Productive Productivity

This was a good weekend. Unlike last weekend, which was 50 degrees max and 19 degrees min most of the days, it was 70 and sunny Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Egg, Z and I went to the playground to fly a kite (and some of us went to slide on the slides) went to dinner on Friday (OK. Is it dinner if it’s 4 o’clock? Really, it was a late lunch.) With wine. On the patio on the way to Sedona. I was fighting a cold so we just came home to have a fire and watch TV.

Saturday, feeling mostly healed, Z and Cleo and I went running and then there was much house-cleaning and laundry-doing then a good bit of writing done by me thanks to the editorial suggestions of Egg. Then, we went over to some people’s house—our first visit at the home of someone who lives in this town. They had a 2.5 year old and a 18 month old. Z played with the little girl (yay! A friend for Z!) while we ate guacamole. We also walked up the hill to a block party (other blocks’ parties are even more odd than one’s own block parties) for which I’d made a frittata (thanks to the brilliant suggestion of Little Hands) and hummus. No one ate it because we were so late they’d finished off the savory chapter of the pot luck and had moved onto the dessert portion of the evening. We took both back to the new friends’ house. Perhaps they finished it off after we left? I can only hope. They cooked some chicken wings from Sam’s Club. Z liked them a lot. We came home and ate peaches and yogurt and then went to bed at 9. Productivity plus new friends plus block parties equal exhaustion.

But Sunday was by far the most productive day of the three. Egg took Z to the park again—to play disc golf and to slide and then to the grocery store. My list will look so much more productive in bullets:

• Finished essay about demi-glace.
• Made bread.
• Began to fix essay about Z and butter.
• Took Cleo running.
• Read for Grad Class.
• Showered.
• Made delicious salad of smoked turkey and turnips.
• Went to MoveOn.org party.
• Called MoveOn-like folks in Virginia to get them to volunteer (stressful but not nearly as as calling undecideds).
• Stopped at Ace for Egg to get him some clear silicon caulk to cover the nails on the roof (I had no idea how many kinds of silicon caulk they have. I stared at tubes for 15 minutes until I found the right one).
• Raked and stuffed 5 bags worth of pine needles. They’re everywhere and seem to be a fire hazard. Some of our neighbors seem to rake them up, some don’t. So we’re doing a half-assed job and doing some of them.
• Made guacamole.
• Sat on porch and played letters with Z.
• Moved inside. Egg set up the stereo (our last box! We’ve been listening to the iPod magic player for 2.5 years. We never unpacked it in GR. I think we may stay here for awhile.)
• I found and dusted speakers.
• Danced to music with Z.
• Made tacos.
• Watched Mad Men.
• Read student essays while Egg gave Z a bath.

Went to bed when? That’s right. 9 o’clock. Thank god we’re on Pacific Time and the sun has been down for 3 hours already so it doesn’t seem entirely lame.

Now, I’m ready for another weekend. Instead, I have two presentations this week (one about publishing, another about PhD school), 16 more essays to read and comment on, 3 student meetings, hardcore advising now that students are registering for spring semester and trying to graduate in the spring, plus a dinner party on Friday and, I hope, some submissions going out the door.

Next week will be also busy but soon we go south to visit our friends and then it’s winter break. Well, my birthday, then Thanksgiving and then winter break. November. What a great month. Almost as lovely as October.

The great thing about my mom coming to visit:

She comes to see me almost as much as she comes to see Z.

She plays with Z so I can write (except when she needs help working the remote).

She cleans the spots, like behind the kitchen faucet, behind the toilet, between the washer and dryer, I don't clean and rather than suggesting I clean it myself, just points out tools—such as toothbrushes and Comet, that make such cleaning easier.

She pets the dog even though she doesn't like dogs.

She loves everything Egg and I cook—even if the pork chops were slightly undercooked. She asked Egg for his green chile stew recipe.

She loved the breadmaker and ate every loaf I made—even the very experimental underdone dill loaf.

She bought me a new bread knife to cut said bread.

She loves turkey vultures ("a committee of" is a common collective term we learned) almost as much as I do. She even wanted to put out some hamburger to see if that would bring more but then she decided that would be messing with the system a bit much.

She brought Play-doh and race tracks for the Z.

She knows how to get Play-doh out of a sisal rug (let dry. Use knife).

She's amazed at the number of ravens circling overhead.

She wipes Z's nose, puts Vaseline under that wiped-raw nose, puts Menthalatum on her chest, learns how to use the Albuteral nebulizer, and wakes up when Z coughs and goes to sleep in Z's bed when Z asks.

She brings tissues wherever she goes.

She loves lunch, the Grand Canyon, Walnut Canyon, Slide Rock, and Sedona in that excellent and proper order.

She and her great boyfriend are up for about anything, including hikes with tarantulas and stopping at 3 different grocery stop on a Saturday, plus the 3 additional grocery stop trips they took on their own, restocking our entire kitchen.

She brings her boyfriend and his great vegetables for his great garden.

She's willing to play Cranium.

She and Egg can talk politics and yell at the TV during the debate in great animated good fun (they're on the same side and yet still manage to disagree over the details—in good humor).

She can watch Z do her singing and dance moves for even longer than I can.

She dances and sings.

She likes to learn new songs like Frog Went A Courtin'.

She tells me what her favorite songs were and when.

She sings the songs she sang to me to Z. And then some new ones.

She promises she'll come back soon.

The Temple of My Familiar

There's a street behind my house. Behind that street, there is forest--a Ponderosa-filled, trail-ridden, semi-hilly, sometimes flat, sometimes hilly forest. I like the idea of living on the edge of the wilderness. From the trails I run every other day, I could conceivably run/ride my bike/walk to Walnut Canyon which is a National Monument. The trails only let you near the actual canyon but inside that canyon supposedly live bears and fox and owls and mountain lions. This space is temple-like to me. That it exists right behind me seems like a miracle. And because, like any empty property next to any (every?) house I've lived, the space has been eventually developed, that eventually, this place will have more streets and more houses on it makes it all the more precious.

My mom was here with her boyfriend last week. We had nonstop good fun including going to the upper rim of the Walnut Canyon as well as the upper rim of the Grand Canyon. As well as the pinnacle of Sedona's vortex (can a pinnacle be a vortex?).

We also went on a hike in behind the house. As we rounded the last turn to go back up the hill, what crossed our paths but a gigantic tarantula. The cephalothorax was all black. The opisthosoma was a rusty brown. He didn't like being on the path with us. He could sense our footsteps, my mom thought, and so was already on the move out of the way. He crawled, as quickly as he could without calling too much to himself by scurrying, across the path. I wanted to tell him that we already noticed him and that we too wanted to look cool but that we'd go ahead and wait for him to make it into the crispy grasses.
Then, Erik and Z and I went walking on Sunday far, far back behind our house and there was another. And then on Monday when I was running with Z, there was another.

At the risk of letting my arachnophopbic sister know this story and vow to never come visit me again, I thought that this was a particularly good October story. And although I'm a little sketched out by seeing 3 (three!) in one week, in these dark times I worry less about big spiders trying to eat me and more that I'll end up having to eat them.

Plan Is Working!

I'm trying to end all my sentences with the phrase "in these dark times" and it's working to great effect.
Such as, "We'd better go to the store today. We don't want to run out of milk in these dark times." And, "Z, paint while you can. This may be the end of expensive crayola paints in these dark times." "Extra butter on my English Muffin. You can't fatten up too much in these dark times." This sentence changes it up a bit: "The house can stay messy. In these dark times, the dirt and dust may be the only thing we actually own." "Dear Students, You've asked and I've finally agreed. In these dark times, you don't need to be on time, turn in your papers on time, or participate in workshop. The University may not even be here by the end of the semester."
You get the drift. See how much more fun this is than talk like a pirate day? Talking like a doomsayer comes more naturally to me. And has I hope a cathartic more than a prophetic effect.

Freaking out

IN general, I'm just feeling the panic of a new job, no accessible friends, the constant panting for the emails of acceptance, the sharp personalities of graduate students, and the pressing day-to-day business of trying to eat at home, get out onto the trails or into the mountains during this gorgeous season, hit the farmer's market and try to make my own cheese to go with my new-found ability to make bread.
But the main panic is the Obama. The news today claimed that the level of racism in this country suggests that Obama just can't win. He'd be 6% higher in the polls if he wasn't black. As it is, he's dead even. And that's a poll of people willing to admit that they have "negative thoughts about black people." I imagine people fully planning on voting for Barack going into the voting booth and just not being able to do it.
I hope I'm wrong. I'm trying to force myself to call swing state voters but it makes me very nervous to do that kind thing. But if I don't, and he loses, I'll kick myself for doing nothing except sending a few bucks Obama's way. Because while I can't talk people out of being racist, maybe I can talk them into putting their racism last on their list of priorities. Saving the environment, providing health insurance for the 46 million without, fixing this suddenly socialist economy from further capitalistic greed, finding our way back to some kind of global honor, protecting the Endagered Species Act, letting women choose what happens to their own bodies--these things have to be more important than the judgement of someon'es race, don't they?
God I hate to cold call.

