Let's do the time warp again...

So I haven't written in what? Nearly a month? I guess it is really just a couple of weeks. I have started back to school-- headed off to PhD camp next week. Two weeks in Virginia, sans kids, so maybe I can catch up. Maybe I can even get ahead?

I am only a week in, and am so sick of my classes I could die. Truthfully, the main problem is the lack of relevance. One class is a reprise of what I took in the spring. While interesting, it does not really add anything to what I did then. The other will probably help with a grant I want help write for our writing center. Regardless, I had rather take something that will count toward graduation. Which neither of them do. I have already taken all my electives. So, all this summer does is let me fulfill my "on campus" requirement.

Okay, enough ranting.

My house is nearly done. I should post pictures.
It looks darling and we have two "second-lookers" scheduled this evening. I hope one of them makes an offer. I am so tired of picking up my house. I have threatened my children that if they use "real" cups instead of disposable ones, I will maim them. I am so tired of chasing after them to put their dirty dishes in the dishwasher. And yes, I do know that by doing that I am depriving them of learning to do it themselves. But I also know that shrieking like a banshee when potential buyers are driving up is not a way to sell a house, even though the children may learn a great lesson from it.

Todd and the kids went with dad to the Buffalo today. (We drove up to mom and dad's yesterday). They are out of the house and so it is peaceful.

In my old age (and having spent too much time painting lately), I have turned into a Muppephone. The "ow!" sound that escapes my body when I stand up is involuntary and really should fit into a Marvin Suggs rendition of Lady of Spain. Of course, Statler and Waldorf would probably boo me off the stage.

So, more painting

Just finished up the master bath. I had it kind of botched, really, with two different shades of green and rough drywall. And the top two feet of the walls were siding that was peeling and not very nice. So I scraped peeling paint and textured the drywall. And filled rough spots. And primed, and painted.

I hurt.

And the ceiling is still peeling. We are just going to put up new bead board and be done with it. I cannot scrape and sand 100 square feet of ceiling. Just can't. I can already hardly breath from the sanding, etc. that we have already done. Mea has been a trooper, doing what work that she could and keeping me company when she couldn't.

The color is an awful pale apricot. It looks so... boring. But it is done. And it looks more "finished" than it did before. There is some fiddly bits around the shower to sort out, probably with caulk. I sort out a lot of things with caulk.

My closet is located inside my bathroom-- not the best plan, but it is an old house. Much of it does not appear to be planned. Anyway, now all the stuff that I pulled out on Tuesday has to go back in. And the house needs to be straighted up, because I have so not been picking up since I started on the latest round of paint. So there is laundry to be done and kid stuff to hide.

And a trip to the mother-in-law's to pack for.

Yes, gentle reader, my husband has scheduled a trip to see his mother. Neil Gaiman canceled his reading in Tulsa, so he figured that it couldn't get much worse, so we are packing up the minivan with all three kids and my husband's breathing machine and heading to southeast Missouri in the heat of the summer.

And tomorrow, I must finish the tile in the other bathroom. Todd finally put the cement board around the window so I can (did I mention that I started this job in April?), so I need to get that done. Why the push to finish up all my home improvement projects? My classes start on Monday. Only six hours this summer (as opposed to nine last summer-- that was insane), but I am interested in neither, really. Oh, and I have an article to co-write in the next two weeks.

It is after midnight, so I suppose I should go to bed. So I guess I will.

My turn with the funeral post...

Today I went to Arvilla Smith's funeral. Arvilla and I were not that close, but she and my great-grandmother were. Arvilla came from a big family, and, as I understand it, kind of got lost in the crowd. My granny (the afore mentioned great-grandmother) was raising her grand daughter, Patsy, who was about the same age, and so Arvilla kind of adopted the family.

So Arvilla was always around. While she was not technically related, I saw her more often that I did many of her cousins (except Wardena's kids mentioned in the Pond story recently).

