Kitchen Counter Re-do

One fine day we decided to re-do the countertops in the kitchen. We're still recovering from that decision, but here are some photos.

BEFORE

Notice the lovely cracked tiles on the front edge of the big counter, plus the oh-so-visible grout lines. These tiles were originally nubby, with many little bumps on them. We'd worn them off.



DURING





First countertop in: the littlest one.

Sink dropped in. This was the defective one, with the crack in the cast iron.

Countertops all in and waiting for the tile backsplashes. We sanded, spackled and painted the backsplash areas above the counters with our yellow, as the tiles wouldn't be as tall as the new subway stack.

AFTER


Oh yes, this is part of after. Genero installs the replacement sink.





YAY!

Packing up a Carnival

(click to head to a lovely site with lots of lovely photographs)

Can I just say that May's been a little busy? Can I add that June isn't letting up much either?

After finishing the semester, grading for a day, a night and a day, posting the grades, dealing with the (cranky as well as heartwarming) student email, we packed up the car and went to Zion National Park. That's ZION, not Zion's, like I always say. I'm working on that.

Then a day home, then the counter boys came to rip up our kitchen counters and put in new ones. Before and after photos coming soon. I packed and drove to Orange County to board a plane for Utah, to see my parents. As I'm walking down the jetway to the plane, my phone rings and it's Dave: "Interesting news. The sink's defective."

Saturday night I return, and between then and Monday morning, we took down all the drapery, blinds and miscellaneous window coverings WITHOUT A POWER DRILL, because it had been so long since we used it, the batteries were dead and weren't charging up. Something had gone wrong somewhere in Rechargeble Battery Land.

Monday morning, the window boys arrive to pull out all our windows and put new ones in. I also had Dave cart down my desktop and I sanded, primed and re-painted that, for it was worn and splintery. Too much grading in one spot, I'd say. Back to the window: the proof was in the pudding, meaning, it was all worth it when Dave, looking around our house said, "It looks like a new house." (I would have said "It looks like a new house!" but Dave doesn't typically speak in exclamation points. That day/afternoon/night I also did four loads of laundry, vacuumed the downstairs, mopped the floor, put furniture back in the living room, family room, dining room, made dinner.)

The counter boys had sent an emissary that morning to pull the defective sink and put the new one in, and after a slow dance with counter boy headquarters--who were slow dancing with their plumbing supplier--they said they'd pay for the plumber this time so to call one. The only time we could be worked in was. . .

Tuesday morning at 5:50 AM! So there I was rubbing sleep out of my eyes, while talking with an obscenely energetic plumber guy while he re-installs my sink and faucets. (Note to Aunt Christine: No Laughing.) Then it's shower, pick up the bill from the plumber guy's wife at their very nicely appointed estate up in the green belt of our town (I guess plumbing is a lucrative work) and head down to Lake Elsinore to pay, via charge card so we can get airline points, our window bill. A quick stop at the Pottery Barn Outlet (across the street, how convenient) and home again to hair appointment, stepping around and through the mess that is our house.

Since I now had a sink (cue Hallelujah Chorus) I could cook up my pasta-dish-to-feed-ten for Tuesday Night's Enrichment Evening, our church's evening gathering for the Ladies. Corkscrew pasta, blanched and chilled cut asparagus, peas, mint, cilantro, lemon vinaigrette with a slug of Dijon mustard and real Herbes de Provence--hand carried home from Lyon France, minced red bell pepper, a shake or two of cayenne and it lost out in the Best Tasting Category to AppleBee's Orange Chicken Salad and a heavily oiled caprese salad. Oh well. I liked it--all fresh and springy.

Wednesday we were able to squeeze in a walk before the rains and thunderstorms and the drywall guy arrived. The typical installation for the new slider was to trim it out with molding, but we have crisply defined window wells on that particular wall and wanted the slider to keep with that. One can have too much molding, I believe. While he worked, I made two batches of raspberry jam, in order to keep up with the Charons, then two batches of strawberry jam. I also located the floor of my study again, trying to pitch extraneous detritus while finding new places for things: an ongoing task that will end when I head to the Old Folks Home. Dinner, dishes, wandering around banging my head into walls.

So last night I dreamed another in a series of dreams this week about physical labor. I had to pack up a carnival. I spent all night long, dissembling the Ferris wheel, the Tilt-A-Whirls, the roller coaster, the Tunnel of Love, opening large wooden crates, packing in the pieces, heading for the Dime Toss booth, gathering up scads of over-sized stuffed animals, sweeping down the site, nailing the crates shut, over and over and over. And like all the other mornings this week, I woke up more tired than when I went to bed. So when I saw the photo above, it spoke to me of what I had imagined my summer to be: long walks in a ferny forest, picking bluebells and reading Victorian Lit. A girl can dream a little, can't she?

Today I hope to pack up this carnival a little, with the help of Dave's upcoming Father's Day Present:


Obviously, I'm still dreaming.

Two Roads Diverged into a Green Wood

Two roads diverged in a green wood, on a trail above my parents house. Why? Because they are installing a water main and have ripped up the main trail, so the new one is marked with construction orange pieces of plastic to guide the walker.

I followed this trail, all apologies to Robert Frost, to where it disappeared into the undergrowth, then looped down onto the gold course cart path for a few paces, and made it the landmark all of us children walk to when we visit Mom and Dad: the stream. The spring run-off has amplified this creek into a noisy, babbling stream which I could have heard from some distance away except that Sheryl Crow was singing All I Want to Do Is Have Some Fun in my earbuds.

My parents are on a different schedule than I: up whenever, nice breakfast, my mother will make/answer phone calls (yesterday there were many since it was her birthday) while my Dad goes down to his art studio to paint, then a walk mid-morning along the Ogden River. Big, late lunch, then working on various tasks, reading--perhaps a nap--until evening, when the blinds are raised because the sun has gone down and we have a snack. I think when I'm not here, they watch a movie, then maybe the news, then bed. Pretty dang active folks for 81 and 83.

