Post holidays, thank God

Since Christmas day, we’ve had Christmas again, with my family this time, gotten the kids settled in their new room, which looks very nice, and finished any cleaning that really needed to be done. Chris and I took the decorations and tree down today, and I am so glad that we’re done with this holiday. Laura’s friend Adeleigh is spending the night with us tonight, so we’ll have three kids the first day of 2005. Poor Will has been getting run off by his big sister all night, but finally he got happy playing by himself with the various new Buzz Lightyear toys my mom and sister-in-law gave him. Every once in a while I hear Buzz telling his arch enemy Zurg, “Bye, I love you.”

As for the grown ups: Chris is going kayaking tomorrow, and I’m going to read. A book. For purely entertainment purposes. Sometimes I think I don’t remember how. In the living room of our first apartment in Alabama, we had this large, very poorly insulated picture window that faced west. It stayed cold in winter and hot in summer. I used to lie on the floor in front of the window and just bake in the afternoon sun while I read—sometimes I would get a headache from the glare, but I loved the warmth. I never read for school there, only for pleasure. We moved out of that apartment before Laura was born, so it was always quiet (except when the upstairs neighbors were fighting or blasting their stereo). Our house here is lovely, and I’m very fond of it, although it’s a little too small. But it doesn’t have a westward window.

Only a few hours til 2005. I keep hearing fireworks outside the window, and I am pretty sure that’s going to be all of the New Year’s festivities I hear. In all the writing I did about Christmas, did I mention it was my birthday? I think I did. I’m not 40 yet, but getting there rapidly, and I feel it tonight. The good thing about getting old is you don’t really care if you can’t stay up til midnight anyhow—but I’m not quite to the point where I don’t think about it yet. Funny. 2004 was a long, long year. Most of them aren’t anymore. Here’s hoping 2005 speeds by happily.

Eye of the storm

The big rush is over, and I am pooped. I got all the presents finished, all wrapped, the food that had to be cooked ahead of time done, and the major rooms in the house clean. The study is still a wreck, but I can deal with that later and just keep the door closed until then. We got the bunk beds assembled and were done with all Christmas preparations by about midnight—we’ve done worse, so I guess I should be proud of us, particularly since I was making all those *&%$ presents this year instead of buying them.

The kids loved their bunk beds and various other presents. We had the beds set up in the living room with all the Santa presents on top, and then we moved them back to their bedroom after brunch. Matt and Shari came to eat with us and see the kids’ toys, so Matt helped Chris move the beds back. There may have been some reassembly required, but I was working on starting the turkey, and I couldn’t see what was going on. I really don’t want to know anyhow as long as they’re in the room now. There’s this unfortunate thing with a ceiling fan going on right now, but I’ve turned the power off at the fan itself so I think everybody should survive. The room is a wreck—you can’t believe all the stuff that was under Laura’s bed, but everybody’s all snuggled down in their new little nests finally, and we’ll worry about rearranging the furniture later. I had put their sheets on the bed last night, but they were new flannel sheets and really stinky—nothing like the smell of chemically (I guess?) treated flannel stored in plastic wrap—so when we moved the beds, I washed the sheets. By the time they were dry Will was dizzy, he was so sleepy, but he wouldn’t nap anywhere but in his new big boy bed with his brand new pillow. While I was putting the sheets back on after they were finally dry, he was standing next to me literally sobbing for “my brand new pillow.” And let me tell you, ladders do not make for an easy bed making process. I suppose it’s just as well we rarely make up beds around here.

The turkey’s due out of the oven soon and it’ll be time for me to start the stuffing, so while everybody else in the house is napping, I’m writing a little and waiting to cook again. And I’m the birthday girl, mind you. Chris says next year we should get catered Christmas food. Maybe I should just try to start earlier next year. Of course, I’ve never said that before.

