Summer

...and the incredible need to get out of here.  Summer.  The season where I'm rested enough to be restless.  Summer.  The time when I'm still enough to feel the lack of motion most acutely.

My parents are watching me out of the corners of their eyes again.  I don't know exactly what has brought on this new phase of my life.  They seem...I don't know...scared of what I'm going to do.  I am carrying on like I always do.  I don't perceive that I am acting any differently than usual, except of course for the fact that I'm not stressed out of my mind and I'm getting plenty of sleep.

I'm not sure what it is that they're scared I'm going to do.  Quit my job?  Purchase a big-engined fast-moving car and take off?  Shack up with somebody?  Get a giant dragon tattoo that covers my entire back? Leave and never come back?

Ah.  That last one. Maybe it's that last one.

I have a streak of pure Gypsy in my feet, that need to travel, get out, see "other where," see "other who"; they're absolutely happy if they don't even have to go in to town to Wal-Mart regularly. Maybe this is where the problem lies.

I don't know.  I just feel nervous, like I've somehow broken some kind of code I was unaware even existed, and now I must be, as Emily Dickinson said, "handled with a chain."  I hate that feeling of walking on eggshells, especially when I don't know how they got underfoot to start with.

Walking

The walls started to close in on me this afternoon.  I've been working on my book for the Ottoman Cultures seminar for the past two days, and even though it's been fascinating, I needed to get out.  I finished the text, got out my sneakers, and headed outside.

In addition to the need to get out of the chair and do something, I needed to clear my head.  Right now, it's going around and around in useless circles over an issue about which I can do nothing.  It's one of those things that I'm just going to have to accept, but it's hard for me to do that right now.  I'm assuming time will do what it always does, give me perspective and some relief (although this might be one of those Edna St. Vincent Millay "Time Does Not Bring Relief" moments...).

I haven't gone out walking in a long time.  In the afternoons when I've come home from school, I have felt too tired to care.  Today, though, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I didn't walk far, maybe a mile or so, but it is amazing how much peace can be found in movement.  As I walked, I focused on the simple act of putting feet down and picking them up.  I noticed the traffic, the various plants blooming, the red-tailed hawk that glided lazily from its hunting perch on the powerline in the pasture to the edge of the woods and disappeared.  I was able to put away the unsolvable thing as long as I was moving.

Now I'm back, and after a long hot shower, I am watching TV.  Maybe if I do this often enough, I can subjugate everything else and keep that red-tailed hawk calm instead.

A Million Little Things

It's amazing to me how much stuff slips through the cracks during the school year.  Today, I vacuumed, steam cleaned, washed all my bedding down to the mattress and sunned the feather mattress, threw out enough junk and old mail to half fill a giant trash bag (this may be the week the trash men lynch me), rearranged my living room, put slip covers back on my couches, swapped out a small bookcase for a much larger one, and renewed two magazine subscriptions that had lapsed.

The sad part is that I'm only about halfway done with all the things I need to take care of urgently.  Before I can get to the things that can wait but need to be done (like my closet.  oh my god.  my closet....), I have to get the house to a place where I wouldn't be ashamed if somebody came into it.  I probably have one more day of heavy cleaning before it will come to that point.  Then I'll just be sorting through the piles I try so HARD not to make during the school year but that always seem to accumulate on the flat surfaces anyway.

At some point, I have to stop and do a lot of reading for Turkey.  Hey, you know what?  This is feeling a LOT like the school year, after all.  (sigh)  Well, I have a pile of clean sheets I need to get out of the dryer so I can reassemble my bed.

Basic Research

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." ~ Wernher von Braun

This amused the heck out of me.  I think I must do craploads of "basic research."

Little Red Blooms

I saw them when I got out of the car at Wal-Mart.  Their blue vests and hats marked them as did their gesture of trying to hand something to the people passing by.  I could see the little flickering of red in their hands.  I felt something inside me tighten up, and I reached for my wallet, gritted my teeth.  It was Memorial Day, and the Buddy Poppies were out again.

As you can see from the picture, I do not object to the Buddy Poppies.  I buy at least one every year.  Whenever I see the American Legion or the DAV handing them out, I always contribute.  The thing that made that little spring inside my clockwork heart wind tighter was what these tiny red blossoms mean to me.

