Light and Momentary

Seven Quick Takes: Post-Walnut/Pre-Magnolia Version

1. The backyard walnut tree is entirely bare, but the saucer magnolia leaves have just barely begun to turn. It was downright chilly today, chilly enough that I wished I'd had my Darth Vader coat instead of my it's-not-that-cold coat. (I named it thus because it is long, black, and sweeping, not because it has enabled me to battle any Jedi knights or upend any empires.)
2. Though I'm telling you: I'd like to upend some empires about now. This Roy Moore news is weighing me down. More accurately, the reactions to the Roy Moore news are weighing me down. 
3. Shall we talk about escapes from the news? Have you seen Murder on the Orient Express? I see very few movies, but I might see that one. It's been so long that I don't remember anything about the story at all.
4. I have also been escaping into my book, The Wine Lover's Daughter. I only have about 18 minutes of escaping left to do, though.
5. Pandora is playing me a whole slew of favorite songs. Is it attempting to woo me back, do you suppose, since I've been away for so long? I have a station called Folk Radio, with a mix of Celtic folk and US indie folk as its anchors. Here, said Pandora, would you like to listen to Kate Rusby covering Patsy Cline's You Belong To Me? Google is telling me Patsy didn't write that song, but in my mind she owns it anyway. 
6. Pete cooked most of dinner tonight. He announced that he was hungry, and that he'd like to have chili. Go for it, said Elwood, and he did. He thought perhaps we needed some cooked carrots on the side. Elwood whipped up a pan of cornbread to go alongside and pulled a salad out of the fridge. I, meanwhile, lolled on the couch and read Prisoner of Azkaban to Stella.
7. One more chapter to go. What will Cornelius Fudge say about the unexpected turn of events that awaits him on the seventh floor? What will the Dursleys say when they learn about Harry's godfather? She can't wait to find out.

Some unspecified number of quick takes (are those still a thing?)

1. I am making chia pudding for the first time and the resemblance to frog spawn is startling. Black speckles surrounded by islets of goo? Exactly like the jars I used to keep on my dresser as a 12yo. But it will allegedly give me the strength of an Aztec warrior. I'll report back tomorrow.
2. Tomorrow morning the 10K training group is running exactly the route that we usually did in my first running group, 5 years ago. It's a little funny: just driving past the park where we'll be starting gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I have such fond memories of running with that group during that summer. The prospect of running the same route makes me feel even warmer and fuzzier. Especially if I can look forward to doing it with the strength of an Aztec warrior!
3. I felt like a bit of a shill after I wrote that post last night. There's a running blog I stopped reading because of the relentless parade of sponsored posts, and I felt cautious about tiptoeing in that direction, even to say "They sent me a free book and it's an above-average book." Then tonight Elwood and I were talking about who was going to cook what for dinner and he mentioned that he had brought home a pork loin. "Oh!" I said, my Friday fatigue evaporating. "I will cook it in the Instant Pot! There's a pork loin recipe in my book!" Pork loin with caramelized onions and more balsamic vinegar than seemed prudent: scrumptious. Kids snarfed it down. Really, though, you could put caramelized onions in balsamic vinegar on top of an alarm clock and I would probably eat it. Caramelized onions are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
4. This recipe called for Dijon mustard, which led to a discussion between Elwood and me about what Dijon mustard actually is. I used to think that mustard was the worst flavor in the whole world. THE. WORST. Then I realized that it wasn't about the mustard. I'm okay with mustard by itself, and I'm okay with turmeric by itself. But American ballpark mustard combines them to create a flavor that I do not put in my mouth at any time for any reason. We had spicy brown mustard in the fridge, but it also contains turmeric. I know I am the person who just talked about eating alarm clocks cheerfully, but that stuff was not going in my dinner. 
5. I was an ultra-fussy kid but I like to think I've become less fussy as a grownup. Dill? No. Ballpark mustard? No. Most of my other childhood food prejudices I have managed to overcome.
6. Huh, that was kind of a Yoda-esque sentence. Or maybe a hymnal sentence. We keep singing All In All as our meditation hymn: "Lord to give up I'd be a fool." Maybe there's an album out there somewhere, full of lines like that one. Yoda Worships. Yoda Before The Throne. Something like that.
7. I am still thinking about tastes. In my early 20s in a Thai restaurant I had an experience like the spanakopita moment, in which an herb in my food tasted so painfully awful that I couldn't finish the meal. Later, when I was 25, I encountered the same herb in an Indian meal. I asked our hostess what it was. (Politely. I thought about saying, "Why does this taste like dirt and penance?" but my mama did teach me some manners.) She gave me a name; it started with ch-. What was it, though? I have no idea.

7QT: Autumn Leaves Edition

1. You guys, I have never seen comments on a post about abortion in which everybody was so courteous. I asked my husband to preview the piece to make sure I wasn't saying anything regrettable, and he said, "There will be a bunch of nice comments and then some horrible stuff." Instead, so far: 100% free of horrible stuff! Thank you for listening. Thank you for telling your own stories. I feel less lonely.
2. I have made good headway on my list from Monday. I'm heading into the weekend with all of the grading done and my work inbox emptied out. I signed up for the 10K I mentioned, which could be interesting. It's funny how running once a week doesn't do much for fitness maintenance. Tomorrow I need to put in some face-to-face time with my brain dump list, but I can do that. Phew, I am feeling calmer than I was a week ago.
3. It was a good week at work, in which I got a small grant to pay for conference travel, had a paper accepted, and had a poster proposal accepted. Next up: creating the posters I am supposed to have ready for my discipline's big convention next month. Eek.
4. Tonight Stella and Ben curled up together in a chair to go fishing with the ten-foot tape measure. And do you know what a girl needs to take along on her fishing trips? The Complete Works of Shakespeare, obvs. Have you ever felt bored watching the guys fish? Julius Caesar to the rescue.
5. She wanted to keep her options open while we were reading The Hobbit, too. She's still leaning intently over Julius Caesar here, just...because the goblins weren't holding her interest completely? I cannot say.
6. 6. I am going to stop at six quick takes because my brain is spiraling slowly toward sleep like a graceless aging lammergeier swooping in for a landing. You can only fight gravity for so long. 

