Cleaning

I slept for almost twelve hours last night.  I didn't intend to sleep that long, but my body more or less shut me down as I was watching a movie (one day soon, I WILL see all of Rebecca again...), and I got up about 1 am and made it to bed.  I felt worlds better for it today. 

Mom, Dad, and I went to eat at our favorite local Chinese buffet after they got out of morning church, and I coerced them into a trip to Wal-Mart on the way home.  While I was there, I picked up one of the Libman FreedomSpray mops I've seen advertised lately, microfiber reusable cloth, mix your own cleaning solution.  It's fan-freaking-tastic.  I am no Happy Homemaker, but once I started using this thing, I actually caught myself thinking, "And where have YOU been all my life?"  I have reached that point in my life where I can be made happy by a high-tech mop I can fill with Mr. Clean Lavender fragrance cleaning solution.  As my kids would text, "smh...."

I had a burst of energy that I harnessed to clean things up when I got home.  I just couldn't stand it anymore.  When I got home, and there was literally nowhere to put the groceries down except the floor, I realized how bad the house had gotten.  I've been coming in and laying stuff down, coming in and dropping off a coat, a jacket, a scarf, and every surface was covered with outerwear, mail that needed to be processed, and tote bags, the endless, endless sea of tote bags.  I put away the groceries, cranked up my favorite get crap done playlist on iTunes, and dove in. 

Three hours later, I finished mopping and put a load of clothes in the washer.  I can see my kitchen countertop.  All of them.  Even the little table that holds my microwave.  I can even see the entire cushion on the bench beside my door.  And there aren't four hundred and eighty seven pairs of shoes piled up under it.  It's a miracle.

My house is by no means completely clean.  It is, though, much better off than it was earlier today.  I don't have to walk in to dirt and chaos, into things that irritate me subtly, into things that harass me because they're in the wrong place or I can't find them, into situations that are going to create messes and spill because things are untidy.  I'm glad I had the energy to do this.  If I can get the energy for one more marathon of it, the house should be in good shape.

Beautiful by MercyMe (Lyrics)

I was on my way to school this morning flipping through radio stations as is my habit when I came across this song by MercyMe.  I'd never heard it before, but it absolutely brought tears to my eyes. So many of their songs do that.  They have a powerful gift for putting the right lyrics together. 

If you've read here lately or much, you know I've been floundering, struggling even more than usual with who I am, with what I'm worth, issues I always deal with.  This song spoke right to that.  I have no trouble seeing the beauty in people around me.  They, for the most part, sort of astound me.  They are always so much more capable and wonderful than they realize.  My students are perfect illustrations of this.  They absolutely shine. 

I never see myself this way, though.  This song nailed me.  It made me realize that the way I see my students is the way God sees me.  He sees potential.  He sees good.  He sees beauty and promise.  He sees worth.  I needed that reminded right now, maybe more than I've ever needed it before.  It was a lovely gift.  It made me feel beautiful, and that was nothing short of a miracle.

You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me....

Top Gear US?  Pardon my casual language, but WTF?  How can you have Top Gear without Jeremy Clarkson?  Without James May?  Without Richard Hammond?  And don't even tell me they've got an American Stig.  Somehow, just the thought of that makes me...twitch. 

Not everything translates.  Some of the joy of that show is in the wonderfully sarcastic and dry British humor of the show.  Much of it is in the interplay of personalities of the hosts.  I don't believe that you can just transplant that to a different network in a different country and get the same results just because you're going to be testing impossible cars. 

Sure, lots of US viewers probably won't know the difference. It's happened before.  There was the US version of Touching Evil.  The Office started in the UK, too.  Most US viewers might know Monty Python, and, if they're really on it, Are You Being Served, Absolutely Fabulous, or Fawlty Towers.  It's a shame more British shows aren't known here.  There are Keeping Up Appearances, Vicar of Dibley, Wire in the Blood, Hex, Being Human, and my personal and perennial favorite, Dr. Who.