Christmas lists

Things I got done yesterday

• cleaned up the kitchen
• mailed the Christmas cards
• picked up my car from the Ford dealership (who wanted to charge $880 for my repairs) & arranged a new shop to take the car next week (for $500-600 instead—still pretty ouch, and there goes my Christmas cash)
• bought the last couple of small presents (while worrying about how much money we spent this month)
• finished planning all the holiday cooking
• bought all the groceries I’d need (while worrying about how much money we spent this month)
• cooked the first big dinner stuff
• finished the sourdough starter and made the loaves
• fell asleep early and forgot to bake the bread

Things I still have to do today

• bake the bread
• make stuffing, my birthday pie (my birthday is Christmas day), jello salad, and tomorrow morning’s breakfast casserole and French toast
• wrap the kids’ presents (which I’m going to do as soon as I post this since strangely they’re still asleep at this hour—this is what comes from worrying about money. I haven’t done it earlier because William has shown an alarming interest in opening presents this year.)
• clean up the study
• scrub my bathtub so I can crash later tonight
• get Santa set up after the kids are in bed (including rebuilding the bunk beds—and Chris and I aren’t sure if we can build them in the living room and move them or if the kids get a very exciting pile of bed pieces and mattresses)
• collapse and pray for Christmas to be over

Losing days

OK, being out of school always messes me up. I never know what day it is, no matter how many times I look at the date on my watch or on the newspaper. I am busy today having my preliminary Christmas panic attack, because I didn’t finish the presents last night and I thought today was the 22nd. Only today and tomorrow to get everything ready—not to mention wrapping and cooking. I always want to have Christmas Eve just to relax, and I never make it. I am starting to really understand that whole Grinch thing. I guess I just need to shoot to enjoy after Christmas and accept it. In the meantime, I have a sour dough starter to attend to.

More goodbyes & cutting down the Christmas list

I’ve been so busy since my last post that it seems almost like another world. I still can’t believe what’s happened to Pete, and it’s made so much worse by the fact that his campus sent out an email announcing his death and funeral details and at the same time started discussing their efforts to find somebody to teach his spring semester courses. He taught practically everything under the sun, so I knew they would have a terrible time, but you’d think they could’ve at least waited a day or so before they started emailing everybody about his classes.

I’m trying not to think about it too much, and really I haven’t had much time to. I’ve been working like crazy on the Christmas presents for my family—not to let the cat out of the bag, but these are rather time consuming projects, and I think I can finally finish them tonight, thank God. I figured out how I wanted to do Christmas cards too. I always write a Christmas letter, and put something odd that Chris has done in as well—an article he wrote for the school newspaper, or a Photoshopped image. He didn’t have anything he particularly liked for this year’s letter, so I finally just went ahead and wrote it without that. People are really going to be disappointed—I know a lot of folks who look forward to seeing his stuff.

Every year, I find writing the letter so difficult—it’s an interesting exercise in audience awareness. You’re writing to so many different people—family, old family friends, colleagues from old jobs, old neighbors. Some people on my list we’ll never see again, and others I’ve never even met (Chris has a staggering number of aunts and uncles who live far far away). And how do you give out news without sounding like a braggart? How long is too long? I have a very good friend who sends out six page letters every year, in ten-point font. Even though she’s a friend, that’s just more than I want to know. Our letter’s usually a page and a half—probably too long. But I do try to make it funny. That was hard this year with Chris’s dad’s cancer, though. Next year’s probably won’t be any easier.

Once I get through the rhetorical difficulty of the yearly update, the rest is usually easy. This year, though, I cut a bunch of people off the list. The cards get so expensive, and we sent out about eighty last year. This year I cut back to sixty, and that still just seems like a ridiculous number. It’s so disheartening looking over the names of old friends and trying to decide who to keep in touch with. But I guess that since everybody I cut hasn’t sent me a card in several years (that was the elimination criteria I finally decided on), I suppose I could just decide that the removal from the Christmas list is just a formal recognition of what’s already the case.