There are more quick takes at Kelly's.

7QT: Sadly Overgrown Lawn Edition

Gosh, I haven't done a quick takes post in ages.

1. I am awfully tired. I finished grading one exam and writing the other, but midterm season is always a little nuts. Please pardon any word salad-ing.
2. I'm reading Blackout, by Connie Willis. And I'm reading Britt-Marie Was Here, by that Swedish author who wrote a novel called something like My Grandmother Wanted Me To Apologize Because She Was A Little Nuts. Backman, maybe? I am feeling too inertiated* to look it up. I liked the first half of My Grandmother better than the second half, but I liked the book enough to get Britt-Marie Was Here out of the library. I finished The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, and found it sweet and earnest.
3. *I don't think inertiated counts as word salad, do you? English lacks a verb suitable for conveying the squashed-down immobilized feeling that sometimes makes a person think ⌘T-ing to look up an author's name would be too effortful.
4. Both Blackout and Britt-Marie are actual physical books, as was Arthur Pepper. This is a switch for me -- I've turned into an all-Kindle-all-the-time sort of reader. I had sort of forgotten that if you try to read a book-book while lying in bed and feeling inertiated, you can whack yourself in the nose when you drift off.
5. I think we are going to buy that van tomorrow. Fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly.
6. Also on the schedule for tomorrow, deciding whether napalm or the Augean stables approach would be a faster route to a less loathsome house. Fire or flood, what's your preference?
7. One of my other books in progress is called Self-Compassion, recommended by my boss. It's a good book that I have to read in small pieces. It contains an exercise in which you're supposed to identify things you're good at, areas where you're average, and sub-par stuff. When I went back to the exercise I was a little surprised to see what I'd identified as "things I am bad at." (I guess that's part of the point: it's hard to assess yourself realistically.) Tonight I was thinking about it again because I bumped up against something I am TERRIBLE at: negotiation. Elwood handled the price negotiations with the van seller, and we were laughing afterward about my "negotiating" skills. I am like a giant marshmallow when I attempt to negotiate. "Okay, negotiation partner, you are offering me a tiny crumb, virtually invisible, after I have made a reasonable request for accommodations? I LOVE tiny crumbs! Invisible ones are my very favorite kind. This looks like a really superlative crumb, in fact. Huh, do you think you are being treated fairly in this crumb negotiation? Because I could be flexible here if need be." (He was asking for my input during the phone conversation, but we are both glad that he was the one making the counteroffers.)

More QT posts at Kelly's.

Seven Quick Takes: Grading Desperation Edition

1. I feel so behind on grading. It is stressing me out. One would think that the solution would be to DO the grading, but apparently I'd rather write a blog post about how it's not done. Just goes to show: you don't have to be smart to have PhD behind your name. Elwood was out of town for most of the week. You know that spoons post? Having Elwood out of town takes about three-quarters of my spoons and melts them into a big ugly ladle, clanking out a bitter tattoo: ALONE ALONE ALONE ALONE ALONE. Saturday I was Fun and Pleasant Mom. Sunday I took homemade cake to the pack meeting and led a three-mile hike cheerfully. But Tuesday I totally spaced the orthodontist appointment (eek) (still haven't called to reschedule) and Wednesday I was refreshing Amtrak's "check status" page like someone whose rescuer was crawling eastward on the California Zephyr. I'm still catching up.

I'm going to do that thing I used to do, grading a couple of papers between each take. If you see a partial version of this post in your feed reader, there might be more to read if you click through. Or I might have jumped on the westbound California Zephyr, abandoning the grading and the relentless email in search of blue skies and green vineyards. 

2. My 15yo just coasted past 6 feet. One morning a few weeks ago he came pelting downstairs. "Mom," he said, "what are these marks on my back?" They were purple, cutting across his back in multiple places. I was worried for a minute, and then I looked closer. "They look like...stretch marks," I said with some puzzlement. Did you know that teens can get stretch marks when they shoot up tall? Turns out they can: Dr. Google told me so, and our doctor's office corroborated it when I called. (Because would you want your son's tombstone to read "Here lies the boy done in by his mother's overreliance on Dr. Google?" I thought not.) Tonight he told me that while he was hanging out with friends they noticed the marks. "It looks like you've been whipped!" they said. Ah, yes, scourging, my favorite discipline strategy.

"But wait," I said, "why could your friends see your back?" "It was a no-shirts party," he explained, "and we were doing pushups. Don't you do that with your friends?" Clearly I need to learn how to live it up a little more.

3. I haven't graded any more papers since I wrote this last take, but I have to tell you about the guy who just wandered onto my porch. There are lots of things to love about living where we do, but the drunk college students are an occasional problem. (One of them was the subject of a whole 7QT post a few years back.) Elwood is away again this evening, and I wasn't expecting any visitors, but suddenly there were footsteps on the porch. When I looked out I saw a muddy guy sitting on the swing. His friends drove him here, he said. He was waiting for his friends. Perhaps I was confused about whose house this really was. After some back and forth he stumbled away. My neighbor and I talked for a minute about what to do -- the neighbor had seen the guy fall down in my yard and lie there for a bit before weaving up to the porch, so he came over with a flashlight. We couldn't decide -- was he drunk enough to need a 911 call? He was out of sight before we came to any conclusions. But I have to say, if he was drunk enough to mistake me for an undergrad, he's  going to have quite the hangover tomorrow.

4. I...[groan]...think...I...can...I...think...I...can.

Just 1.5 more papers to return, at about 20 minutes per. And an exam to finish up, so I can email it to disability services before Monday.

