Light and Momentary

Back to it

This last week was my spring break, and for the first time in many years I left town for part of it. Back in the fall I was asked to serve as a program reviewer for another university: they offered to pay me to come out and evaluate the quality and sustainability of their grad program, which is located in an area where I have good friends. Sure, I said, I can do that.

I left on time change Sunday and drove to my friend Becky's house. We have an ongoing daily text conversation about everything under the sun, but we hadn't seen each other in person since the summer of 2021. I'd never met her youngest; I hadn't seen her husband in-- hm, probably 20 years. We went to a concert that night, I got to tour her office the next morning, and then I headed out after that.

The weather was worse than I expected, and I hate driving in bad weather. The sky dropped so much slush on the front of my little rental car that its cruise control cut out because the radar system couldn't function. But I kept plugging and made it to the other side of the state, where I had lunch with friend #2. After one more hour of icky driving, I got to the city where I'd be staying.

I had expected the university to put me up in a hotel that was clean but un-fancy, so I was pretty surprised by the reality: mammoth chandeliers, high ceilings, much swankier than my usual hotel choices. I had a little time to review my materials for the next day before I headed out to dinner with my friends who live in the city. We had the nicest dinner together -- we talked and laughed and talked some more.

The next morning I met my co-reviewer and we headed into two days of meetings. I wasn't expecting the job to be so interesting, and it was fun to be looking at the program as an outsider, with the freedom to recommend anything at all. They built in time for us to start drafting our report, which we appreciated. I had an uneventful trip back on Wednesday evening.

Spring break is always filled with grading, and I hadn't really done the math on how many hours of grading I would be trying to squish into Thursday and Friday. I wound up working a fair amount yesterday and I'm still not finished. It will be okay, though; the grading always gets done. Spring break is usually a lonely week for me -- usually I am on my own doing the least pleasant parts of my job while the kids are in school -- but this one was the opposite of lonely. 

WWJD, IJHS?

It was chilly today, chilly enough that I was wishing for gloves when I went for a run. It was chilly enough that I was not expecting to see Foundation Snake curled up by the daffodils. I think he was regretting his choice to sunbathe on this damp gray day (insofar as a creature with a brain the size of a lentil can be said to experience regret), because he was looking pretty torpid when I prodded him gently with a stick.

"Maybe I could pick him up with barbecue tongs and drop him down the storm sewer," I thought to myself. But when I opened the garage door, I remembered that the barbecue tongs were indoors, in the kitchen. And maybe this will sound weird to those of you who are less squeamish about snakes, but I didn't want to pick him up with something that would eventually be used on food I hoped to eat.

"Hm," I said to myself as I looked around the garage. 

My eyes fell on the rakes. "Will I have more nightmares about snakes if I try to move him or if I don't try to move him?" I asked myself. (I have been having nightmares about snakes in the house since the Unspeakable Event.) "Is it a bad idea to move him with an implement that is designed to bring him closer to me?" I asked myself. I decided that I would plunge in anyway.

Instead of using the rake like a rake, I adopted a sort of croquet-player stance, or at least the sort of stance croquet players might use if they were aiming their mallets at cold-blooded living creatures associated with evils including the Fall, countless deaths* by suffocation and poisoning, and unrelenting slitheriness.

*I know, okay; I KNOW garter snakes are not venomous and can't suffocate anything and still I cannot keep from shuddering at the thought of them. MUCH slithery. VERY slitheriness.

Wielding my rake like a croquet mallet, I sent Foundation Snake flying down the driveway. He landed with his pale belly upward, his body arranged in curves that I would call graceful if they weren't so darned...serpentine. If his little lentil brain does have any regret circuitry, it must have been lighting up like a Christmas tree.

Belly-up snake in the driveway did not seem like a big improvement over belly-down snake by the daffodils, so I tried another croquet maneuver. This time he landed in the street, unmoving, and I found myself on the horns of a dilemma.

If I left him in the street, he would probably get run over. If I scooted him into the nearest yard, it would be a failure in charity. I do not like the lady who lives directly across from us but I do take "love thy neighbor" very seriously. I believe Jesus understands why I do not like her and also does not want me to yeet any snakes at her. So that option was out. 

