Light and Momentary

WWYP Wednesday, Vol. 4

This week I am weeding where I'm planted by calling the doctor to request a thyroid test. I'm tired all the time; my body adjusted its set point upward about 9 months ago and those pounds will not budge; my hair is falling out. If I spend nine hours in bed and still want a nap the next day, something is not right. I think it will be easier for me to tend my house if I am a little perkier.

More of the story

My husband has three sisters. The middle sister was my maid of honor; she and my daughter share a family name. She and her husband agreed to be our children's guardians in the event of disaster.

After a long struggle with infertility, they arranged to adopt a baby girl. Just a few weeks before the baby was born, they discovered they were expecting. Now they have one little girl who will be 2 in July and another who turned 1 earlier this month.

Her husband was just diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. It's stage IV. They're saying he has no more than a year.

She is asking for prayers: first, for miraculous healing; second, for strength (both physical and emotional); third, for a peaceful transition as they ease their younger daughter out of their bed and into a crib.

Please pray

My brother-in-law is in the hospital, seriously ill.

WWYP Wednesday, vol. 3

This week I have a different kind of problem. This time I know exactly what to do about the situation that's bothering me, but I have yet to muster the gumption to actually do it. Remember how we turned our former office into a bedroom? The paperback books that used to live on the office wall have been homeless ever since.

The weekend before last Elwood put up enough shelves for half of the paperbacks. Ten days later, the paperbacks are all still sitting on the floor. Mission: put books on shelves. Offer to divert toddler to facilitate building second set of shelves. Put other books on other shelves.

Our piano tuner was here today, and after the piano was sounding like itself again he sat down for a while and talked about his wife's death six months ago -- all the things he has been cleaning out and getting rid of. It sounds like she was quite a shopper; he described bags and bags of items she purchased and never used. It was a pointed reminder for me: if you don't clean up your own stuff, sooner or later somebody will have to do it for you. 

Right now we have some broken-window syndrome going in our new office. There's a bunch of stuff that needs new digs (see that big red toolbox in the picture at right? and the garbage can in the foreground, standing in the middle of the room?), and it's easy for clutter to accumulate where there's already clutter. I am tempted to set big ambitious goals that will require me to tidy All The Things before next Wednesday. That's probably neither wise nor practical, though. This week I'll get the books on the shelves. We'll see about next week. 

How about you? Want to weed where you're planted?

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Weed Where You're Planted

WWYP Wednesday

Color Me Weird

Am I the only person who liked the Downton Abbey season finale? 

Many people seemed to think the episode went like this: boring boring boring boring ACK! Not me. I don't know what this says about me, but I was relieved that the catastrophe was what it was. I thought the house was going to burn down while they were all at the fair. Maybe it would be Branson's fault somehow, because he hasn't had enough in-law friction yet. Or pre-eclampsia has a genetic link, you know. Maybe we'd see more death throes, this time wiping out the heir too. 

Aside from my preparatory (and misguided) flinching, I enjoyed the episode so much I didn't even knit while it was playing. And I always knit. I loved the preparations for the trip to Scotland-- imagine a life in which you might need your tiara on vacation! I loved the scene at the railway station, with the gleaming steam engine taking all of them (and their luggage! loved the luggage!) away to the north. Perhaps it's because I just read To Say Nothing Of The Dog, but I found the luggage especially evocative, a marker of how much the world has changed. How much would it cost you to travel with that much baggage these days? It'd be cheaper to take a black cab to Inverness, I bet.

Oh, Inverness! I loved watching the Crawleys on holiday. Part of it was the scenery-- the people like miniatures against the highland landscape, the towering clouds scudding in. Part of it was the interaction. We haven't seen much of the Crawleys relaxing with their friends, have we? Lots of upstairs-downstairs interaction, lots of hospitality extended to various acquaintances, but nothing quite like this, with people from the same milieu spending time together. I found the grass-is-always-greener moments effective, and Matthew's vindication (by way of Shrimpie's admission) especially satisfying.

Really, the plot could have consisted of "the Crawleys watch paint dry in the Highlands" and I would have gone along with it happily. There's nothing so glorious as a Scottish summer.