But my rhythm is off, as rhythms always are when visiting or being visited. People, relatives, friends interrupt our optimum routine and while there are times we can reclaim it for a while (like this morning's walk) basically it's time to let others disrupt, interrupt and intrude our boring, static schedules.

Mom always said a change is as good as a rest, and maybe she was on to something. After the visit/visiting, there's a deliciousness in reclaiming the routine, a safety and sameness that click-clocks along our day. We know what to do, what time to do it, and the structure strengthens our doing, helps us cross of our To Do List tasks.

Thank heavens for disruptions, or we'd miss a singing stream high up on Ogden's mountain, a forested way marked with fluttering pieces of plastic, Sheryl reminding me that all I want to do is not have just fun until the sun goes down, but instead, work with my father on his memoir, celebrate a Happy Eighty-first, see my mother's blue eyes, jump in line with my father's energy, see the newest painting, laugh over lunch with some aunties, in other words to matter to someone, to connect, to love.

Crisis du Jour

I spackled, my husband sanded, I primed, I painted and that was last night. This morning, before heading out to a neighboring state to see my parents, I spackled again, and painted again, all trying to remove the hard edge where the old tile was as the new tile would be about a half-inch lower. I was ready for this day's project to be done: tile, sink installation, clean-up.

While the tile guy's working on the tile, the plumber arrived to make us $300 poorer, no wait--that wasn't it. He arrived to put in our new sink and faucet. (And make us poorer.)


Testing one-two-three in Plumber Land means fill the sink with water. As I'm walking down the jetway to board the plane, my phone rings with the news from my husband that the sink leaks.

Leaks? It's brand new--out of the box brand new.

Yep. When the plumber was testing the sink, it started leaking. There's a crack on the underside and several stress cracks in the enamel. But on balance, all the faucet and sprayer look nice and they made it all fit. So Call A to Call B to Call C and he calls me back later that afternoon with the news that the new sink will be here tomorrow and can they put it in Monday?

Oh, sure. We're doing the windows that day too--the more the merrier. I was happy about that news actually because the guy in the airplane seat near me told me about his cousin's woes of redoing their floors and it took nearly a year with this crisis and that crisis. I had visions of washing the dishes in the bathroom for months while they hassled and figured out my sink issues. But Monday? Monday's fine.

Vision vs. Reality

I have an older house--not the kind that people drool over when they drive down the street--but the ubiquitous California ranch house, one of many in this 33-year old neighborhood. It's update time, and we finally saved enough to redo the countertops and the windows. Yes, one week apart, but all in one swoop--chaos.

The vision: a smooth sweep of countertop, dying into the window, just like it was before: all one level everywhere.

But after tear-out, they discovered that the Ceasarstone would not be as thick and therefore I could not have one-level countertop. The guy (who speaks pretty good English) and his helper (who speaks only Spanish) say "You gotta problem." I say, "No. You have the problem." They call for back-ups and reinforcements.

I would call the Mr. but he's teaching a class. But he has about as much experience as I do, as we've never done this and have lived in this house nearly twenty years. So I call the Girlfriend, who is an expert on this. "I don't think it would be a problem to have a little ledge, she says. "Really?" I ask. "It will be fine," she says. Okay.

While I was on the phone with Girlfriend she tells me about the latest (weird) wedding invitation she'd received in the mail. (We vie with each other to see who gets the weirder invitations.) It was housed a slender box which opened to reveal a scroll, with a sort of Princess and Prince Charming theme complete with castle. I said, "You've got to feel sorry for the guy, right off." She agreed.

So I'm amiable when Kurt, the co-owner of the company came over, as well as the Tile Guy. (I'm doing a subway tile backsplash for those of you who know what that means. I didn't, before I started all of this.) He explains it to me, and we talk heights and window ledges and touch-up painting. It's then that we discover that Tile Guy thought the tile was going only behind the stove, when I thought it was going all along that wall. Okey, dokey. We try to solve this one out, and Kurt raises his hand and says calmly (I was calm too. I promise.) "We'll work it out."

I remember once a long time ago in another marriage when I was working with the architect on designing a dream house. She told me, as we worked out a precise little plan for the sewing room, laundry chute, cupboards, etc., that "It would never be built like it is on paper. There's always a difference between Vision and Reality."

Okay, so Visions have to modified to work in Reality: I'll have a teensy ledge, instead of smooth sweep into the window. But that groom will be stuck with his Precious Princess forever.

I'll take the windowsill dilemma.

iPhone Drawing

Clever use of an iPhone app, I think. Now watch it happen. (Yeah, okay, after the obligatory ad imbedded in this link from The New Yorker.)

Three Days in Peru

I've spent the last three days in Peru. Not literally, but the Peru of my youth, when my father took a leap of faith and a deanship position for a business school in Lima. And the Peru I just spent time in was filtered through his eyes, his journals and his concerns and successes.

I went through the 100-plus page section twice in a row, first straightening out the cupboards, then restocking them with previously cut sections to add back more of the flavor. This experience of editing his memoir has been a real gift to me from my father, as I am beginning to understand--in a sliver of a way--some of what he went through (and helps me understand why the children and family aren't at the center of the writing--that will be in Mother's journals and letters. Heads Up, Mom. You're next.).

The family is there, but at the core. The great peripheral is ESAN, the business school run by Stanford University, swirling in a great stew of faculty and staff issues, the constant conundrum of financial support, the incredible trips, the conferences and meeting of a wide range of all different types of people from government, missionary, academia, and local. What a leap it was for our family--for all seven of us--to follow our parents into a different land and culture for two years.

We are richer for it.

Hanging Out in 1984, Bored Stiff

For the final in English 101, I included a portion of an article printed in the New York Times contrasting reading in a book and reading on the web. The article didn't discuss blogs, but instead the distractions posed by web reading, and the non-linear way it pulls a reader through material. Since I'm a teacher, I ended where it champions book reading.

The students had to first annotate the excerpt for the argument, then in a written answer discuss the argument and support.