There's a narrow vacant lot next to Grumpy Neighbor's house which seemed like a good second choice, but I am friendly with the neighbor on the other side. Probably she would not be thrilled with snake-yeeting that directed Foundation Snake closer to her foundation. I didn't want to try to put him in the storm sewer because (a) he would die there and (b) my aim was not great with my rake-turned-croquet-mallet. I can believe that snakes are good for the environment even as I wish very strongly for them not to be in my own personal environment.

I went back inside. "Marie," I said, "I have an ethical question."

While I was inside, Foundation Snake shook off his torpor, righted himself, and headed off to parts unknown. At least I hope they are unknown. Maybe the likeliest outcome is that he wriggled back up the driveway and into his favorite tiny hole in the mortar. Maybe I could spackle that little hole the next time I catch him outside. Maybe then he'll find new digs until it gets warm enough for the mason to come out and do something more permanent.

The title of this post stands for What Would Jesus Do, If Jesus Hated Snakes? Perhaps it seems to you that the obvious solution is for me to stop hating snakes. But it doesn't really seem to be a decision of my conscious mind. If the snakes on your property were causing you recurring nightmares, what would you do? 

Climbing then and now

In January 2020 I posted about finishing a painfully long route at the climbing gym, graded 5.10a; the next month I finished an equally long 5.10b. The month after that, the world shut down, and I haven't climbed consistently since then.

In the interim, the climbing gym personnel completely changed over: new manager, new route-setters. Somewhere in there they decided collectively that their old grades had been too soft, so a route that used to get a 5.8 rating would now be a 5.7 or perhaps a 5.6. A 5.6 rating is supposed to mean it's beginner-friendly, but it got a lot harder to find easy routes.

Also in the interim, I started lifting weights and added a fair amount of bulk to my frame. (Seriously, you guys: I tried on Marie's blazer after she said, "But my shoulders are much bigger than yours," and I couldn't move my arms AT ALL. I needed, like, a sausage-stuffing machine to pour myself into those sleeves. Her shoulders are not actually bigger than mine, even though she is 8 inches taller than I am.) The muscle is an advantage, but at the same time it's harder to move a heavier body up the wall. This is a tension Joe has often talked about: wanting to build muscle for lifting, wanting to stay light for climbing. 

The result of all this was that my sense of what I could and couldn't do at the climbing gym came unmoored. Was I struggling on a route labeled 5.7 because it corresponded to a 2019 5.9 route? Or because it was set by a new employee with no clue what it's like to be a middle-aged climber with a 66-inch wingspan? Or because [self-critical thoughts redacted here, though they remain very loud in my brain] and I should just give up?

In January 2023 I decided to buy an annual membership, and I've been climbing every week with Pete. I would put the humbling:pleasant ratio at about 65:35, because he keeps nudging me to do hard things. But I think I am beginning to see some progress.

We have been doing more bouldering than we used to, climbing shorter routes with no ropes. I do not love the idea of jumping down from holds 15 feet in the air, even though there are mats on the floor, so part of the issue for me is mental. Also, though, the boulder problems are hard. 

Before the pandemic I could often but not always climb V2 boulders (I don't know why they have two different systems for rating difficulty) and I was just starting to do V3s. But when I started climbing again this year, the V2s felt entirely out of reach.

Pete has been super-patient with me, giving me both encouragement and beta (climber-speak for step-by-step explanations of how to get from Point A to Point B). He can propel his body across the wall with a combination of control and grace that seems impossible for this 52-year-old body to imitate. "Put your left foot there," he told me today. "My LEFT foot?" I asked him skeptically. "Your left foot," he said again, with more patience than I deserve. And do you know, after a few false starts I sent my first post-COVID V2 route.

"Now try the green one," he urged me. The green one felt ridiculous two weeks ago. Imagine putting one foot on a surface that's at hip height, and then standing up on that foot with minimal upper-body support. Like, say you have a light switch you can hold with one hand, but mostly you have to push with your bent leg without losing your balance. Hard, right? Pete and I have this recurring conversation at the climbing gym: he says, "now stand up on your foot," and I say, "I can't," because my legs don't really work like that here in my sixth decade. (There's a similar maneuver in this video (0:57-1:01), but I have two solid handholds there.)

