it would have been hard for it to be bad with Patrick Stewart in it.  There is, however, something in it that has scarred me for life:  the Witches.  They're terrifying.

Part of it is the way they move.  It's that slippery, fast-slow thing you often see ghosts do in horror films.  There's something about it that is deeply disturbing and that somehow impresses itself on the mind.  I really hate that.

Then there's the fact that they are, as you can clearly see here, dressed as old-fashioned nurses.  Why that adds to the creep-out factor I can't really say, but it does.  It truly, truly does.  Even the glasses on the one chick add to the overall "run-away" feeling.

 Watch them in action in the famous "Double-Double-Toil-and-Trouble" scene for yourself.  just don't expect to sleep afterward.


Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Bee Herding for Fun and Profit

Today was another day with no air conditioning in my classroom.  It was more than 80 degrees by the time we were in the middle of first block.  Yesterday, similar conditions triggered a migraine, one bad enough to warrant Maxalt and 12 hours of unconsciousness.  To combat the ridiculous heat, I opened most of the windows around the perimeter of my room.  While this did help the temperature to drop somewhat, it brought in its own batch of problems.

First there was the noise.  Schools are active places.  Classes move hither, thither, and yon.  Even though I am on the second floor, there were still periods of activity where somebody was taking a class to the library or when some random kid was yelling to a friend across the green.

Then there were the bugs.  Yesterday when I had the windows open, it was wasps.  One stayed overnight in the curtains, and I started my teaching day trying to kill it.  It was remarkably resilient.  I hit it about six times before I finally crushed it in the window sill.  Wasps are not my friends.

Today it was bumblebees.  No.  I do not know why.  I guess that's all Central Casting had to send after I violently eliminated the wasp.  Two flew in during second block.  One landed on the back of a miniblind.  I thumped my side hard enough to eject it out the open window behind it.  Its companion made its clumsy way between the open window and the unmoving panel, thoroughly trapping itself.

This is how I became a beeherd.  I tried to gently shoo it toward the opening.  No deal.  Apparently, bumblebees are not to be "shooed."  I finally gave up and waited on it to decide to find the opening itself.  Yeah.  It seems the bumblebees quite stubbornly insist that the one place they currently are is the only door to freedom.  Finally, I gently slid the window closed, took a bright red folder, and carefully, carefully slid it under the bee.  It clung, politely folding its wings down as if it liked being on the red folder for some reason, and I moved it to the window sill.  The folder was too large to sit there, so I gently laid it on the desk nearby.  The bee, irritated that I was moving away from the light coming in the window, buzzed back up to the glass.  I quickly flung open the window, herded the bee back onto the red folder, and propelled it outside again to all our very great relief.

I think I can file this as #356 of the things nobody ever told me school teachers were required to know how to do.....

Monday, April 08, 2013

Useless Skills I Possess

 In no particular order, I can:


  1. make an owl out of white foamcore
  2. slice tomatoes very thinly
  3. assemble a six-band Turkish puzzle ring
  4. trap a large silly white dog by using subterfuge and stealth
  5. open a Maxalt tablet when I'm in so much pain that I don't even know who I am
  6. curse quite colorfully in five languages (this is not to imply that I speak five languages...which would be useful)
  7. plan a lesson and replan the same skills in the sudden and inexplicable absence of all technology
  8. change a tire next to a busy highway and or interstate
  9. fold origami cranes
  10. artfully smear wheat bread with Nutella
I'm sure somebody out there is just waiting for these qualifications.  In the meantime, there is bread that needs Nutellaing.  Excuse me.

Saturday, April 06, 2013

House and Garden

I slept late for me (8:00), and then I just sort of stayed in my pajamas for awhile, something I rarely do.  I watched Real Genius, one of my favorite oddball 80s movies, and then I read.

I had decided when I woke up, though, that today was going to be useful.  There was something at Moundville I sort of wanted to see, but I knew if I went that I would spend money I don't really have right now.  Therefore, instead of road trip Saturday, this was going to be do something about my crappy house Saturday.