The answers were all over the map, as about half of them couldn't discern the argument in this short (1 page) piece. {Note to self: lead with annotation in the next term, and with a discussion of argument.}

I was intrigued with one young man's rationale for why his age group (discussed in the article) doesn't read, as opposed to the older, wrinkled, and nearly dead folks who do (that would be people like me, you see):

"In this article they state that a fifth of 17-year-olds said they read for fun and in 1984 more 17-year-olds read for fun. Most people in 1984 really didn't have much to do back then, so of course more people are going to read for fun. Now that we have better technology people read on-line. Time has changed and more and more people rely on technology more then books. Although books could help on certain subjects."

There you have it, misspellings, errors and all. Take it from the authority: if you were hanging around in 1984, you weren't having much fun.

Dancing in the Station, Amsterdam

Something to Think About

Happy Mother's Day

The Lanyard, by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

More Laughs

Okay, I'll stop for a while as I really don't think blogs with tons of videos are much fun--would rather read words and see pictures and parse ideas. (Yeah, I know you can tell how old I am by that statement.)

But I happened on this list of "Ninety-nine Things You Should Have Already Experienced on the Internet," that is to say, if you are with it, you should have caught these items on YouTube.

I have other favorites from this list, of course, and I'll post them every once in a while. Those who are "with it" will have already seen them. The rest of us will be brought up to speed, I guess.

Semester's almost over--it's time for a Laugh

Repeated Sentences

I've been reading repeated sentences all day.

It's had the effect of making me crazy and cranky, not a pleasant situation where I'm supposed to be judging 20% of a student's grade (their research papers). This is the Big Kahuna of their grade and we spend approximately six weeks of class time dedicating ourselves to the pursuit of truth, justice, MLA, reputable sources, Works Cited pages, and maybe some happiness along the way.

After reading today's batch, I've decided they spent about six hours of their time pursuing their truth, sources and the American Way. And that's a generous estimation for some papers.

When a student has gone through two library orientations (mine and the librarian's), a section on what constitutes a reputable, scholarly source, and then you have to define for them what "reputable" and "scholarly" means, you know you're in trouble. When you've told them to attach the final paper to an email and send it in, but only if it's a .doc or .docx or .rtf and you draw pictures and the international "not" symbol (red circle with a line through it) and you even put the admonition to song, after which Boyd in the front row joked and said "Don't quit your day job," and then he sent in .wps format so I had to mark him down 10 points on his Mechanics grade, do you think I felt bad about lowering his grade? (The correct answer is "no.")

I have students who get through 3 of the 4 Research Paper assignments and then drop the class, because we are a poor college district and we have the drop date 15 weeks into the semester (where Big U, with lots of money has theirs 5 weeks into their 10-week quarter). In fact, they've been dropping like flies around our college, and while you're glad they gave it their all, you think about how many papers you graded and conferences you held and questions you answered and wished that some of those who are a Few Tacos Short of a Combination Plate would have dropped the second week instead of the 14th.

My husband (also a professor, but over at Big U) and I know to grade the papers all in a batch because of what we call "grade creep." It's when you tend to score the first few students harshly, but then lighten up as you go. Then you norm them all, making sure you were playing fair-n-square with all of them. But today, I've had grade deflation. I've become more and more fed up with their redundant (and yes, I have to define that for some) and repetitive and inane and frankly dumb blathering in between their quoted sources. And then there's others who rarely bother with the blathering but just throw in 12 (TWELVE!) lengthy block quotes in a 7-page paper, with no introductory comments. Just the author's name, their publication, a verb and a colon and the block quote, and I'm supposed to figure it out, make the connections, do the work that the student didn't.

Okay, step away from the keyboard now, lady, and finish up the two last papers. You've saved the best two students for last, and hopefully you'll be rewarded with succinct writing, well-supported statements, and no repeated sentences repeated sentences repeated sentences.

Intersection

Two quotes to get us started today. One is from Science magazine, when talking about the difference between the limestone core of Queen Nefertiti's famous 3300-year-old bust and the outer stucco skin. "Nefertiti's bust. . . is an intersection between realism and stylization," said the lead author.

And then this in my email box when I arrived home from school:

"Honestly it was not my intent to not citie my sources I did not look over my essay good enough.I will stay in the class ,and if there is anything I could do to pick up my grade please let me know.All I need is a 70 to get my degree this semster.If it dose not look like its going to happen I could use some help taking it in the summer.So if you know of a good professor let me.Thanks again for your help.It just got to me a little being so close to reaching a goal then slipping when almost there."

This is an email note from one of three students who failed their research essay because of plagiarism. The student's plagiarism was especially egregious because nearly the entire conclusion was lifted from the source, without any attempt at attribution whatsoever. This student, who is a custodian at a local high school, is a nice man with great intentions. However I'd have to say his evaluation of how he is doing in the class is certainly an "intersection between realism and stylization."

I was dreading this event today--not only telling him, but also the other two students who also failed their paper. One young woman said she didn't put quotes in because her classmate (who is well-meaning) told her that if she didn't directly quote the source, in other words, didn't use quote marks, then it wouldn't be plagiarism. Um. Wrong.

The last of the three was just sloppy, tired, sick of it all, and she knew it and I knew it. But the first student, the one who wrote me the email told me this was his 4th try through this Less-Than-101. I was reminded of that essay in Atlantic Monthly titled "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower" (illustration above is from that article--if you haven't read it yet, you must) about the myth we impose on people that everyone should go to college, get a degree, get ahead. From the essay, by a Professor X:

"Beneath the surface of this serene and scholarly mise-en-scène roil waters of frustration and bad feeling, for these colleges teem with students who are in over their heads. . . . Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence.

In each of my courses, we discuss thesis statements and topic sentences, the need for precision in vocabulary, why economy of language is desirable, what constitutes a compelling subject. I explain, I give examples, I cheerlead, I cajole, but each evening, when the class is over and I come down from my teaching high, I inevitably lose faith in the task, as I’m sure my students do. I envision the lot of us driving home, solitary scholars in our cars, growing sadder by the mile."

I read and re-read this essay a lot. I have it saved on my hard drive. It butts up against our little community college's efforts at cheerfully urging us proffies to Retain More Of Our Students. The only way to do that, is to allow writing, like that in the above email, to be the norm. Texting as text. Sloppy scholarship as the only scholarship.