This year I finally (after years and years of including photos and letters inside Christmas cards) realized that if I ordered the photo greeting cards my “holiday message” could be printed on the card and I wouldn’t have to handwrite notes in all those cards. It’s less personal, but so much faster—and I do try to keep in touch in other ways than the Christmas card too. I do feel rather guilty, but I must say it’s difficult to express how delighted I was with this revelation and the time saved as a result (and Chris even got the letter folded when he photocopied it!). So much for the cards I bought last year during the after-Christmas sales, though. I’m just glad it’s almost done. Stamps and they’re off tomorrow, arriving in mailboxes nationwide by at least New Year’s. Still, I haven’t beat the record of the year I wrote the letter Christmas Day, so I guess there’s something to be proud of.

Christmas goodbyes to a friend

Carolyn called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that one of my friends at another of our campuses had been killed in a car accident that morning. He was driving alone and apparently lost control of his car going around a curve. Peter and I had worked together on faculty senate, and Carolyn had asked me when he was hired to mentor him, which at the time I thought was pretty sad since I’d only been on campus two years myself then. We were often at meetings together, and spent a lot of time together through senate especially—I’m chairing this year, and he was our vice-chair. I guess I didn’t realize how many breakfasts and lunches you can eat with somebody at senate meetings.

Still, we weren’t terribly close, and the only time we’ve ever socialized outside school was this past summer when I had a party for Fran and Todd and myself after we were all three tenured and promoted. Pete drove all the way over from Union and brought us a bottle of champagne. He stayed for dinner and cake, but then left just as we were opening his champagne. He was like that—we worked together often, but he never talked about his family or his personal life. Carolyn called me because we were close—surely he had closer friends than me. I will miss him, though. Pete was up for promotion this year, and I served as a local committee member for his case. I was really looking forward to bringing him a bottle of champagne for his celebration when his promotion was announced next year.

I called Todd and a couple of other people who also knew Pete, but I didn’t want to call Fran since I knew she was celebrating Christmas on Sunday. I needed to tell somebody, I guess. It was an odd afternoon, calling those few folks who also knew Pete and decorating the Christmas tree. I don’t know if Peter had a tree or not, or whether he was planning to travel for the holidays, or even if he celebrated Christmas—I saw him a week ago today at another meeting, but he was in a hurry afterwards and I didn’t have a chance to tell him goodbye and ask about his holiday plans. Still, I put my ornaments on the tree in his honor and was thankful that I’m here today to do that with my family.

Exams and first round of Christmas down

Finally I’m done with grading exams, and the first round of Christmas is over. Thank God it wasn’t at our house. After Thursday’s mostly blind day, I spent Friday finishing grading and trying to get things a little organized in my office—although the fact that I forgot even to water my plants ought to tell you what a good job I did of that. Then home to finish handsewing the binding on the two quilts for Chris’ parent’s Christmas presents.

This past Thanksgiving, all Chris’s brothers families got together at his dad’s house for the first time; we generally all get together at Christmas with his mom, but we see his dad and his wife here and there—they usually don’t get a big event organized, either, so I didn’t really realize that was something they much wanted to do (I hope Chris and I never get divorced). Anyhow, his father has pancreatic cancer this year and wanted everybody there for his 73rd birthday, which is right after Thanksgiving, so we combined the two events. And since we were all together before Christmas, I thought I’d have time to make a quilt with each grandchild’s handprint on a square, something I’ve always wanted to do. The timing seemed right, especially with Chris’s father so sick. And we finally have about all the grandchildren in the family we’re going to have too—one more is coming next summer, which’ll be four in that family, four in the youngest son’s family, and our two (and no, we don’t want four).

I thought I’d be able to work on the quilts during the Christmas holiday, since we usually go to Greenville after the 25th, but this year the family consensus was the 18th, so I had to really rush to finish them. So Friday night, there I was, sewing binding (bias cut by complicated mathematical formula, mind) and watching Star Trek. It took so long to finish I had to get up the next morning and wrap the presents we’d exchange that day right before we got in the car to leave—Chris helped, but boy does he hate wrapping. I actually wrap my own presents sometimes if he can get organized enough to get them into anonymous boxes—I keep thinking one day I’ll get a department store job wrapping presents, because I am good at that, let me tell you.