I wish people would watch these in their "native form" rather than feel as though they have to alter them.  I don't know why we do that.  Other countries pretty much have to watch whatever we send them; why don't we try to expand our horizons some, too?  It's not like they're going to be speaking another language or something (although, really, even if they were...would a subtitle kill you?  I mean...really?), and as everybody knows, a remake is almost never even as good as the original, much less surpassing it. 

I will probably check out the new US version just to give it a chance, but I'm not expecting anything.  I don't see how they can have episodes as epic as the guys' camping trip last week with the homemade travel trailers or the convertible people carriers or the tractor races.  I'll keep mine with the Union Jack flying behind it if it's all the same to you.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for that accent.

Emily Dickinson Again

Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind -
Thy windy will to bear!

Isn't it funny how a piece of a poem can grab you suddenly? This one spoke to me today.

My New Motto

"Run mad as often as you like, but do not faint."  ~ Jane Austen

Once again, I turn to Jane Austen for wisdom.  Funny how she has the right words so frequently.  I told somebody myself yesterday, "Bend.  Don't break."  I think that's what she's saying here.  That's what I have to find a way to do.  There are ways to restore balance, to reclaim something for myself from the trainwreck everything has become.  I can do this.  I think, although I hesitate to say it lest I tempt the gods to strike me again, that I've hit the bottom.  Now it's time to push my way back up.

The Fall of Icarus

I love this painting by Brueghel.  I always have.  Poor Icarus falls, probably screaming, to his death, wings disintegrating, wax running, and the farmer continues to plow, the shepherd tends his sheep, the ship sails on.  His troubles do not trouble the world.  He makes no mark on anyone, not even in his moment of greatest distress.  It's a perfect model for the way the world works.

I feel Icarus' pain today.  My wings are coming apart, and I can see the water rushing closer and closer.  Impact is imminent.  I know it's going to close over my head, fill my screaming mouth, and that will be the end.  I will just disappear.  There will be nothing to mark my passage except a feather or two floating on the apathetic waves.  They'll suit somebody else up with wax and festive plumage and toss them high, be amused as they circle and dart, and then yawn when the inevitable occurs. 

They're pulling me apart piece by piece.  I wish I could summon up a righteous fury or soar again on a draft of renewal, but all I can think of is that nothing I do makes any difference to anyone in any way at all...it's all just feathers caught in currents, spiraling into an endless ocean of salt and senselessness.  

Distant Thunder

I'm finally home. I had a very tasty Italian sub thing Stouffer makes and some Vinegar and Salt potato chips (my favorite flavor along with Dill Pickle...which, I guess is really more or less the same thing).  I bought some groceries so I don't have to open my pantry and stare into the vast emptiness before grabbing a bag of animal crackers for lunch again. 

Now, I'm taking a few minutes to unwind.  In the distance, I can hear the sound of thunder.  It's been a long time since we had a good thunderstorm.  I hope it comes on and gives us some rain tonight.  It would be nice to sleep to the sound of falling rain, and we really need the water.  

I'm going to bed soon.  I'm tired.  Yesterday and today were 12+ hour days at school, and tomorrow will be, too.  I'm going to take a Mental Health Day soon just to catch up on sleep and grading.  Maybe if I sleep tonight to the sound of this oncoming weather then I will somehow soak up some extra rest.

Appropriate, I Thought

Yeah.  You're in the right place.  Still me, jangly cap with the bells intact.  I get tired of things quickly as far as blog decorative details.  I finally found a blog template I can honestly say that I like, though.  It feels appropriate for me.  It's the closest I've come to one I think I'll keep.  I just wish the body was dark.  I like light print on a dark background.  If I were enterprising, I might be able to tweak it and get that effect, but right now, I'm going to leave it as is.

With regret, I also got rid of my Japanese bell.  I love my funin, but I got tired of the sound and of having to cut the sound off every time I came to the site.  If you found it restful, I apologize for it going away.  I just needed a change.  I still have my real ones hanging around the house and outside, but the one on the blog ultimately got on my nerves.

Oh.  And beware the sheep at the bottom.....

