School uniforms

Laura’s school is considering adopting uniforms for the elementary level kids—I’m on the School Improvement Council, so I knew there was some discussion about this, but evidently it’s a little more serious than I thought, because she came home from school today with a brainstorming exercise on it. Ms. H has asked her class to write letters to the principal telling him what they think the pros and cons are. Laura’s list—just cons so far—includes this reason, my personal favorite: “Life would drain out of you if you couldn’t say ‘I like your clothes.’” Fourth grade, what a hoot.

Squeezing oranges

I wanted to write a little note before Thanksgiving about cooking and writing, but I still have to finish the cranberry sauce (yes, I know, I cooked it last week, but it’s a different family holiday now—can’t just have one Thanksgiving, now, can we?) and I’m pooped, so I’m posting an email I wrote to my friend Lisa instead. Yes, Lisa is a real person and not my split personality. Did you know, by the way, that Lisa was the most popular name in the country the year I was born? And, yes, I know you can’t see the poem. I can’t post the poem, or I won’t be able to publish it later. I did, by the way again, finally get an acceptance for one poem last week after the awful string of rejections. Did I mention that one of the rejections had the little handwritten note that means we liked your poem—just not enough? I just to enjoy getting those—the good rejections. Now I want all or nothing, thanks. I guess that’s how a lot of people feel about cranberry sauce.

From: Lisa
To: Lisa
Date: Wednesday - November 24, 2004 11:56 PM
Subject: what do you think?
Attachment: Squeezing Oranges.doc (20992 bytes)
[View] [Open] [Save As]

Hey Lisa. This poem is either awful or very good. I can’t tell yet. What do you think?

Sorry I missed you this afternoon—I had gone on into work to try to get caught up. Did I tell you I have jury duty the week of exams? Which means that I have to be completely finished with everything before exams, and no fudging around, and I have to provide rather extensive written directions for the two proctors I’ve had to arrange for my composition classes—a student who knows Blackboard to help people submit files correctly and to check that they’ve turned everything in before they leave, and a faculty member to sit around and look stern to prevent cheating.

So I worked until about 8:00 p.m. and have been cooking for tomorrow ever since, until just now when I had to come work on this poem. I’m not one of those waiting-for-the-muse-and-inspiration type writers; I am generally a little more methodical than that, but this particular image hit rather abruptly as a solution to an idea I’d been trying to work out . . . and I was most fortunately between recipes anyhow. Although now the zest of the orange in question is lying on the counter turning brown.

Well, I hope you and Jim are either enjoying one more night at home because the snow was coming down too hard to drive, or that you’re safely there already (and by the way, it’s 60 degrees here now). I’ll try to call you Sunday, but if yall aren’t back yet, I’ll talk to you Monday night and tell you all about how the lawyers mysteriously do not want feminist English professors on their juries . . .

Happy Thanksgiving.
Love,
Lisa

Lunch with the Glowworms

I am really supposed to be working today, and I really don’t want to. Finally I’m here in my office, though. We all slept in this morning until 8:30! I couldn’t believe it when I heard Will—and I was sleeping like the dead at this point. I got up, ate breakfast—which I never have time to do—and made the dough for the yeast rolls for Thanksgiving dinner at my parents tomorrow. By the time I got myself dressed and organized to leave, it was 11:00. Shocking.

Since it was already so late, I took Will into daycare and had lunch with him, which I never do because I can’t leave work during the middle of the day and come back. Plus he would not like the idea one bit of me coming in and then leaving him again. Several of the other parents in the room come in for lunch pretty regularly, and I always feel guilty about not doing it myself. But today I am all over that guilt, since not only did I eat lunch with Will and his friends, but I also had to have cold beanie weenies. I have suffered sufficiently for at least the next year. I hope that’s not what they usually feed my kid. The staff consensus was that since the regular cook was off, the food was pretty nasty.

But it was still fun eating with the kids. Since it was a school holiday and so many of the parents in the room are teachers in the local school district, there were only five kids there—all boys. They were hilarious. Little tiny men, all competing and showing off for Will’s mom. Who could play with the football? Who could squirt better with the water play toys? Who could wear the cowboy hat? Who could sit next to Will's mom? (I should add that it’s very odd to have boys fighting over you when they’re all two years old—although I’m not sure it’s not odd when they’re the right age either, now that you mention it.) Finally Jacob ended up with the hat when everybody else got distracted, they’re sitting at the table eating, and Will announces that he is Buzz Lightyear. Jacob counters that he’s a cowboy, and then Blake chimes in, “I’m a Gamecock Boy.” You could actually hear the capitals. Those are some cute children.