Do you know that part in the early Thomas the Tank Engine stories where Henry needed Welsh coal to run properly? I need some Welsh coal. Or maybe I need the Fat Controller to send another engine along to push my train up to the top of the hill.

5. Oh, alas, in the last one? Plagiarism. I am done but it doesn't even feel good to be done.

6. Dear future self: If there is a future week in which you think, "Oh, sure, I can handle hours of intense grading while my husband is at a work thing for the first half of the week and a fun thing for most of the second half of the week"? Think again.

7. Linking up with Kelly, who invites quick-takers to link to their most popular QT post. Mine is probably the day of the lice infestation + head injury. It puts my current state of mind in perspective. But I'm going to have to add the link tomorrow, because the writing of this take was interrupted by yet another jaunt in the car to retrieve a kid, and I could not be any tireder.

Seven Quick Takes: Slacker Edition

1. This has not been a great blogging year, as you may have noticed. I have been writing and editing at work, and I seem to have some limits on how frequently I can dip into that writing/editing reservoir before I weary of the sound of my own voice.

2. The good news is that things are going well on the research front: I had a paper accepted a couple of weeks ago -- the one that was rejected in June from the flagship journal in my field. I got the proofs back today and the queries look straightforward -- mostly tidying references. I also got really enthusiastic reviews -- the most enthusiastic I've ever received -- about the paper I wrote last fall. Stop me if I already told you this (oh, wait, the thing about blogging is you're stuck with me if I'm being repetitive), but one reviewer said, "This paper should be published as quickly as possible." And I'm working on an IRB protocol for a project that promises to be super-interesting-- mostly my idea, mostly other people's primary expertise, which seems to mean I get to do the fun parts. So far, anyway.

3. I am trying to remember when I learned what an IRB protocol was, and I think I must have been a doctoral student. The IRB is the board that reviews all research involving human subjects, and the protocol is the document in which you tell them exactly what you're going to do and exactly how it could go wrong. Our IRB is tough. They tend to ask questions like, "But how will you REALLY KNOW if your participants are upset??" I'm optimistic that we're most of the way there, but sometimes the process makes me want to say, "Listen, we are recording their voices. This is a LOW-RISK procedure."

4. Right now I also have another paper under review, one with a lot of my heart in it. It's tricky writing about things that make me passionate, because the emotional investment is inevitable. I revised it extensively -- no, that's not right. I need a word like fortississimo. Extensensensively. The reviewers had lots of stuff for my co-author and me to do, and so we did it. It spent 3 weeks with the associate editor and now it's beginning its fifth week with the editor. That's a little weird. I hope it doesn't mean bad news, because I will be crushed like a sad bug if it gets rejected after all of that revising. Maybe throw up a quick prayer to Our Lady of La Leche for me if you're so inclined. (<-Hint as to topic. So excited about the prospect of getting this paper in this journal. Too bad my refresh key does not ring a little bell inside the editor's brain. Although on second thought that would probably be a really dreadful state of affairs.)

5. This semester I am only teaching one class, the one I prepped last semester. It's going much better the second time around, as classes always seem to do. Fifty students this time, and I think I finally have everybody's names and faces linked up. I probably won't be teaching this one again for a while, so I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

6. There is one unpleasant task on the docket: the supplemental materials for my recently accepted article have needed tidying and OH MY GOODNESS it is a huge task. Huge. And unbeLIEVably boring. My poor GAs deserve, like, a pony apiece after all the slogging they have been doing. (We are editing a giant document, something like 15,000 lines long in its original incarnation, great swaths of which required cleaning up. Is zitbutt a word? Is ying? Is morn being used as a word or is it just a word fragment? Talk about decision fatigue. But! The end! Is in sight!)

7. Gosh, that was a whole bunch of words all about work. Life is good; kids are good. I'm working toward that spring 10K again, and last week I took Stella to family Zumba. She thought dancing together was the best thing ever and has asked every day since if it's time to go back to Zumba (though she tends to mangle the name. What's that fun thing that starts with a Z, mom?). Today there were more girls in class, and I was surprised to see that the moms were sitting on the bench, hanging out on their phones. I spent ten minutes on the bench, feeling self-conscious about wanting to be out there with the kids, and then I thought, "This is silly, self. You came for some mother-daughter fun and the instructor says parents are welcome to be on the floor. Get out there!" So I did, shrugging off my stubborn self-consciousness for the rest of the class.

Afterward the instructor encouraged one of the moms to try it herself next week. "Oh," she said with embarrassment, "I'm not coordinated enough for Zumba." I'd been thinking the whole time that she was too cool for family Zumba, and that wasn't it at all. At all! 

Seven Quick Takes: Feast Day Trifecta Edition

1. Happy beheading day!

That is probably a weird beginning after a three-week absence. But I love this series of feast days: St. Monica, patron of mothers and people who pray about something big for a long discouraging string of years; St. Augustine, of "our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee" fame; St. John the Baptist, my weight loss role model.

2. It would probably be TMI to tell you that one of my children got started on this date in 2001, so I won't tell you that. But when a pregnancy begins and ends on two different St. JtB feasts, a person feels sort of obligated to acknowledge the connection in naming the resulting baby.

3. I am two weeks into the semester and mostly very happy. I love my classes; I love my job. It's a lot of work, but I am grateful for it every day.

4. Work is doing a number on my workout schedule. I am trying to decide if it is too extravagant to join the campus fitness center. Would I really swim at lunchtime and finish my Monday work more quickly so I could go to open climb in the afternoon? Or would I fail to do those things and feel guilty about it? It is kind of weird to see my students at the fitness center, but perhaps the invisibility conferred by a swim cap and googles would help. Speaking of which: I must tell you more about swimming soon.

