Light and Momentary

Spoiled for Choice

In addition to my extra organic vegetables, I have an extra job offer.

Both of the women who interviewed me offered me a job.  Now I have to figure out what to do.  Job #1:  providing therapy for kids birth to three, mostly in their homes.  I love working with young kids (mostly) and I have a really good feeling from the supervisor.  I would ease into that position, building up a caseload gradually.  It's mostly in-home therapy, and they wouldn't reimburse me for travel time or mileage.  I could be asked to see a family anywhere in the county, so mileage could add up.

Job #2:  evals and therapy at a nursing home in my neighborhood.  It's walking distance from my house, the big kids' school, Joe's preschool, Pete's babysitter, and campus.  The hours would be predictable and they want me to start on Wednesday of next week.  I would never show up to find that my patient had forgotten about a therapy appointment and headed out to the grocery store.  I have really enjoyed some of the work I've done in long-term care.  Almost everybody I met was pleasant and friendly.

But I'm not sure about the director of rehab.  She made a big deal about how a 45-minute session needs to be precisely 45 minutes long.  "Not 44," she said.  "But don't go over 45 minutes, either, because that costs us money."  She'd expect my productivity to be at or above 90%, meaning I'd need to bill for 54 minutes of every hour I spent in the building.

And she wants more hours than I want to put in.  She'd like me there 15 hours a week.  I told her that was more than I could commit to, but she kept pushing.

The hourly rate is the same for the two jobs, though the travel time difference makes Job #2 more lucrative.  I think I'm going to call the DoR back and tell her no thank you.  I think.  I can't quite make up my mind.

A Surfeit of Salad

Okay, this week is Mission De-Green.  Our produce drawers are overflowing.  We get a weekly delivery of organic vegetables and I am behind on using them.  I told Elwood P. that they would all be eaten by Monday of next week.  I'm beginning to think I need to have a vegetable party, though.  Would you come to a vegetable party?

Tonight I am roasting a chicken and serving it with slow-cooked zucchini (farewell, three big supermarket zucchini and one plum tomato), roasted orange beets, a little salad of bok choy, red pepper, cucumber, and carrot in an Asian-y dressing, and braised lettuce.  Cooked lettuce sounds pretty odd to me, too, but it is the first of three --three! -- heads of lettuce to be eaten in six days.  We are none of us huge green salad lovers, and desperate times call for desperate measures. 

Still to be dealt with:

• one bunch of beet greens
• two more heads of lettuce
• a bunch of leftover sweet potato, probably destined for muffins
• a giant cabbage
• more bok choy (this bunch of bok choy regenerates when I'm not looking, I think, because I have made about five different dishes with it and there's still more)
• five tomatoes
• a forlorn green pepper half and a perkier red pepper half
• and the leftovers from tonight's veggie extravaganza

There are also carrots and celery and onions and potatoes, but those I'm not worried about using.

This is such a spoiled American post, isn't it?  Help, I have too many beautiful organic vegetables!  Just ignore me if it sounds too much like "Let them eat ratatouille."  But if you have any good ways to finish off a self-regenerating bunch of bok choy, I'd love to hear them.

Bo & Luke, Redux

This morning I was scheduled to cantor 10:30 Mass.  At 9:53 I was in the van, ready to go and practice with the organist.  Unfortunately, the van wasn't moving.

It started right up and I put it in reverse.  But when I stepped on the gas, it just sat there and growled at me.  I put it in drive (experimentally, since I didn't want to crash into the garage) and then back into reverse.  No go.  How was I going to get to church on time if I couldn't get out of the driveway?

I got out and left the door open.  I gave the hood a nudge, and then I nudged it again a little harder.  The van started moving and I hopped in the open door, thinking, "Good thing I didn't really give it a shove."  It went very cooperatively to church and we haven't had any trouble with it all day.

When I told Elwood about it he said, "You did what?!  You pushed the van while it was in reverse and no one was inside?!  Next time come and get me so I can help you!"  Noted, Elwood.

As I was swinging into the driver's seat with the van in motion I felt a little like one of the Dukes of Hazzard -- if only the Duke brothers had driven a minivan with a soccer sticker on its rear end.

Hey, did you watch the Dukes when you were a kid?  Everybody, but everybody, in my sixth grade class, watched DoH faithfully and the brothers' relative cuteness was hotly debated -- at least by the sixth grade girls.  Was it ever winter in Hazzard County?  Daisy must have been a mite chilly in the cold weather since she didn't seem to own any clothing that came below mid-thigh.

With that meteorological mystery I will bid you good night.  Think happy car thoughts for me, please, because I need it to get me to Other University and back tomorrow.

In Which I Smack Myself Upside the Head

I'm pretty sure I haven't told you this yet-- I don't live in the town where I'm going to get my degree.  I got my advising committee's okay to take my stats classes at the university here in the town where I live, and my plan for this academic year was to take stats and do my first-year research project, and go only rarely to the Other University.