My father, who was a professor at Harvard, repeats often the line "The university is bigger than any one student." In my tiny corner of my tiny college in the tiny community where I teach, this line is my lifeline. It's the only way I can sit across the desk from an anxious student who resides in the back row of the classroom, smiling and nodding like he does get it, only he doesn't, and tell him that he has a 60% in the class, and no, I don't give extra credit work, and yes, it's very likely he'll get a D, which is neither passing, nor failing.

My classroom is that intersection between the stylization--the college brochure pictures of smiling grads surrounded by their friends--obscuring the realism of the classroom, where MLA rules, grammar conventions and research papers take their toll.

Some days the drive home is a sad one indeed.

Thrillsville

Very cool.

My sister Susan has a review of a book in the Wall Street Journal.

Very cool.

Big People

My brain cells are scattering, just like a ripe dandelion's seeds float away in a breeze. I chalk it all up to the Research Essays from my Less-Than-101 class.

I keep reminding myself of two things, as I grade these little gems of construction, disaster and pillaging: 1) they are in college, and 2) this is Less-Than-101 so don't expect too much.

I look out at my classroom and see Big People bodies, Big People heads, Big People with Big People car payments, Big People schedules, Big People responsibilities. I'm just not seeing Big People essays, and I'm only on the third one.

It could be my own fault, as I drew from the top of the stack--yes, those are the students who who came in and sat down, saw the announcement on the board that final essays were Due Today, blanched white, gathered up their things and went upstairs to the library to do six weeks of work in 90 minutes.

I don't know how I'm going to get through this weekend of grading.

Too bad I've already eaten up the chocolate Easter bunny.



P.S. Just caught my first plagiarist. Correcting their essays take as much time as three regular essays.

P.P.S. I may have to go and buy more chocolate.

Went Down

I, like many others, have been watching Little Dorrit on PBS, a series that originally aired in England last fall. I first saw Little Dorrit, a tale written by Charles Dickens, when I was dating my husband, some twenty years ago. The movie, in black and white (I think), was in two parts and we went to the Berkeley theater for two successive Saturdays to catch the whole thing.

Like any Dickens tale, character is king. And multiple characters, for Dickens, are needed to populate his fictional kingdoms. I was very interested in Little Dorrit for her quiet ways, a life I felt like I lived as wife, mother and silent partner. And now, ready to marry again for a second time, I was putting away any visions of earthly fame and grandeur (really quite unrealistic, truthfully, given my four children) and again took on another man's name.

What struck me about the movie, other than it's sheer length, were the final narrated comments, seemingly so parallel to the life I was choosing:
"Little Dorrit and her husband walked out of the church alone. They paused for a moment on the steps of the portico, looking at the fresh perspective of the street in the autumn morning sun's bright rays, and then went down.
Went down into a modest life of usefulness and happiness. Went down to give a mother's care. . . Went down to [be] a tender nurse and friend. . . . They went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and in shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant, and the froward and the vain, fretted and chafed, and made their usual uproar."

I was reminded of this from another post on Junkfood Science (another fav) about a woman named Susan Boyles from Britain. In her interview, she says she lives with her parents, never been kissed, and you can tell she has had a life much like Little Dorrit's in many ways--living quietly. If you haven't caught the video of her yet, you must, but first--read what was said about her in The Herald:

"Susan is a reminder that it's time we all looked a little deeper. She has lived an obscure but important life. She has been a companionable and caring daughter. It's people like her who are the unseen glue in society; the ones who day in and day out put themselves last. They make this country civilised and they deserve acknowledgement and respect. Susan has been forgiven her looks and been given respect because of her talent. She should always have received it because of the calibre of her character."-- The Herald, April 14, 2009.

Aerial Lake by Night

Worried about my ultrasound appointment (a re-exam, triggered by my mammogram), I went on the web to look things over and look things up. Apparently there's only two categories: good and bad. The bad category, from what I could tell from the photos, looks kind of like flying over a night terrain, all the little cities and streets and streetlights a meshy web, with a meshy blob in the middle.

The good category, is the same night terrain, but with the looks of a lake in the middle of that city.

It's unnerving, really to be put in a place where no information is given to help the patient process, digest, figure out, think about, mull over the situation. As a teacher, I am used to being the Momma bird for my baby birds, gathering the information and making it palatable and digestible for the ones I am trying to teach (even though sometimes I feel like flying off and leaving the nest for good). I am used to teaching, imparting information, making myself clear, with a healthy dose of Are There Any Questions?

Any questions I asked last week resulted in the technician pointing to a well-worn piece of paper tacked to a cabinet that stated: "We are technicians only. We are not allowed to discuss patient results." Yeah, okay. Since they won't answer questions, and the paper clearly said that they hadn't sent the films up yet as it was a Radiology issue, my doctor wasn't an option. Where else could I turn?

So, properly internetted up, I went to the appointment.

I asked the tech if she could explain the process. Her hand was midway to pointing at the sign, when I said I knew she couldn't discuss the results, but some information would be helpful. I acknowledged that she wasn't in the business of diagnosis, but really, didn't we both know that patients do better when they have enough and the right kind of information? It had been a long week, I told her (trying to keep the tremor out of my voice), and somewhat stressful.

Yes, she said. Most of my mammo retakes are pretty stressed out when they get here.

Given the terse language in the recheck letter I received, it's no wonder.

During the exam, I asked her what she was seeing, craning my neck to see if I had a landscape of streets, or if there was a dark lake.
I'm not allowed to. . .
Yes, I know, I interjected. I just wondered if you could describe what you see.
I'm not allowed. . . she began again.
I know, I said.

She kept dragging the ultrasound wand, clicking on her keyboard in the dim room, making little notations on the screen.

I know if I fall apart, I said, it's better to be in the doctor's office, but I just wondered. . .

She paused, zeroing in on something. Oh, that probably won't happen, she said, then fell silent.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a lovely lake in the mesh of streets and highways. I didn't ask any more questions.