"Hm," he said, looking again at the route. "You could also put get both hands on the next hold and pull up instead of pushing up." This is not a move that 2020 Jamie could have managed, because she did not have the upper-body strength for it, but it worked well for 2023 Jamie. And it felt really satisfying to finish a second tough boulder problem in one session after weeks of frustration.

Hm, now that I have written all this out I am thinking it is unlikely to be as interesting to anyone else as it is to me. But I want to remember the sensation of pulling myself up to that fat green hold: effortful but doable. I spent a lot of the session thinking tailspinny thoughts. I told myself I was too tired, inadequately fueled. I was a little shaky when I tackled the green route for the last time, and the voice in my head said, "What if you FALL and HIT YOUR HEAD?" 

The voice in my head is not very likely to say "what if you finish the route and feel really pleased with yourself?" But that's what actually happened.

Enthusiasm tempered

I finished Unraveling today and I am less enthusiastic than I was in my last post. I think it's largely an editing issue. In one chapter there were spots where she used very similar phrases close together on the same page, in a way that I would absolutely understand in a second draft but found grating in a published book. The diversity of topics that seemed pleasingly eclectic early on seemed a little more scattershot toward the end of the book -- I'm still not clear how the section on Fibonacci numbers was supposed to fit. 

Maybe because I know more about planning and knitting sweaters than I do about shearing and spinning fleece, I had less patience with her uncertainties in those chapters; maybe a non-knitter would like those better than I did. Or maybe it's just hard to write a whole book about making a sweater and hold the reader's interest all the way through. I had a similar experience with Adrienne Martini's book Sweater Quest -- the first half was more fun than the second half. Final verdict: glad I finished it, would still recommend it, but the recommendation is a little more measured now.

A couple of interesting books about women that might be niche recommendations

I am reading Peggy Orenstein's pandemic memoir, Unraveling, and I am really enjoying it. She'd always been a knitter, but during the pandemic she decided to learn how to shear a sheep, process and card the fleece, and spin her own yarn. But I don't think -- I'm not sure, but I really don't think -- it's too fiber-artsy for the non-fiber-arts-inclined among us. And you guys, there is SO much interesting stuff woven in (ha! see what I did there!) among the spinning bits. For instance, she discusses:

• research quantifying the amount of labor required of Viking women to produce sails in a time before spinning wheels
• textile millworkers as key drivers of both organized labor and the women's movement
• the face recognition abilities of sheep (better than mine!)

She has a lot to say about the fashion industry, and it's well timed for me given my recent forays into more sustainable clothing. The writing is zippy and engaging, and it's such an evocative book. That was a wild time to be alive, and lament and uncertainty are beautifully interleaved with fabric factoids and anti-fast-fashion segments. Enthusiastically recommended, with the caveat that I might have more patience for passages about sheep breeds than the average reader.

Yesterday I finished Trollope novel #14, Miss Mackenzie. On one of my recent-ish book posts, Nicole-the-Victorian-lit-professor (as distinct from Canadian Nicole, whose teaching interests lie more in the yoga-ward direction) asked me what I thought about Trollope's female characters, and the answer is that I am generally a fan. In contrast to Dickens, who has approximately five female characters to whom he assigns different names across all of his books, Trollope usually does a nice job creating interesting characters who also happen to be women. I had low expectations for this book because of its obscurity, but I'm glad I read it.

I wish I knew of a Trollope-loving corner of the internet. There are UK and US Trollope societies, but they seem to be a little too academic for my taste. I want a 1990s-ish bulletin board, or something like Pemberley, only Trollope-flavored. Lady Glencora Palliser makes an appearance late in Miss Mackenzie and I was so pleased to see her there-- alive and well, not yet a duchess, presumably rolling her eyes affectionately at Plantagenet's plans to decimalize English currency. Alas, the number of people to whom I can say, "You guys, you guys, it's Lady Glencora Palliser!" is approximately zero.