Edited to Add: Called 10 numbers. 6 not homes. 2 refusals to talk to me. 2 all for McCain. I think I'll be done for now.

Robato

I am finishing an essay and thought, hm, I'd better change the names to protect the innocent, etc. So I go through the essay in Word and replace "Tom" with "Rob." Sadly, this essay is about tomatoes. So now, there's a lot of Robatoes that need fixing.

Sarah Palin is

the new George W. Bush.
She scares me. Like Bush, you'd think, she's too crazy (no sex education?) and too evil (did you hear what she said about Obama?) and too dumb (or fake dumb) to win. And you'd be wrong.
McCain is old. Palin's giving him a flat tire standing so close on his heel.
Ack.

Processing

Another good thing/bad thing list?
Sure, why not.
1. The campus is pleasant but I don't know where anything is.
2. The admin staff knows much but seems reluctant to share what they know with me.
3. There was a lot of orientation. None of it orientated me toward where the printer is.
4. I have a new computer. It's not ready yet--still needs to be tagged as "property of."
5. We're starting the new MFA program. We're starting a new summer conference.
6. There's a union with many food choices including sushi. They take only dining cards.
7. The school is located right downtown and I can walk to other fooderies but I haven't gotten paid yet so I may as well be taking a dining card to the downtown restaurants since that would be as effective as my debit card.
8. I am on two committees. I am on two committees.
9. I teach in the late afternoon/evenings. I teach in the late afternoon/evenings.
10. I unpacked all my books, bought with my no money (read AmEx) two plants, and opened my two lovely windows. There's construction out those windows.
11. I taught my first class. I have two more to go and the first week is very hard for me. I hate the syllabus spiel.

In other, less binary news, I love my colleagues. They're pretty mellow, pretty funny and, in the advising center, I advised a student well with my advising coach looking on and I got all accolades. Was even called a whiz kid. I like positive reinforcement. A lot. The chair took some of my ideas to the Dean and he loved them. Yay. Now we're looking for a name for our new program to brand it a little. I'm sure it will be hokey but I love hokey as much as I like anything else (which includes not much so I shouldn't complain either way as to my likings).
In my first class, the laptop cord was broken, only I didn't know that so I kept trying to get my laptop to put up the cool stuff on the screen. I looked like an idiot. Today, I found out the cord was broken. I hope everyone who taught in that room looked like an idiot so I'm not alone in idiocy but this isn't that techy of a department.
The first week has already been brutal and I'm only at the halfway point. Advising, committees, 400 emails, and a general lack of knowing where anything is or how any thing works is draining. An example of the the how-anything-works-lack-of-knowledge: the rooms have codes. I arrive at my first class, and my first grad class ever, carrying 18 Writers Chronicles, two books, one laptop (unusefully), 18 syllabi, a camera and my purse. I arrive. The students are waiting outside. I'm told by the students that I'll need a code. A code? It's 4:30. The English Dept. office closes at 4:30. I run down three flights of stairs. The AA is still there. She looks surprised that I didn't know that I needed the code. She practically shakes her head in disapproval at me as she gives me the code. Perhaps there was yet another orientation I missed? The how-things-work-around-here one? You know, the truly useful one.
But, back to list of good and bad: most faculty offices are in the same building as the classrooms! But the classrooms have codes and I still need 3 more to remember.

If I recall, the first week is always beyond rough. I'm sincerely hoping that next week is less frantic with busywork and more thick with content.

Proofreading

I am proofreading my syllabi. I have been replaced by an alien. Or at least have enough bile-inducing memory of reading typos aloud to the class.
I'm getting a little nervous. The first day of class with no books, no assignments, no papers, just me and a now proofread syllabus drives me a bit mad. I'll bring in some exercise called make a poem from the syllabus. The students will find the word chicken therein. They should be able to do something with that.

I have time to proofread because Z is at school today. From 11:30 to 4:30. I can't quite stand it. I can stand it quite a bit. I just fear I've just dipped her in a vat of germs and 3 to 5 incubation days from now, she'll come down with the dreaded cough. But, in more optimistic and productive news, I've called the city to have them come remove the old stove, talked happily with Deon, the plumber who has installed the new gas line and put the gas line into the new stove (they call them ranges. I don't like it. I love the word stove), and have helped him lift the stove (see, sounds heavier, no?), and sympathized when he realized he had to move the whole down-draft blower mechanism. I drove to campus, going turny-turny (Z thinks I drive too turny-turny and that's what makes her car sick. Today, I didn't have to avoid turning) the whole way there and turned back toward her school to spy on her class if they were outside (which they were not), and found a good carne asada taco down the street. I also just stopped in at the "Farmer's Market" store which is kind of a Mexican green grocer with all kinds of peppers and bulk items. I bought Z gummy bears and Egg cinnamon bears and for me I bought pablanos and Anaheim chiles. They call Anaheims New Mexico Chiles here and they'll roast them for you. A case is $25. If they scrape the skins off them, then I think Egg and I will be convinced it's a deal (an unroasted case cost $20). I also drove over to the Prairie Dog town where I ate my tacos. I heard the noisy dogs but saw nary a one. The wildflowers hide them well.
I still have an hour and a half before Z gets home and, did I mention I've already proofread my syllabi? Now what to do? Oh, the expansiveness of time. I may have to proofread one of my mantel-piece manuscripts (my friend Steve calls his manuscripts mantel pieces in that they, like so many ancestoral portraits, can be placed on the mantel to gaze at adoringly. They're easier to dust than frames).
Orientation tomorrow. All day. I already figured out how to use their HR Portal, what benefits I want, how to enroll in said benefits and how to check my email. What else will I need to know?
Perhaps I'll bring my computer and continue my proofreading extravaganza.

I Am So Dedicated

I have just spent 30 minutes searching for and adding wingdings to my syllabus.

My students, and their aesthetic pleasure, come first.

In the end, actually, I ended up using the tilda. Boring. Perhaps I can make it up to them by finding a stimulating font. And alternating between italics and boldface letters. Oh, how they will pay attention to the details thanks to these machinations. Late papers. What are they? Not accepted! (ha.)

Stress and Distress

I knew the trip to GR would be exhausting. It's a crazy long flight from here. SW to NE via the south. It was great to see a few people. I made two new friends of the guy who now has my job and his partner. I ran by my old house and through the college. I sat outside in the near-perfect temperatures. The air was thick with oxygen and water and bird noises and city sounds. I stayed out until too late with my old students, whom I love. I went to a lovely wedding and made better friends with friends I'd left behind. But. Friday was a loss from the too-much-with-students night. I slept in until 10 almost every day. So whatever hopes of this becoming a writing retreat quickly fled from me.
And flying is killing me. It's the rush to get there and the attempt to rush the plane to make your connection and the freak out if I should have carried on my luggage and the fear of making your almost-brand-new friends wait for you at the airport. And the turbulence and near-death experiences.
I hurt my neck again too. Like the last time I traveled frantically, I think it was to Chicago, I hurt my shoulder carrying too much stuff on it. It's been 5 days now and I can barely move my neck. I'm supposed to be having last fun of the summer with Z but mostly I just say ow. Ow.

But the truest ow is that Little Hands and son are sick. He's been in the hospital for at least three nights now. I'm pretty sure the Hotel California means the Children's Hospital. I'm worried and sad for them. I had bad dreams last night remembering Z's incarceration. I would feel better about things if the doctors ever knew what was going on but with viruses, they seem completely idiotic. IV fluids and a lot of hemming and hawing. You can hem and haw. I'm going home to quarantine myself, I want to say.

I wish I could do more but I can't even offer the IV fluids.

Oh, and school starts. Soon. And my syllabi ? They're MIA. Poor syllabi, lost in the forest of my computer. Perhaps they'll find their way into shape and home soon.

Pasta

If eating locally means not having to drive to the store and eating what's in the fridge, then I've been a champion since moving here. The store is 10 minutes away. This is insane. I used to live two blocks from Smiths, or half a mile from Nature's or a mile from the D&W. I could walk or ride. Not that I always did. But I did once and awhile. And I could drive in like 2-5 minutes. This 10 minute thing might be good for me though. I've been planning meals, stocking way up at the farmer's market, and shopping more thoroughly at the Safeway.
So yesterday, I looked in the fridge and saw that I had whole milk ricotta, a bag of basil, and a bunch of tomatoes. And I'm leaving tomorrow for GR and these things will not be good when I get back (I can rely on Egg to eat the tomatoes but not to use the ricotta. Or probably the basil).
So I googled those ingredients and came up with a fettuccine and fresh tomato dish. But then I saw the fettuccine was supposed to be fresh too. Instead of bailing to the store or making it with regular spaghetti, I remembered I had a pasta maker.
It took an hour but Egg and Z helped pull the sheets and hold the machine down as I cranked the handle. Z had her noodles with peas and butter. We had our ricotta. Z's was better but in both dishes, the pasta was great.
Fun fun fun. I love being hobbled by my hatred of driving to the store!