Afterwards I had to make one quick errand run into Target, but figured I may as well do a little Christmas shopping since I didn’t have the kids—it was packed. I guess avoiding the day after Thanksgiving isn’t enough now. At that point I decided I’d spent enough of the day avoiding the job I have ahead, and headed into work. I’m finishing my Chick-fil-a sandwich now (those beanie weenies were really just repulsive), and it’s time to start. Make it fast, girl. I need to get home and hear about The Incredibles—Chris took Laura this morning. And this after Harry Potter last night too—so much entertainment all at once!

Monsters and holiday plans

I am too excited. It’s our Thanksgiving holiday so we don’t have school tomorrow (although I still have to work tomorrow because I have two tenure and promotion files to review), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban just came out on DVD. We’re currently negotiating how we’ll all get to watch it—William is too young for the scary parts, we think, but then Laura pointed out that he’s been carrying around a dementor action figure from the movie for about a month now. He’s at that stage sometimes young kids get where they think monsters on tv are interesting—he’s not quite old enough for them to be scary yet. But carrying around a three-inch plastic dementor isn’t quite the same thing as seeing one on the screen. Laura’s next plan was for Chris to put Will to bed (which is a long term project involving lying down with him for a while) while she and I watch the movie tonight, and then tomorrow night Chris can watch it with her. Interesting plan.

And by the way—he only has a dementor of his own because I found the sets of the Harry Potter tiny action figures on big sale at Bi-Lo for something like $1.77 each, so bought several for Laura—and then they were fighting over them every single day. Finally I figured my peace and happiness was worth an additional $2.00, although I’m sure that I’m the world’s worst spoil-my-children parent. I can’t say otherwise that giving my two-year old a really spooky monster is high on my list.

People from other planets

I guess one good thing about the holidays is that you get to visit your relatives in whatever universes they live in. It's too bad there are so many different worlds, though, and dang, those rules are different everywhere you go. Despite the interesting phenomenom, I really think my life is too short just now to spend it on holiday celebrations. Sigh.

Cooking with Spam

Acknowledge my mail
Sincere Proposition
My Warmest Regards
Pls assistance

You might think all these are the subject lines of spam. And you’d be right. But as I’m checking my email and cleaning out my junk mail folder tonight while I wait for my sweet potato crunch to finish cooking, these subject lines seem more indicative of the conflicted nature of the holidays than anything resembling a proposition to inherit an abandoned multimillion dollar account. I never understood how people could hate the holidays—I loved the cooking, the decorating, the visits with family, watching the kids play with the cousins (except when they were trying to kill each other). And yes, presents were good too. My only conflict with Christmas then was that my birthday also happens to be Christmas day. You really get stiffed on presents that way, let me tell you, and forget about birthday parties.

But in recent years, when I’ve often been the one responsible for a lot of the holiday planning, cooking, hosting, and cleaning, I’ve started to see why others didn’t like it. And this year, I am just plain cranky, and I’m not even sure why. But rather than looking forward to Christmas as I usually do, instead I’m struggling with this feeling that I see all these people all year long—now I have to spend my one holiday on them too?

Maybe work is getting too busy—and I do have a big paper to write over Christmas, so that doesn’t help. Maybe it’s that it’s been years since I was able to spend holidays doing the kinds of things I used to enjoy so much about the season. When we were in grad school and really broke, I made all the Christmas presents—one year I’d cross-stitch ornaments, the next I painted and molded plaster of Paris Santa Clauses, and I handsewed felt stockings one year for something like ten people. And this was on top of keeping up with my photo albums. I loved that part of my life, and it’s just gone now.

I don’t know what it is. All I do know is that it’s really late, we have to get up early to travel to Chris’s dad’s for an early Thanksgiving, I can smell my wonderful cranberry apple sauce and I want to sleep in tomorrow and send the food along with Chris and the kids—with my warmest regards.

Early mornings

You know, it is really just not fair how early young kids wake up on the weekends.