Almost every male member of my family has served in the military.  Both my grandfathers were WWII veterans, one almost freezing to death in Italy while the other went all over the place loading bombs onto planes.  My dad was sent to Vietnam while he was in the Coast Guard. My uncles were Vietnam-era Marines; one of them also served in the Coast Guard after his tour with the Corps ended.

It has been just a little less than a year since I lost the uncle who served in both branches, my Uncle Gary.  He spent the last years of his life in a veterans' care facility in Kosciusko after having a major stroke that left him partially paralyzed on one side.  For whatever reason, even though there are so many veterans in my life, those little red flowers always make me think of him.

I miss him.  Even though at the end, his condition and his medication kept him from being mentally sharp, I miss going to see him and talking with him.  Today, seeing those little flowers again brought the end of it back, the long hours in the hospital waiting room, the last time I saw him.

I believe in donating to the men who hand the poppies out.  They are men who served our country and who continue to serve it still by making sure our veterans are taken care of.  They are men like my grandfathers, like my dad, like my uncle, like my friends, like my students, like all those men and women who have left behind comfort and safety to do what was needed.  Their sacrifices deserve to be remembered, whether those sacrifices were physical on the field of combat or those much-harder-to-spot renderings of psychological health, family closeness, peaceful dreams at night.  I cannot do much about most of these things.  I can, however, do this one little thing, show my respect in this one way.  Maybe it means something.

Through Linoleum

"They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze.  They should photograph me through linoleum." ~ Tallulah Bankhead

Exactly.

Weary, Stale, Flat, and Unprofitable

O God, God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
~ Hamlet I.ii. 132-134.
____________

There's sun this afternoon, but the greyness I woke up to better suited my mood.  I can't shake this bone deep sadness. Everything seems totally useless.  As always, Hamlet says it better than I can.

I wish I could just put my dogs in my car and drive until there was no more road left.  Maybe somewhere along the way, there would be something to take it all away.  Maybe if I drove fast enough, I could leave it behind, chasing after me like an old dog snapping at my rear wheels.

Or maybe I will just sink into Istanbul, dissolve there, turn into a section of a golden-tiled mosaic.  I feel as old, as trapped, as fragile, as unreal as any Byzantine wall.  Maybe if I was frozen there, then this feeling currently gnashing its pointed teeth on my soul would no longer be able to rip me apart.

They say as you get older, wisdom and perspective are supposed to come.  I wish that a lessening of feeling came with it, too.  I wish my heart was marble, cold, hard, and unalterable, requiring the strike of a hammer and a chisel to harm it.  As it stands, it's too easily damaged, too easily hurt.

Clean

One of my favorite sensations in the world is to slip between cool cotton sheets, clean and dry after taking a long, hot shower.  It earns double-wonder points if the bed has a freshly sunned and fluffed feather mattress on it and if the sheets are right out of the dryer and still fragrant with fabric softener.  This seems like a little thing, I'm sure, but sometimes the little things are the best things.

I still remember after Katrina when I had no power for two weeks.  Although I had running water, the hot summer and the hard work of trying to clear all the downed trees from my yard covered me in sweat constantly.  In the evenings when the sun had gone down and things cooled off somewhat, I would stumble into my bathroom and take a cold shower by the light of a kerosene lantern.  The tepid water did get me clean, did help bring down the infernal temperature somewhat, but every time I slid under it, I felt a little horrible.  When my parents got their power back, we had a meal that wasn't from a can and then I took a long shower at their house.  I think I cried.

I also remember my first chaotic night in Costa Rica, the delayed flight, the drunk host family who came to get me in a car too small for two people (there were five of us in it), the breakdown and walking, and then, finally, after all of that, a really scary electric showerhead designed to heat the water as it came through that I did not know how to operate.  I tried and tried to get hot water out of it, and I finally just jumped under the freezing cold stream enough to wash the day of travel off me before burrowing in beneath insufficient covers to shiver the rest of the night away.

