Mostly just a ramble

Today, I got my hair cut, which was long overdue. Now if I could just get motivated to color it, I'd be in business.

My current project is rehabbing a couple of American Girl Kirstens that I bought on eBay. One of them, I knew was a Kirsten. She even had her "meet" dress. But some darling child had styled her hair in what can only be called dreadlocks. Her hair is dried out and in really terrible shape. The other one came in modern jeans, tennis shoes, and a jacket. It was billed as a "Just Like You" doll, which is one of the modern ones that have a variety of eye and hair colors to match the girl they are intended for. But she is also a Kirsten. And her hair is in much better shape. Mea and I have washed it, sprayed it with vinyl restorer and will probably get her ready to sell on eBay next week. I am hoping for a nice return on her, since Kirsten dolls are retired. The other one? I don't know. Her hair is soaking in Downy right now, which is really a "last resort" kind of treatment for doll hair. If it works, I probably sell her, too. I could sell her anyway. I saw a doll listed for "parts" sell for more than either of these did.

An old friend came over last night. He is grad school, so he had spring break, too, and spent at least part of the week with his family, who live about a half-hour away. Yesterday, though, he came to visit his friends here in town. It was so nice to see him and just visit. :)

Really, that is all that is going on. Oh, except my daughter's boyfriend broke up with her yesterday. Really, how is that to top off the week she's had?

Stealing a moment

I should be asleep. Barring that, I should be reading for my comps. Or doing laundry. Or something productive.

Instead, I am sitting on the loveseat, indulging in a guilty pleasure.

I feel like I am trapped in shoulds. Shoot, I know I am. I should be a better teacher, better student, better mother. My house should be neater, my papers graded faster, I should be thinner, more patient.

I am completely aware that my expectations are excessive. If anyone else were trying to do everything I try to do, I would tell them that they are nuts. I, however, feel that I ought to manage.

And really, I should. You know, my great grandmothers raised everything their families put in their mouths. They got up before everyone else so that there was breakfast before they went out to the fields to work. They built fires to cook on and hauled water to cook with and wash up with. They hauled their laundry to the creek to wash it on a rub board for god's sake.

Comps? I should be able to breeze through them, right? With one hand on a mop and the other grasping an outline for the perfect answer? Whatever.

Sigh of relief

My second job wrapped up today, so I am back down to just the one full time teaching job. Oh, and graduate school. My dissertation proposal is due in December. So I just trade one problem in for another.

We've adjusted son's medication, so he is less crazy. Which makes my life less crazy.

We bought a new kitchen stove today, paid for by my second job. We bought a dishwasher earlier this summer with that money, too. It is so nice not to have to borrow money for absolutely everything we do. My mother keeps pointing out that everything I borrow just has to be paid back, and of course, she's right. Maybe next year, if I do this again, I can pay something off.

Someday, our student loans will be due, and at that point, we're in trouble. :) I should totally buy a car before that happens. Never worry today about what I can worry about tomorrow.

In the meantime, I try to muddle through my PhD and keep my kids fed. As part of my quest to keep my kids fed, I bought Once-A-Month Cooking: Family Favorites. I don't know why I keep buying these cookbooks. I like the way it is laid out, and the way they break down the shopping lists. But a lot of the dishes sound really horrid, like Mahi Mahi steaks. The worst part of that recipe is actually that it isn't really a make-ahead recipe. The recipe is for a grilling sauce that gets repackaged with the fish steaks that don't even thaw as this recipe is "made ahead."

And, of course, modifying one recipe changes the whole shopping list, the advantage of buying the book. Aaarg!

Where has the time gone?

I can hardly believe how little I've posted lately! Well, maybe I can. I've been uber-busy, finishing up my summer job as my real job started up. My summer job is grading papers for a class for talented high school students, and all I have left are final reviews. Those are due Monday, but I'm procrastinating.

On top of all this, my son has been especially unstable. That is always fun. He disrupts the whole household, and then does not understand why we're still upset once he's calmed down.