Catching up and missing Mommy

Obviously I’m back from my conference, and probably just as obviously, I’m swamped with trying to catch up on everything I had put off last week while I was finishing writing my paper. I was only gone two days, but you’d think it was a week-long trip from how disorganized I am now that I’m back and much laundry I have to do now, and from how Will reacted to my going. Chris says he woke up at 4:45 Saturday morning and found Will rocking back and forth crying “Mommy went away, Mommy went away.” And I had been gone one night at this point. Evidently he wasn’t interested in being consoled by Daddy, and Chris finally got up with him to watch Wiggles. He was fine the rest of the day—until he hit his head on the coffeetable. I had just called from the airport then to see if they wanted to meet me in Charlotte for dinner, and Will was hollering like there was absolutely no tomorrow: “I need Mommy!” That Mommy abandonment thing. Whew. He did whack his head pretty hard—he hit the table right between his eyebrows, so his forehead swelled up to Neanderthal proportions, and the next day he had two little tiny black eyes, just bruised shadows right next to his nose . . . definitely changes his appearance. Finally that’s starting to fade. Thank goodness. Well . . . I have some grading this morning then class till noon, so I’d better get to it.

Two papers and some time alone

Laura is working on a new essay for her class. The last one didn’t have a required structure—she did a great job with it. You know, she never got the essay back! Finally I wrote a note to her teacher asking how she did, since they were starting a new one. Ms. H wrote back that Laura made an A, but that she’d graded the papers at home and now couldn’t find them to return them. I’ve lost homework papers before, but never real essays! Makes me feel a little better…

Anyhow, her new assignment is to write a very traditional five paragraph essay, which is just reminding me all about why I don’t like teaching that structure so rigidly. Five paragraphs, with five sentences in each paragraph. Exactly. And no deviations, thank you. I understand why they’re learning it this way, but ugh. Anyhow, here was her very first draft of the intro. Hmmm.

Why I like Cats
Cats have great exprient in my life. I think they are soft, furry, and cute. I really love cats!

And here’s her brainstorming cluster, with Ms. H’s comments from their conference. I agree with her teacher that it’s going to be tough to write five whole sentences about soft… but I didn’t think quiet was a much better choice. We’ll see what they come up with.



I am writing these days too. I made good progress on my conference paper yesterday—although boy am I hoping no big experts show up for my panel (unlikely, might I add). I should be able to finish it today, which will be wonderful, because then I can leave the laptop home when I fly out Friday morning. You can always tell the biggest procrastinators at academic conferences—they’re the ones reading their papers off the laptop screen because they didn’t want to pay a buck and a half to print the paper off at the hotel or the local copy shop. Although Todd suggested to me yesterday that if I ended up doing that I could always just introduce my talk by explaining that I am a strict environmentalist and don’t want to kill trees by printing out my papers. A little weak, but better than most of the excuses you hear.

This’ll be the third conference I’ve been to since Will was born that I’ll have gone to alone. I hate leaving him home (I invited Chris to go and he didn’t want to, so that’s his own fault). He’s old enough now to talk on the phone, which makes it more interesting but also harder. A whole day without William twirling my hair? But I have to confess I am really looking forward to being alone for a while. Well, I have grading to finish this morning and I still haven’t reread “Desiree’s Baby,” so I’d better get to it.

Finding without seeking, for once

From: Chris
To: Lisa
Date: 11/9/2004 9:34:38 AM
Subject: Do not despair...

for your cosmetic accoutrement device for attracting attention to your inherent aesthetic beauty...

HAS BEEN FOUND
in a dumpster behind the back of the building
after much labor and
two changes of clothes
and a call to the fire department

But it wasn't a problem.
Really.
You're welcome.
I'm just glad I could help.
C

_______________________________________________
Really the folks at daycare found it and taped it on the counter next to the sign-in sheet. Somebody was trying to take the credit… Anyhow, who’d have thought! After I resigned myself to the tragic loss, too.

Rejection overload

I’ve just gotten my fourth rejection in the last week. Just for context, I’ve gotten 13 rejections this calendar year, and 4 acceptances. So what is that, 1 out of 4? Not bad, and certainly nothing to complain about (in fact, I think that’s a pretty good ratio—how depressing!). But when they all come at once… that’s when I can’t take it. Anyhow, this one rather annoyed me. A standard rejection from literary magazines is typically a quarter of a sheet of paper—it’s really good if they’re printed (rather than photocopied), and even better if you get a note on them. But this one was just too much.



