Light and Momentary

Waving Wanly

Hello out there. I am still here but feeling somewhat bedraggled. It's been dreary dreary DREARY here during a time of year that always gets me down anyway. Yesterday I was looking at online classifieds and saw a job advertised in New Zealand. Wouldn't it be nice to see things peeking up out of the soil in October, instead of slimy leaves and squashed squirrels everywhere?

I don't know what it is about this town, but we always seem to have a plague of dead squirrels in the fall. The first year that we lived here, I kept waiting for a newspaper article about it. "Brain infection afflicts area squirrels, causing them to fall from trees," or something. I want to tell them, "Guys, you are squirrels. Not lemmings. You are not supposed to be plunging to your deaths here." Except (a) they're dead and (b) they're not English-speaking squirrels even before their untimely demises. So that's probably a non-starter.

Huh, I started this post with no intention of writing about dead squirrels and look at that. Give a woman a blog and there's no telling where she'll go with it.

Remember the student who challenged every single grading decision on her midterm? After a fruitless email exchange I asked the professor to review it. She re-graded it without looking at my comments -- and came up with exactly the same score. To the half-point, which is closer than I expected for an essay exam. This prompts the small and petty person inside me to say "I told you so" and "so next time don't hassle me like that" but my inner big and charitable person is sitting on my inner small and petty person so she will be quiet. Wait, is it uncharitable for my inner charitable person to sit on someone else to shut her up?

Actually, that's sort of a serious question. Did you see the column Elizabeth Foss wrote on patience? She urges us to be patient with ourselves. I have so much trouble with that. I tend to confuse "patient with myself" and "slothful." Or maybe I am just afraid that being patient with myself would prompt me to plunge headlong into sloth, like a person who thinks she's a squirrel who thinks it's a lemming. Does anybody else worry about that (probably minus the four-legged comparisons)? 

Yesterday I felt like I got some flak about not wanting to work full-time next year. Today I got some flak about not wanting to homeschool next year. ("If you like to teach, why aren't you teaching your own children?") I am feeling uncertain and gloomy. If you have any encouragement or good knock-knock jokes for me, I'd be grateful.

Knock Knock

    Who's there?

Interrupting cow.

    [raised eyebrow, because I know (and love) that joke]

Go on--

    Interrupting c--

Moooo! Knock knock.

    Who's there?

Interrupting coefficient of friction.

    Interrupting c--

Muuuuuu!

Good News, Bad News

1. GOOD: Chapter draft finished and submitted and my advisor liked it.
2. BAD: I am fielding emails from students unhappy about their midterm grades, including one who challenged every single point I docked.
3. GOOD: Plumbing repair cost <$500, not $3500.
4. BAD: Repeated changes in water pressure caused by the plumbing repair prompted our old water heater to give up the ghost.
5. GOOD: Now we have a shiny new water heater.
6. ALSO GOOD: It went out with a whimper, not a bang, so we didn't have hot water spraying all over the basement. Just dripping woefully.
7. BAD: Water heaters aren't cheap.
8. SORT OF GOOD: But it still didn't add up to $3500. My friend Jenny and I think maybe plumbers do that on purpose -- give you a colossal number so that whatever smaller total you end up with sounds really awesome. Yes, you can have a big chunk of our hard-earned money! Is that all? Don't you need a little extra? A big chunk is a lot less than $3500, you know.
9. GOOD: I made 10 photo album pages in the past week.
10. BAD: That brings me up to December 25, 2008. Uuugggghhh, I don't like making albums.
11. GOOD: Two more boys have asked me to teach them to knit. They want to chat about techniques and patterns. How many ways do I know to cast on? Which is harder, Fair Isle or entrelac? Very fun.
12. BAD (not really): Our end tables are looking awfully untidy, with all these knitting projects lying around.
13. GOOD: I am delighted with the February baby sweater. So pretty, with unexpectedly nice drape after blocking. Pix to come when I get buttons sewn on.
14. BAD: I just talked to my advisor about my goals for the week and they are going to cut way into my knitting time.
15. GOOD: She says I'm making good progress, which is motivating. Hurray! Seven months until graduation!

Tidbits

My 9yo was complaining about the kids in his class who said his behind was as big as an elephant's. "What'd you say?" I asked him. "I said they were as heavy as top quarks that had been through a Higgs field." "What'd they say?" I asked. He told me, "They said, 'What?'"

I'll bet they did.

One of my sons (I am not allowed to say which one) has turned into an obsessive knitter. Obsessive as in pleading with me at bedtime -- "can't I just do four more stitches? two more?" (I said no. Because I always stop knitting right away when it's bedtime. Ahem.)

I am almost done with a February baby sweater in beautiful caramel-colored wool. It is not quite caramel, actually; it is the luscious color of a slice of pumpkin bread -- not orange, but with a glow beneath the brown. It is a fabulous redhead color. When I am done I am going to make a February lady sweater for myself in the same wool. This is so baby Stella can wail when she turns 13, "Why did you dress me like a 1970s appliance?" Because I loved you so, my darling.

Today the plumber came to do a minor repair which could end up as a $3500 repair. Eek. Also, LALALALA I'm just going to keep knitting up my pretty wool into matchy-matchy sweaters and not think about four-figure payments to plumbers right now. He is coming back tomorrow in an attempt to do a cheaper fix. Is there a patron saint for plumbers?

I am the first Google result for "R data frame tricks." To the person who arrived here that way, my apologies.

One of my sons just came downstairs to tell me about a creepy thought that was bothering him as he lay in bed trying to sleep. I was planning out my prayer strategy as he was telling me the gory details, and so I was a little surprised to hear that he had a different plan. "So could I have a vial of hydrochloric acid to keep under my pillow?" No, I said. You may not. How about we pray to your guardian angel together?

He was having none of it. "Nitric?"

I am resolved not to post again until I get my revised chapter 2 sent off to my advisor. This should not be hard, but I have been kind of stuck. (I have also been kind of busy. The baby is determined to give the turtle a kiss -- just dead set on it.) I found this lovely prayer today. Maybe it will help. Think of me. :-/

Fifteen Years On

Fifteen years ago exactly, I was in the last semester of my MA program and writhing with anxiety about what came next. I had felt called into this field. After discerning the best I could I packed up my belongings and moved away from the big city to get a master's degree.

Small Freedoms Redux

So it turns out that the preschool teachers got burned last year. A mother brought her child to school on a chilly day without a jacket, which the teachers took to mean that she didn't think a jacket was needed. Jacketless, the child went outside to play. The mother went ballistic when she found out.

This is our fourth year at this preschool (Joe went there before Pete was old enough) and I have been so pleased with it. The director has five children; she's pretty much unflappable. She loves God and she loves kids and she sets a great tone for the teachers. That's part of why I was surprised by the conversation I had with Pete's teacher on Tuesday -- she's not usually autocratic like that. I wondered if something else was going on.

Pete and I sat down with Miss Barb for a chat this morning when I dropped him off. I had told him that he always needed to listen respectfully to his teachers, and that usually he had to obey them. I had told him that sometimes he might say, "Could we negotiate?" if he and a teacher had a difference of opinion -- that maybe he could have offered to carry the jacket outside and lay it on the bench in case he got cold. (With this nauseating Roman Polanski story in the news, I will not suggest to my children that they owe unswerving obedience to any adult. Not that saying no did that poor girl much good.)

Miss Barb was fine with "Could we negotiate?" and very sympathetic to my point of view; she just didn't want to be in the line of fire if another mother had a cow. I assured her there was no cow-bearing in the offing. Pete wore a sweatshirt today of his own volition. I think we're good.