In many cultures, bathing is a ritual, an important part of daily life.  Japan was wonderful for this.  I still want one of the gas water heaters like I had there, one that heated as much water as you wanted on demand.  I could literally have showered forever there if I had the money to pay the bills....  This isn't even bringing in the happiness of a bathtub with enough hot water to fill it up to my chin.

More than any of these, though, is a happier memory of Costa Rica from my second trip there.  After a tremendously long day painting, digging septic fields, and pushing large trucks out of deep mud, we were taken to the Tabacon Spa whose hot springs were heated and enriched by Arenal, one of the most active volcanoes in the world.  I remember they had pools and miniature water falls where you could sit and stare up at the almost full moon while the hot water pounded down on your aching back and shoulders.  It was beyond wonderful.

I'm looking forward to trying the culture of the hamam while I'm in Turkey.  I did the community baths in Japan a couple of times, and it was very nice, very relaxing.  I have been reading up on etiquette for this, and  while I have no idea if I want to go be the big, odd foreigner again (sometimes that gets really old), it sounds like something I'll enjoy.  Maybe it will be another memory to add to this rather odd collection of cleanliness.

Orphaned Pencils

Like most people, I have a lot of little idiosyncrasies.  I look for four-leaf clovers every time I walk through a patch while I'm walking my dogs.  I collect bobbleheads when I travel.  My favorite clothing is a literary tshirt.  I always carry a fancy vintage handkerchief.  Added to all these other oddities, I am also a rescuer of orphaned pencils.  

There is something heartbreaking about an abandoned pencil.  I find them frequently on the floor of my classroom, sometimes almost used up, sometimes barely sharpened.  I always scoop them up and put them in a brown ceramic cylinder some student made in Ceramics and left in my room one year.  I call it the lost pencil cup.  Students know to look there for something to write with before they ask me about it.

I think the sadness for me comes from seeing a tool so closely related to all the things my heart holds most dear simply cast aside.  There's power in a pencil, power to change the world, power to change someone's mind, power to change oneself.

When a student comes to class and has no pencil every day, there is a kind of hopelessness to it.  It's like seeing someone who needs to put out a destructive blaze but who has no bucket or hose.  They simply lack the right equipment to save themselves.

A pencil lets a person draw a picture to clarify, solve a math problem, make a list.  It allows a poem to be created, things done or cast aside to be crossed off, dots to be connected.  There is a universe encased in a slim wooden or plastic sheath, infinitely malleable and portable.

There's a quote in You've Got Mail about bouquets of freshly-sharpened pencils.  I always smile when I see that part because I know that feeling.  There really *is* something about a brand new pencil.  They're among my favorite school supplies.

There's something to be said about the old ones, too, though.  When you see a pencil that is only as long as your little finger, that has its eraser gone, even one with the indentations made by teeth or the impact against the edge of a desk or table, you're looking at a battle-scarred veteran of the war against idiocy and ignorance.  It deserves the chance to continue its service.

Today after the last bell, I walked around my room and tidied everything up as I always do.  Under one of the desks in the back, I found one of these forlorn instruments.  Except for its eraser, it had almost no use.  I picked it up, carried it over to the turn-in table, placed it next to the others in the cup.  I gathered all my belongings and headed down the stairs to my car.  On the way, another pencil was sitting on the end of our wide wooden banisters, almost as though it was just waiting for me.  I smiled, tucked it in the back pocket of my school work bag.  Monday, it can join the assembly of orphaned pencils waiting a second chance at usefulness.

Bonfire

You got a lot of lovers with star-crossed wrists

They keep a candle burning on the corner you kissed.

One day I might die, until then there's too much to do

But I'll keep a bonfire for you.

I've seen the pretty boys that you're keeping around

I know how it goes, I've got a girl in town.

And she likes me enough to do what I like to do.

But, I'll keep a bonfire for you.

Let the other lovers talk about who carries the torch

Let them talk about the beauty that they carry it for

Let the other lovers talk about who got what

And who got burned and who got cut

I'll be in the orchard when you get tired

Day after day of the shouts from the choir

Eating the apples and eating the peaches, too

And waiting by my bonfire for you.

In the dark anybody will do for love

But you're the only one I want when the sun comes up

No burning ball of fire set in the sky will do

Next to my bonfire for you.