I drove home, rounding the corner to see my neighbors Tom and Dee out looking at their sprinklers. After some conversation (they're both really busy and we only catch up every once in a while), she allowed that she'd had a lumpectomy last week, and was still a little sore. She was upbeat and was soon starting chemo. We talked shop--er, breasts--and then we both moved on. Them, to their yellow spots in their lawn, and me, home to bake chocolate chip cookies.

Feeling Mortal

I read a post on a young friend's blog the other day about finding her first gray hair. My hairdresser found mine and with a tug, yanked it out of my head. I asked her not to do that again, and have tried to live, somewhat gracefully, with aging.

Until last week's double whammy.

First was the mammogram people, calling me back to schedule another appointment, not only with them, but also with the radiology/ultrasound people. This was a sobering moment, but to combat it with perfect denial, I repeated to myself the phrase, kind of like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, chanting while she clicked her ruby-red heels together: "I'm not in a high risk group, I'm not in a risk group." I breastfed my children, no close relative has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and I had children before age 30. Doesn't that entitle me to a little denial?

Then my doctor's office called and yes, they want to put me on statins. This one's harder to work around, as it's all invisible little something-or-others that are not cooperating with my desire to have perfect health until I suddenly fall over at around, say, at age 92 or something. (Although I reserve the chance to revise that upwards if I hit 90.)

However all this interferes with the idea that I've cultivated for a while: There's Always More Time. This is my trap, my snare, that hole that swallows me up. I have lots of time so I can do that later. I began saying this when I had three teenagers. It was like a soothing utterance as I shelved one fondly held desire after another. I can do it when they're all raised. I'll have Time. Lots of it. It's how I kept my sanity.

But the reality is that there's never any more time. I just think there is. For the Big Joke was when I finally got rid of all those pesky mouthy and crazy and wonderful teens and did have more time, I went to Grad School. I repeated the mantra, with an added clause: There's Always More Time, as soon as I finish grad school. Yes, yes. And then there was trying to find a job, which I got, which really gives me NO TIME whatsoever for lounging around and doing whatever it was I put off until later.

And the Really Big Joke comes when you finally do get time and get past all that, and you find, to your great surprise, that all those things you thought you'd do, um, you don't really want to do now. According to Oprah, it's a part of menopause. According to Erickson's Stages of Psychosocial Development, it's a natural part of the aging process--you have a different set of tasks that you take on as you age, and you leave the younger tasks behind. According to me, it's all a Big Joke. A bait and switch in the shopping aisle of life. And those trite phrases work well when it's not you trying to Seize the Day or something, and soon you'll design that great quilt, or write the All-American Novel, or photograph the one scene that the Getty really wants, only they haven't discovered you yet. You can't really blame them though, as you haven't discovered yourself yet. It's on my To Do list and I'll get to it as soon as I'm through grading these essays, and figure out what we're having for dinner, and finish up the laundry. You know. . . when I have a little more time.

Annual Peep Diorama Contest

The Washington Post runs a Peeps-inspired diorama contest. Here's three of this year's contestants. (above: Peeps-A Lot).

Respect

Escher

Parking Lots

Boyd* sat across the table from me, having come to my office hours, held on the second floor of the library. It was his first visit, and I knew why he was there. His score on the second research paper assignment was a 9 out of 30, abysmal.

Tired of student topics like abortion, video games as a positive benefit, legalization of marijuana and way way too many papers on global warming, I changed up the schema for this class, tying into current events. "If you could have a portion of that stimulus money to engineer/fix/build/change something, what would you go after? It has to be domestic, as no American taxpayer wants their money to head overseas."

Boyd wanted to "end pollution." How? By tackling littering, global warming, car emissions, and recycling. Hmmm. Could I say this seemed to lack focus? Can I just say this is representative of his performance in this freshman comp class? Can I just he's a really sweet guy, and is WAY over his head? I relayed to him, as he sat there across the table from me, that his thesis seemed to lack focus.

"Then I'll just talk about just global warming."
"It has to be a domestic issue," I reminded him.
"Really?" He looked puzzled, really sincerely puzzled. "I didn't know that."

I did not reach across the table and strangle him. I did not even stand up with a regal flourish and order him to the elevators, down to the parking lot, into his car and to never come back to my class. I didn't even roll my eyes, which took considerable discipline.

However, I did crumble inside a little, as I've been flapping my jaws about this research paper for six weeks. I sent him downstairs to the computers, to look up on our class blog a list of subjects that he could choose from. "Think big, Boyd. Remember how much money they have in Washington to throw around."

I helped another student while he was gone, there in my luxurious "adjunct faculty office." But the chairs are nice and since it's the floor of the library where all the books are kept, hardly anyone is around to bug us.

Boyd came back up a few minutes later, a huge grin on his face. "I've got it, Professor. I know what I want to write about."
"Great! What did you choose?" I was praying for something clean and neat, as the 8 page rough draft with five sources is due in one week.
"Community Colleges. I want to write about community colleges."
"Terrific! How can all that stimulus money benefit community colleges?"

Quickly in my mind I reviewed some options that came to my mind: give me a real table that doesn't have the metal apron hanging off on one end. Buy a TV remote to go with all the TVs in our rooms. Better yet, let's have some real audio/visual/digital equipment, thinking of all my K-12 friends with their delicious technology set-up. Hurry up with the new library. Give us an adjunct office that's private. Hey, give us adjuncts a raise, since our faculty make two and half times what we do per teaching hour. I stopped myself there, for Boyd was about to tell me his ideas.

He leaned in. "Parking lots," he confided. "We need better parking lots."

Couldn't Resist This

(From a website about the toy Transformers)

Finding Ourselves Again

Do you want chopsticks? I asked my husband as he stir-fried the meal from Trader Joe's, one of our favorite resources when neither of us wants to stop and cook.

He did and so did I, so I pulled open--or should I say--yanked open the drawer in our kitchen which houses the odds and ends. Yanked, because something was stuck. While he pushed the food around in the hot pan, I decided to excavate.