This is the actual size, by the way—or maybe slightly larger. Come on, people, don’t hurt the photocopying budget too much. That’s roughly 10 rejection notes per page of paper! What economy! Fran says at this rate they’ll be coming by ESP.

I like this article about accepting rejection. Wish I’d gotten the Chinese economics journal one. But look. Even the fabulous Ursula Le Guin used to get them.

Grading and writing

I just finished about 55 first-year composition essays—now it’s on to my American lit class. If I hurry this morning, I might be able to finish their group projects (about which much complaining in the blogs). I still have to finish preparing my realism lecture, though—nothing like a little Mark Twain. I’d forgotten how long “The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg” was, although that’s because it reads so quickly, I think. It didn’t seem long last night when I read it again. But I bet there was more general wailing and gnashing of teeth and whatnot among some students.

Then this afternoon it’s my conference paper again. I finally have about a half a handle on what I’m writing about. This paper has been a bear—I usually have a much better idea from the beginning of what I’m doing in my papers, so this very vague idea I had is really giving me ulcers. I choose half the poems from the various anthologies I’m talking about, so today I have to choose the other half; it should go faster, now that I have a little more direction. I talked to Lisa yesterday, and she hasn’t finished hers for this weekend either, so I feel a little better. Wonder how many of us there are across the country right now fiendishly trying to write our papers the week before they’re due? And at the same time, fussing at our students for procrastinating on their work? :)

I wish Lisa and I were going to the same conference—she’ll be in Atlanta, I think, while I’m in Virginia. I still haven’t finished her birthday present either (and the birthday was in the summer). This is the problem with homemade gifts… Well, I should quit procrastinating on the papers and get to them. See you American lit people in a while.

Lost again

I can lose earrings in so many ways. I think I must be one of very few people who’s ever lost both earrings at once (not while wearing them—I think they got thrown away, to tell you the truth, because I certainly scoured the house and couldn’t find them, and we’re talking days and days). I lost one of my favorite earrings tonight, I think at Will’s daycare. My husband patiently swept the parking lot with the car headlights on our way home from the bookstore last night, once I realized it was gone, and my sweet children were very worried about the whole thing. Will kept asking, “Mommy, did you found it?” while Laura was promising to buy me something special to make it up to me. I looked briefly in all the places I thought it might be, and now I’m giving it up. It’s gone. Maybe I can make art with the other one—I envision a whole piece, maybe titled “Lost and Found.”

Happy smiley literature?

I’ve been trying for something like three days to post a comment on Alayna’s blog entry about why American literature is so depressing and why I’m inflicting it on my poor innocent students who just want to be happy, but I guess everybody’s blogging about the election, because something’s going on and I can’t get my comment to post.

Alayna writes:
“My point is... stop giving us such crappy literature and choose something cheerful and positive for once! We don't need to add to the depressing.”

Yall just finished your survey of American literature courses, and one thing I read in a number of your project papers was that you found the courses very similar in their coverage--what authors were being taught, etc. There’s a reason for that: experts in American literature have decided together what constitutes the “best” literature. As you’ve also seen, that changes over time, so that we’re reading literature written by a much more diverse group of authors than you would have read even when I was in school (which is now 20 years ago! Oh my God! When did I start getting so old?). But what experts in recent decades have valued is complexity, often of plot or writing style, and almost always of subject matter. So the theory basically runs, the more complex the novel or poem or story is, the better. Generally happiness is a little simple for that interpretation.

This question also requires you to think about what you mean by “happy” literature. OK, so Hawthorne would not come up as a possible author here--but Whitman is an optimist on an earthshaking scale. So does he count? I find Douglass’s narrative about his experiences in slavery empowering--literally an example of the best of humanity. And it’s all about living in and escaping from slavery. What about a book we’re not reading here, but that many of you may have read at some time, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women? Children read this book, a novel with essentially a very uplifting tone--about a family sinking into poverty in the Civil War. So what do you mean by happy? Yall be thinking about what you would consider “happy” literature--what examples could you give? And we’ll talk about this in class one day.