5. This is day 30 of the Whole30, and I am trying to figure out what comes next. I have not been following the don't-weigh-yourself rule, which is how I know that I had lost 11.6 pounds as of a few days ago. More importantly, though, my brain is working really well: my focus and equilibrium are better than they've been in...I don't know how long.

But a life with no legumes and no grains and no dairy and no sugar and no white potatoes and no alcohol and no sulfites and no for-Pete's-sake carageenan is a complicated life. My vegetarian son is SO over it.

6. Kids are doing well at school, although I had to scramble home from the office yesterday to take my kindergartner some fresh clothes. Someone jostled her off a wall outside and her nose bled all over her clothing. :-( No lasting harm done, though.

7. I feel much more confident about determining how much independence is the right amount of independence for younger kids than I do about figuring it out for teens. My oldest is in his second year of college classes and wants to hang out with his college friends a lot. A LOT.

I wonder if I will be better at these decisions by the time my kindergartner is a teenager, or if I will just be really tired.

More quick takes at Jen's.

Seven Quick Takes: Fading Amaryllis Edition

1. I am totally taken with this image of Our Lady with DPNs. (This version is available here.) Does anyone know anything about it? I first saw it labeled as the Annunciation, but isn't that Jesus with the book? Aren't the two of them kicking back at home, when some angels come with a crown of thorns and three nails? Even though she lived a thousand years before the invention of knitting, I bet Mary would have been a knitter if she'd had the opportunity.

2. I myself am also working on the yoke of a sweater. Isn't that the prettiest cable? (Mine needs blocking, but I have high hopes for it.) It's a Kate Davies design called Braid Hills. I should be able to seam the shoulders this weekend, and then I'll just have the sleeves and the neckband to go. Perhaps it is a little silly to feel impatient about finishing a wool sweater in August, but impatient I am nonetheless. I started this a year ago, and let it languish all winter. Time to get this puppy bound off.

3. My 14yo would prefer it if my knitting energy were channeled in a different direction. I am also working on this sock's mate (shown here with a map and itinerary from his trip to Philmont Scout Ranch, a highlight of his summer), but it is not calling to me this week.

4. Perhaps I should be thinking a bit less about knitting and a bit more about work, since this is the first day of my contract. I'm most of the way there on my work goals, though: I have a bit of work to do (a couple of hours' worth) before I resubmit my rejected manuscript, and I haven't started scheduling interviews for my new project. I haven't yet published my course websites, since I want to swoop through the syllabi once more. But I think (I hope!) I'm in reasonably good shape. (If you could spare a prayer: editors are making a decision on a manuscript I wrote last semester. I would SO LOVE for it to be in this journal.)

5. The high school boys (plural! a senior and a freshman!) are back in school, and the other kids return Monday. Last night at open house Stella said, "I'm so excited about this place!" and her soon-to-be kindergarten teacher said, "This is the most exciting place in the world." Of course, then we went to the fourth grade classroom, where my sweet 9yo learned that his best friends both have the teacher we wanted for him -- and he does not. But the other teacher is not bad, just new. Here's to a good year for both of them.

6. The kids have been troupers this summer, faithfully helping me clean out the basement in exchange for chocolate and the occasional lunch out. It's about 80% less disgusting down there, which feels like an accomplishment. A couple of key realizations: first, in an old house, where the mechanicals are scattered all across the basement instead of clustered in one spot, your beautification options are limited. But, second, even if "beautiful" feels overwhelming, "more functional" is within reach.

7. Have you heard of the Whole30? I am doing the Whole 30. It is a little crazy, but it is a doable kind of crazy. This is day 16, and I am feeling like a font of energy and focus. A sweet-tempered font of energy and focus, even. 

Happy feast day, y'all! Go read more quick takes at Jen's.

Seven Quick Takes: Sigh of Relief Edition

1. I'm back! Did you miss me? Yesterday (now the day before, since the writing of this post spilled over into Saturday) was the last day of the thing that was eating all my brain cells. I am looking forward to returning to the Land of the Brain-Celled. Ooooohhhh, in the middle of this first take I am being summoned to read Emeraldalicious. Don't tell my daughter, but Emeraldalicious might get disappeared when no one is watching. It's one of those books that cries out for some accompanying knitting, because paying close attention to the book itself pains me.

7 Quick Takes: Slightly Cryptic Edition

1. You know how there's a group of people in my life whom I enjoy very much (mostly) and from whom I would prefer to keep this blog hidden? I am spending a lot of time with some of those people right now. I am also putting them in touch with a couple of internet friends who have relevant stories to tell them, and I am feeling a little paranoid that they will google-click-google-click their way here.

2. I am playing Words With Friends with my husband again. Remember how this used to be a bad idea? In our last game he got 120 points with the J alone. One! hundred! twenty! (Triple letter/triple word in "inject," followed by "jade" landing on that other triple.) His final score in that came: 536 points. This could be an opportunity for me to grow in patience and humility, could it not?

3. Opportunities to grow in patience and humility are more appealing in the abstract than in real life.

4. I am casting about for other things to tell you, because that context in which I am spending time with those people who aren't supposed to google-click their way here is taking up most of the available space in my brain right now. There is a blog post I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to write so we could all chat about young women and culture and bodies and contemporary gnosticism and misguided modesty.

5. I picked up a book by Joni Eareckson Tada when the Kindle version was free -- lots of interesting food for thought about suffering. When I was a kid my dad gave me her autobiography and I read it again and again. I hadn't thought about it in years, but the memories are still vivid: the accident, the hospital, the wide range of rehab personnel, the story of her faith. In hindsight I'm a little surprised my dad gave it to me, because it's so Jesus-y.

6. This new book describes her work around the world, providing wheelchairs to people with disabilities in developing countries. I am intrigued.

7. And I am out of minutes. I will try to write a more interesting post when the brain cell count permits.

Seven Quick Takes: Books Edition

Hi, all, I am blowing away the cobwebs here. I am alive and well, just not blogging. 