I wanted to know about Mary's labor, but no luck there. Was she as reserved as ever? Did she perhaps emit a tiny (but dignified) howl when the going got tough? How does a person come to have such tidy hair so soon after giving birth? My post-birth pictures all show clear evidence of my lack of a lady's maid.

Here's the thing about Matthew: what a way to go! Seeing his long-hoped-for son, brimming over with joy, returning to the estate he preserved from ruin despite significant opposition -- and boom. No lingering suffering, no long ugly illness peppered with false hope. He did good things with the time he had. He brought out the very best in a woman in whom it used to be hard to see much good, and what a valediction he gave her! Life is short and unpredictable, and we none of us know what lies around the next bend. 

So do good work, and enjoy the sunshine, and be ready for the milk truck to strike! [she said cheerily] Can't wait for season 4.

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Lifestyles of the Rich and Eclamptic

Yldalg Rosseforp

My chair emailed me today to ask if we could arrange a time to talk this weekend.

I didn't know what to make of it. You guys, my brain has been a bad place lately. I had pretty much persuaded myself that they didn't want me. Maybe their first-choice candidate would turn them down, and I would have a shot. But maybe they knew the SECRET TRUTH about my inadequacies. Maybe I had bombed so badly in my meeting with the dean that he emailed the chair immediately afterward to say "Anyone but the redhead." Maybe I made a fatal error in not selling myself harder during the exit meeting with the chair. Maybe it was all HOPELESS HOPELESS HOPELESS and why did I think I had been called to do this work again?

I had brief glimpses of sanity, in which I remembered that I did a lot of things right during the interview, but mostly good sense eluded me.

My mother asked me a couple of days ago what I would do if I didn't get the job. I said, "Ululate plaintively until I feel better." She laughed merrily, as if she were talking to someone who was making a joke, but I wasn't joking.

Part of me thought my chair was calling to give me a heads-up that I hadn't been chosen, so I could get all of my wailing and gnashing of teeth out of the way before Monday. (Total underestimate of the required wailing/gnashing time, BTW.) Part of me was suddenly wildly hopeful. Part of me was just relieved that the waiting would be over.

She said she'd call at 5:30. I went outside and paced so we wouldn't have to talk over the dinnertime chaos.

My phone rang a few minutes after 5:30. "I'm delighted," she began, "to offer you a tenure-track job."

WWYP Wednesday

You guys, thanks so much for your thoughts on my crowded kitchen last week. I am ordering a 5-pocket wall file to hang near the back door (thanks to swimmermom for the idea!) and I am trying to make paper sorting part of the post-dinner cleanup routine. Bearing suggested doing it beforehand, but getting food on the table is generally a scramble.

Next challenge: we don't have much storage space in our dining room. Consequently, we have a bunch of stuff crammed into a small piece of furniture. Cloth napkins and serving dishes sit cheek by jowl with crayons, markers, construction paper, etc.

Step 1 is probably to give napkins an assigned space that fits them. They overflow their current basket, and so the kids just toss them anywhere. It's also reasonable to move the serving dishes elsewhere (or donate them) since they are rarely used.

Tell me, though: what do you do about art supplies? How often do you purge crayons and markers? How do you determine when a notebook is garbage? Kids generate a lot of crayon nubs and half-filled notebooks. Don't even get me started on the capless markers, which must, mysteriously, have wriggled out of their own caps and flung them stealthily into the heating ducts, because the kids never know how they came to be capless.

Several of you said you'd be up for weeding where you're planted too. Write a post and link to it, please! I'd love to see what's on your mind.

Sing it, Tom Petty

Tom Petty was right: the wai-yaiting is the hardest part.

I spent the morning in the office, convinced that they've offered the local position to someone else. I imagined the announcement at our next faculty meeting. I thought about other jobs I might get for next year, because it is really not very likely that I will accept a job two hours away.

I went to Adoration at 1 and spent most of the hour slogging through a book I don't love. Right at the end I looked up at the monstrance and back down at my own arms and I had one of those moments of knowing that I am loved -- individually, enormously. This sounds narcissistic but it is true: God looks at the sprinkling of fine hairs at my wrist, at the visible pulse that he set in motion and sustains, and says, "That is Jamie and she is mine." His will is only good, no matter how it may diverge from my own.