Well, I did say it to my husband, who nodded patiently if bemusedly, but you know what I mean.

Day 50

My 30-day dress challenge turned me into a Wool& fangirl, and I started a 100-day challenge on day 31. Today is the halfway point. Do you remember when I posted about how my swingy black tank dress caused the jam-session guy to ask me if I was a nun? That's my 100-day dress and I love it. It's cozy but never hot, and it lends itself to all kinds of layering adventures: shirts underneath, tunics atop, knitwear every which way. I have an eShakti wrap dress that is very pretty but a little too revealing, and today I wore it over my challenge dress. No cleavage issues, no skirt-blowing-open surprises when the wind came gusting off the prairie. I wondered if it would be too bulky to have that much yardage tucked underneath the wrap dress, but I think it works. (Facial expression caption: the person in this photo does not love taking selfies. Least favorite part of the challenge.)

So far Stella seems to be the only person in my life who has noticed that I am doing this admittedly rather odd thing. She told me that today's ensemble made me look like a Disney princess, and I did not ask whether this was a good look or a bad look. (She's not the only one to think the eShakti dress has a Disney princess vibe. Once when I wore it to class one of my students once said to me, "Dr. Gladly! You have Merida's hair AND you have her dress too!") My friend Beth, the one who encouraged me to give it a whirl, texts me every so often asking if my husband has commented on the wardrobe shift yet. So far the answer is no. One of my colleagues said something complimentary about "that dress you wore yesterday," not recognizing that I was wearing the selfsame dress again.

Sometimes I will only wear the challenge dress for part of the day, and put on something different to teach. Only sometimes, though -- mostly I love the structure of knowing what I will wear while retaining a bit of freedom to accessorize.

When I first heard about this challenge it sounded implausible. Like, c'mon, of course the clothes get stinky. Also: it's wool -- how could you not get overheated wearing wool every day? But it turns out they were telling the truth: an overnight airing does the trick, for their leggings as well as their dresses. And even as a person whose inner furnace is set to ROAST far more often than she might like, I'm finding that the temperature control element of their marketing materials holds up as well. 

Wool& doesn't do promos but here's a WoolX referral link for a $20 coupon, if you want some magic leggings or magic PJs of your very own.

More thoughts on leisure activities that require persistence

Today I came home from work and plunked myself down in the armchair. I picked up a project I started knitting almost 3 years ago, and I said to myself, "I am tired of knitting this thing." It reminded me of my post from earlier this week about books that I have to make myself read: I spend a not-inconsiderable proportion of my leisure time doing things that are more annoying than pleasant in the moment.

This project is a design by Ysolda Teague, a pair of colorwork mittens with some bells and whistles. They have a flip top, they have a lining (pulled out in the picture below), they have a fancypants braided cast-on. Unfortunately, they also have a gauge issue.

This is not my first go-round with Ysolda's mitt patterns and gauge issues. Gauge has bitten me in the butt on two other Ysolda projects, actually.. The last time I made a pair of Ysolda mitts, I started over THREE TIMES in an effort to get them right. But! Alas! I used to have the problem that my knitting was looser than expected, and the finished product would be too big. These mittens, though, are too snug.

I don't get it, actually. My gauge is spot on and I have average-sized hands. Did the pattern get rushed to print because she was trying to wrap up the Colourwork Club? Is there some other weird alchemy where the size can be right and the gauge can be right and the finished item can still be too small? It's a mystery.

Maybe if I tell you what the steps are, I will talk myself into completing them. Maybe they will grow when I block them, or maybe I have a friend with Lilliputian hands who would love them. We shall see. Anyway, here are the tasks standing between me and a pair of completed mittens.

• There are only ten rounds left in the main mitten chart, plus a little I-cord button loop. Painful level: yellow; definitely fiddly.
• Next up: flip-top openings (top and bottom) and thumb. Painful level: orange shading to red.
• After that, the lining. Painful level: yellow shading to green.
• Finally, the finishing-- tidying up, weaving ends, adding buttons. Painful level: fiery flame-bright red. Not my favorite part of any project and this one is extra-complicated.