Worn Out

I've never seen this one by Van Gogh before.  I stumbled across it on the web today, and it moved me powerfully.  When I saw it and the title of it, I said to myself, "My God.  That's me.  That's me and everybody I know right now." 

The other day at lunch, the conversation turned to fatigue and all the things we aren't getting done.  Work stuff was mentioned, how behind we are with this task or the other even as more is being added, but I was astonished by how much even the simplest functions of everyday life are being laid aside because everyone is tired and nobody has any time to do them anymore.  One woman said she told her husband they were going to need to hire somebody to clean their house because she just couldn't do both school and the house right now.  Everybody sitting there made sympathetic noises about the derelict condition of our homes although few of the rest of us will be able to hire help to rectify it. 

We all talked about the TV/Couch/Sleep phenomenon.  I don't know that I've seen the end of any movie I started watching later than 6:00 pm in three months.  I come home, put in a favorite to soothe me or catch one on TCM that I love, and the next thing I know, Yoda (my cat) is leaning over me sort of patting me on the cheek with an insistent paw because it's 2:00 am and she's ready to go to bed in the big bed and stop this silly napping on a crowded and narrow couch business.  I get up, stumble to take the almighty Topamax, and go sleep in the bed for three hours.  I hate this.  I'm not the only doing it, either, from the conversation at the table.  I might be the only one with a cat waker-upper, but I'm not the only one collapsing on the couch.

How has this happened to us all?  How has life become this?  I get up at 5:00, stagger into a shower, wake myself up with cold caffeine, teach my heart out while trying to juggle a million other little parts of my school day, work three or four hours after the last bell trying to catch up on everything I couldn't do during the hours allotted, and stagger home again to fall face down.  How am I supposed to find a life in all that?  Because, ladies and gentlemen, this isn't one.  Is it?

That's what I'm asking myself lately.  I feel more like a member of a cloistered order, Educatorius Sanctificatatum (and no, I don't know any Latin, so if I said something funny, laugh to yourself and leave me alone), than I do whatever it is I really am.  I rarely see my friends.  My house is almost literally falling down around me.  My family looks at me nervously and out of the corners of their eyes to see when I'm going to drop from sheer exhaustion.  My doctor is taking samples of blood to start arcane rituals and analyses.  I wouldn't know a date if one walked up to me, slung me over its shoulder, and carted me away.  Truth be told, it's been so long since I have even had time to think about romance, even a silly little crush or interest in someone, that it makes my heart sad.  So I ask again.  Is this what life is supposed to be?  And if it's not, how do I make it that thing?

It's very easy for somebody to say, "Run away!  Quit your job and be free!  Cast off your chains and fly!"  But there's the mortage.  And the hospital bills.  And the government who was so nice to pay for my graduate education and would like me to pay them back now.  And food.  Oh yeah.  Food.   Let me not forget that.

I look at this man in his chair and I can feel the tension in him, even as he rests for a moment there, hands covering his face, blocking out the world for a moment.  I just bet you his head hurts.  I know just how.  Like an icepick right through the eye.  Maybe a hot tear rolls down his cheeks.  Maybe his teeth grind against each other and a little noise he can't quite stop escapes the back of his throat.  He's given everything he has, and, at the end of the day, despite that old cliche about your all being enough, he's found out the truth behind that:  that most of the time, it never really is.  Somebody almost always wants just a little more than you've given, just a little more than you have. 

I wonder if he found a way to get up from that chair and go on.  That's the painting I'd really love to see just now.  God, if Van Gogh did that one, too, I think I'd scrape up the purchase price for the original and carry it with me everywhere I go.

On Being President

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." ~ Douglas Adams

Upgrading

I went in fasting this morning to get some bloodwork done, and after I stumbled out of the clinic and drove through Chick-Fil-A to get some juice and a biscuit so I wouldn't be quite so goofy anymore, I went to our local OfficeThing to take care of a massive purchase order and to get some stuff for myself with a reward certificate from their teacher cash-back program. 