Addiction

The internet was down at the house from 4 p.m. until 10 a.m. The next morning. I literally started twitching. I suggested going out to dinner not because we had no food in the house or because I didn't want to cook but because I held some hope there would be internet available at the restaurant. I drank my glass of wine at the pizza place a little too quickly to try to cover the withdrawals.
When Middlebrow was here, we talked about how we'd been trying to be on the internet less. While he said he actually was putting pen to paper, I just nodded and applauded myself for not taking the computer on my walks with the dog. I've cut down my usage by about 1%. Usually that 1% is dedicated to playing puzzles with Z.
I think it was the not knowing when Qwest would fix the phone line that drove me the most crazy because it's not like I missed that much. No, even when I'm online, I'm like, where is that thing that used to make me spend so much time looking for it? And then I spend so much time looking for it, which is the thing I think I used to do that seemed so interesting but was probably not that.
We're having more guests this weekend. Perhaps I'll knock off the habit a bit.

Life Is (Was?) a Vacation

tThe nice thing about moving closer to home and close to vacation spots is that people come to visit you. Egg’s mom and step-dad came down for a week. Unpacking and moving furniture sucked the life out of the first few days but by Wednesday, we were in adventure mode. On Wednesday, up the ski lift to the highest peak. The chair lift was so slow— letting on people who do not usually ski takes many a brake-lever and backwards-moving motion. It was no quad so on top of the slow-down per rider, it went trudged up the hill but the views of the peaks and the valleys and the Grand Canyon off in the distance made it worth it. At the top, we learned about a prehistoric yellow-flowered plant whose protected status meant there was no climbing down the mountain. We weren’t planning to hike down anyway because we had the Z, but the thought of the slow-speeded chair lift almost made us want to attempt it. The next day, amazing ruins. The solidness of the Pueblo architecture impressed. The layers of rock and mortar lasting 500 years—most of them without the care (or the misguided re-building, ranger-living-inside-of, re-enactments-on-top-of and kicking the modern natives out of) and help of the National Forest Service. The next day, red rocks and Z climbing high on boulders and vortices and a shared porterhouse with my step-dad-in-law, known more easily as my Rick. Then, Z’s birthday with the mountain biking, Saturday’s Prairie Dog Town Visit and last week’s adventure to Lower Lake Mary (empty), Upper Lake Mary (wide and shallow) and Marshall Lake (odd and sedge-filled with many a noisy but hidden duck).

Whilst Dr. Write and Middlebrow and son visited (starring as the most delightful visitors of all time), we went to the in-town forested park to watch Egg and Middlebrow finish up their game of disc golf. We stopped downtown for a beer and then came home to tacos and more beer and wine. The next day, we drove both of our front-wheel drive cars toward the ski resort, taking a left down a bumpy and muddy Forest Road 245 and another left on Forest Service Road 171 to the damp and dark caves. The lava was hard on the knees and the climb hard on the thighs. The tourists were too many to enjoy the experience entirely but Z and Son did a great job climbing pretty far in. The sheer number of people made the place more claustrophobic than the narrow and the dark parts. I kept imagining having to climb over people to get out. And that would be rude. But necessary. We returned home to more rain, more wine and beer, more great times.

We have one more set of visitors due this weekend but it’s already feeling like the end of vacation times. Egg went to work at a horrible job because nothing great has turned up yet. I have to go back to GR for a student scholarship thing (not so fun) and a wedding (yay!) I am working on syllabi and readings and finishing up summer writing projects. I plan to visit Z’s school this week. Do dry-cleaning. Perhaps someone else can schedule a visit so the summer isn’t really over. I could live in vacation-time all the time. I really like adventures with such fine folks all around this town.

Copying Dr. Write

Who knew Dr. Write and I liked like so much.



We're metaphorists at heart. Or girls from the valley.

A little weird

This Ponderosa-filled town is weird. All towns are weird but this one seems particularly paradoxical. It's in the mountains but it's in the desert so it's hot with both the desert and sun so close but cool with the elevation and the monsoons. It's a small town but it appears to be transportation central--planes, trains and cars galore. It's pretty difficult to travel through because of all the other modes of transportation and other cars in your way. It's full of super rich people because people buy their summer homes here to escape the desert but super poor because there's no real industry except for the University to support those who live here year round. A summertime economy does not a middle-class make. There's a lot of chain stores and some cute boutiques but not so many locally-owned mid-sized shops. There lots of people here with fancy kitchens but no gourmet store. There are a lot of wine and beer shops but no real bakeries or deli's, at least as far as I've discovered. I'm still on the hunt for deliciousness and the farmer's market has been great. Tomatoes already!

The mountains are spectacular--we watch the sunset from the porch every night and the trails behind the house are lined with Indian Paintbrush and Lupine and little yellow flowers and Rabbit Brush and, of course, Ponderosas.

It's really beautiful, a little noisy, and the downtown area is full of cuteness. On Saturday night, we went downtown and ate good sushi. Z ate her edamame with chopsticks!

As long as we have access to some good fish, wine and beer, and fun places to walk, I think we're pretty happy.--except for the part when we actually might need to go back to work. I've already begun constructing lectures in my head. Lectures with the words "discipline" and "what is the point anyway" in them. Perhaps I'll take one more week to work on my own stuff before I start thinking of ways to torture my new students.

Z's Birthday

An open letter to Z, who turns three,
I think I finally get you. It’s mostly the talking but it’s also the way you make hard things—like moving across the country, saying hello and goodbye to so many people—seem easy. You laugh, over the top, at the tiniest joke. Your favorite joke is this: We don’t swim in your toilet, please don’t pee in our pool. And, for potty training purposes, I’ve adapted it to: We don’t sleep in your Pull-ups, please don’t pee in our bed. If you call out mom, and I answer “Bart” in a low voice, you giggle so hard you snort. Yesterday, in the car, you kept asking us where mom and dad were. I answered, “ummm, right here,” making the “right here” interrupt the “ummm” at new and surprising places. Mostly, you make me feel like a comic genius. Finally, someone recognizes my true talent and I thank you for being so perceptive.
You love to be surprised and so you like hide and seek the best although we’re not sure of the rules of your version. You run and hide for about two seconds and then come find us and say boo. If we’re feeling really lazy, we can get you to hide in a box and you jump out every minute or so and we jump as high as we can get our lazy bones to go, in absolute shock. Where were you? In that box? Just like you were a minute ago?
You do so love to count and yet you’ve banished the numbers 3 and 4 to the end of 10. I know this is just stubbornness on your part but when you start school next month, I bet I’ll sound like one of those poor mothers who really needs to get a grip and realize that her kid’s paste-eating is not a sign of future culinary skill. But really, the 3 and the 4, they pissed you off somehow. Perhaps now that you’re three, you’ll begin to forgive the pair.

You have the narrative gene that must have skipped a generation. Every time before nap, I get a rundown of what just happened and a preview of what will take place after the nap: “Brush teeth, go to the potty, change clothes, make coffee, go on a walk, eat breakfast, brush teeth, go to bed.” Then “Wake up (note that all the phrases lilt up in the end like a question. Not a question if that’s what’s going to happen but a question like, you’re getting this down, right?), play puzzle, hide & seek, play monster, make dinner, find Box (Box has been losing himself in the wilds in the day), change clothes, brush teeth, and go to bed.” Sometimes, we think you’re of Italian heritage because many verbs and nouns have an extra “a” to them: “We go-a to the park. We park-a the car. You also ask-a that if we take-a mom’s car, that I not turna so much. It makes me sick”. It does make you sick. You throw up if I turn too many u-turns looking for a parking place.

You got to spend a lot of time with your Maestra and your grandma and grandpa and your aunts. And your cousins. Lately, the narrative litany of activities included, “go to Maestras” or “Go to Lily and Cam’s,” “are Grandma and Grandpa here yet?” and “go to Salt Lake.” The number of activities attended this summer outweighs the sum total of your life up to this point. You went swimming with KJ, and with Cam and Lil, you went through the forest every day, Mice took you on a bus, on a light rail, and on a choo choo train all in one day. You went kayaking twice and swung on a swing either at Little Hands’ or at Grandma’s every single day. You went to Liberty Park and went on the Ferris Wheel and the Merry-Go-Round. Mice and Bart and I took you and Cam and Lil on the alpine slide. You rode your big wheel that Lil lent you. And, you learned how to be a cool cousin to Cam and Lil. You rode in the car to Ponderosa Town. You went to the peaks here and then the pueblos and then to Red Rock wonder. I hope your birthday holds new adventures: a trip to the lake, a bike ride, maybe a movie???

You still eat a lot of kinds of foods. You now like lettuce once in a while. The other day, you ate your taco like a normal person instead of like your mom who still keeps the meat separate from the cheese from the lettuce from the tortilla. Your palate may have already transcended mine. You still like raw onions, pickles, turkey, sausage, broccoli, peas, and red bell peppers but lately, you’ve liked salmon more than anything. At the wine bar, we had to order a second plate of smoked salmon. You loved it, although the capers, not so much. Two days ago, I was shucking corn and you sat on the counter and ate of two of the cobs, raw. And then you ate another cob for dinner. You love cherries, and, thanks to your grandma, eat around the pit. You love blueberries and strawberries and raspberries like all reasonable humans. You pretend to like coffee and then you take a sip and say “gah, what have I put in my mouth.”