Except-- my advisor is teaching a really cool-sounding seminar for doctoral students during the first half of this semester.  Elwood rearranged his schedule so he's working four ten-hour days (how supportive is that? props to Elwood, yes?), and I'm taking her seminar on his day off.

Which means less time for my first-year project.  My project director has sons herself and she knows there are only so many balls a person can keep in the air at one time.  I am supposed to get her a new draft by the middle of next week, and I just spent a fruitless hour or so searching for the version from the end of last semester.

I didn't worry at first.  I dug around in a few different directories.  I searched by date modified and by file extension.  I searched the /tmp directory.  I searched the flash drive and my various email accounts, thinking surely I would have left a copy in more than one place.

No dice.  Had I overwritten it?  Had I done some massive control-Z and lost all my revisions?  Where could it be?

The whole time there was a little voice in my head saying, "What about the laptop? Did you do those revisions on the laptop?"  I kept swatting it away like an annoying midge.

Wouldn't you know, when I finally checked the laptop, thinking, "Oh, no, it won't be here," it popped right up.

Wait, this is the most boring post ever.  So I will tell you that as of tonight there is a new resident in our house -- a leopard gecko named Gonzo (at least until the boys can agree on something better).  We have been going around about pets for a long time, with me saying, "I have enough living things requiring my attention already," and Elwood saying, "The boys should have a pet."  Also with me saying, "Maybe something small and furry but not a rat or a mouse?" and him saying, "No, let's get something with scales."  He won.  We have a secondhand gecko.  I am going to watch closely and see if he can teach me how to put my money where my mouth is when I say, "I'm ready to climb the walls."

Oh, bummer, leopard geckos don't have those cool adhesive toes, according to Wikipedia.  How I would love to have adhesive toes.  (<--If I do one of those memes that requires me to quote a closing sentence from random posts, that one's going to be hard to explain.)

Wish Me Luck

Job interview tomorrow morning, and one at the nursing home in my neighborhood next week.  Fingers crossed.

Random Bullets for a Frosty Thursday

• Brains are complicated.  I thought I had a reasonable background in neuroanatomy but tonight's bathtub reading, a long long painfully long article on the basal ganglia circuits, disabused me of that notion. 
• From the article:  "Ecstasy is not suitable for the treatment of stuttering, because of a suspected risk that it might induce Parkinson's disease."  Um, toxicity, anyone?  Addictive potential?  Legality?  Not to mention the minor issue of walking around high in the pursuit of fluent speech?
• This was the first week of class and I'm liking the new stats professor a lot so far.  She is much quieter than the prof from last semester, but she is funny and smart and I think it will be a useful class.  I had an übergeek moment, looking over the syllabus and thinking, "Oh, ANCOVA!  I've been wanting to learn about ANCOVA!"
• I have not been terribly enthusiastic about the start of the semester, in large part because I need a babysitter during my stats class.  I have been waiting and praying and expecting it all to come together and I was getting nowhere.  Everyone and her dog seemed to have a commitment at the exact same time as my stats class.  This afternoon I asked if I could hang a flyer in the sorority house around the corner.  Fifteen minutes later I got a call from someone who's available when I need her.  We're going to talk tomorrow and OH I hope it works out.  I have cobbled-together arrangements I can rely on for a little while, but I want to get something firmed up quickly.
• I have a job interview on Wednesday.  I have no idea what kind of money to ask for if we happen to get that far. 
• You can chuck a chipotle in adobo sauce into a pot of simmering beans and wind up with mild heat and pleasant smoky flavor.  I keep hoping that I can teach my kids to like spicy food but they are not on board with this idea so far.  But I have a plan:  tonight, one pepper.  Next week, three peppers.  By spring they'll be licking the adobo sauce off their fingers and asking for more.

My Wheelbarrow Needs Some Axle Grease

This was not a day destined for remembrance in the annals of good mothering.  Mass was a struggle.  The weather is and has been foul and the kids were bouncing off the walls this afternoon.  We went swimming, which worked well to siphon off some of that energy, but the 7yo caused trouble in the locker room and was very upset afterward.  He was not upset about his bad judgment but about the consequence imposed:  Elwood told him he'd have to wait until tomorrow to have one of the doughnuts we brought home.  I know it sounded, to those of you in the surrounding counties, as if Elwood had threatened to chain him in the leaky part of the basement overnight while ravenous rats fought over his digits, but I assure you it wasn't the case.

(Parenthetically, the me of five years ago would be appalled at the food-reward-punishment business that transpired tonight.  Five years ago I had no white flour and no white sugar in my pantry and the trans fats in a Krispy Kreme doughnut gave me the all-overs.  Five years ago I categorically would not have allowed my children to participate in the Krispy Kreme promotion that gives them a doughnut for each A on their report cards because I was skeptical about (a) traditional grading methods, (b) food rewards in general, and (c) teaching kids to associate achievement with trips to Krispy Kreme specifically.  I would also have frowned on Elwood's discipline strategy and probably would have added to Marty's noise with my protestations that it was a Bad Idea for the long haul.