And anyhow, happy literature is boring. :)

Sad day for Democrats

Well, I knew this had been an angry and divisive election, but I didn’t realize how bad it was. Laura’s class was talking about the election just before Kerry’s concession speech, and she said something about how she wished Kerry had won. A few minutes later, while they were listening to the speech, a boy in her class passed her a note that said “I would go to Hell before I voted for John Kerry.” Not the most appropriate comment for a fourth grader, and not exactly in the spirit of the democratic process. I suppose I should at least be grateful he didn't tell her she’d be going to Hell. Not much to be grateful for. Ms. H sent the little boy to the Recovery Room (alas, not really where they send budding Republicans, but the next step down from the principal's office).



My little Democrat is not the best speller. I am pretty sure this is not a general curse of the party, but rather an affliction that crosses party lines (although she seems to have an unusually bad case of it). The very small wording in the bottom right hand corner reads "But he didn't win."

Laura wants to add a note here: I regret having to write that. But I wrote it any way in case nobody knew yet. As you saw in my picture, I am a big Kerry fan. That is why I regret writing it. And Carolyn, if you're reading this, it was funny about the blue dot party. I wish I could have been there.

Reconciled to the potty

I’ve been so preoccupied with my student conferences and the election that the latest William report has absolutely just slipped my mind. Second kids have it rough.

So we’re right in the middle of the Halloween party, all the kids are playing out in the backyard, I’m getting the cornbread out of the oven--when William comes inside and says he needs to potty. And he does. So the next day I bought the underwear and sent in the five changes of clothes to daycare. He’s ready. So far he’s doing really well with it. But a lot of it definitely is training the parents; at daycare they set a timer to go off every thirty minutes, and I think we probably need to do that too. He gets so excited! Every time now, we have to immediately announce successful pee-pees to the whole house. We are all very enthusiastic. We aren't fit to have a discussion in public, but boy are we all happy.

He looks so different running around in little boy underwear and not diapers! Almost taller, even, and definitely leaner (maybe we should have been changing him more often?) After a very bad experience with the Wal-Mart selection of destructive monster undergarments in the 3T/4T sizes, we went to Target and found him several pairs of cute little Finding Nemo and Bob the Builder underwear. Apparently it is very important for all young children to have a train or princess on their behinds, or else plain underwear is illegal. Maybe the folks who make clothes really think we have that much trouble telling the difference? Anyhow, I may have bought my last carton of diapers. Let’s hope.

A pissed off friend

So my friend from the Halloween party wrote me this typically charming thank you email, in which he wrote that he couldn't remembering being surrounded by so many children: “It was a salutary reminder that there is life outside of academe, even if I don't actually have one myself.” I wrote back and suggested he give it a try himself; now he’s pissed at me, boy. “Hadn’t considered that one,” he writes back. Good golly. The way email invites the worst possible readings (although yes, I know, I was stupid to suggest it through email in the first place).

Anyhow, here’s my friend, a charming single man living in a decent-sized Southern city. Anytime he wants to go out, fine, he can. No kids to drag with him to any poetry reading he goes to. If he wants to be on the local Democratic party committee, nothing in the world stopping him. No rushing home from having coffee once every semester with a friend because it’s time to pick up the kids. And he can’t make friends. I’m working myself into getting pissed off too, and that’s not what this is about and I don’t have time for that today, so I’m going to stop now. God give me patience, cause I sure don’t have any myself.

Blue dots and firetrucks

I took Laura and Will with me to vote today. We had about a half hour wait—nothing compared to what some folks had—but the longest by far I’ve ever had to wait since moving back to South Carolina. Laura wanted to go to see the voting because they’d had a mock election at her school; I figured she may as well get used to being what one of my friend calls a blue dot in a red state. Will wanted to see the fire trucks; our precinct votes in the volunteer fire department. Nothing like climbing on (and under) the fire trucks while waiting in line. We certainly kept the crowd entertained.

A gorgeous music lover

This morning my good friend Carolyn was telling me an idea she’d had about the structure of a committee we’re working on; this had occurred to her in the wee hours, she said. I noted down her excellent suggestion, and then said she needed to think about other things in the wee hours. She replied that she always worried about work in the middle of the night, and this was why she had blood pressure problems and would die young. But at least she would be beautiful, she said. At her funeral, she wanted me to say that Carolyn was gorgeous and she loved music. I promised I would write it down, since I knew I’d be too sad to remember it later. And so I have.

Coughing or sleeping

William woke up about 4:00 a.m. coughing; finally I’ve got him settled back down, propped up on enough pillows so he’s comfortable and sleeping again--just in time for me to get up. It’s been a long weekend. Feels like it'll be a long week too.