You change clothes 4-5 times a day. You also like to tell me what to wear. “Go upstairs, find a dress, change your clothes. Wear a dress.” I usually comply although lately I’ve been saying, “you get to wear what you want; I’ll wear what I want.” This confounds you. Obviously, you have better fashion sense than I should listen to you. Mice bought you a new purple dress to replace your old purple dress which you wear every day. You also wear the dress that Little Hands got you. Every day. You still like purple but pink is even better. You still don’t like your clothes dirty, but sometimes it seems you spill just as an excuse to change your clothes. You have ways of the girl—all your stuffed animals are babies and you’re the mama. You also like to climb on rocks (and furniture) and go on hikes in the forest (both our backyard, Grandma’s backyard, and the real forest just behind our house). You love to swim and are learning to blow out rather than to suck in, albeit not as fast as you would like.

You sing. A lot. Going on a trip and then add in the people above houses to which we’ll go and mom and dad. Or you’ll sing “we’re on a bike ride, going on a bike ride, bike ride, bike ride” if we are, for instance, on a bike ride. You dance too and can do an arabesque, a leap and downward dog using your head instead of your hands. Many talents you have.

There are some cute and yet, what is the euphemism, challenging elements to the Z. You ask why a lot. Like why are there two lights and three over there? Where is there a stair there? Why is that my plate? Where is the chicken? (In your mouth…) When can I see some ducks? You also say “what” a lot even though you’ve heard exactly what I said (methinks you get this from your dad). My favorite thing about you is how nothing gets by—which is why there’s all those why’s and what’s. A pinecone in the road makes you mad. “Put it over there.” An empty Coke cup in the road, “why?” A raven caws, “what’s that.” The refrigerator kicks on, “what’s that.” You remind me that noise is called “thunder” every time the clouds bang together. You tell me how bright it is when the sun is out and that you need your glasses. Which you keep in your purse. Along with your sunscreen and lip stuff.

You also have a mommy-thing lately which, while sweet for me, isn’t very friendly and is a bit wearing. “Can daddy take you to bed?” No, mommy take you. My likes mommy.” My is I around here sometimes. And sometimes “you” is “me.” I can’t wait to teach her about the accusative case and direct objects. However, you do ask “May I have one more gummy bear” with the diction of a blue blood. I will be sad when proper grammar takes over entirely.

She also refuses to sleep in her new princess room. She sleeps with us. Sometimes she sleeps vertically but not every night. But the cuddling. It’s not so bad. And, you’re a bit of a romantic kisser. One arm behind my neck and you pull me to you like so many princes. You pucker nicely. And the random hugging is pretty nice.

So far this morning we found my sunglasses! Yay! And then we went for a bike ride on your trike with Cleo and you pedaled and steered. Simultaneously. And then your dad and I took you mountain biking on the trails behind the house. You went in the bike seat on the back of my bike. You weigh 33 pounds. Ow. My legs.

We’re off to lunch and then maybe to the lake to see those ducks you’re always asking about.

I hope you have a good birthday Z. I can’t wait to see what adventure is next.
Love,
Mom

The Good and the Bad

I should just follow Lisa B.'s approach toward positive attitudes and such but I think that grousing and kevetching is too much my personality to give up. But I have many goods to counterbalance the bads about Town Named after a Post on which to Hang Something.

The Bads:

1. The street our house is located on is a highway. It has double solid lines in the middle of it. 5 cars drive down a minute (to be fair, there are many minutes when there are no cars). Still, it gets in the way of my peace and tranquility as well as adds stress to the kid/dog/cat running in the street factor.
2. This car (really truck), fast driving problem is compounded by the fact that the area we live in does not allow fences. We had to buy an electronic fence for Cleo and it makes me wonder if how humane it is, although it does give off a warning beep. Cleo only got shocked once and it was my fault since I didn't think it was working and called her over to the neighbors'. (Lisa B.--that possessive is for you!) It was traumatic but she seems to acknowledge her boundaries.
3. The house is far from school. 12 minutes but I hate to use any gas at all any more. I'm going to try riding my bike although the hill we live up is a big one.
4. It's hotter than they say. It's about 10 degrees hotter everyday than Yahoo weather predicts. This means that living without air-conditioning is a test of one's commitment to use less energy.
5. The sales tax is 8.2%
6. The kitchen in our house has cabinets with shelves but 4 inches high, an ELECTRIC stove with a malfunctioning burner and strange wood-laminate countertops.
7. You have to import dirt to grow anything. I plan to bring in enough to at least grow an herb garden.
   

OK. Enough grousing even for me.
The goods

1. The street behind ours opens up into state trust forest land. You can run for miles under ponderosa pines.
2. There are many more kinds of birds than I thought. When I first visited, I saw only ravens but now I've seen hummingbirds and vultures, blue birds and flickers.
3. The sunsets are amazing and you can see them from any of the three balconies, including the one off the bedroom.
4. The bathtub is round and big.
5. The people are the nicest people I've ever met.
6. It gets good and cold at night.
7. The mountains are flush with ferns and aspens, as well as pines.
8. The grill is up and working (to offset my lack of working burner).
9. The likelihood that people will come visit on their way to Phoenix or elsewhere is high.

In the end, I think the speeding cars down the interstate will always drive me crazy but that everything else will work out fine. I'm taking my boxes of books to the University tomorrow. May my office window (I do think I have an office window) be automobile traffic free!

Where Have All the Calories Gone?

In my stomach!
Here's a post to food as a guide to where the time has gone.

I often plan to make lists to post. Two recent posting ideas included previous Halloween Costume's and Bob's Red Mill grains in alphabetical order. The latter was one of my methods to fall asleep. Amaranth grain, bulgur, corn meal...I'll spare you the rest.

But since I've been trying to do some accounting of where the hell the time has gone, I thought I would try to reconstruct what I've done, at least in the evenings, (with some memorable days added in) since I got to the town with salt and mountains, in blog backwards time fashion.

Be warned, this may be as interesting as "millet, n...(i can't think if an "n" grain or baking product), oats, potato flour, rye..."

Starting with the future:
Saturday--leave for town with mountains but no salt.
Friday--Day, alpine slide. Night, Sue's with kids.
Thursday--Day, visit grandma. Night, Napoli pizza with Egg.
Wednesday--Day, hike with Egg. Night, Paris with M and Little Hands.

Now the past:
Tuesday--Day, lunch with Chapman at Finn's--lovely open-faced sandwiches. Night, delicious dinner with lemon and pancetta pasta made by Little Hands.
Monday--Afternoon, great time with grad school friends. Night, OK time at Egg's aunt's house.
Sunday--Day, swimming with Little Hands and kids. Night, Z's birthday with the fam at El and Rick's! New York steaks with red bell pepper vinaigrette, trout with pine nut butter, salmon with leftover lime-jalepeno butter. Plus mac & cheese.

Saturday--Day, family reunion on mom's side. Night, party at Rick's friend's house. Brats.
Friday--Dinner with mom & co. Sleepover at mom's (Missed Dr. Write's and other folks' reading. Still feeling bad about it).
Thursday--Day, writing group. Night, dinner at Trio, wedding at a ward in West Jordan.
Wednesday--Day, lunch with ex-boyfriend from long, long ago (although he looks young so it makes me feel much less old) Red Rocks. Veggie Sandwich. Night, dinner at Em's with Em! Pate. For dinner.
Tuesday--Night, lamb thanks to mom at Val's.
Monday--Kyoto with mom. Ate 1000 times too much sushi. Z used chopsticks!
Sunday--Day, Kayak with El and Rick and Z and Egg. Night?

Saturday--Day, by to Kendall Jackson, prep for big Sibs (Ell's siblings'). Night, sib's dinner. Rick made corn husk wrapped snapper with lime-jalepeno butter. Delicious.
Friday--Goodbye dinner with P. Little Hand's fabulous pork, my everyday tacos. Sue, Van, Tim and Camille.
Thursday--Reading at King's English. Dinner at Paris with Pam. Artichoke pizza--too salty.
Wednesday-- Night, Oyster Bar with KJ, Little Hands and mom.
Tuesday--Iron Chef Mushroom (another would-be blog post). See KJ and Little Hands for details.
Monday--Tres Hombres with everyone, including KJ. Not good food. Not at all.
Sunday--Father's Day Day: Kayak on the Jetta with KJ, Little Hands, kids, El & Rick and Egg!--Rib-eyes thanks to Little Hands at El and Rick's.

Saturday--KJ's delicious: Red Snapper with ginger lime sauce, quinoa and baby artichokes.
Friday--Greenstreet. Not delicious.
Thursday--KJ comes to salty town. Day: lunch at Training Table. Night ?