Let the other lovers talk about who carries the torch

Let them talk about the beauty that they carry it for

Let the other lovers talk about who got what

And who got burned and who got cut

I need a little motion, need a little relief

I get a little lonely at the end of the week

And I want it so bad and if you want it so bad, too

I'll be over here with my bonfire for you.

You got a lot of lovers with star-crossed wrists

They keep a candle burning on the corner you kissed.

One day I might die, until then there's too much to do

But I'll keep a bonfire for you.

~ "Bonfire" - Josh Ritter

________

I love just about everything I've heard by Ritter, but there are certain songs of his that always feel like they were more or less stolen right out of my own thoughts.  (Of course, if this is the case, he's dressing them up in prettier clothing than they had when they were with me.  Heh.)

This song, "Bonfire," is one of those I identify with closely.  Switch some genders here and there, and it's just about the situation I find myself in.  I like the fact that he's not pining and following. Others might thrive on the drama of "star-crossed wrists," but I, like the speaker in the song, am just much more comfortable taking care of life, hanging out in the orchard.

 There is tremendous personal truth for me in the line "One day I might die, until then there's too much to do."  I'm busy.  I have a ridiculous schedule and probably will for the rest of my life.  It's not conducive to marriage or happy homelife.  I've known that for a long time.  Who would put up with me leaving early in the morning and not coming home until after 6:00 most nights?  Who would willingly suffer the slings and arrows of being married to a teacher?  I'm not sure that I really expect anybody to.

That doesn't really prevent me from keeping that bonfire going.  Just because I don't think it will work out doesn't seem to be a deterrent to feeling.  I understand that "bonfire" level of desire all too well.  Candles are all well and good; they give some light and a certain aura of romance, I suppose. However, a candle's lifespan is limited before the match ever touches the wick.  I think a lot of relationships have that same quality. When you think about love, which would you really rather have - the temporary glamor, beauty of limited use and duration, or the permanent that provides on so many different levels?  

Bonfires may require work to make and work to keep them going but they give more heat, more light, more protection from all those things that hunt in the night. They are actually functional rather than decorative.  The metaphor is perfect, then.  Who wants a purely decorative love?  Is it really love at all? The speaker says no.  He has a girl whom he likes and who likes him well enough to "do what [he] likes to do," but this is presented as a necessity, a place-holder.  It's not the real deal, and he's not pretending that it is. He knows good and well he's only got a candle at the present.

This is the place the speaker and I diverge.  I'm not interested in candles.  I don't have the time for them.  I'm only interested in bonfires, I guess.  In fact, that metaphor can go right next to the Sonnet 116 ones as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway....  As you can tell, I've English Teachered this song more than once in my head.  This is probably a lot more thought than it was ever intended to evoke.  (Sorry for beating your song to death, Josh Ritter.)  This is almost certainly more thought than you really wanted to read.  For some reason, though, this was the thing I needed to say just now, so, as always, caveat emptor.  And now, I have some papers to grade and a bonfire to tend.

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

I bought my tickets for Turkey yesterday.   I shopped around, tried to use my SkyMiles to defray the cost of the ticket, and finally just clicked "Purchase" with no small amount of both trepidation and relief.  It's done.  When you click the big green button, it's done.

I still can't believe it, though.  The more I read and discover, the more fantastic it all seems.  I got my main course textbook from Primary Source last week, and I looked at it some last night.  I also got on our course Moodle and started meeting the people I'm going to be traveling with.  As usual, I'm the only person from the Deep South.  Well.  Every trip needs a token chick from MS, right?  In all seriousness, it looks like it will be a good mix of disciplines, grade levels, and parts of the country.

I also started digging through the list of "extras" one of the course instructors put up.  I ordered a couple of used copies of some books about Istanbul/Ottoman Turkey from Amazon, and I got one of Orham Pamuk's novels on my Kindle.  I can see that what I'm supposed to be doing and what I want to be doing are going to be at war with each other for the next few weeks.  (So what else is new, right?)