Plastic forks, spoons, some wrapped from fast food runs, the Japanese chopstick rests, the children's silverware (miniature versions of ours for the grandchildren), serving spoons, the Christmas-themed cheese spreaders, nutcrackers, more-than-enough chopsticks (from our trip to Japan), clippies to hold the chip bags shut, cheese slicers, orange peelers: a veritable treasure trove of clattering, clanging, cluttering detritus.

My husband looked over at me as I unloaded most of this onto the counter. What are you doing? Getting the chopsticks in order, I said. I didn't wash out the baskets that held it all, but did winnow down the bulk of these items and restowed them back in place. The drawer opened and shut smoothly.

When I'm on the run, it's tasks like this that remain undone. The floor in my study starts to pile with books. The ironing board becomes another surface on which to pile things. The guest bedroom collects shipping boxes around the corners. The spare bed in my husband's study starts to resemble an archaeological dig, layer upon layer of manuscripts and papers to be read.

For when we get too busy, we just stack and layer and toss and vow to come back later (summer, anyone?) and find ourselves again.

Luminosity at the Beauty Counter

Yesterday I spent 40 minutes with a really charming young salesclerk with long brown hair, big eyes, an engaging smile and a pace that would never challenge a snail. After more than a half an hour of trying to find my bottle, my color, my style, sorting through the more than seven Wonderful! Different! Age-Defying! kinds of make-up and then realizing that they didn't really stock mine, I decided to push on with the rest of my errands and asked her to call me when she figured it all out.

She called last night. I said I'd see her around 2 p.m. today, after teaching.

Went back, arriving at 2:05. She was at lunch. I wait while the neighboring beauty counter lady helps two people. Then it's my turn. However she couldn't find the bottle on hold--did she put it on hold? she asked me. I shrugged my shoulders and recounted to her that I'd received a call saying it was here. After thirty minutes of waiting, looking, more shrugging, the Salesgirl waltzes in from lunch.

Can I just say it shouldn't be this hard to pick up some make-up? And why didn't I head over to another counter? Free gift time, of course. Can't miss out on those free little make-up bags with free stuff.

She shows me what she thinks, dipping her swab into the bottle and then on me. It's lighter, I say. I'll look like I'm wearing a mask. I'll have a make-up line at my chin like all those old women I see.

It's not really lighter than yours, she says, Just more luminous. We have a scale of 1-6 of luminous, she says, leaning in closer.

The thought crosses my mind as she continues to try to persuade me with her limited grasp of her product line that she sounds like my remedial English students trying to explain the use of commas in their Grammar Groups. I'm also thinking, as I look at myself in the mirror--then look at her face--that she sees me like she sees her grandmother. And maybe that's why she's so pitifully slow. She's trying to give me a break and let it all sink in to this obviously near-dead brain. Whatever. It's painful. (If I am near dead, it's because I was trying to explain commas to remedial English students, preparing for their Grammar Group presentation.)

I realize that when I look in the mirror, I see all of me--my life, my kids, my grandkids, my eyes, my face, my older self, my younger self, my possibilities, my limitations, the extra weight I should lose, the wrinkles I've acquired, the great smile, the good teeth, the pretty-good eyebrows, the love I have for my students, the fatigue of grading, the pride I feel over having walked already that morning even with a sore hip, the lingering dream about trying to mold clay over and over at a potter's wheel (never even sat at one). I see everything.

When she's stroking make-up on me at the Estee Lauder counter, she sees: old woman. Not her possibly ancient abuelita who they maybe buried last year in Guanajato, but just old, as in her mother, her grandmother. The worn-out-from-life old, the come sit here by me on the sofa you beautiful granddaughter old, as the wrinkled woman supposedly pats the plastic covered cushion, while the salesgirl flicks back her long dark hair. Her grandmother catches it, strokes it and calls her Mija and they talk about the day and how it went for her at the beauty counter with all the different people. Oh, it's crazy, the salesgirl says. It's free gift time, and so many people!

The salesgirl puts the foam wedge down on the tissue, studies my face and shrugs her shoulders. It's not lighter, she repeats the third time. Just more luminous.

Think About It, Part II

Think About It, part I

I picked this up last night from a teachery site (basically rants about our beloved higher education experience--so cathartic). Couple that with a book I've been reading, L. Dee Fink's Creating Significant Learning Experiences, and I'm starting to bend my mind around a new thinking about higher ed.

I have resisted mightily all this K-12 "drift-up" of assessments, Student Learning Outcomes, scorings, reading other classes' essays and the like, feeling instead like I was the one being scored. It's partly true, I realize, because we as teachers are the one constant in education. A good teacher, according to Malcolm Gladwell's piece, teaches up to a year-and-a-half's worth of material; a poor teacher accomplishes about three-fourths of what is expected.

But this video hits on my level of education, and my fondly-held beliefs are sliding away, inch by inch. I resisted the idea that we move away from content-centered teaching to student-centered teaching because it all sounded so, well, chaotic. I had this vision of a classroom of hepped up freshmen, tuned into iPods, throwing pencils or Twinkies at each other--basically the inmates running the institution (unfortunate metaphor, but it works). But Fink's book is wising me up to a different thinking about how I approach my classroom experience. I think of some of my students who are relying on me to present good content, as well as assist them in getting through the research paper/English 101. That responsibility weighs heavy some days.

I'm looking forward to summer, where I can really dig into my syllabus and (perhaps) even make some changes.

Free Stuff

I know now why I've put off grading these English 101 essays. I'm more than half-way through and I have to spend an inordinate amount of time going over their sources to ensure proper attribution. Do Grade 3 teachers worry about plagiarism like we do up here in Grade 13 (a standard joke at our community college)?

When a generation thinks it's all okay to download music, books, software all for free I can tell they haven't internalized that old saying of my friend's: You don't know whose it is, but you know it isn't yours. In other words, if you don't own it, you can't have it. If it doesn't have your name on it, you can't take it home with you unless you pay for it. If you find it, you don't say Finders-Keepers-Losers-Weepers--you try and find the owner unless doing so is completely out of line with the value of the item or where you found it--say a penny on the side of the road.