OK. That gets me to June 12th. Other great times included Trio lunch with Dr. Write, brie with apple & nut compote, writing group, tabbouleh and hummuses (regular, red bell pepper, chipotle) made by me, roasted chickens by Little Hands (delicious) twice--once with Em & beau and kids, another Paris meal with Little Hands and friend including Steak Tartar and the charcuterie plate (delicious), Hires (twice. Pretty good), wine at Scorpion's Tail, Rick's family over for dinner, Rick's friends over for dinner, halibut tacos which George loved, halibut and mashed potatoes for Em, Beautiful lunch with mom at Oasis (Mediterranean Salad), OK lunch at Oasis with El and Joyce, Erik and Z, three dinners, always stuffed poblanos, at Red Butte Cafe, one odd brunch at the downtown OB after Gay Pride.


Missing? Hong Kong Tea House. Pho. Street tacos. Red Iguana. This new Acme Burger.

Fortunately, I've gotten quite a bit of running in in between these many meals. Still, who eats this much? My life as a Michelin Restaurant Guide. But I am so lucky to eat so well with so many fine folks. There will be less eating in Ponderosa Mountain Town. Unless you all come to visit!

I didn't just eat. I had a bit of productivity. I also wrote 40 pages of crazy, 1 poem, 238 emails, mentored my mentee, installed wireless internet and more memory for my mom's computer, read 4 books including the best book ever (The Road Home), Dead Lucky, The Snow Leopard and Love Medicine. I started the very bad Eat, Pray, Love.

If anyone notices any food or fun I neglected, please let me know.

Next posting from Town Filled with Ponderosa.

The True Project

One hopes that one jinxes nothing but noting this but the true success of Summer 2008 is the potty training of the Z. It would not have been possible without the help of the grandma and the maestra, Egg, Thirty-One and Thirty-One's ever-encouraging kids. There was much applause by grandpa and George too. We sometimes bribed her by letting her blow out a candle. We sometimes "encouraged" her with candy--a no-no I know but OK, if one also sometimes bribes her by letting her brush her teeth!
I'm shocked by how it works. One day, she has no idea she has this thing called a bladder. The next, she's a camel who can hold it all night. She has far superior holding-it ability than I. I am very proud of the little bug even though sometimes she complains and wants to wear her Pull-Ups again. As long as the Pull-Up stays dry though, I think she can claim success.

P.S. Blogging the lost: I swear I had a book around here. A book of poems or essays...If anyone finds it, please let me know.

Projects--there's too many

I have only about 2 hours a day during the summer to work unless I leave the house and go to a coffee shop. One great and hard thing about being in Salty Town is that there are an infinite number of hours where one could hang out and not do projects. There's much hiking to do and drinking of wine to do and somehow I end up going to the store at least once a day to buy groceries to feed the people with whom I can hang out. $55 every other day seems not so bad considering the number of people and the fact that I'm living in the land of free rent and good food. Although some sticker shock applies--5 oz of organic lettuce? In March, $1.99. In June, $3.99. Outrageous. Orange juice too. It seems there's some serious gouging of the produce but the worst is prepackaged stuff. I bought a veggie tray for $8.99! It wasn't even organic!

Anyway, this is not the point of the post. The point is is that I emailed my agent to say which of my projects should I work on this summer and she said all of them. This is in no way helpful. So, of course, I started a new project. But truly,

• I must revise the novel that Dr. Write, KJ, 31 and Scorpion's Tail (is she ever coming back to blogland?) helped me with.
• I also must edit the nonfiction for the online mag.
• Mentor my mentee (especially via place book).
• Also must conjure fall courses syllabi.
• Also, finish the grant app.
• I also must work on the small book related to the grant.
• And the place book.
• And the new poetry book about Pin Art.

So I work on each of these a little a day? Plus answer Z's questions about where Grandma, Grandpa, Dad, Maestra, Cam, Lil, V and P are (they're all over there Z. We're only here for 2.5 more weeks. Go talk with them.) No wonder my writing is fractured and no projects are done. Still, I think I'll have a better draft of all these things by the end of June, just in time for another disruption and this one without the helpful distractions of grandparents and siblings and cousins.

Fortunately, I don't need to figure out bullets on blogger. Things like helpful bullet are how I save a little bit of time and a little bit of focus every day. At least I got my 500 words done.

Books

I'm reading The Road Home which I can't believe I haven't read before because a) it's the best book ever b) my old job houses the Harrison archive and c) I love Nebraska (OK. I didn't know that until I drove across it lately or until I read this book.

But still. I'm very happy living in this book right now. It will be over soon and I will be very sad. But perhaps I could choose from this list that's meming itself around called "The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users."

Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion is this
There is Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Hmm--this list seems a bit overdone. Perhaps I could try to finish Watership Down after all these years. My mom bought it for me when Waking Owl books was still around. I swear it was in Foothill Village for awhile but maybe that was A Woman's Place Books. Perhaps I'll read House of Leaves instead. Or finish Pynchon's Against the Day.

Survivor: Urban City Edition

I've been sleeping somewhat better but I still have patches of sleeplessness in the mornings. What do I think about during these times? Intensely productive thoughts like what would it be like if the show Survivor was a bit more realistic? Like, if you had to survive in your current house but without water or heat or power. And then I thought how survival would be different depending on what city you lived in, which led to these great thoughts. Forgive me in advance.

Survivor New York City: You're set down in NYC with a gun, a knife and a billfold full of cash but when you go to take the subway, you see it's been replaced by a monorail. Then you notice that the metrocard machine only takes Disneyland tokens. Your challenge: To reach the Magic Kingdom in less time than it takes to wait on the Space Mountain line.

Survivor Detroit: Opposite scenario. You have neither gun nor knife nor billfold, just a pocketful of Disneyland tokens. Challenge: To find a "revitalized" part of the city and keep it vital by sheer wit and will alone. Oh wait, that's what most Detroiters do every day.

Survivor Portland: You're set down on the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland without black-rimmed glasses, secondhand dress, or a bicycle. Challenge: To prove to Portland police that it is in fact legal for you to walk eastward into the coolie part of town.

Survivor Austin: You're set down in Austin but you've been stripped of your love for tacos, music, or margaritas. Your challenge: To explain to yourself the purpose of the city without those loves.

Survivor Cleveland: You're set down on a street in Cleveland where every house is for sale. Challenge: To find a house where the seller still holds the deed and offer to pay them what they paid for their house 10 years ago.

Survivor L.A.: Same scenario as Cleveland but with more hope toward profit. Challenge: Find a house for sale and wait and wait and think, is this the bottom of the market yet? Is this the bottom of the market yet? Purchase house and pray the house appraises for more next year.

Survivor Salt Lake: You're set down on a Saturday night after 10 p.m. of a holiday weekend. You've planned a big barbecue for Monday but have forgotten the liquor stores are closed until Tuesday. Challenge: Find a way to make/keep your guests appropriately inebriated. (This did not happen to me but it's one of the nightmares that wakes me up at 3:00 a.m.)

Survivor Flagstaff: You find yourself in downtown Flagstaff. You're starving for dinner and there's outdoor seating available at an OK restaurant. Challenge: To keep yourself warm and awake after 5:00 on a summer evening now that the sun's gone down and you realize why the patio is open.

Please feel free to add your own. As you can see, stereotype and Yahoo news headlines are sufficient to make judgments about the city. Fair is fair in the surviving game.

Travelodge, Desert Mountain Town

My brain does not adjust to drastic change very well. It punishes me by not letting me sleep. I also have many requirements for sleep like dark, quiet, clean sheets. So when I called out to outdoor-chair sitting Egg from the furniture-free floor in GR and asked in what hotel he would like to stay while we looked for houses in Desert Mountain Town, he said Little America. His family is related to the owners. This does not get us a discount. It doesn't even get us a room--everything in town was booked for graduation. As was everything except the Travelodge. Also: one could stay at the Travelodge for 5 days for what one could stay at Little America for 2. And I'm feeling the budgetary pinch of moving and buying and summer. So the Travelodge it is. I booked a suite--it came with a fireplace and a fridge. What else could I need?

When we got to the hotel (motel?), Egg groaned a little. I said that we'd stayed in worse places--in Kemmerer, WY (fossil fish capital of the world) on our way to the Wind Rivers for our honeymoon, all those motels on the Olympic Peninsula the October we first started dating, and the Chelsea Hotel--the famous hotel that writers and other bohemian types used to stay and write(and apparently go to die). The Travelodge could not be worse than the Chelsea where there was at least three inches between the floor and the outer door so you could watch the 70 year old's high heels click up and down the hallway all night and where sleeping with the light on kept a few of the cockroaches at bay.

And it wasn't as bad as the Chelsea. We were put into a regular two bed room so I had to go back and ask for the suite. Suite might be an overstatement. It meant: fridge and microwave. This particular suite came without the fireplace but it did have wireless so what else did I need?