Months and months ago, I signed up for an Amazon Affiliate account. Before I ever used it, there was some weird regulatory thing that made Amazon tell me I couldn't use it. Now they are telling me I have a green light, but I have to hurry or they will close my account. So I am going to tell you about books I have been reading, and you can click through if they interest you, and then maybe I can figure out this Amazon Affiiate thing that doesn't seem like it ought to be that hard.

1. Remember when I posted about books I had been meaning to finish? I'm almost to the end of One Hundred Names for Love, and I'm enjoying the second half more than the first half. Diane Ackerman described her husband Paul West's remarkable recovery from a stroke that left him severely aphasic. It is leaving me in awe of his resilience and persistence. I think I will probably wind up assigning parts of it in a class I'm teaching next year. (Oh, wait, it looks like you have to give separate links for book-books and e-books? Kindle version here.)

2. I just finished How To Write A Lot (Kindle link): accessible, funny, encouraging, motivating. Recommended.

3. Stella is way into this Marcia WIlliams book at the moment. My kids have all enjoyed Marcia Williams, but this one is in especially heavy rotation right now.

4. After I finish this batch of grading I am going to buy myself a new Dorothy Sayers novel. I will sigh a happy sigh, knowing that it has not been plagiarized. (Seriously, students. What part of "If you plagiarize, I will catch you and you will be sorry" did you not understand?)

5. I bought a copy of Honest Pretzels when Elizabeth Foss recommended it. Stella is fascinated by it. (I haven't actually cooked anything from it. It might blow her little mind to realize that we could actually make some of the foods she enjoys chatting about.)

6. I am continuing to think about Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's newest essay collection. There's a hilarious essay about better parenting through nudity, and a thoughtful one about the way that we can carry high school ugliness with us for a long time.

7. The Warden is at the top of my TBR queue, and it's free! Happy reading. 

More quick takes at Jen's, as usual.

PS Speaking of Jen, you can pre-order her book and get a free e-book along with it.

Seven Quick Takes: Dull Girl Edition

1. This week was my spring break, and yesterday I was feeling a little grumpy about it. You know how all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? I was feeling pretty dull. I'd set myself a long list (an impractically long list) of Stuff To Do.

2. Things I did: filed federal taxes, completed the diocesan scholarship application with all its invasive questions about our finances, cleaned out the gecko tank, emptied work/personal email and the backlogged paper cubby, steam-cleaned the grubby tracks on the dining-room carpet, and weathered a snow day (on the twelfth of March, I ask you).

3. It was a productive week at work, too, in which I sent a manuscript draft to a co-author and made good headway on another draft. I sent off one IRB and edited another, and all but finished the slides that are due tomorrow for a conference presentation.

4. But somewhere in there I slid across the line from happy-productive to grim-productive, all the while realizing that I was going to have to head back to teaching in a small and dwindling number of days. So today I had some fun.

5. I finished Barchester Towers this morning. Oh, you guys, I loved it. I loved it immoderately. I loved it so much I am a little embarrassed to admit how much I loved it, because it is 600 pages of clergymen's attempts to outmaneuver each other. But it is laugh-out-loud funny, and so spot-on observant. I kept highlighting passages just because they were such a pleasure to read. I think I've found my next ten-year project.

6. I've been thinking about Trollope vs. Dickens. Trollope's strength, at least in this book, is the utter believability of his main characters. You've known people like these people before. You understand why they're doing what they're doing. There's not much in the way of plot, but that's perfectly fine. With Dickens, the plot is simultaneously the strength and the limitation. I love the intricacy of his plots -- when it's not causing my Implausibility Meter to honk like a pack of territorial geese.

7. I suppose geese do not really consort in packs. But I am out of time to tell you more about my happy day, which included a quiet lunch out with potato-leek soup and a trip to the used bookstore AND the yarn store, where I bought one gorgeous hank of laceweight merino/silk blend in the peculiarly hopeful green of new willow leaves.

Visit Jen for more quick takes.

Seven Quick Takes: Typology Version

1. It's Exodus season in the Office of Readings, and I've read Exodus a lot. I wasn't really expecting the WOW moment that hit me this morning. It's not hard to see Moses as a type of Christ, saving his people from slavery through the blood of a spotless lamb. What clicked for me this morning was the similarities at the beginnings of their lives.

2. I knew that both of them were born into danger -- Moses' life threatened by Pharaoh's edict, Jesus' by Herod's. I hadn't realized that both were mothered by young women from royal families -- Moses by Pharaoh's daughter, Jesus by David's g'g'g'g'g'g'g'granddaughter. I'd never seen the parallel in their mutual decision to say yes. Why didn't they play it safe? One of the handmaids asked the princess, "Should I find a woman to nurse him?" Why didn't the princess say, "My dad will totally flip his lid if I bring home a Hebrew baby." Why didn't Mary say, "The Holy Spirit wants to do WHAT?" Instead both of them said yes, an answer that would echo down the generations. (Oh, God, grant me the courage to say yes to you, even when it seems like a bad idea.)

3. That train of thought reminded me that just as Moses was a foreigner in his own home, as a Hebrew child reared in Pharaoh's court, so was Jesus. The One who set the earth in motion confined himself to a tiny pocket of it for his growing-up years: the fullness of divinity dwelling in the modest home of a carpenter. For a moment I imagined the very walls bowing outward under the power of the Presence, but then I remembered all the times I have walked heedlessly by a tabernacle. (Oh, God, grant me the grace to know your hidden holy presence in the world.)

4. I wonder if their shared experience -- growing up feeling like a stranger between two homes --equipped both Moses and Jesus to lead people away from one home and toward another. In hindsight it's easy to view the Israelites as whiners, but admit it: you probably would have joined in too. It's all very well to talk about the Promised Land, but we've been in this desert for years now -- years! And I! miss! cucumbers! (Oh, God, help me to see beyond temporal struggles to the true Promised Land, to cultivate willing detachment from this world that is not my home.)