Perhaps I should camp out in the chapel for the next few weeks.

Seven Quick Takes: Inigo Montoya Edition

1. Inigo Montoya is the Princess Bride character I am most likely to quote. I am quoting him a lot this week: I hate waiting.

2. I haven't heard about the local job. I don't know when I'll hear about the local job. I hate waiting.

3. I had to drive a couple of hours to get to that other campus, and it was the first time in years I'd traveled alone along that stretch of highway. I drove it every day for a while, first to a clinical placement and later to a short-term job at the same hospital, and what I mostly remember is the stress. WOULD I be able to handle the placement? WHAT IF nobody ever wanted to hire me? WHEN was our '78 Dodge Aspen going to die?

4. Last week I was reflecting on the answers to those questions and thinking about how much needless angst I had wallowed through on those early morning drives. Yes, I handled the placement just fine. Yes, I got a job: first a temporary job at the familiar hospital, filling in for a month for a woman on maternity leave in a setting where I felt free to ask my newbie questions, and then a fantastic permanent job at the hospital in my own town. Yes, our Dodge Aspen would eventually die, but not until after we moved away to Scotland and donated it to a local charity. Why, I wondered, had I been so reluctant to trust God? Why was I so certain that BAD THINGS loomed? Good thing I know better these days, I thought to myself.

5. HA HA HA, I laugh bitterly at the irony.

6. I have been wrangling and wrangling with my anxiety again. WHAT IF my co-workers secretly hate me? WHAT IF they don't hate me but the other candidates are just so amazing that they reject me? WHAT IF  WHAT IF WHAT IF?

A funny thing happened on Wednesday. I went into the office at lunchtime to copy an exam, having edited it at home and stashed it in the cloud. When I arrived at my office, the document wasn't where I'd left it. I was very annoyed with myself. I came back at 4, having deputized my 13yo to hold down the fort for half an hour while I got the exams ready for the next morning. My phone rang in the quiet of my office rather than in the chaos of my house after school, allowing me to give the department chair my full attention as she offered me the job. The weirdness of it -- how often have I stored something in the cloud? (often) how often has it totally vanished? (never) -- suggested to me that I should pay attention, that I should remember God's sovereignty over events and their timing. That I should TRUST.

7. If you asked me, I'd say of course I trust God. But given my mental landscape this week, I am dusting off my other favorite Inigo Montoya quote: I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Reffo

The place where I had the weivrenti last week made me a job reffo today. (I know it's quite unlikely that they are blog-searching. I'm paranoid anyway. If I were on a search committee, I would do a quick post-weivrenti blog-search to see if it uncovered any overly candid candidates.)

Lots of disadvantages to the position, but it still feels good to get the call. Now I wait to hear from the other university. Prayers appreciated.

Weed Where You're Planted

I have an idea. You know how we're supposed to bloom where you're planted? It's easier to bloom if you don't have to deal with weeds. I love my little yellow house. I don't want to move. Occasionally, on the very worst days, I have fleeting thoughts about blowing it up and cackling at the flames, but they pass quickly. Still, there are lots of things that bug me about this house.

I am guessing that some of you might feel the same way about your houses, am I right? So here's my idea: what if we crowd-source our frustrations? What if we were to have Weed Where You're Planted Wednesdays, and post about a problem area and possible solutions? A chance to vent, a chance to problem-solve, a chance to make our homes a little more homey and a little less napalm-worthy.

(That is totally the next realtor buzzword: Very low napalm-worthiness!)

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. When you come in our back door carrying things, the most natural place to put them down is on the butcher block in the kitchen. This behavior causes my inner Gollum to caper about, shrieking "Paper clutter! We hates it forever!" Papers get lost. Papers get stained with food. The space available for food prep in our tiny kitchen is diminished. Do. Not. Like. (You might notice that unattractive collection of junk on the shelf above the butcher block. Objectively, it is uglier. And yet it bothers me not a whit. Foolish consistency, hobgoblin, little minds, etc.)

I have considered a number of possible solutions to this problem, but the one I keep coming back to is installing a portcullis that would slam down on the paper-setter-downer's arm. An alarm would sound. A blinky sign would flash "Put it where it belongs. Now."