We got to Greenville, then, saw both sets of parents, exchanged all the presents, and got home about midnight last night. The kids are thrilled with their hauls—Will is especially fun to watch, since this is his first year of really understanding Christmas and presents (he opened Chris’s mom’s presents for her, which fortunately she didn’t mind). He’s in there now with Chris testing our the new batteries in his Spiderman car, while Laura, who is trying to watch her new DVD Shrek 2, is yelling, “That’s the loudest thing on earth!” Chris and I get money every year, which we are also thrilled with. It’s my birthday at Christmas too, so I get a pretty good haul of cash. I’ll hang onto it for a while in case we need it before our tax refund comes in, but after that I’m going to buy a new piece of art, I think.

After all that, we’re home and I can do whatever I want to today. I need to finish decorating the tree—it just has lights on right now. I haven’t wrapped any presents (and I still have a couple to finish). And the house is a wreck, and the laundry’s piled up. So I probably should work on all that so I can relax later this week in a clean house. But even the prospect of working on that stuff all day doesn’t bother me because I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to. I can do nothing all day! I have no deadline! I am finally free.

Old and blind

I got a foretaste of my old woman life today. Laura and I had our eye exams this morning, and I guess last time we went they didn’t do the pupil dilation. Because I had certainly forgotten how horrendous a process it is. I immediately thought I would be blind forever. Once the burning stopped and I began to regain my distance vision, I decided I might eventually recover my eyesight, but it was touch and go there for a while. The doctor’s staff unleashed me driving onto the unsuspecting world after watching me write a check purely by touch and memory. Laura and I were going afterwards to lunch at Chick-fil-a, and I had a coupon for a free something-or-the-other—but I had to give it to Laura to read. She couldn’t read it at first either, which gave me a little more hope. Finally she held the card out at arm’s length just like a little old lady herself and read it off. I’m sure the folks at Chick-fil-a enjoyed our ultra hip plastic eye-doctor sunglasses.

Essentially I have to conclude from today that blindness would—well, let’s just say put a major crimp in my lifestyle. I spent the afternoon at work making phone calls and squinting at library books to try to see the due date since I couldn’t focus on the computer screen to grade my papers. Eventually the dilation began to wear off and I did manage to get through most of another class’s exams, but it was not a particularly productive day. I’m making two quilts for Christmas presents, and I spent tonight peering at my needle trying to see which end really had the eye for the thread. I hope that Laura and Will are looking forward to taking care of me in my old blind woman stage of life, because obviously I will be unable to function alone. Although, come to think of it, Chris will no doubt outlive me with his perfect eyesight intact (except for the lima bean, a story for another night), so I guess he gets to torment me in our old age together. We’ll see. I hope.

My Vampire Needs Regular Compassion

We’re doing mnemonic devices for Laura’s social studies test tonight. Let’s just say that what Chris and I come up with isn’t probably what Laura would remember. The New England colonies were Massachusetts Vermont New Hampshire Rhode Island Connecticut: My Vampire Needs Regular Compassion (we had something slightly different for Laura). I don’t know how I’m supposed to have time to finish grading my exams and to help Laura study too. I keep thinking one day she’ll learn to study on her own. Wishful thinking.

What’s in a name?

I watched part of Earthsea last night and tonight—the SciFi channel miniseries. I adore the Earthsea books; Le Guin is one of my favorite authors, and these books have a beautiful lyrical quality of seriousness and thoughtfulness and fantasy and truth. But this movie was so awful. Terrible terrible dialogue. And let’s just say that the movie wasn’t remotely faithful to the books.

Fortunately I never have any faith that film adaptations of my favorite books will be any good, so therefore I’m not disappointed. I almost didn’t watch it—but I couldn’t help it. It’s like a terrible car accident—it’s so hard not to look, even though you know it’ll be gruesome. The moment they lost me was quite early on—they changed the main character’s name! Why would you make a film based on books and change something so fundamental (and names are incredibly fundamental here)? Never mind everything else they changed. Sounds like Le Guin wasn’t very happy herself.

Nothing about a dreadful miniseries changes those beautiful books. But still it feels like a desecration to me.