All I have been doing for weeks is working one job or the other, punctuated by insane rampaging teenage boy.

I haven't even seen one of Project Runway's new season yet. (Although I do have them on the DVR.) As soon as I finish these final papers, I am going to go all hedonist and catch up on Project Runway. And watch those Being Human episodes that I've queued up in anticipation for a moment's free time.

Unfortunately, almost as soon as I finish up with my talented high school students, I have to start to work on bibliographies for my Comprehensive Exam. To make matters worse, I am only really friends with two of the other ten people in my class, and neither of them (I think) are in my "track," Professional Writing and New Media. Either way, I will have to do group work with people that I don't know/like. So I am fretting about that.

I tell my students that they should narrow their ideas down so that they only are saying one thing, but I completely failed on that point here. Perhaps if I had loaded my ideas in a shotgun and shot them at my blog they could have been more scattered. But perhaps not.

It is possible that I could be better next time. :)

Cash for clunkers?

So I am tired of my life. It gets lousy gas mileage. I'm looking for a trade in program. My life for someone who did her phd the normal way-- funded and sans kids. My kids are, this very minute, asleep. But earlier today, they made me crazy. Miss O, my seven year old, skipped in circles around my parents' living room, but refused to go outside to burn off energy. My 16 year old took five hours to figure out what she wanted to do today, and then called me in a panic to sort out the fact that we ate the food that she had intended to contribute to the church youth group get-together. My 14 year old son spent the evening lolling around because he got too much sun at above youth get together and somehow can't figure out that his pale skin (belying his Scots-Irish roots-- he managed to skip any Native American skin tones) means sunscreen and lots of it.

And all of this is my problem.

Right.

Craziness & Chaos

My husband is moderate about nothing. If anything gets his attention, the world is on hold until someone has solved it. This is never more apparent than it was today.

Olivia, our seven year old, is staying with Mea while I am in Writing Project and Todd is taking graduate classes. Today, Olivia did bother to wake up Mea. She got board, so decided to call me. I was of course in class. W had my phone because his day camp was over and he had to wait until I got done. W wouldn't come get me, so Olivia called Todd. He got very upset because she was “alone” while Meleah slept. It is important to note here that Todd was often neglected as a small child. From the time his sister was born when he was seven, he was left at home alone. This has obviously affected his outlook. His visceral reaction was extreme. So I tried to sort things out.

I called home. I called Mea's number and it rolled over to voicemail. Then I called the house phone. It, too, rolled over to voicemail. I had understood from Walker that Olivia could not wake Mea. So I came home.

I walk in the door, Mea is awake. Olivia is on the phone with her friend Sharnetta, watching tv in my bedroom. I had a nice long conversation with Olivia about what constitutes an emergency. She should only call me if one of the following occurs: the house is on fire; uncontrollable bleeding; severe burns; a break-in; or if she cannot wake up Mea after she pours water on her. I'll add a meltdown by W to that list for Mea.

It is hard to come down too hard on a seven-year-old for a lack of judgment. Of course, she lacks judgment. She's seven. But now she knows. No more judgment for her. Now she has rules.

Basics

How can serving food for five people on a daily basis be so hard? I mean, I have a refrigerator, a deep freeze, an oven, and a crock pot.

My great grandmother had a wood stove.

I have a pantry full of food, in cans, waiting to be turned into meals.

My great grandmother canned everything from peaches to green beans to pork. Only then did she ever begin to cook.

She also hauled water, built a fire, and cooked. Then she heated water on the stove and washed dishes. Cooking for her crew was about a full time job.

For me, though, cooking is not my job. It is what I have to do *after* my job. My dh, on the other hand, does his job, then comes home and waits for supper to appear. By magic. Occasionally, he does the dishes (not as often as he thinks he does) or he puts something precooked from Sam's in the oven (or microwave). He *never* cooks. He will look at my pantry full of food and ask me what there is to eat. Seriously.