Perhaps the sloppy scholarship I'm seeing comes from being seduced by the strength of the author's words, which make writing look so easy, so smooth. Maybe the plagiarism is accidental, due to ignorance. Hard to believe that a student can come to my classroom never having heard about plagiarism. Or perhaps it's laziness.

I like a freebie as well as the next person, always lining up at the Clinique counter for my Beauty Bonus. And when my husband goes to a convention I tell him to pick up whatever they're giving away--free stuff is always a good time.

Just not in my English papers.

Happy Place

Just like Peter Pan had his Happy Thought Place, I have mine, but on the web. I go there when I'm sick and tired of lesson prep, grading, entering said grades. I sit. I click. I wipe the drool off the keyboard. You have your own Happy Place. This is mine:

(Heather Bailey's online shop.)

For I'm a quilter, you see, and we collect fabrics. We don't collect them necessarily to do anything with them (a corollary would be a workbench full of screws, nails, power tools) but we always PLAN to do something with them. Sometimes this planning takes place as we are stroking the folded fabric in our local quilt shop, or clicking-clicking online. Many times it is in the abstract, as the shopkeeper slices off a yard or two of an especially exquisite piece of yardage.

It's for the Double-Four Patch, we'll say when she asks us. Or--we add,tilting our head to the side--this piece might also coordinate with that group of greens I've been saving for the guest bedroom quilt. She nods knowingly, as she's seen this disease before, wields her rolling cutter, and slice! Another folded piece for our stash.

Yes, the technical name is "stash." I have a fairly comprehensive stash, some fabrics dating back to when I first learned to quilt, some thirty years ago. At that time I took one class and learned how to make a nine-inch square quilt. The second class taught me how to bind it and quilt it. Then, feeling ready, I made a queen-sized quilt out of fabric and sheets. This was in the days before rotary cutters, rulers and mats. I painstakingly traced around a cardboard template for all of the patches, then sewed them together on my little sewing machine, then quilted it all by hand. I only had one baby and no job, so within a year I had that quilt on my bed. That seemed all rather quick, actually.

Now we slice, sew on machines that cost as much as a car did then (you know, back when we churned our own butter). Now I take it over to the quilter to get the quilting done. A slow machine quilter will take about a month, rotating my quilt into the line-up (I think the actual quilting only takes a day or two) and within 6 weeks, if I'm diligent and am not grading papers or doing lesson prep, I could have a quilt start-to-finish.

Today I'm dreaming of summertime, of days when I can quilt and sew and cut and listen to music and NPR radio shows and not think about dangling participles, run-on sentences, cranky students and wierd emails. Today I'm in my Happy Place.

(Anna Marie Horner's shop, online. )

Thank You For Shopping

Our local grocery store is undergoing a renovation which translates to moving all the grocery items around so you can't find them, ripping up the floors every night so we walk on scraped concrete in the day, and filling one-third of the parking lot with fenced-in equipment, supplies, boxes and trash. It's a slight pain, nothing big, really.

Until I saw that they planned to get rid of three of the regular checkstands and put in those annoying self-help checkstands. Okay, okay for those of you who love them, let me guess why: no waiting in line, can control the pace, you love the annoying voice that narrates your entire transaction and you enjoy the game of Where Do We Put The Money, along with Where Does The Money Come Out.

I use these at Home Depot. A can of paint is not a big deal and the weigh machine is NOT confused that there is an item that has been moved to the bag. It doesn't ask you to place the item in the bag over and over.

But how is this good in a grocery store, where a jalapeno chili requires three screens of look-up and when all's said and done probably the bag it's in weighs more than the chili? Or if one of the PLU stickers is off of the zucchini (you get extra points if you know what PLU stands for, or even what it is when the annoying digital lady voice tells you to look for it) that you have to know to hit the pumpkin screen because it is, after all, a squash and then hit the squash screen again and then don't hit the cucumber screen but instead the zucchini screen and there's no way to fix your dumb error and you're really hungry and all you wanted was some vegetables (you lose extra points if you use the word "veggie" around me) to go in your salad and where's the REAL person?

She arrives and you just know she worked in a dental office before she came to work at the Grocer's and is firm, but pleasant and no nonsense and you wish you had gone through the checkstand with the tall lady with the hair that's upswept platinum and takes a half of a can of hairspray to keep it balanced while she enters your PLU codes and smiles the whole time even though her lipstick is outside her lip line and bright pinky-red, she's infinitely better than the digital lady voice saying for the third time, THANK YOU LOYAL CUSTOMER PLEASE TAKE YOUR CHANGE, and you would if you could only figure out where it is.

Common Threads

I listened to Joe Cocker's Feeling All Right as I crossed the desert. After him came New Soul, Sunchyme (a trance cut), Crush by David Archuleta, Bongo Bong by Manu Chao, Praan, and Living in a Bubble by Eiffel 65, among others.

(Crossing the Mohave)

I like music most of the time. I think about those early settlers who sang or whistled to provide their own tunes, with silence as the norm. I think I'm lucky to be able to carry a tune, but have to admit I sound much better when the iPod is cranked up and it's blasting Sweet Dreams Are Made of This, with me as Annie Lenox's back-up singer.

I carry music on aforementioned iPod, have it on my computer when I'm working, driving, cooking in the kitchen. I have different playlists for different moods and seasons, and in all this I'm not much different than any other person today.

But don't give me music when I'm on hold on the phone, or when I'm in the doctor's office (and NO television there either, as I carry my own reading material and have ways to entertain myself that don't involve People's Court or Oprah). I also hate music on websites and especially blogs as I have my own tunes playing as I surf the web, thank you very much.

And now, Sunday morning I'm off now to church where another wonderful musical tradition exists: the hymn. I love the old standards, the words and melodies and shifting harmonies, that have always been a part of my life. Sometimes I visit other churches when I'm traveling and when the pastor/preacher's sermon grows less engaging, I'm apt to open the hymnal of this different religion with its different service and pattern. In these hymns, no matter what church you were raised in, can be found our common threads.