One of my last purchases, a whim I indulged after somebody else brought it up again on FB, was the They Might Be Giants song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."  I remember that song from a million years ago.  C. and I laughed about it when we were in Venice and I was still waiting to find out whether or not I had gotten in for this institute.  It's a very silly song, but somehow it was the perfect thing to celebrate.  It feels very, very good to have this ticket, something to hold on to in the rough week ahead of me.

I'm now running very late to start my day, but it's worth it.  If you haven't heard this song or heard it in a long time, I leave it here to get stuck in your head, too.  Enjoy.

Lost Day

Yesterday was so beautiful.  Shame I missed most of it.

I woke up, took the dogs out, settled in for a little breakfast reading on the couch.  I had big plans to get much done.  I had phone calls to make, jeans to wash, floors to vacuum.  Not one bit of that got done.

My head started slamming me early, and I ignored it because I'm sick and tired of it.  I've done nothing but hurt all week.  I know it's been due to stress and weather, but I'm really, really worn out from it.  I know that ignoring it was not the best response, but I could not stand the thought of taking a Maxalt.  Since it was not to a level that was making me scream yet, I also thought it might back off.

You think after all this time, I would have learned....

I took a nap in an effort to shake it, intending to get up refreshed and pain-free and take care of my list.  No dice.  When I woke up, I was disoriented and sick.  Two hours later, I *was* screaming.

I took a Maxalt, and when that didn't work, I took the phenergan.  That, of course, was the game-ender.  Nothing happens after phenergan takes the field.  Even it, though, didn't kill the pain.  Every time I woke up, my head was hurting.  I would just roll over and wait for unconsciousness to slide back over me again.  The only thing I had to deal with while I was asleep was the Hell of Dreams from all the things kicking up sediment in my mind.  I won't even go into the details here.  I am still hoping that they will fade soon so I can forget them.

I'm better today.  I still can't tell if it's going to come back or not.  If it does, and if it won't stop hurting me, I think I'm going to have to call my doctor.  Probably this is just what I think it is, too much stress and weather shifting too fast, but I can't take much more of it.

The thing that makes me so mad about all of it is that I just lost a day.  It happens so much lately.  I have plans, I have things I need to do, and WHAM, suddenly I'm incapacitated.  There has to be something better than this.  I hate it.

Things They Don't Tell Teachers to Get in Education Classes

I was in OfficeThing Friday night making a last-minute, last-of-the-year provisioning run.  As I threw things in my cart and ran through the inventory of frequently-used supplies mentally to see if I was forgetting anything, I thought to myself, "This is just another one of those things they don't tell preservice teachers:  Friday nights involve trips to OfficeThing."

And then I started thinking of all the things I have that are "outside of the usual" that make life easier. Consider this blog a public service message.

1.  A small personal heat-seal laminator - You can get one for about $30 if you pay attention.  Mine came from Wal-Mart and was on sale.  I use it for tons of things from making ID cards for my National Honor Society Officers to protecting bell schedules and labels for things.  I still have my large posters done in the library because of size, but for all the little stuff, I do that myself.

2.  Self-adhesive magnet discs - You can buy them from Wal-Mart or a craft store, but I find the best value to be online.  I use them for countless things.  They turn anything into something easily hung and easily removed.  I hang notices, labels, posters, the term cards that compose my word wall, instruction signs, everything really.  I don't have to fight stick-tac (which only sticks SOMETIMES or FOREVER), and it makes it easy and fast to change things out.

3.  Ceiling Hanglars - (yes.  that is their real name.)  Almost every classroom now has drop in "grid" ceilings. If your doesn't, these are of no use to you.  If it DOES, then these are a display/decoration dream-come-true.  I use them to suspend artifacts from my travels, mobiles, and tons and tons of student projects.  Again, this is about easy-up, easy-down with no damage to the fixtures.  Everybody loves the fact that I've used student work to decorate, too.

4.  Command Velcro Strips - I'm not sure that this is the right name for these.  They have a plastic surface that meshes with and holds to another similar surface, so I am calling them that.  They might be picture-hanger strips.  Again, no-damage hanging is the goal.  I found these and tried them for some things I wanted to put on my plastered walls.  They work like a charm.  No nails.  No mess.  They go right up and come right down perfectly.  They hold fairly heavy frames, too.