So, this is my problem. My belief in equality aside, if I am ever going to consistantly have nutritous meals, I am responsible for making sure they happen.

So I flirt with organization.

I have books like Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer: Great-Tasting Meals You Can Make Ahead
and the The Freezer Cooking Manual from 30 Day Gourmet: A Month of Meals Made Easy
(if your idea of Gormet is chicken and pasta, you're there) and even the Woman's Day Cookbook.

What I should probably do is to quit trying to find a system, and just start. Cook a week's worth of food. I can do that, right? I'll be off more this summer and won't be selling a house or taking six hours of PhD level classes.

Coming down to the wire

Presentation done. Research paper to go. I really want to get it done before the break.

And guess what it is about? Come on, what debate to I live my life in the middle of? That college composition belongs in college.

And it does. High school is high school. It cannot, regardless of the quality of the class, be college. It just can't.

And it certainly can't if it is also an AP class.

Sorry that this is just a drive-by posting. I keep promising myself that I will actually have time to sit down and write something-- anything other than scholarship.

Bad hair day

No day that starts out with hair looking as badly as mine does can be a good day. It is flat, and starting to look a bit gray at the roots.

I had a light day planned, so I did not realize that I needed emergency hair therapy. I was just going to visit a high school, meet briefly with my boss, and deal firmly with a plagiarist (who is not even in my class). No need to break out the curling iron and heavy duty hairspray, right? Sounds like a day so harmless not even bad hair could ruin it.

Boy was I wrong. My van wouldn't start. Granted, this has been kind of an on-going issue, but we thought we had it solved last night. Found out this morning that we did not. So I have to drive the moldy car, again. But today, I have to drive it farther because marching band is over and 10th grade band meets over at East campus, which is way out of my way.

So I make it there and to work with only a blistering headache and a mild asthma attack (forgot to mention the mold allergy, didn't I?)

I had to cancel the school visit.

The meeting with my boss was okay, though. We'll see how it goes with the plagiarist.

I would feel better with some heat styling and some hairspray.

Busy busy busy

Last week I was in Las Vegas at the International Writing Center Conference. My friend and colleague Joanna and I had a presentation accepted. We saw a lot of good sessions, but were a bit disappointed by the turnout for our session. I have some observations from that trip that I will get together eventually.

This week, I have been playing catchup. Laundry, student issues, spending catch-up time with my kids (the little one played sick on Monday so she could go to work with me). Oh, and the 4-H award banquet was on Thursday, after class. My kids are new, so they didn't get any awards, but now we know that awards exist...

Mea's last half time show of the season was last night-- senior night. So she missed the 4-H banquet, and I missed her last half-time show. And this weekend, we are staying home.

Random Blathering

So my life is so completely lame. I am trying to think of something to write about, and all I can think of is what is on television-- Friends. The one where the girls lose the apartment.

Mea is sick today-- we are hoping that it is *not* strep. Especially since strep means that I have to do her wretched babysitting job.

Today is my spring break. No class today, but I do have to get my research project started. I now have IRB clearance from two institutions. That is a lot of IRB.

We are doing professional development to get ready for our assessment program. It is really going pretty well, but it is tiring. More tomorrow (along with my regularly scheduled class load), and on Thursday.

On another subject...
My children are seriously lacking in the 80s-90s movie department. I discovered a couple of weeks ago that Mea had never seen Wayne's World. Or Weekend at Bernie's. Or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. She (and W) are seriously missing out on the whole... understanding of the popular culture that has shaped my understanding of reality. They get the music, so I am not completely isolated in my home. (Actually, Mea introduced me to Bauhaus-- how wrong is that??) So on movies, I educate them, one movie at a time.

Feel free to give me some ideas for 1980-1995 movies to share with teen aged children.

Writing home

Yet another post inspired by Tim...
I am trying to write my home. And that keeps me from writing other things. And I am not sure that I can write it until I come to terms with it.