I have been using Windows 7 on the new laptop the school got for us, and I really like it.  My home desktop came with Vista, and it has been a mostly crap experience.  I haven't had many of the serious issues I have heard others complain of, but I haven't used that machine very much because of the little things.  They've added up to my using my netbook instead when the screen is larger in the back and the printer is actually attached to the desktop in the back.  I also need 7 to get all the Home Networking stuff set up because Vista has never been able to manage that well.  There has always been something...off...with it. 

After getting my 600 folders with my purchase order (don't ask), I checked on upgrading my netbook to 7 (no go), and came home to upgrade the desktop.  Now, something like nine hours later, I'm still trying to finish it up.  I really hate doing upgrades.  It's ridiculous.  Nothing should take this long.  The OS upgrade itself took about three hours.  I just gave up and went to take a nap.  It did its thing and I got some much-needed rest.  When I got up, it was waiting for the product key.  It was much less frustrating that way.

I should have done that for my attempt at upgrading Office, too.  I wanted to upgrade 2007 to 2010, but after three attempts, I'm quitting.  There's some error that is probably going to require a clean install and I'm just not up for that tonight.  Some things are too much, you know, and 2007 has been a stable and good version for me.  It's just frustrating that these things can't be easier. 

I still have some cleanup work to do on the desktop.  Now that 7 is running, some programs I needed for Vista are redundant, so I want to uninstall them.  I also need to "tweak it out" like I always do and get my home network set up to see if I can share files easily between my work laptop and my big desktop in the back.  That will make life tremendously easier for me. 

Days like today reinforce my knowledge that I could never be a tech.  Just the waiting alone would do me in.  The silly error messages added on top of that would have me smashing stuff right left and center.  I'm glad there are people out there who can do this stuff all day every day, but I'm not one of them.

Every Girl's Crazy About a Sharp Dressed Man

I was cruising around Etsy today and I saw the Forage line of handmade bowties from somethingshidinghere.  I had to smile.  I am a fan of the bowtie.  I just think they look....I don't know...nifty.  For some reason, I think nifty is probably the word I want here. 

Yeah, guys in ties are nice.  And in suits, lovely ties are appropriate and expected.  However, there's something about a guy who can really, actually, and truly pull off a bowtie with aplomb that makes me take notice. 

Very few guys go with this option anymore.  I, not being a guy, don't know why exactly.  I would suppose if I had to venture a guess that perhaps it's a little old-fashioned. This would be a plus for me, but you know I write with fountain pens and frequently choose antiques instead of modern things.  Somebody noted earlier this week that I had made all the fonts being projected on my on-screen bellringers look like old-school manual typewriters.  She called me an "old soul," and she's right.

It also looks to me like it's a real pain in the backside to tie, too, maybe even moreso than the traditional Windsor knot.  But when they're on and done, they just have so much more personality to them than the regular ties that everybody else wears.  I also would think they'd be better because they wouldn't constantly be in the way of whatever it was a person was trying to do.  Who knows?  Maybe this isn't an issue?  You can tell how much I know about men's clothing here...

There will be those who say that bowties are the provence of older men.  I can refute this with a single image.  Voila.  Looks good on him, doesn't it?  It is just a little disturbing to me that I've come to like this angular and antic Brit in his bowtie as much as I have. He is, after all, approximately six years old, I think....

Perhaps my fondness for the garment comes from the gentleman, you suggest.  (Looks at the photo a moment)  Perhaps.... 

(Snicker)

Can You Spare a Square?

This is what we've been reduced to:  an entire hallway of 14 educated professionals with higher degrees rationing the two rolls of toilet tissue we're allotted every day in our staff bathroom.  Toilet tissue, quite ironically, has become more valuable than copy paper, and that was already more precious than gold. 

There is nothing that makes you feel your lack of worth in the universe than dashing down the hall in the five minutes you have between classes to take care of vital personal business to find that you can't even do that because there is no toilet tissue.  It's absurd.  It's depressing. 

We were also told that if they found any rolls in our rooms that had been taken for kids to use as Kleenex, they would confiscate them.  Now, I have always bought Kleenex out of my own money, so this doesn't apply to me, but I find the idea of turning our cleaning staff into TP Police ridiculous.  I makes me absolutely rebellious, in fact.