My husband frowns on the portcullis idea, and not just because he suspects I would ask him to help with the installation. He says people need a place to put things when they first walk in the door. And that's true; they do. My objection is that even after they take off their shoes and hang up their coats, they leave the Boy Scout manual/school newsletter/crossword puzzle in situ until the Paper Fairy happens by.

So here's what I'm thinking:

1. Part of the problem is the lack of sorting. Maybe it's okay to leave papers there that need maternal action or decisions, because I hate having papers there so much that it will spur me to act and decide.

2. Part of the problem is the lack of space for other people's papers. I could clear out a bin that's currently full of dismembered books awaiting repair, and my husband's crossword puzzles could go there. I could talk with my two older boys about paper storage options for their rooms. At present there's no good place for them to keep their own papers.

3. Part of the problem is that I keep swooping in and playing Paper Fairy. (I'm more a Fanged Ogre than a Fairy, really. I don't mind the dishes and I don't mind the laundry, but dealing with the paper reliably triggers my napalm fantasies.) Maybe there needs to be some kind of consequence for leaving the Boy Scout manual on the butcher block. If I keep cleaning up other people's messes, I am only teaching them to leave the messes for me.

Any other thoughts for me? Do you have a collection of weird odds and ends in your own kitchen, and does it bother you? Any interest in a WWYP Wednesday as a semi-regular thing?

100 Books Meme from Goodreads

I'm lifting this from Mrs. Darwin and Bearing. Mrs. Darwin says:

In the spirit of the 100 book meme, Goodreads has posted a fairly diverse group of novels for its members to rank, drawn from both the most popular and the most highly rated books from its readers' libraries. And in the true internet spirit of borrowing, I've typed up the list for the rest of us to pass around. Goodreads reports that its average user has read 27 out of the 100; I've read 58 (and Darwin has read 31), and I find that most of the ones I haven't are books I've seen around but haven't felt a great compulsion to take and read.

Here's the key:

Books I've read
Books I've re-read
Books I started but didn't finish
Could be interested in this one
I'd rather read a prescription package insert
Haven't read

• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Catcher in the Rye
• Fellowship of the Ring
• Pride and Prejudice
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
• Romeo and Juliet
• Jane Eyre
• 1984
• Hamlet
• The Hobbit
• Brave New World
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
• The Great Gatsby
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Fahrenheit 451
• Wuthering Heights
• Alice in Wonderland
• The Secret Garden
• Green Eggs and Ham (don't even want to THINK about how many times)
• Little Women
• Of Mice and Men
• The Handmaid's Tale
• Lord of the Flies
• The DaVinci Code
• Frankenstein
• Dune
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Gone With The Wind
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• A Wrinkle in Time
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Slaughterhouse Five
• Anne of Green Gables
• Twilight
• Where the Sidewalk Ends
• The Little Prince
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• The Princess Bride (only book I know that's worse than the movie)
• The Picture of Dorian Grey
• The Hunger Games
• Sense and Sensibility
• The Golden Compass
• Dracula
• The Color Purple
• The Kite Runner
• The Odyssey
• Anna Karenina
• And Then There Were None
• Interview with the Vampire
• The Book Thief
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• The Joy Luck Club
• Little House on the Prairie
• The Giver
• Life of Pi
• Rebecca
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Ender's Game
• A Tale of Two Cities
• The Stranger
• East of Eden
• Les Miserables
• The Bell Jar
• Lolita
• The Road
• The Time Traveler's Wife
• A Prayer for Owen Meany
• The Stand
• Catch-22
• The Sun Also Rises
• The Pillars of the Earth
• Crime and Punishment
• The Good Earth
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• The Help
• Watchmen
• Lonesome Dove
• Water for Elephants
• Outlander
• American Gods
• The Poisonwood Bible
• My Sister's Keeper
• The Master and Margarita
• The Notebook
• Like Water for Chocolate
• Beloved
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Invisible Man
• A Game of Thrones
• The Fountainhead
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
• Ulysses
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
• The Brothers Karamazov (I skipped 40 pages in the middle. It was finals week.)
• The House of the Spirits
• Fight Club
• Middlesex
• Interpreter of Maladies

I've been casting about for a new reading Project. I'm wondering about tackling the purple ones systematically. How about you?