(The me of 2007 waves wanly at the me of 2002 and says, "Um, yeah, very principled of you.  Now wouldn't you like a doughnut?"  Secretly, the me of 2002 thought that hot Krispy Kremes were delicious.)

Back at the ranch I set the boys to work mucking out the pigsty picking up the Legos (which they spread across the floor of their own free will earlier today, so why do they find it so objectionable to be instructed to pick them up? why especially given that we pick up Legos every night world without end amen?) and sat down at the dining room table with my face in my hands.  The repetition gets me down sometimes, the grinding sameness of the lessons I try to teach them.

But as I sat there two things popped into my head in quick succession:  the cathedral at Chartres, and the end of Ephesians 2, the bit that says we are "members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.  In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord."

I thought about the twelfth-century laborers who brought the loads of stone that would be fashioned into the walls of the great cathedral.  Did they imagine what those stones would become?  Did they guess that 900 years later we would still be inspired by the work they began?

I thought about a cranky laborer -- not one of the eager penitents, but a middle-aged guy tired of pushing a wheelbarrow on rutted roads and breathing in the rock dust.  This guy is feeling a weary skepticism about the whole cathedral idea.  J'ai besoin d'une bière, he says.  Ou peut-être un beignet du Krispy Kreme.  I resolved, again, to keep pushing forward -- to focus less on the imperfections of my rocks and the weight of my cart, and more on the skill of the master stonemason, and the promises he has made.

Hopeful

Back in June I applied for a job at a nursing home in my neighborhood.  Long-term care is not my favorite setting.  The work is mostly swallowing assessment and therapy with some language/cognitive stuff thrown in, and I much prefer the reverse ratio.  But in my last job I was surprised to see how much I enjoyed working with the residents and their families.  The money's always good and this facility is an easy walk from my house.  I sent in a resume and got a couple of requests to interview with facilities further away -- there was nothing here in town.

Tonight I got a call from one of the company's recruiters.  He did a brief phone interview despite the background kid noise, and he said he'd check and see if there's an opening in town now.  Wouldn't that be cool?  Say a prayer if you're a pray-er, please.

The Hazards of Self-Serve

While I was sitting here typing, Pete went to the fridge and opened it up.  He got himself a yummy-looking carton and a toddler cup, and took it all the table, where he poured himself a nice cold glass of...chicken broth.  Ick.

Memed

Erin tagged me for the meme in which I tell you six weird things about me.  Here goes:

1. I am in my eleventh year of continuous breastfeeding.
2. I am a word geek.  I just went on a fruitless hunt for our copy of Fowler's usage book because I cannot remember the difference between continuous and continual.  I always notice when people use "enormity" to refer to size.  Not an obnoxious kind of noticing, since I'm not a prescriptivist, but a consistent kind of noticing.  (While at dictionary.com I noticed that they prefer continual to continous for something like breastfeeding, but I'll let it stand anyway.)
3. I have not owned a TV since 1998 and I like it that way. 
4. My heart has some anomalous wiring that causes it to race wildly with exertion.  I'm fine if I take a beta blocker.  Periodically I think about surgical correction, which is supposedly no big deal.  But surgery? on the bits of me that tell my heart to beat? --I think I'll stick with the drugs for a while.
5. At this moment both the inbox for my real email address and the cubby in which I keep papers in need of filing are completely empty.  Completely! Empty!  How weird is that?  (One week ago today there were 449 messages in that selfsame inbox, so this is indeed an odd state of affairs for me.)
6. You might not guess it from the state of my house, but I love to vacuum.  It soothes my soul to glide over all those bits of lint/shreds of cheese/wayward Christmas tree needles and watch them disappear forever.  Today, unfortunately, my vacuum cleaner belt broke while I was getting up the last of the Christmas tree leavings.  Sometimes I let errands slide for weeks at a time, but I can tell you with certainty that I will be going to get a replacement belt in the next day or two.  I don't need a TV, or a cell phone, or a snowblower or a DVD player or a PDA. But don't take away my vacuum cleaner.

I won't tag anyone because this one has been floating around for a while.  Consider yourself tagged if you want to play along, or answer in the comments if you don't have a blog.

Pictures from Gladlyville

Since I last posted, my oldest hit double digits (picture quality is poor because we turned out the lights in the dining room to sing "Happy Birthday") and we had a magical New Year's celebration.

I connected with my inner web-slinger.  (Bet you wish you had a light-up Spiderman mask for the days when you need some extra superpowers.)

Pete has been especially cute lately.  Today he wanted to wear his brother's knight costume (the dark streak down his shirt? he had just overturned a glass of water on his head), but then decided he needed to nurse not long afterward.  Duly refreshed, he pushed a dining room chair all the way into the office, so he could retrieve a book from the paperback shelf.   What did he need to read so badly?  Hamlet.  Let's hope Sir Pete has a happier end than the prince of Denmark.

This last one is chronologically out of order but it makes me laugh.  We have a swinging door between our kitchen and dining room that's almost always open.  Joe decided this was a perfect place to stash some Advent candy filched from the bag one night when no one was looking.  Life is hard, Joe says.  Keep chocolate close at hand.