Tomorrow, I'm fighting back.  I'm taking my own supplies to school.  I'm not living like this any more.  This will be just one more thing I have to buy and take of my own, I guess.  Pretty soon, I suppose I'll be paying the light bill there, too.

Rain and Migraines

I've had a migraine off and on all day today.  I tried ignoring it for most of the morning, but that's a little like ignoring a two-ton, bright orange monster pirouetting on ice skates while it blows one of those canned-air horns.  Not something exactly easy to overlook, really, once it decides it wants your attention....

By the time fifth period got going, I was in serious pain.  I took a Maxalt and started "the wait."  Either the medicine will get ahead of the pain or nothing will do any good and I will simply have to long for a dark, cool place to be very still until the pain stops or I die.  Fifth period finally left for lunch, and I just stayed in the room.  We are not, technically, supposed to do that, but I couldn't stand even the fluorescent lights in the hall, so I knew going outside and into the noise of the cafeteria would have been like an icepick through the eye.  I told my next-door neighbor where I was going to be and slunk back into the cool, quiet darkness of my classroom to consume my meager lunch. 

After school, we had a planning session for one of the grade level teams I'm on for the new 9wks.  I think we got a lot done, and I feel like a burden has been lifted from me.  It's great when we can stuff accomplished.  The headache continued to plague me, but I didn't take another big pill.  Even after all this time, I still avoid them as much as possible.

On the way home, the sky was lit up with lightning.  It was good to see.  I got just outside of town when the bottom fell out of it.  I put my flashers on, slowed down to about 40 and pressed on.  I needed to get home.  I'm so grateful for the rain, even though I suspect that the changing atmospheric pressure is part of what's causing my head pain.  It's worth it not to have to worry so much about wildfire. 

I'm about to go to bed.  I need sleep, and maybe all the stupid crossed wires in my poor head will reset if I get a little extra.  Tomorrow, all the dust will be washed out of the air, and I can try it all again.

Dark Phase

Too much lately.  This is not a happy place.  Click away if you're looking for a rhapsody on autumn sun or one of my tried-and-true geek philosophical excursions. 

My uncle is in the hospital.  They're not exactly sure what's wrong with him.  I hate that.  Why the hell don't they know?  Why is it that as I've gotten older it seems that this is what I hear more and more frequently whenever anyone I know has to deal with medical science?  Was it always this way and I didn't notice?  As I child, I think we're taught to trust that medicine has all the answers, that they are omniscient.  I'm beginning to wonder just how often they're playing "the blind men and the elephant" with things behind that clean white surface.  Of course, that may be all anybody can do, and I'm grateful for the care he receives, but it's frustrating.  Very frustrating.

I need some big happy thing.  Some big stupid impossible cinematic happy thing.  Right now, my joy is very far away.  I've found out bad things about people I truly thought well of, been told a story about a woman who finally found love at the age of 65 only to have her husband die two weeks after the marriage, and am watching a situation I care about a great deal spiral out of control.  Grades are due tomorrow and I'm so far away from having things ready to finish them out that it's almost a comedy routine. Tomorrow will start another week where every human imaginable wants me to be in three places at once.  Would that I could clone myself or that I came in triple form..... 

I am trying to combat this as best I can with little joys, with small pleasures, but increasingly, they are not enough.  This is no eclipse; this is shift to the dark phase of the moon.  One of my friends asked me if I wanted to talk about it.  I laughed.  What is there to say?  Why should I burden her with it?  I'm tired.  I have things going on that I don't know how to resolve.  I'm not going to make somebody else carry this when it's so heavy for me.

Poem

The gods fall

no matter how grand and gilded the idol

or how costly the sacrifice laid

before the high pedestal.

Underneath those shining layers of

carefully-applied veneer

hide crumbling clay feet.

He will let you down.

There is no divinity in that form

you’ve been adoring

no salvation

in those powerful alabaster arms

you’ve lovingly caressed.