Cooking to procrastinate

I remember when I used to love to cook. I think that was probably because I didn’t come home to cook after driving around for an hour to get home from work and then picking everybody up from school. It may also have something to do with the fact that I used to not have two kids hanging off my legs moaning about how they will starve to death in the next thirty seconds if they don’t have food. It might help too if it wasn’t after 6ish every night when I got home. I remember thinking what a lovely career academics would be, since I could read books and get paid for it, and have a class in the morning and spend the rest of the day home writing (or whatever). Such fond fantasies.

Anyhow, I did love to cook once. Tonight after our thrilling Boston Market tv dinners (which are actually not that bad), I had to make macaroni and cheese for Chris’s athletic banquet tomorrow night, which is a potluck—go soccer moms. I’d planned to make two macaronis when I got home from work and we’d eat one, but once again I mysteriously was unable to leave school until the last possible second. I suppose it’s a good thing the kids have to be picked up at a particular time or maybe I’d never get to come home. So after dinner I made the macaroni—dinner for tomorrow night is mostly ready now!—and then just because I was dying to, I made fudge. Also I’m avoiding grading papers. I did plow through a pile of them today, many of them not too bad, but I can’t tell you how much I hate reading research papers that have two sources, both from the internet, when the assignment requires something altogether more substantial. At least when I procrastinate I know when to quit. To be charitable, though, it did take me a while to learn the fine art of gauging exactly how long I could put off my work. I think I’ve got it down now, though.

Laura helped me with the fudge and also with the dishes afterwards. She’s getting big enough to really help, and in fact stirred the fudge for me the whole time I was chopping chocolate. It looks a little grainy this time, but I’m sure it’ll be fine anyhow. After the fudge, I avoided grading a while longer by working on my own paper (which isn’t due until March, so there, procrastinating students!). It’s going to shape up into something interesting, I think. I’m looking forward to having some time next week to work on it at length. But for now—well, I’ve put off my grading long enough that I’m too tired now to be fair, so I’m off the hook until tomorrow. I’ll get up early and grade some more before I have to report for jury duty again.

Rendering verdicts

I had my first day of jury duty yesterday—not particularly exciting. The judge told us the week would be very light, which I’m grateful for; I don’t have to report today at all, so I get to go to work and grade papers, whoopee! In fact the Municipal Court only had one case to try yesterday at all, the city versus a teenager charged with driving with a suspended license, driving with an open container, and possessing alcohol while a minor. That was one sad looking puppy. He sat there with his grandparents and his lawyer looking like somebody was going to eat him.

I was called for his jury. I thought for sure I’d be dismissed, liberal teetotaling wacko that I am, but neither of the lawyers asked any questions, and they only dismissed two women based on either their occupations or their clothes. I still can’t figure out what those lawyers were thinking choosing me—maybe the defense thought since I was a professor I was sympathetic to students (little do they know it’s exams, the week of excuses and pleas for extra credit), and maybe the prosecutor thought I’d be well versed in understanding nuance? Who knows.

It ended up being a moot point—after choosing the jurors, the judge sent us out into the jury room so she could deal with certain matters of law that didn’t concern us, she said, where we sat for over half an hour. One guy in the room apparently had some disorder that made him unable to sit in silence, which is what everybody else seemed to want to do, because he talked nonstop about nothing until I wanted to strangle him (I always hated Seinfeld). Fortunately we were right there where I could’ve pled insanity. I’d brought a book and tried to read, so it could’ve been worse. Finally they called us back into the courtroom to tell us that thanks to the jury’s hard work the case had been disposed of. Evidently she really meant it, though. She said that many cases depended on the fact that a jury was ready and waiting in the next room. I can see her point—no pressure.

The judge said we probably wouldn’t be needed again until Thursday, which I really hope is true. I can give my own exams Wednesday instead of sending my proctors—much better all around for everybody. In the meantime I should probably get my act together and get to work. I have piles of student essays waiting for me to render a verdict.

Notes from Laura's lunchbox

Laura and Chris have been having this interesting correspondence in her lunchbox. The Daddy and Laura Monsters are getting fiercer.