As much as I love the Ozarks, and the Ozarkers who live there, growing up, I was more ambivalent. I never really fit in as a child. I read too much, I had asthma. I have a non-verbal learning disability-- I don't pick up some social cues, especially non-verbal ones. And I was sensitive as a child and cried easily. Sounds like a textbook case for alienation, doesn't it?

And so I hung out with my family. My grandparents lived on the next hill. My great-grandmother across the field from them-- a quick walk around the pond. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. I learned to sew. I learned about when they lived in Kansas City and in California. I admired the strength and determination that allowed them to buy the farm that we all lived on (my parents bought part of it).

But then school intruded.

Everyone I knew is dying, though, Joe Kenneth, Timothy, Amber (a girl I used to baby sit-- baby sit! She was 26), my granny, my grandparents, Gladys (my grandmother's friend).

I would love to do this well-- a cynical A Long Way from Chicago... a story that shows the beauty of the area and its people, and that shows me as, well, frankly, not a pathetic victim. I want to be a smart, engaging observer. But the problem is, of course, the reality of who I was. So really, the first character I have to create is myself as a child. And that is a major reconstruction job.

So, of course, I am paralyzed. I write about what I would write if I were to write. And I really only manage to write that here. So.

There you go.

Reruns

I am watching a Designing Women rerun, which makes me wish for the 80s, or at least 80s television. Mary Jo and Suzanne are debating the difference between "come hither" and "happy to make your acquaintance" looks. That is so what I want to see on TV Land, not the High School Reunion reality show they are hawking. I have managed to miss my own high school reunions. The only one I have any desire to watch is Romy and Michelle's. It makes me wonder what is wrong with those people who sign up for that show. Kind of like Who Wants to be Superhero (which I love, don't get me wrong-- mostly out of adoration for Stan Lee).

Now Mea wants to watch The Breakfast Club, which I think glorifies drug use. And worse, it shows drugs solving isolation. Drugs don't ever solve isolation. Drugs don't solve anything. I try not to judge people who use. I understand that some people need to escape from their lives. I try to construct my life in such as way that I do not need to escape it through anything more than a couple several hours of husband & kid free scrapbooking. Mostly, I have been successful with that.

I am obviously getting old. It is 10 pm and I am falling asleep as I type.

Stranglehold

My life is a bit overwhelming. Miss O was not feeling well, so I let her sleep in and then took her to school. W didn't realize that she was at school, so he did not get her.

And our childcare provider completely forget about the kids. Completely. And her cell phone battery died. So we could not contact her.

And of course, today was one of those days when I had a meeting with my department head and people outside my department (including another department head).

And the renewing contract that I thought I was getting? Seems be have become someone else's tenured position. But I am sure they will still let me do site visits.

Oh, and the circus I thought I was sending my kids to? NEXT week. In my defense, Todd had the tickets with the date, not me.

I want to go to bed, but I have another hour of class.

Fun.

Study Break

I am reading for my research methods class-- the third graduate level research methods class that I have take. Trust me, it is not any more interesting this time.

Yesterday, though, I helped Mea with some fun research. We went to visit my first grade teacher, who sold (rather was forced to sell) her land to the government to create the Buffalo National River. It was so good to see her-- I haven't seen her in years.

On a not quite as happy note, W is having problems in school. His teachers are not enthusiastic about his modifications & his grades are showing that. He is also having problems with anxiety (sigh). I am not sure that I am going to do. Homeschooling keeps coming up as an option, but I am reluctant to try that route again (we made a valiant attempt last year). W resists working, especially at home.

Anyway, I am off to create a handout for ethnography.

Updating...

Meleah survived her allergy attack. She has had not other symptoms-- no other problems.

We got our heat pump installed, along with a second mortgage, but fortunately no co-signer.

No clue how my paper turned out, gradewise, but I was pleased with how it turned out given the constraints of the assignment.

I still have portfolios and journals to grade. And papers. Lots of papers.

I am watching Star Trek: Enterprise, which I totally and completely missed when it was out the first time. How I manage to miss these shows, I'll never know. I totally missed Dead Like Me when it came out, too. I *love* Dead Like Me.