5.  A small plastic box each of Sharpies, Post-its, pens of a different color (green/purple), and highlighters - My students use these all the time, but some of them either cannot keep up with them or can't seem to get around to getting them.  It's easier to have them on-hand and easy-to-access than to fuss or hold up an activity because of their lack.  I use fliptop plastic boxes that I think were actually made for cds or something.  They hold a lot of each thing. I put them out when we need to use them, and the students (with the exception of one particular class awhile back) have always been very good to use what's needed and return it at the end of class.  No fuss, no hassle.

6.  Index cards - millions and millions of them.  I use all sizes.  The 3X5 blanks are fabulous for quick notes/passes/etc and also exit slips.  4X6 is what I put my word wall elements on.  5X8 is what I use for instructions, labels, and my "quote wall" of interesting student sentences from their papers, etc.

7.  Endless plastic baskets from Dollar Tree - I prefer the ones that are colored vinyl with a metal frame.  I use them for every kind of thing.  If we need to draw strips to choose something, I cut them up and put them in a basket.  If I need to put candy out for Parent-Teacher Conferences, I put it in a basket.  I have one for completed exit slips, one to collect the pieces of a bulletin board my students are creating and one to hold extra blanks.  I use one to hold student project CDs as they're turned in.  They're just good for organization.

8.  A small bookshelf stereo system - I have my laptop hooked up to mine, and whenever we watch movies or listen to Hamlet, the sound is crisp and clear.  I show YouTube videos.  We do a version of "musical chairs" involving walking until the music stops and picking a poem taped to a chair.  I have my students do multimedia projects often, and even if the recording wasn't the best in the world, we still hear.  I use it to play music while they write and to play textbook supplemental CDs of professional readers or original authors presenting the work we're dealing with.  During my planning period and after school, I use it just for me.  I don't see how anybody manages with just a pair of computer speakers.    

9. A scented wax warmer - You have to be careful with this one, but classrooms can be stinky places.  Since science has proven that smell influences mood, I think this is something important to deal with.  I said that you have to be careful with it, and I mean that, because if the fragrance is heavy or cloying, it can give those with allergies or asthma big problems.  I always stick with things that are clean (citrus or lavender) or at least non-floral (apple cinnamon, vanilla, sandalwood), and I have never had a problem with it.  The students seem to like coming in to it, too.

10.  A tape dispenser, a stapler, and a 3-hole punch for at least two "stations" in your room - unless you want kids constantly at your desk for stuff, put it out for them elsewhere.  I have two sets of the basics out on two sides of my room.  When not in use, it sits neatly on a Dollar Tree silver serving tray.  One set is near the printer.  One set is next to the turn-in baskets.  This works really well.

11.  A pass just for the bathroom - I fabricated mine from a cheap unpainted wooden door hanger, painted it black, and put a tiny silver cutout of a man (like the standard men's room icon) on one side and a tiny silver cut out of a woman on the other.  I don't like to let the "big pass" our school issues us out of my sight very often since sometimes students just wander around with them.  With the bathroom pass, it's really obvious they're not supposed to be anywhere but the restroom.

12.  A laser printer - I actually have two now because I have a laptop cart in my room.  Mine is not a $400 job; it's a fairly inexpensive Brother.  It was some of the best money I've ever spent because where I used to go through two or three ink jet cartridges a month, I now go through toner about every other month for about the same money.  It also duplexes, meaning that if I get in a bind to print something off in the morning, I don't have to fight my way to the copying machine.  I love it.  The extra for the laptop cart can't be praised enough, either.  It's set up wirelessly, and so everybody can print to it from the laptops, no muss (as long as our network is up), no fuss.

13.  Plastic shower curtains and small "cafe" rods - A shower curtain can hide a multitude of sins on a big bookshelf.  Just saying.  I put mine up with small extendable cafe rods that are supported by a Command hook on either end.  They keep all my supply and book shelves looking neat even when they are really not and give my classroom the illusion of neatness when it's just not possible to have the reality.

Yeah.  Well, if you're not a teacher, this probably bored the crap out of you.  However, I've been thinking about this list for awhile, and I wanted to share it.  I probably have left off some things that others consider to be essential.  That just means they get to make lists of their own.