6. I'd never heard of typology before my college Chaucer class and it sounded like a wacky cabalistic idea at first. It's kind of cool, though, to see the parallels. The thing about being Catholic is that you can be pretty sure somebody else probably got there before you in 2000 years of collective reflection on the Bible. In fact, I checked the second reading to see if it was some desert father or other musing on these very same things, and I had just forgotten about reading it last year or some other time. (It wasn't. At least not today.) Even though it's unlikely that these are original thoughts, I couldn't quite settle down to work until I'd written them down.

7. This is unrelated to Exodus, but what are your thoughts on pictures in blog posts? I prefer blogs that don't have a lot of pictures -- it's more about the text for me. (I almost never go to the Pioneer Woman's site, no matter how much people rave about her recipes, because I get impatient waiting for the picture of flour + baking powder to load immediately below the picture of flour without baking powder. Just give me the proportions; I can imagine the flour for myself.) I've read a couple of posts lately asserting that blogs need regular infusions of pictures and I'm wondering which way opinion runs in these parts. This is going to be a skewed sample, I suppose, since nobody is reading this blog for the pictures.

More quick takes at Jen's.

Approximately Seven Quick Takes: Nameless Winter Games Edition

1. It is time, my friends, for my very favorite sporting event. Not the thing in Russia: the very best sporting event. It used to be called the Ravelympics, but then the IOC got all cease-y and desist-y about that. Now it is technically called the Ravellenic Games, I think, but you and I know that it is still really the Ravelympics. There's a festival of knitting for the summer games, too, but do you want a big pile of wool in your lap in the middle of August? Maybe you do if you live in New Zealand. 

2. I do not live in New Zealand. I live in the Midwest, and it is really cold. Brrr. Bring the wool, baby!

3. During TEFKAR (The Event Formerly Known As Ravelympics) I am planning to finish half of my UFOs (unfinished objects, for all y'all non-knitters, though you probably skipped town in the first sentence, and maybe went searching for the unsub setting in Feedly, because DANG I am talking a lot about knitting so far in 2014).This is ambitious, but not insane. Or at least not very insane. Due for smiting: one baby sweater, one grown-up sweater (as of this morning, it was just a swatch), one wackadoodle shawl/wrap/lacy trilobite thing, and a pair of potholders that just need to have some ends woven in.

4. I think my job might interfere with these plans, potentially. Or at least the adult sweater part of these plans. There are always more stitches in an adult sweater than I seem to remember from the last time I made an adult sweater. 

5. All week I have been thinking about writing a work-related post and then feeling like a dork about the whole thing. So I will just tuck it into this post as a quick take. Here's the deal: my college has meetings for first-year professors about every six weeks. We come together, there's a topic and a little panel, and the idea is that we can talk about what we need to do to get tenure.

6. Last week the topic was networking, and the last question was "What are barriers to effective networking for you?" The question hung there in the silence for a moment, and then I answered it. The #1 barrier to effective networking for me is that there's a mental hurdle involved. Every time you reach out to establish contact, you're putting yourself and your ideas out there. And sure, some people say, "That's a great idea and I would love to work with you." 

Lots of people don't. And I'm not, like, wishing that the hospital administrators would be my best friends and have coffee with  me every Tuesday, but I still feel some reluctance about sending them my protocol and asking them to help me with recruitment because what if they hate it and say no? I don't let this keep me from doing it, but I have to acknowledge that this creates a mental barrier for me and I need to keep pushing past it.

7. So I said this and the room was silent-- nobody else, not one person, said, "Yeah, the rejection thing is a drag" or "Getting started means there's a lot of that." I have been trying not to let the awkward feeling get me down, because surely I'm not the only one even if I was the only one who spoke up. But still: awkward moment. 

7.5 But also a helpful moment. This week, in planning what I was going to do when, I said, "Okay, self, it's not realistic to send out the whole batch of protocols in one day. Mental load, and all that. Break it up. It's okay." 

More quick takes at Jen's.

Seven Quick Takes: Feast of St. John Edition

1. We have to deal with the coat storage question again. Seven people living in the Midwest wear a lot of coats; there's no way around it. I was bustling out of the house on Christmas morning when the coat hooks began pulling out of the wall. I yelled for Elwood, who was still sleeping and did not view the situation as urgent, but he was not the one listening to the creak of bending screws being disgorged by the studs, or the one being buried in piles of winter clothing. The coats are piled in the office floor for the nonce (argh) and we are trying to figure out a better solution. I was thinking, "It's a shame we need so many coats. It'd be nicer if the kids could meet that need with something more portable. It wouldn't really work for them to carry blankets. I know! Maybe they could grow fur!"

2. And then I thought, "What was IN that beer I just drank if it is making me think my kids need to grow fur?"

3. Did you have a good Christmas? We had a nice Christmas. I've been turning it over in my head, though. Some of the things that we do to make Christmas less crazy and more Christ-centered were clearly foreign to one of our guests, and it's been niggling at me.

4. Things that might make Christmas less crazy for someone else too: 1) don't focus on wish lists at all -- God gives surprising gifts and it's perfectly fine for parents to do so too 2) open presents in rounds, where each person opens one present in some specified order (reverse alphabetical by middle name was suggested a couple of times) and then we take a break before the next round to appreciate that present, work on Christmas meal prep, and step back from the all-you-can-eat overstimulation buffet that is Christmas Day in a large family 3) get the kids' input on year-end giving and make it a fun family occasion to give away a bunch of money to causes that especially speak to them 4) say vespers together with loud happy Christmas carols at the beginning and the end.

5. We also played charades, which we love to do. My 8yo got "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" out of nowhere and he was pleased as could be. That boy couldn't be any more heart-melty, I tell you what.