The Letter I Didn't Send

The Letter I Didn't Send:
Dear Dingbat,
When you wrote me last time for your mid-term grade, I had just walked in the door from school, a mere 3 hours after I had given your entire class of 30 students the test. I didn't even roll my eyes when I wrote you back saying that I don't give out grades without the tests, and that I would work on them over Spring Break and you'd find out your score when we returned.

Imagine my surprise in checking my email the night I returned home from my trip, finding another email from you, telling me it was really important that you know your mid-term test grade and would I please tell you.

Well, Dingbat, I've been a little busy. Since I last corresponded with you, I've been in three cities, two states, driven across two deserts, flown over another, attended a funeral, held babies, cooked and cleaned and sewed and sorry to say, didn't get your midterm graded.

And because Uncle Sam outranks you, I didn't even jump right on it this morning, instead doing taxes with my husband, so we can send them off to our tax guy Lloyd this afternoon.

So, as I said before, you'll find out your score when I hand you back the test on Tuesday. I also noticed that you hadn't posted on our class blog like you were supposed to, and that your paragraph revisions---the only grading I did get to--was missing. Did you forget to turn it in?

I like you a lot Dingbat, but enough already. I have a full life outside of the classroom. As an adjunct professor, I'm only paid for the hours I'm there, so my off-time is my time. Not yours.

See you Tuesday.


The Letter I Did Send:
Dear Student,
I've been out of town traveling and am not near my school materials. I hope Tuesday is early enough for you to find out your grade on your midterm.

Sincerely,
Ms. Teacher

Travels

Saturday morning, I got up very early, navigated the speed traps on the freeways around my son's town and flew up to Utah to Aunt Jean's funeral. This lovely tree is at the Farmington cemetary, where she was buried.

My mother is always very thoughtful and gets flowers to send from our family. This is a closeup of the beautiful arrangement.

Sunday morning, I was back on the plane, back through Phoenix's airport where they have a wonderful stained glass ceiling over a suspended airplane in the center of the terminal.

And I headed back to Matthew's to this treasure: Brooke. Here she is laying on the quilt I made for her, steadied by her father's hand.

Monday morning I was on the road again, up to Flagstaff to Barbara's house, where a happy baby welcomed me.

Barbara is beautiful, although to me she looks tired, and one of her helpers was at her home when I arrived. The helper agreed to babysit the 2-year-old while I drove my daughter to get gas in her car and some food in the fridge. I worried the whole time that I would tire her out further, and rounded the corner to see her leaning on her shopping cart (I was getting some milk). I couldn't get her home fast enough.

How to keep life going when you've been hit with a chronic, debilitating illness seems to be her challenge, and it's like watching Philippe Petit cross the cables strung between the Twin Towers, one step at a time. One step at a time. How come something so trite is actually calming? Do those old cliches get repeated because they all contain a nugget of truth? My latest for myself is "Go Zen," meaning take it in stride, as stress-free as possible.

I've always been fascinated by Matthew's hands. From an early age, they would reach out, fingers often splayed as if to filter the world down to his size. So, that led to a photo of his hand with his new baby's. I like her expression--what would you say it is?

Some days I just worry about myself.
I didn't worry when I was twenty, when I should have.
I didn't worry when I was thirty, because I didn't have the time.
I didn't worry when I was forty, because nothing ached yet.
Fifty came and went and I was still standing, and holding my long-sought-after MFA. On top of the world--fifty looked good.

I remember reading a story about two Bubbes in the New York Times many years ago. These little grandmothers of Jewish origin had prompted a piece written by their granddaughter and it was a touching, insightful piece about the ravages and delights of old age. (A hit, the granddaughter went on to write a book.)

I'm certainly not there yet, but I can stand in the middle of my life now and see those years coming, just as I can look back and see myself at twenty. Of course there are some basic assumptions being made here, such as I'll someday be as old as my grandmother, who died at 105.

So the worrying comes when the plate is too full and too grueling (like the feeling at the end of term--for all you teachers--with grading and grades and lesson plans and hitting the wall) and I worry that I won't be able to pull it off and that I'll have to lie on my sofa for days afterwards, eating comfort foods and watching movies from the 1940s when I should really be up-and-at those other projects I'd lined up before the wall came around and smacked me in the head.

My marathon week begins today with a drive across the California-Arizona deserts to see my newest grandchild, a five-hour schlep. I've downloaded some new tunes onto the iPod, bought some red licorice and pretzels (perfect driving food), threw my clothes into the suitcase last night and have my stacks and stacks of papers to grade (just in case I need something to do while I'm there).

So stay tuned, and please get out those ratty pom-poms from the last football game you attended and cheer me on. And while you're at it, give a cheer for yourself. We can all use a little razz-a-ma-tazz now and then. Even if you worry.

(The only photo I have of her is this snapshot with Uncle Steve mugging in the foreground, and she by his side with that wonderful smile on her face, Yes--that's me on the right.)

I woke up early today, thinking about my Aunt Jean, my mother's sister, who died yesterday after a long illness (Alzheimer's Disease). I remember my last interaction with her at her rest home.

She looked like an adolescent, with acne and her dark hair--relatively free of gray even at her age--now cut in a bob. She didn't have her glasses on and as we sat around the table I wondered if to her, we all looked like blurry moving masses of color. Uncle Steve, her husband, met my mother, my father and I there; we had come because it was my aunt's birthday.

She sat silent, gazing at us like we were the ones in the zoo, her mask-like face showing neither awe, nor curiosity. Uncle Steve stroked her hand. She turned and looked at my father, mother, then me, then at the lady serving lunch.

After chatting at her and around her and congratulating her on her birthday, it was time to go. I stood and leaned over very close to her face and said "Happy Birthday, Aunt Jean." The blank mask she'd worn the entire visit dropped away for a second; her eyes lit up and I sensed the person there. A wide, beauty-queen smile--a twin to my mother's radiant grin--broke over her face. I patted her shoulder, moved back to give my mother her chance. As my mother stood up from her hug, Aunt Jean's mask slid back into place.

We left her behind the locked doors, walking out into the brisk sunny day. Although in many ways she's been gone a long time, today I miss her more than I can say.