W has been at work with me the last couple of days and will be with me again tomorrow. Fighting, this time. And yes, he did win, although I cannot understand why people continue to ask... He lost, in that he has to miss three days of school. Heaven knows he has enough problems turning stuff in when he is *at* school. I am dreading what he ends up doing after three days off.

Laundry took over my house while I was working on my paper. Now there is a ginormous pile of dirty clothes in the laundry room and clean clothes everywhere else. *sigh. I suppose I should stop procrastinating and get some work done.

Home

We all drove up to Mom and Dad's today. First, though, I had to get my tags renewed-- because I am a loser and did not do it in October when I was supposed to. Traffic was terrible coming up here. Trucks everywhere, and Miss O had to go to the restroom three times.

KY3 (the Springfield MO NBC affiliate)is doing a story on the "baby boom" 10 months after the ice storm last year. I love Springfield local news. It is, of course, what I grew up with. We never saw Little Rock news at home, when I was a kid.

We got our new heat and air system installed. It is really nice to have heat again ; )
Old houses certainly have quirks.

I seem to be having a gathering at my house in December, which means I have to throw out stuff. I cannot bear for my oldest friends to see the mess my house is. And Do is probably going to stop by on her way to Louisiana. So, yeah, I have to clean my house. And I need to paint my living room, dining room, and trim. Because I have nasty paneling in my living room and ugly knotty pine trim in both the living room and dining rooms. And my dining room is yellow. Which is fine, until I paint my living room, then they will clash. And they are only divided by columns. So, they have to match.

All this after my final paper is due on Dec. 8, grades are due a week after that. Then I am free for a week to clean my house.

Debt to Income Ratio

I have discovered that I am broke. My debt to income ratio is too high.

How did I discover this wonderful piece of information? Our furnace went out. It just will not come on any more. And even when it did work, it was inefficient and obviously on its last legs.

So we have to buy a new one. A $6000 new one.

And my dad has to co-sign. I find this depressing. I try to pretend that I am enough of a grownup to not need my parents help all the time. And truthfully, we manage most of the time. We have bought two houses on our own. We have bought vehicles on our own. We paid for the transmission on our truck when it went out. We did, however, get help when the air conditioning went out on my van. They offered, though, because they thought that it was making me sick to go without air conditioning (and it was).

So that is where I am. In my mid-thirties and still not financially independent. I hate that. Hate that.

Update

I have been so busy-- I have spent the last week just running around in circles. I did turn in my paper on time, though. It was painful. But done.

Now, maybe, I can get some time to *gasp* do my job. I did critique a group of drafts today, and handed those back.

I am behind on a set of papers, which has the darlings slightly freaked (and which is not necessarily a bad thing)(he he).

We are launching the online writing center. We do have some dissension in the ranks. But I think ultimately, it will be a positive thing.

Randomness

This week has been rather hellish. The sheriff found the body of my high school friend. W had a speech language eval on Monday, so I sent an email to the secretary to cancel my class. She got distracted, so she didn't. I had to give a brief presentation at the Dean's reception on Tuesday (he saw me today with Becky, and I could tell that he was trying to work out how he knew me. Today is Friday.) Wednesday, I went to the Robert Kennedy Jr. lecture (which was wonderful). Thursday was Vino, plus W's progress reports came in. He is failing some of his classes. FAILING? I never failed a class. A test maybe, but not a class.

I need to go pick up the little dears. We have a quiet weekend planned. I am going to get some kids clothes ready for a consignment sale, so I can buy them more clothes. Or maybe purge a bit. We have too much stuff for our house. Or maybe we don't have enough house for our stuff? Either way, we have a mess. Right now, my entire house looks like a child's bedroom. Even to the clothes and toys strewn all over the living room floor. Part of it is my fault. I can admit that. I have my grad school stuff strung out. But that is everywhere. Maybe I should start by containing that.