I started with the yard.  There is never a non-mowing season in Mississippi.  Well, maybe about a week in December and the first two weeks of January.  Aside from this the growing things are a problem all the time. My yard isn't green yet, but it was scruffy with spring weeds, seedpods from blooming things, and drifts of live oak leaves.  The tufty stuff had gotten high enough to hide snakes, which like the yard are always a problem here, so it had to go.  I walk dogs out near the woods in total darkness, so clear ground is a necessity.

I got my mower running after getting air in the tires, etc., and spent the next three hours zipping around and avoiding boggy spots on the zero-turn.  It's amazing how much junk there was now that I've seen everything cleaned up.

Chewie, Yelldo, and even Roux were outside with me.   Roux was on her new run that Dad crafted with some industrial-weight cable and huge eye-bolts.  It lets her run around some outside between two large trees in the backyard but removes the risk that she'll take off.  She can finally have some sun with everybody else without having to be held on a leash.

After I finished with the yards, I got out my hammock and strung it up.  Roux immediately came and laid under it, poked her head through it, demanded I pet her over it.  I took a picture of her when she figured out she could stick her muzzle insistently through the loose weave of the hammock.  She's a mess.

While I was in the hammock, I saw the first hummingbird of the season.  He came up to the feeder in the backyard, stuck a beak in, backed up, and flew off twittering in irritation.  I guess tomorrow I need to clean up the feeders and refill them before the little sugar-hungry devils start roughing up  me on my way to the car.

About 6:30, I came in and got ready for Doctor Who.  The new episodes are on now, and although I know Moffatt is building character background, I still feel a little underwhelmed by this season.  Maybe next episode is "the magic episode" I'll need to kickstart my enthusiasm.

After Doctor Who, I turned off the TV and turned my attention to the rest of the house.  I cranked up the stereo and started in.  I cleaned up the kitchen and reloaded the dishwasher.  I moved laundry from point a to point b and started that process over again.  I vacuumed, the task I hate the most in the whole housekeeping rigmarole. I made a fresh pitcher of tea.  As loads of laundry finished, I dumped them on my bed since what I've been washing for most of the day is bed linens and my comforter, etc.

Now I'm waiting for Chewie to decide he is ready to come in for the night and for the last load of bed-related stuff to finish.  When those two things happen, I can take a hot shower, make up my bed, and get some sleep.  I'm by no means finished with my house cleaning, but what I've done will help me not to feel so bad every time I come home and see my junky house and yard.  

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Nightmares

I wasn't kidding when I said I would have nightmares tonight. This, however, is really going to be no different from any other night....

Lately, I've had increasingly horrible nightmares.  All the old themes are there, like some kind of hellish classic film festival in the recesses of my mind.  I lose people.  I lose places.  I lose myself.  All of it is dressed up in the majestic glory of a mind too prone to imagination and well-fed with science fiction and fantasy monsters.

I wish I could sleep one night and not wake up, heart pounding, reaching out for...whatever it is....  I don't know what it would take to do that. I am tired of staring into the green glare of my clock as I try to make my mind comprehend what time and place I'm in.

It doesn't seem to matter what I do just before bed, either.  I can read the happiest, fluffiest stuff in the world and still wind up in that bombed-out, demon-ridden landscape that apparently hides just behind my eyelids.

It's time to head back there for tonight.  Maybe tomorrow I'll have a different story to tell.  It would make a nice change.

Hunger Games

As usual, I am more than a little behind on my viewing.  Tonight, I clicked onto my Amazon Prime Streaming account and saw The Hunger Games had been added to Prime Videos (i.e. - Free Stuff).  Even though it was going to keep me up "past my bedtime" (oh God.  how sad.), I decided I wanted to see it.

I've been putting off watching it for more reasons than the financial.  I really like the Hunger Games series.  I was afraid that they'd screw the movie up.  I hate it when movies take a perfectly good book and turn it into something else.  I could tell very early in the film that while a lot of it was going to be impossible to film because it happens in Katniss's head, the film makers had tried very hard to keep the feel and the spirit of the  books.

As disturbing as the books were, though, somehow the movie is even more.  I know I will have nightmares about it tonight.  And maybe, really, that's not the wrong reaction to have.  It SHOULD terrify.  It SHOULD cause grief, even if it's only a fiction.  When it stops moving us is when I think the problem has overtaken us.