It's really rare for me not to finish a knitting project, even if it marinates for a while. Which is a little funny, given that in this space I tend to grouse about my knitting more often than I say happy things about my knitting. I grumbled about this selfsame project nine months ago today, as a matter of fact. I wonder if I'd be happier if my leisure time included more purely leisurely things and fewer things that feel like work. Or maybe I am just wired this way. How about you? How much of your leisure time do you spend doing things that you enjoy more in the rearview mirror? Do tell -- I'm very curious.

Bon courage

This semester, friends, I have done a series of brave things that I can't tell you much about. I was left queasy and disheartened by the outcome of deliberations I was part of, and I resolved to see what I could do to make the situation better. I made a couple of scary appointments; I wrote (and rewrote!) a couple of scary letters. Today I sat in a room with the deliberating group again, and I told someone very senior that he was wrong, and why. My voice was calm but my heart was thumping loudly.

When I did the scary things I was mostly focused on the fact that they were scary (and hard, and time-consuming). But here is what happened as a result: five of the people involved in various steps of this process said, "Thank you for raising these issues; I agree with you." Best of all -- hurray! huzzah! -- a bad decision was reversed. 

So this post is to say that if you have been hesitating to rock a boat that needs rocking, or to push back on a bad outcome, or to do some other flavor of hard thing-- maybe it's a good day to take a step forward. Sometimes people are just waiting for someone to say, "This needs to change."

Books that reward persistence

Nicole posted today about abandoning books, and it made me think about books that I've kept reading when I wasn't enthusiastic about them. Sometimes it's a great decision, and sometimes it means throwing away additional hours of my life on something that wasn't worth the time.

When we were living in Scotland an older friend from church gave me a copy of Far from the Madding Crowd. I did not enjoy the first three-quarters of that book, you guys. I was pushing myself to finish it because it had been a gift from this kind and helpful person, but I was forcing myself to read it. And then! to my amazement! the last quarter of the book was really, really good.

A friend's recommendation is not always sufficient. I kept waiting for the part when I would like Middlemarch, because a different friend said, "You will absolutely love it!" I did not love it: not at the beginning, not in the middle, and not even at the end. That was a LOT of waiting fruitlessly for things to improve.

It's pretty common for me to start a book, set it aside, and then come back to it. Two of the best books I read in 2022 were Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, and I had to start them both more than once before they caught my interest.

But it's also pretty common for me to buy a book, read part of it, and then feel that I ought to finish it because of some blend of stubbornness and enduring susceptibility to the sunk cost fallacy.

You must have books in both categories, too. What's something that you were glad you put in the effort to finish? What's something that wasn't actually worth the time it required?

One of these days it will stop surprising me

Today was a long full day at work (they're all feeling like long full days right now), and I walked home under spitting gray skies feeling tired and sick. I walked in the door and took a COVID test. But I had told Pete that we could climb today, so when my test was negative I changed into workout clothes and headed off, a little reluctantly, to the climbing gym. 

After 45 minutes at the gym I felt seven million times better -- perky, upbeat, singing happy songs about dinner. This always seems a little weird to me. I can read about the mood-boosting effects of exercise, but when my own personal mood is boosted by exercise I'm always like, "Wait, this is not fair. Why can't I get my mood boosted by lying on the couch with a bag of Lindor truffles?"

I am shifting my focus back toward endurance training for the first time in a while. It feels pretty terrible right now, but bodies are adaptable and so I am just going to lean into the terrible. My plan is to dial back my lower-body weight-training to about once a week. I'm not willing to give up deadlifting, because nothing else makes me feel quite as mighty, but I find it very tricky to combine tough lifting sessions and tough running sessions. So: for a while I am going to run more and lift less, with the goal of maintaining my current level of strength while also getting enough rest to absorb the benefits of my running workouts.

Pete and I have been climbing more lately, which I am counting as a strength + cardio + flexibility cross-training session. I am trying not to focus on the ground I lost over the pandemic; I'm just going to try to keep nudging it forward from where I am.