If you could see the reality

instead of the dream-blind glamor

the whole hollow thing

would tumble into the light

to cower there ashamed

naked, cracked, rotted, empty,

the incarnation of nothing more than

sawdust, cobwebs, broken promises,

and foolishness.

Think for Yourself

To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list.  ~John Aikin

Banned Book Week just ended yesterday, and today there is a notice in a North Carolina paper about a church that wants to burn all other versions of the Bible except for the King James version and "evil" books by Billy Graham, etc., to cleanse the world of "satanic literature."  I don't know whether to cry, scream, or sit down and just put my head in my hands and give up.

Censorship of books, wherever it happens, is wrong.  If you don't want to read it, leave it alone.  If you don't want your children to read it, teach them your beliefs and trust that they will leave it alone, too.  Don't presume, however, that you have the right to tell somebody ELSE how to think about things.  There is danger in that.  That's how dictatorships get started.  That's how dystopian literature becomes reality.

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, said, "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."  I think that those who seek power for the sake of power, those 1984-esque  people who are not mere myth or paranoid fantasy, know this.  Whether they are wearing the mask of religious fervor or political righteousness, the people who take away the first book are setting a precedent, knocking over the first domino that will allow the others to go, too. 

Maybe you don't personally care about that first book.  Maybe you don't know anything about it.  Maybe you do, but you don't like to look at it.  Maybe it blatantly offends you, in fact.  Be careful, though.  Once somebody has been able to reach out their hand and take away that book because "it offends," something you hold dear might come under fire next.  It's a very slippery slope when value judgments are made on the basis of something so subjective.


I'm not saying there are no lines and no limits ever.  I don't think that your freedom should ever be taken at the cost of someone else.  Things like child pornography and the language of hate are always harmful to others.  I know there are those who disagree with this and say there should be no regulation at all, but I can't believe that the original ideas of free speech included a protection for things that damage others, use them and make them less than human.  


Therein lies the distinction between the books that people are trying to ban and these other things to me.  The literature is trying very much to explore what humanity is, dig down through the layers of this life, this world, this condition of being alive, even the bits that are not pleasant.  Perhaps especially the bits that aren't pleasant.  Some of the literature that people have tried to ban most frequently takes hold of some of life's toughest situations and looks them directly in their blood-shot eyes, tries to explain them honestly, tries to force people to look at the ugliness and brutality that all-too-frequently creeps into every life despite the most careful steps taken in prevention.

I think that is why those who want to ban these hate them so much.  It makes them face realities they want to hide, makes them realize that not all the gated communities in the world can keep pain away forever.  These books are the anti-TV, the anti-pop music.  "Books can be dangerous.  The best ones should be labeled 'This could change your life,'"  said Helen Exley.  Change is always hard.  We're creatures of inertia, comfortable in our little ruts.  Let's hope we can find a way to be less fearful of alternate ideas, though, before we wake up and find that they have all slipped through our fingers when we weren't paying attention.

Shameless Luxury

Today, I put supper in the crockpot and went outside.  The weather was splendid.  I sat in my lawnchair under the tulip poplars and the chestnut tree with my iPod and my Kindle and read for hours.  The air was soft and golden, slipping through the leaves in whispers and scented with the faintest tinge of distant wood smoke.  If someone had set out to create a perfect autumn day, they couldn't have done better than today. 

Days like this make me grateful for this ramshackle old house out here in the country.  I may not have much, but on these great gilded days, what I do have is more than enough.

Typography

I love typography. I find the art of words fascinating. Words and quotes becoming beautiful, the shapes of the letters themselves becoming the focus, is something I never get tired of looking at. Today, I was cruising through Etsy and looking at all the creative quotes and recreations of those sometimes familiar lines. I found probably half-a-dozen things I would like to have to hang up somewhere.

I've often wished I knew how to use something like Adobe Photoshop better or other graphic design software that would allow me to make these pieces myself. Maybe someday I'll have time to sit down and teach myself or take a class. Until then, I'll enjoy the fruits of talented others.

(This print can be found here on Etsy in MursBlanc's shop.  All the Zodiac signs are represented there.  This one just happens to be mine.)