My students asked me yesterday if they thought we were headed for a dystopia.  I told them it was entirely possible.  After NYC Mayor Bloomberg tells the citizens of his city that increased surveillance up to and including remote controlled drones will be a reality in their immediate future, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise.  Maybe we won't be sitting around drinking Victory Gin or watching children kill in a Hunger Games, but the things these works warn us about are starting the seep in the cracks.

Of course, I could just be paranoid.  I could just have taught too many dystopian works too many times.  If it's all the same to you, though, I think I'll keep looking over my shoulder....

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

New Boots

When I was little, I had a pair of bright yellow wellies.  They had Big Bird on them and a fastener that always reminded me of the oval-shaped looping sticks on the lollipops I received at the end of each doctor's visit.  I guess in those days, that was an easy connection for me to make since I was forever sick, forever going to doctor, forever getting shots or having blood drawn, and forever having it pseudo-comforted by green hard candy on a cardboard stick.

Those boots always made me happy.  I remember playing in puddles with them and being oddly fascinated that my feet did not get wet even if I stood in ankle-deep puddles.  When I outgrew them, no other rainboots emerged to take their place.  I always missed them, though.

I've looked at rainboots off and one for a long time.  I stand morning and afternoon duty outside at least one week a month, sometimes two.  Our weather here in Mississippi is...well...ridiculous.  We frequently have monsoonish rains that make the entire universe slush.  Even my other "waterproof" shoes can't always do the job, and very few things make me feel as icky and miserable as soaked socks.

I finally found a pair I liked, and they were my "monthly splurge."  I have no idea why wellies are so freaking expensive, but they are.  They had to qualify as an indulgence in my current budget.  They came today, and they are so infinitely worth it.

Since wellies are fashionable right now for some odd reason, there were bunches of patterns to choose from.  They had stripes, brights, even animal prints.  None of those things really called out to me, though.  Instead, I picked a pair in a color called matte red.  That means that unlike so many of the pairs of boots running around right now, there is no insane (and easily scuffable) gloss shine to mine.  They are a cheerful red, one of my favorite pick-me-up colors.  It's the same red that the rubber balls I used to have as a child were.  I've started calling them my red-rubber-ball wellies, and that association makes them even nicer.

It happened to be raining today when the package arrived (hm. imagine that.  rain in Mississippi....), so I put on some socks, slipped on the wellies, leashed Roux, and went outside to walk dogs and test boots.  They're fabulous.  I wasn't expecting much by way of comfort, but I think I could wear them indefinitely.  Best of all, as Roux sniffed and strolled, I splashed through puddles, hesitantly at first and then with increasing confidence and into increasing depth.  No cold trickle of water seeped in.  I felt like I did when I was small, marveling at the everyday magic of being sealed safely inside my bright boots.

Swackett glumly predicts rain for tomorrow.  If its predictions pan out, I'll wear the red-rubber-ball-boots to school and be able to ford the rivers in the parking lot with no more worry than if it were a bright, dry day.  It's a little thing that makes life better.  Money well-spent, indeed.

Monday, April 01, 2013

Turkey

I had a morning of professional development and car problems.  When I got out of a two-hour assembly, I had a voicemail waiting.  It was one of the coordinators from the NEH Summer Institute I had applied for.  Out of more than 200 applications, I had been chosen to be one of thirty teachers to spend three weeks exploring the Ottoman Empire in Turkey.

I am afraid that I jumped up and down and squeaked like a cartoon character at that point.

It still hasn't fully registered that it is real.  I have been pinning stuff about Turkey on a special board on Pinterest since I first became aware of this program.  While I was in Venice, Constantinople (now, of course, Istanbul) was everywhere because of the trade ties and seemingly-regular wars.  Now, I have the chance to see the other side of that total equation.  It is incredible.

In all my life, I have never imagined that I would be able to see Turkey.  I have to pay for my own plane ticket, but the NEH provides a stipend to pay for the other expenses in-country.  Even if I have to eat rice for three months, I will find a way to pay for that ticket.