Apparently I needed a train running through the room at night. The Travelodge sits (as do many of the other hotels, including Little America) near the train tracks. The Travelodge is a little closer than the others in that it sits on the tracks, but trains are romantic, no? Part of the charm of the west and mountain towns and route 66?
Not at midnight. And 1. and 1:30. And 2, 3, 3:45, 4, 4:15, 4:30, 4:58. They don't just drive through either. They honk their horns both with safety and pleasure in mind. Some trains honk only twice per intersection. Some honk all the way from LA to Chicago.
So it wasn't that quiet.
And apparently Arizona thinks daylight savings is for democrats or something. The sun started to peek through the not so sun-blocking curtains by quarter to five. It was full bright by 5:30. It felt like about 9 a.m. Except I didn't have the I-slept-in-so-long feeling. I had the, I-didn't-sleep- at-all feeling. One night, I woke up at 2 and never went back to sleep.

It wasn't just the Travelodge contributing to my lack of sleep. The exorbitant housing prices, the lack of friends there, the fact that it was 80 degrees already (although it snowed the next day), the concern that this new job may not be better than the old one (or what if it's worse?), and the fact that somewhere in Wyoming I realized I wasn't exactly moving home. As the Wind River range passed on my left, the craggy, I remembered that the snow-covered Rockies are not the softer, Ponderosa-filled mountains of the desert.

Other sleep issues include:
When I got to Salt Lake, a dump truck rammed the back of my car. Z was in the back in her carseat but she was OK. I was sore and suddenly busy with more paperwork.
Egg's mom's house is the opposite of the Travelodge: clean, quiet, and except for one night, cool. And yet, the 2 in the morning thing happened. As did the 3, 4, 5.....I blame it on the fluctuating interest rate, the fluctuating temperature (94 one day! 44 the next), the fluctuating time zone, and the fluctuating certainty that change is necessarily good.

Drama, Trauma, and Obama

Oy, never move, never move, never move.
That is my advice unto thee.
We packed up our house. We sent our stuff on the ABF truck toward Arizona, we put Z on the plane with her grandparents, and Egg got in the 4 Runner with Cleo and I got in the Jetta with the cat and we drove across Michigan, Illinois, Iowa and through Nebraska. We stayed the night in North Platte and made it to SLC by dark on Thursday. By Friday, we were dog and cat free and in one car and headed the 7.5 hour drive to Arid Mountain Town.
We looked at a lot of houses.
We seem to have purchased one.
We are heaving under the heavy mortgage. Unlike everywhere else in the country, Arid Mountain Town's prices have held pretty much steady. Still, I think we got an OK deal.
We drove home on Wednesday--made it in 8 hours.
The next day, driving toward my mom's house where my cat is living (although without my mom who is in Yosemite), I was rear-ended by a gigantic dump truck. My car is hurt and I'm sore and Z, who was with me, is absolutely OK. But it sucks and my mom isn't back even though she's supposed to return and the lender wants w-2's which are packed in the truck and Egg's step-dad and sister are in a fight and I want to make fish tacos right now and have a margarita but Egg and Thirty-One's husband just went to play disc golf (it is 3:52 right now Mountain Time. None of my clocks are on the right time) and it gets light in AZ at 4:30 in the morning because they refuse god's greatest gift to mankind--daylight savings, and this past ten days since I've left GR have left me twisted, sore and a bit parched.
But I think next week is going to be a lot more mellow. Especially if my mom gets home....
P.S. This blog has nothing to do with Obama but since Thirty-One blogged twice recently and once about Obama (although more about Hillary) I thought I'd highlight her efforts.

Last Day

I promised to keep a tally of the things I would miss but the list was getting too long and my organizational skills have been pressed into packing duty so whatever lists I did make were not properly demarcated in proper categories. So now all I've got is a long soupy mess of things that will be missed, categorically:
The tree out of my back porch that blooms some magenta colored flower--Erik thinks it's a blossoming plum. Perhaps.
The white magnolia-like tree that last winter the freeze got the minute the flowers bloomed but this year, we got to appreciate the thick-with-cellulose almost-southern flower.
The snow drops that were the first flower this year--bent over white noses kissing snow.
The hyacinths that perfumed my runs.
The tulips although I missed the Holland tulip festival yet again.
The morels that I never found.
The rhododendron, the dianthus, the hydrangea, the butterfly bush and the lavender we planted last year.
The weird Dr. Seuss like trees that keep their purple blossoms tight to their many-direction pointing branches.
The other deciduous trees whose names I know--larch, ash, birch, oak, maple but which I'm not 100% certain I'm applying to the proper tree. I come from the mountains where the trees are mostly pointy firred ones, aspens, or ones imported to the desert for their usefulness like honey locusts for their shade-giving or cherries for their fruit-bearing.
The blueberries. Michigan is the highest producer of blueberries.
The carrots.
They also have an apple called Honeycrisp. Do you have these? They are the best apples in all the land.
The asparagus.
The hawks.
The owls.
The cardinals.
Those little yellow flitting birds.
The gigantic bumblebees.
The fireflies.
The water, the water, the water.
The nights where it's light until almost eleven and because it's a little humid, it's still 75 degrees outside and our friends stay late and we sit on the back patio in the wrought iron chairs and wait for the raccoons and bats to show up.

I'm going on one last run through the college where I hope to see the owls but know I will see at least the geese and their goslings. I might see the frog and the turtle. And I'll definitely see some squirrels. Cleo will miss the squirrels.

Goodbye Michigan! I wish I'd stayed just a little bit longer. I'll try to come visit. Preferably in the spring.

Six Word Memoir Meme (now with more words)

Pretty Hard, Dammit tagged me for a meme. Since I have never been tagged before by someone I know only through the blog world and since I’ve been deficient in my blogging, I am going to write a series of six word memoirs. Lucky you.

1) I know the value of nothing.

I’m sitting here waiting for someone to come look at our dining room table that I’ve been complaining about for a year. The chairs are uncomfortable, the table is scratched. So I posted it on a university classified ad service for a relatively cheap price. Note that our neighbors had already looked at it and did not buy it so it’s obvious, as of this morning, that it’s worthless. After I post the table and chairs on the service, I get 10 emails within 15 minutes. Everyone wants it. Guess what? I don’t want to sell it now.

The couch I listed that no one emailed me about? It is certainly still worthless and I’m still willing to sell it. Until someone lets me know otherwise.

2) I like words: they are deletable.

This table-selling business just clarifies exactly what sorts of therapy I need. Making decisions is just about making regret for me. No matter what I decide, it is the wrong decision. This is why I like writing. I can revise. Delete. Finished is a generally arbitrary idea. I send stuff off. People like it or they don’t. I know it’s done when they like it. Similar to the idea that my table is worthwhile. Perhaps I’ll post some of my essays to the classifieds to see if there are any takers.

3) I just want to go home:

This is a mantra that I repeat always and wherever I go. Even when I am home. Meaning home is always where I’m not. Flip side, grass greener, nostalgia (sickness for the past). I am a sick cookie. I think my true home is Welches, Oregon where once I found fourteen pounds of chanterelles. But it’s kind of shady there with all those firs and pines. And cloudy. Maybe Mountain Town southwest has chanterelles AND sunshine. Except you can’t have mushrooms without rain.

Pretty Hard Dammit actually tagged me to write Zoe’s birth story in 6 word meme. The I-just-want-to-go-home one describes it pretty well. Z however very much wanted to get out into the world. So at 32.5 weeks she kicked her way out of there and made it as far as the NICU. We could see our house from the window, making the longing all the stronger. I was in the hospital for only 4 days but she was there for 20. Still, she was home four weeks before the doctors told us she would be. And she has now lived in two homes and is moving toward another. Perhaps she’ll be less of a I-wish-I-was-somewhere-else kind of person and more of a I’m-happy-wherever-I-am kind of bug. And then I will take a lesson from her and we will hang out happily in the sunny forest full of mushrooms and trees watching the otters swim in the river. I’ll keep you posted on how that turns out.

Edited to add: Woman not interested in the table. Table now back on the undesirable list.

The Next Go Round

My boss, who is really sweet one on one, took me to lunch a couple of weeks ago and gave me a bit of advice about my next job. He told me to take the long view and not get so stressed out about doing it all at once. I'm not sure what kinds of mythologies exist in peoples' perceptions of my time at this University but I was pretty stressed out. I didn't realize how stressed until I quit. I was never entirely sure how much service I was doing or needed to do, if my presence on campus was sufficient, if my publications mattered at all, if I graded too easy or too hard. So I'm trying to think about how I'll do things differently at the next job.