6. I gave my husband Dixit for Christmas. He loves games; I am pickier about games. I read descriptions of recent award-winning games in search of one that did not have seven million pieces or eight kabillion rules, and Dixit was the winner. It's a lot of fun, and suitable for a mix of ages. 

7. I have been knitting like a fiend this week, trying to finish Christmas gifts. Dear Jamie of December 2014: if you haven't made a bunch of headway on a Christmas gift by the time December starts, wait until next year. My 2012 self sent the same memo to my 2013 self, however, and she did not even pretend to listen. I am going to see my mother on Monday night, and I am hoping to finish not only this sock (Roses from the new Knitty) but also its mate. This might be delusional, but I am going to call it optimistic and see how that works out for me.

Some Number of Quick Takes: Week 3 Edition

1. I think it's a sure sign that I'm out of the blogging groove if seven quick takes sounds like too many.

2. Last week I was thinking, "I should close down the blog. I'm not going to have time to write. It will just be a distraction. My students will find it eventually and I don't want that to happen." And then I remembered that the whole reason I started this blog seven years ago (!) was to write quick and easy posts documenting life with the kids. After that I remembered how fun it is to revisit those early posts, full of things I would never have been able to recall on my own. So. Onward.

3. Back in July I applied for life insurance. I was disgruntled when my bloodwork results kicked me into a higher risk category: one of my liver numbers was elevated. Harrumph, I thought, it was the Kahlua I drank while I was working on those stupid photo albums. I'm a one-drink-a-month kind of drinker and I had two a night for a week. I'll get it retested and then I can go back in the low-risk category where I belong.

Now I have two liver numbers that are elevated: AST and GGT. 

4. But I am not letting my imagination run away with me, she said virtuously. Not at all. I'm going to see a gastroenterologist on the 17th. Say a prayer?

5. Stella has been interested in dance for a while now, but after calling around in the summer and determining that every little girl dance class in town was inconvenient for one reason or another, I decided guiltily to let it slide for another semester. But! Then! At our downtown arts festival I came across a table for a ballet studio that's right in my neighborhood, offering classes that fit into our crazypants fall schedule. She started yesterday and OH OH OH the cuteness. So glad it worked out after all.

6. Do you happen to remember all my stress and angst about getting my grad school research projects published? Rejections, a withdrawal, revising until I was weary of the sound of my own voice? Well. Both of those projects were accepted for publication this summer-- one in June and one in August. The timing couldn't be better -- it means I am in good shape for my first year on the tenure track. 

Maybe one day I will learn to trust God's timing, you think?

7. The semester is going well, I think, but I have a boatload of grading to do this weekend. Prepping a class is a bit like childbirth-- the way you think afterward, "Oh, it wasn't that bad," and then you get into the middle of it again and you realize it was that bad and then some.

Hey, look at that-- I made it to 7. More quick takes at Jen's.

Seven Quick Takes: St. Anne Edition

1. Stella took a nap this afternoon and when she woke up we were cleaning the house. "Who's coming over, Mama?" she wanted to know. That is pathetic, for her to assume that cleaning only happens when we're having company, but it's not unjustified.

2. I was more enthusiastic about cleaning and cooking when my kids were younger and I still hoped they would turn into people who offered to mop and loved my butternut squash-apple soup. (Not that I'm bitter or anything.) That was also the period of my life when I was a full-time mom, which has something to do with it. It's not just the at-home/employed thing, though, because I am mostly momming it this summer and I am just not feeling the vacuum love.

3. I might be too old to say "feeling the love." I have been 43 for a week now. Forty-three is the first age I have ever been that sounds old to me.

4. My husband and I also observed our twentieth anniversary this week.

5. ACOG invited Amy Tuteur to speak about homebirth at their annual meeting this fall. This discovery requires a post of its own, but I have to say I am astonished. 

6. Petely asked me to teach him to knit today. He is *so* proud of his efforts. It's the cutest thing.

(6.5. I wish that knitwear designers would  agree that "at the same time" should always be put in boldface type, preferably in some neon color with the blinky tag. I am making a kid's sweater, which I started over once because my increases weren't quite right. Now I have to rip back 600 stitches or so because of an "at the same time" instruction that wasn't bold or neon or blinky or even on the same page as the first part of the pattern. Sigh.)

7. Speaking of cutest things, my niece sent Pete a letter after our trip to my parents' house. The first part of it was ordinary chitchat, but the PS slays me: "I miss you so much. I miss your face. I miss your vois." I was planning to save it forever, because I know exactly what she means about that irresistible face and voice, but it got recycled today (see #1 re: unaccustomed blitz cleaning). So I am writing it down here instead.

More quick takes at Jen's.

Seven Quick Takes: Flowering Volunteer Tomato Edition

1. Please pray for Kate, whose husband died last week. I haven't been spending much time on the internet and was aghast to see her news on Ravelry today.

2. Everything else feels so trivial after that. Maybe we need a moment-of-silence take here.

[silence, filled with prayers and sympathy]

3. I took the four youngest kids down to see my parents and my siblings and my SIL and their cousins. They were all sorry to leave. I made them go to Mammoth Cave on the way back and you would have thought I was chaining them up and making them mine for saltpeter. "Whyyyyy couldn't we stay and play with the cousins?" they wanted to know. One of these days I will learn that things I think will be fun for them are rarely met with shouts of glee.

4. I've been mulling over the fact that I'm always happier when I'm blogging more frequently, and trying to figure out which way the causality runs. Do I blog more during periods when my life is full of happy things I want to post about? Or do I make an effort to squeeze more blogworthy things into my life if I've made a commitment to post frequently? The latter possibility sounds kind of terrible, as if I am living my life for the benefit of my invisible friends on the internet. I suspect there's some truth in it, though. Thoughts?