From the above list, it seems obvious and apparent that perhaps I should have asked. Of course, I did ask my one good friend but, as a friend, he tended to either support or tease me about freaking out about these things. I should have asked the chair these things, at least some of them, just so as to alleviate my stress. I think I was afraid he would say, you do too little. Now I find out that in some ways, he thinks I did too much. I've never been good about asking for help or feedback. In PhD school, I spent little time in my professors offices. I think this was a huge drawback to my grad school experience and, though I've known I'm like this, I still haven't corrected it. In fact, when students come to visit me in my office, I stare at them like what could I possibly tell you here that you couldn't ask me in class. I mean, my students come. We have good discussions. But I'm so unclear as to WHY they're there (they don't tell me) that I just talk and pontificate. If they have a clear question, it's easy, but the hanging out as an extension of the professorial experience makes me act all talky and uncomfortable.
So my prejudice against office-time goes both ways. One way to fix this is to change the context of the office hour by taking it out of the office. Fortunately, at my new school, there are compulsory writing center hours. If nothing else, I will have face-time with students when they don't have to specifically seek me out. The other thing to do, is to schedule time with my chair and other profs throughout the semester so I make myself go to the meetings. If I schedule something, I might be able to be more precise in the way I ask how am I doing, am I doing enough service, what kinds of service should I be doing.....
The other good thing about the new job is that my service is already built into the job so wandering around the hallways looking for ways to distinguish my service will not be so difficult. At my current job, everyone had claimed their service territories and I wasn't sure how to claim my own. I ended up doing a lot of assessment, benchmarking, curriculum development-type work (which helped me get this new job, I think) but at the new job, I'll be the point person, the public face of the department, which is something that suits the kind of service I want to be doing.

Other random things I'll do differently

1. Get to town earlier. We arrived in this town ten days before classes started. We had a couple of personal crises plus a one-year old who was still a entirely new concept. We knew where nothing was. We had no vacuum. We didn't know where the grocery store was. We couldn't decide on cable or not. I barely knew how to drive to campus. In fact, it took me a whole semester to figure out the fast way. I missed some of the first of the year meetings on campus so Erik could interview for jobs. I feel like I started behind and have been playing catch up ever since.

2. Figure out a babysitter/daycare situation. Before we knew that daycare would be the infectious trap that it was, we planned for Z to be in daycare the whole time while Erik worked. We realized that Zoe would not be able to go to school as sick as she got, we ended up in the hospital. Erik quit his job, in part, so he could take care of her. In Mountain Town I'm going to have to have a sitter to cover my schedule plus preschool for her so she can get some kid-time in but if she does still get sick, Erik and I can go to work and I'll feel like I'm putting in plenty of face time.

3. Have a party early on. Invite everyone before I figure out who likes who and who tends to hang out with who else.

4. Ask how people grade grad students and then how they grade their undergrads. Having gone to Reed and then grad school, I still find all this grading mysterious. I do grade creative work but maybe I should stop and just grade brilliant comments.

5. Get in a writing group. I have online ones but I miss having a regular face-to-face meeting.

6. Take at least one weekend day off. Go somewhere. That's why we moved there. For the somewhere.

7. Write down long-term service goals. Piece them out into workable parts. Do a little part. Again, with the long view.

8. Hang out at school. This will be easier as I hope that we live closer to campus. It sucks if it takes 25 minutes to get to campus. One is likely to go for a long time, but not as often.

I'm sure there are more ways to take the long view but this is a good start. Maybe if I make my plans public, I'll stick to them. Perhaps someone could ask me some time in October if I've been to visit my chair lately or had a party. Or find out when I will be having a party and then you can come. It would be easier if I already knew some people there....

An Update on the Z Zau McFlau

We are living under the reign of Z. She is a gentle tyrant but not to well disposed to instruction or rules or wearing of the clothing. This morning while I was in the shower, she took my make up and spread it like peanut butter all over our leather chair. Why? Because the chair was dry and it needed lotion.
Do you remember when she would wear only purple? Purple turtleneck, purple leggings, purple dress? First went the turtleneck, and now the leggings and now, if we're lucky, she will wear the purple, sleeveless sundress from last summer because she has decided that now it is summer and she is "cold enough" and it's bright out there and even though it's still only forty-degrees tops, that is all she needs to wear.
At night--she needs books. Several books. We started a chapter book. We also finished it that night because she wanted to hear just a little more. And can you say no to books? We have the goodnight moon book from her Maestra (my mom) the blue moon that her aunt Joyce gave her and the Zoe's Potty that my cousin gave her and the animals in the forest from her grandparents and some idiotic everything book that has no narrative that we must read every night. Plus the songs three: Hush, Sunshine and Zoe (Zoe still says her name Dowie so sometimes we think she's talking about her dad, Airwick). And then songs three one more time.
At 3:46 a.m. she would like more milk please. Just a tiny bit, she asks. Tiny bit?
She'll still eat half an onion but is less into other foods like turkey and chicken. Skittles? Those she'll accept.
She counts to ten if you don't make her say 7 and are OK with 8 being H.
Paint a picture of Lily, please. NO PANTS! DRESS! she demands. I tell her Lily, unlike she, wears pants. And a shirt. And some other color than purple.
She must watch Steins (Little Einsteins) and Dora with Diegos in them. We are allowed to dance--swing her around in 20 circles until one of us is about to throw up, practice our arabesques and pirouettes but cannot sing. If we do sing, we must sing loud.
It's a Byzantine system we've been living but we cut her some slack because someone's got to be in charge and she who knows what she wants and what she wants to wear is obviously someone who has good leadership and management skills. And the leather chair, it is silky soft now, even if slightly tinted human color. Plus, when she demands hug and runs full tilt into the surprise of my shoulder or demands kiss and kisses my lips and then offers me lip-stuff because they too seem dry, I give up all plans for revolt and rebellion and spin her one more time. And then one more time again.

Edited to add: Because I wasn't here, I forgot that during random times of the day, one is told to lie down and "close eyes." She puts a blanket on one's body and sings a variation of "hush." If one stirs or makes moves to get up or opens one's eyes, one is told to "go to sleep." I'm not sure why she thinks that would work on either me or Egg, since it certainly doesn't work on her.

Too much

All of those stresses of a month ago seem to be resolving themselves. The villa owner in Italy let us move our reservations to next June, the nice people at the U found my payroll reports and verified that I worked at the U for more than .5 FTE so I am vested in my 403B here, and our house has an offer and has passed inspection. If things continue in this way, I might begin to believe that the gods favor our moving. We're looking at houses online in high-altitude desert town and are gagging at the prices but think we'll be able to find a cute enough house. We're storing our stuff for a month, heading west for the summer. I'm sad I'll be missing the spring and summer here. My backyard patio let's in just the right amount of light--all sunny in the morning and shaded by trees in the afternoon. Remind me to keep my eye out for that in the new house.
Z's grandparents are coming to fly her to salty town the first week of May. I may well be eating at Em's and the Metropolitan sooner than I ever could have thought.
I still have high hopes to do here: find morels in the woods, find asparagus along the river, cross the Mackinac Bridge into the UP and see the tulips in Holland. I have a wee bit (75 portfolios) of grading to do but I think I can work in a weekend trip or two.

Things I Will Miss

I expect as it gets closer and closer to when I'll be moving and now that most everyone knows that I am going, I will be only melancholy and nostalgic about what I'm leaving. So expect a number of posts with this same title.

Today gets a sub-title: Birds and other flying things:

• The geese that fly overhead to land in the pond at the college down the street.
• The cardinals that stare into our back room from the two trees that are not, but remind me of, a magnolia and a Japanese maple.
• The ducks that are swimming in couples around the pond. The same pond where the geese are trying to land.
• The white-bellied hawks that dive from the tall trees (again, what kind? Alder? Sure, that sounds good) as I drive toward school on the big street named after the big lake.
• Fireflies. When my mom's boyfriend came to visit, he was so surprised. What are these flying lights?
• These black and white tit-mice that land on the sycamore that I watch out the bathroom and hallway windows.
• The black and white woodpecker that eats from that same sycamore.
• The squirrels that seem to fly from branch to branch, from sycamore to hyacinth to fence to pine.
• The chipmunks that chase the squirrels.
• The red-tail hawk that sometimes appears on the sycamore looking for squirrels to eat, and, who one winter, caught and ate a squirrel while perched on top of the snow, leaving the white spattered red.
• The leaves that span seventy-five colors of red--from black cherry to neon pink-- falling to the sidewalk, on the sidewalk.
• The sparrows, plucking clean the already-bare winter branches.
• The spring blossoms, having fallen on the flower beds, blanketing them in May like so much snow did just the other day in April.

The Ice

100 Years of Solitude begins thusly:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

When I leave GR, I will remember the ice.

I grew up in a mountain town next to a lake, albeit a salty one, so I thought that moving to another snowy town with lake effect snow wouldn't be that huge of a transition. But because the mountain town I'm from also doubles as desert, the snow melts. It dries. The sidewalks if left unshoveled eventually are melted of their snow and returned to their chalky brightness.

Not so here. This winter, especially February, has gone on record as having the most snowfall ever. If it had been last year, when the temperatures all winter never rose above freezing, there would be snow up to our windows. But this year, there have been a couple of thaws. This is great when it's happening. Whole roads turn to rivers, the iciles fall and stab the ground, you can exhale and inhale outside.

But it never stays above freezing for more than 6 hours. At night, all that melt turns to ice. The streets are black with it. The gutters are puddled with it. People who haven't shoveled now have frozen slush, impossible to walk on because the shoe prints of the last person to walk through the slush have solidified--it's like walking on hardened lava. You have to high-step over the foot of ice between the gutter and the curb.

Running has been hard. Some days, even the college by my house which uses enough salt to keep the walks clear at 10 degrees, can't keep the stream of melt turn to a blanket of ice. Some days, it wasn't so much like walking as ice skating. I still ran, a little, slowly but on my tip-toes.