5. Do you know what I am doing with the rest of July, O invisible friends on the internet? I am catching up on pictures, yes I am. If I do at least a month's worth of pictures every day, I will be caught up by August. So that's what I'm doing. Caught-up-ness or BUST, I tell you.

6. I keep having anxiety dreams about the beginning of the semester. I forgot that classes were starting and I missed the first day. Classes are starting tomorrow and I have no syllabi. I am in front of my class with no idea -- none -- of how I will fill the next 75 minutes. Also on the list for the remainder of July: finish syllabi, firm up readings for the new prep, work on planning the first few weeks of class. Oh, yeah, and smack that manuscript into shape.

7. The princess party went well, if you don't count the vomit in the carpet. Next time the princess dancing will involve less twirling. I was going to post a princess mask tutorial with pictures, but I haven't quite managed it yet. I only used about two-thirds of the planned activities, but I have learned from sad experience that it's better to plan a few more things than you think you'll have time for. Better to have them saying, "Can we just go play now?" than saying, "We're bored!"

Seven Quick Takes: One-Third Edition

1. My summer runs from May 15 to August 15, contractually speaking, meaning that the first third is over today. I'm looking back at my list of summer ideas and trying to figure out how to make the most of the weeks that remain. 

2. I got the best email today, you guys: my manuscript was accepted for publication. Accepted! Huzzah! For those of you keeping track at home, this was my early research project, the one I've written about off and on in this space since 2006. I defended it successfully in June of 2008, and then tabled it for a while to work on the dissertation. During my postdoc I submitted it to the flagship journal of my professional organization, from which it was rejected despite promising initial reviews. It sat on the back burner for my first insane year of teaching. Last September it was rejected again (I was aiming awfully high, so I can't complain), and although I got it resubmitted shortly afterward I was worried that one of the reviewers was going to torpedo my chances. But! He didn't! My first first-author publication finally has a home and I am so relieved.

3. Remember the balaclava that has been tormenting me? I told my son I'd do my level best to get it finished before he left for Scout camp on Sunday, and that deadline has been exactly what I needed. I am finished with the knitting and the seaming, and now I just (just!) have to weave in 7,592 ends. The rule for knitted garments is that they have to spend as many hours wearing them as I spend making them. I totally get it that it's easy to lose track of a hat. As long as it gets a reasonable amount of wear, there's no need to haul around excess guilt about it. For this balaclava, man, he's going to be wearing it every day until he's 35 to get those hours in. I'm going to have to write a note to his teachers in the fall: please allow my son to wear his tentacled balaclava in class, because he has to keep it on his face for as many hours as I spent making it and that's a really large number of hours.

I'm sure that would make a great first impression.

Isn't it a little funny that he's excited to take a wool balaclava to camp in June?

4. I watched Braveheart on Amazon while grinding out the last of the knitting and seaming. I'd never seen it before and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it -- surprised, too, at its Catholic flavor. It's too bad Mel Gibson lost his mind, huh? One little detail that stood out to me was when the priest shriving soldiers before battle said "Ego vos absolvo..." That "vos" made me jerk my head up from my knitting and pay attention: general absolution means there's serious business at hand.

I would have been just as happy reading a synopsis of the battle scenes, though. I am bad at gore.

5. My Edinburgh-born son would love the movie, but he's only 13. We have been a little surprised at how early some of our acquaintances allow their kids to watch R-rated movies. My 11-yo has been asking me almost daily to watch various PG-13 movies. It's a tricky thing, isn't it? 

6. One of my boys had a tetanus booster yesterday and his arm is swollen and red and sore today. Any tips other than OTC pain reliever? The last time I had a tetanus shot my arm was sore for weeks afterward, so I'm hoping his reaction is milder than mine was.

7. If I encourage the use of Super Soakers, watering my little herb garden is a task they're happy to do.

More quick takes at Jen's.

Seven Quick Takes: Birthday Boy Edition

1. My middle son is eleven today. He says, "It's my first palindromic age!" I wished him ten more palindrome birthdays, thinking that would take him to 111, but my 13yo pointed out that 101 is actually a palindrome too. 

2. For his birthday Joe asked for a replacement factorial T-shirt. He wore the original until I told him it was too ragged for school, and now he wears it to bed.

3. He is not as ubergeeky as these first two takes might make him sound. He's the child who eroded my ban on toy guns. He is the proud owner of 15ish Nerf guns, and is forever hoping for more. His thoughts on circumventing silly snacktime rules, obtaining cool toys, using bad language, and dealing with unimaginative deacons are all favorite family stories. 

4. On the menu: blueberry oven pancake for breakfast, subs for lunch, potato-cheese pie with green beans and chocolate cake for dinner. On the schedule: minor league baseball tonight, paintball with pals on Sunday.

5. No matter how many things I forget when I am an elderly lady with an uncertain memory, I think I will always remember the joy of his birth -- my first at home.

6. He is a kid to be proud of: hard-working, independent, conscientious. He won the 5th-grade citizenship award, the first of our kids to do so.

7. Recently he found himself in need of some comfort after a sticky situation at a friend's house. He had handled it beautifully -- you couldn't have asked for a better response -- but the memory lingered. He asked if I would read Esther to him -- he thinks this bit is a hoot. Before you get to chapter 6, though, there's a fair amount of story to get through. I lay beside him, trying to pour all the love and consolation I could into the reading. "Hammedatha the Agagite" isn't what one usually thinks of as a soothing phrase, but any port in a storm, I guess. His eyelids fluttered closed as I read about satraps and eunuchs and gibbets and genocide averted, until his breathing was peaceful and I eased away slowly.

The thing about 11 is that you turn around and blink and they're teenagers already, and they don't ask you to stay with them while they fall asleep any longer. I am remembering the days when he was very small, the way his dark blue eyes studied my face as we got to know each other. It's been such a pleasure to watch him unfurl.

More quick takes at Jen's. And phew! Thirty days, thirty posts. Thanks for reading.