It seems that it might be forty degrees over the next few days. The snow banks are getting smaller. There will still be that sheet of wet ice when I run because it will still freeze overnight. But when I start counting the curb ice in inches rather than feet, when walking up the driveway doesn't require sending Cleo the dog up first so she can pull me by her leash, when I don't wear my wool hat every day, when running through the college is more mud than Dorothy Hamill impersonation, then I will look at the blue skies--here for a record 6 days in a row now, and, even though break is almost a week over, call it spring.

When I came here, I wondered why we had "fall" and "winter" semesters rather than "fall" and "spring." They laughed when I asked. They said, you'll figure it out.
Now I know.
Still. The curb ice? It's down to inches.

Edited to add: Dorothy Hamill implies some sort of graceful ice-venture. That is not me. In the Upper Penisula, there's the verb pank. It means to tap down the snow hard with a flat tool--possibly called a panker. That's more like what I'm doing with the ice except the ice is already hard so my feet don't make much of an impact.

Ineffective Political Action ETA Not So Ineffective!

I got an email from the HRC last night urging me to email all 76 Utah state reps and ask them to oppose amending Senate Bill 199. Since I haven't been involved in Utah politics for awhile, I was unfamiliar with the bill but apparently the original, unamended bill would allow domestic partners in SLC to keep their domestic partner benefits although it would change the name of the registry. The amendment would make it illegal for a city to define domestic partners or benefit participants (something like that. Like I said, I'm out of Utah politics). I'd already had some wine and had nothing better to do so I emailed them all (please note that it's probably illegal, or at least very pointless, for me to do so as a nonresident) and asked them to vote against the amendment.
I remember from my old letter-writing days (pre 2004 when I gave entirely) about how nervous I was to write letters, especially to Utah Reps because I could just imagine the awful responses I could and did get--from what Utah families "are" to how it cannot be a priority to think of water management. But by emailing all 76, I realized that although 15 or even 25 would or could write heinous responses to me about their distaste for anything outside their realms of known experience, I realized that there might be at least that many who might not have such a strong response. Ones who might care what someone might say.
We'll see. I've already had one request for my address (which of course I coudln't send) and another telling me to stick it. But one person did say "thanks. This adds to my reasons to vote against." And so I say yay!

ETA:
From a rep!
Thank you for contacting me about this amendment. I share your concerns and voted against it. I am pleased to let you know that it failed.

Best Wishes,
Representative Karen Morgan

Disaster, minor

I was going to blog on Sunday about the dinner I made on Saturday night. But, right before I went to take the souffles out of the oven, I went to check on Z who had gone to find a necklace in my nightstand drawers. Instead of a necklace, she found a bottle of benadryl. The lid was on, just not very tightly. I found it underneath the pile of pink pills. I asked her if she ate any, she said yes. I said how many, she said two. I had to believe her even though she was saying yes as if I wanted her to say yes. What I really wanted was for her to say no but I didn't want to lead the witness. Two seems plausible. And two too many. So we tell our guests to make themselves at home, to pull the souffles out, to slice the ricotta tart, to add the lemon juice to the lentils and we drive over to the ER. We know where it is. (3 blocks away). We've been there before.
The nurses are pretty calm. No charcoal. No stomach pumping. They just watch her for a minute. Benadryl isn't particularly toxic, we learn. Still, two hours of monitors and lots of stickers on her chest to make sure her heart rate doesn't spike is a long time for a 2.5 year-old. Fortunately we had my cell phone and there's a Tetris-like game on it (who knew?) that now she and Erik are addicted to. We were let go with not too much shame or admonishment. I apologized to Erik and Z for my Benadryl addiction and for my wrists which are apparently too weak to twist a cap all the way to lock.

We got home. The guests had eaten the souffles, the tart, and figured out to put the leeks with the lentils. They also saved us some food and cleaned up the dishes. The best part was that they were still here when we got back. Usually when we go to the ER, no one knows where we are. This time, people were waiting to hear and then willing to hang out longer just so the whole night wasn't a total disaster.

In the end, we think Z took none of the Benadryl. She stayed up until 11 and woke up by 7 the next day.

Indexed

Numbers of pages revised this week: 268—247 of them novel, 21 of them essay.

Number of pages written: 21—1 of a new essay, 1 formal letter and 1 letter of resignation, 18 of comments on stories, essays, and poems.

Number of people who mooned me when they find out I was quitting: 1— both bra and underwear.

Number of calls and emails negotiating job offer: 6.

Number of concessions made of the three I asked for by new school: 3, although only the first by ½.

Number of forms filled out consenting to a background check: 1

Number of readings attended: 2—1 with Bill Olsen and Linda Gregerson, who restored my certainty in poetry and readings and 1 with me, Brock Clarke and Douglas Kearney, who bewildered me all over again.

Number of hawks sighted while returning from the University of Illinois where reading # 2 was held: 16.

Number of phone calls and emails about the transition including am I vested in my 401K, how will we sell this house in the down market, can we move our Italy trip to 2009? 9.

Weight, in pounds of fear, that all the answers will be no: 2,837.

Weight, in pounds of guilt and sadness, of leaving my fine, fine department here: 2,838 (thereby, the guilt will be redeemed when I’m punished by the resulting no’s from the 401K, house selling and Italy questions, though I’ll still be left with a pound left over).

Number of poems of mine re-published on Verse Daily: 1.

Number of times I emailed Verse Daily to make the archives reflect my current name and the first line of the poem: 2.

Number of times asked to listen to Didn’t Bring Nothing But the Baby per hour on the way to U of I: 12.

Number of hours to and fro U of I: 10. Thankfully, it’s a good song and I like Alison Krauss.

Back from AWP/NYC Many Days Ago

AWP was even more fun than usual. Getting out of here was less fun than usual. I woke up at 6, did not shower, did not make coffee. I had parked the 4-Runner in the carport because it was supposed to snow and do other bad things in the sky like freeze rain and spit sleet. So it was cold. 9 degrees. And the locks on the car doors? They were as frozen as the rain. I finally get in, but I'm 10 minutes late.
The roads are not good for lateness. I go very slow on the highway. I take the exit at a mere 10 miles an hour. I make it to the turn into the airport but when I move into the left-lane, all is ice and Lexus SUV in front of me. I slam into him. Hard. We pull over. It's just his ($3823) bumper. He says don't worry about it. But then he takes my phone number.
Now I'm really late.
I get to the parking lot. I park in a snow drift up to my hips. The parking shuttle passes me by. Another one comes before I get frostbite.
By the time I'm at the kiosk, I'm pretty sure they won't let me on but then who do I see but my colleagues, coming in after me, all unfrazzled and unworried.
Turns out the flight is delayed. No time for departure listed. I had checked at home! But the internet lies. It lies a lot.
So we wait and wait. The flight looks like it's ready. There's much cheering in the gate area.
And then there are many tears. Freezing rain is fine for this airport but it's windy in LaGuardia.
I fly out the next day.
The rest of the trip is less eventful. There's some shopping in the village and some good subway riding.
There are many good foods eaten.
First there was Lupa downtown near Prince Street that Mapmaker so kindly organized. It was restaurant week so for $24.07 we had 4 courses. I had the oxtail terrine (sliced very thinly), the pork shoulder fettuccine, pan-seared sea bass and ricotta with honey for dessert.
For dinner: random French restaurant with my good grad school friends. What a surprise to see two of them. Such great times. Goat cheese and beet salad without any beets but otherwise good.
Breakfast the next day at Astros by the hotel (52nd and 6th)--Lox and Bagels.
Lunch: Quality Meats on 58th. Another $24.07 deliciousness. Steak tartar (my first time!), shrimp salad sandwich and some dessert I don't remember. The steak tartar was amazing.
Dinner: I wasn't hungry and I felt a little broke but I really wanted to spend time with my grad school friends. So to Balthazar! A ravioli for appetizer. I had the pork belly. Others (Dr. Write) had the confit and (High-Touch) delicious fish.
The next morning? I went to Carnegie deli. Mistake. I order $20 corned beef hash. It had green peppers. I had four bites. I talked to nice people from Philadelphia though because the tables? They're made for sharing.
But another French lunch with onion soup and foie gras terrine almost redeemed the dining day.
Oh yeah, and then I presented on our panel (I moderated and showed up late because the lines to the bathroom were 100 miles long. Sorry for the stress Margot!). I also spent much time at the bookfair looking at pretty books and lamenting the outcast state of those who seemed desperate for a book. I try very hard not to look desperate but I did spend a fair deal of time and quite a few dollars at the Milkweed table. I'll buy my way into your hearts! I told them.
I also found a few good mags to submit to and some highly hilarious children's books from McSweeney's which Dr. Write also bought.
I didn't see a number of people I had hoped to because my trip was abbreviated but overall it was one of my favorite AWP's. Because it was NYC? Because it was so short?
The rest of the week was full of campus visits and other stresses to be blogged about shortly.
AWP's in Chicago next year. Feb 11-14. Can't wait to see how many flights are canceled then....