We went to my granny's on Sundays, after church and after lunch. About every month or two, Arvilla would be there. As far as I know, she never came empty handed. She was always bringing a pie, or flowers, or something. When granny got older and couldn't take care of herself, Arvilla got a job with the Area Agency on Aging so that she could come and get paid to take care of her. Arvilla is the only person I know that could bake an apple pie that tasted like my granny's. And I think granny had her bake the pies for us, really. She liked circus peanuts (which I still like stale, because that is how granny's always were, because she stored them on top of the refrigerator).

Eventually, Arvilla got a different job-- one that was full time with benefits. Which is a good thing, because, like everyone I love, she got cancer. She won a couple of rounds, but with cancer, you always lose the war. Cancer won June 15.

It is not that Arvilla and I were that close, really. I have only seen her a handful of times since my granny died. But I still loved her, if that makes any sense. When she came to my mamaw and papaw's house after my papaw died, we all cried together. She came to the house for my mamaw's funeral as well. She was part of the family. Any of us would have done anything for her.
And more than herself, personally, she is part of my childhood-- my life at "home." That life keeps slipping further and further away. I used to kid myself and say that I would move home, if I could get a job that paid anything, but Todd was actually offered a job there a couple of years back that he turned down. That is not who I am any more.

But it is hard watching that world evaporate. Arvilla's kids are not like her (and the one that is most like her lives in Greenbrier, not at home). My mom is not like her granny. And I am not really like either one. I wish I could capture that world, because there is no where like it. It was anachronism twenty years ago, so it would be even more so now.

But, oh, how I wish it weren't.

Disappointment

Neil Gaiman won't be coming to Tulsa. Evidently my tickets will be refunded.

And the only people who have looked at my house (so far) can't really afford it. (In the multilist, it is #10196134). And, turns out, real estate has been slower this June than normal.

Disappointing.

On the up side, we went to Branson yesterday to take the kids to Silver Dollar City to celebrate surviving putting the house on the market. After the kids rode the rides for a couple of hours, we went to Bass. And Bass was having a sale. I got a couple pair of shoes and two linen dresses and a woven top. I love the dresses. They will be nice and cool this summer. And they were 70% off. And Todd got some shoes, too. But they are boy shoes and much less interesting. So that was lovely. And then we ate in Harrison and then we came home.

Actually, only some of us came home. Mea went to church camp. AG church camp. That just makes me smile a little bit. Her grandparents sent her. I don't think I could have gotten her there with a cattle prod. Why? You may well ask. For one thing, their website is terrible. For another, their rules are restrictive. Here is a sample from their application:

Multi-media players, firearms, knives, weapons, communicative devices or clothing and other articles displaying questionable content are NOT allowed.

Cell phones are not allowed. Students caught using cell phones will have their phones confiscated until checkout on Friday. The AR DISTRICT will not be responsible for lost or stolen cell phones.

DRESS CODE -

• ALL CLOTHING MUST BE NO SHORTER THAN 2” ABOVE THE KNEE.
• Shorts can be worn during the day. Absolutely NO spandex shorts, boxer shorts, or shorts shorter than 2” above the knee.
• Abbreviated attire such as half shirts, tank tops, sundresses, spaghetti straps or crop shirts will not be allowed, and should be left at home.
• Shirts and dresses that have ANY part of the back missing will not be allowed. NO oversized armholes or sides cut out of shirts.
• Tight fitting clothing (pants and shirts) should be left at home. If you bring it, you will be asked to change. ALL CLOTHING MUST BE MODEST.
• Shoes must be worn at all times. Shoes that cover the whole foot must be worn while riding go-carts.
• For evening services, young ladies may wear modest dresses or long pants. Young men must wear long pants (this means clean and with no holes in them) and a shirt. Absolutely no shorts for evening services!
• If in doubt, DON’T BRING IT!

Mea dresses pretty modestly for a 15 year old, but these rules may hearken back to 1955... We had to go shopping so that she would have some shorts that she could wear.

Actually, the dress code is less restrictive that when I attended in the 80s. Back then, shorts were verboten, but we could wear culottes. My mother, who only sews under extreme duress made me culottes because she could not stand the thought of sending me to Hot Springs in the summer in jeans. They were terrible, but I was sent back to my room to change one day because they were too short! So someone had something wrong with them, and I am pretty sure that it was not my mother. Ah, they joys of religious education.

And W? He is hiding out at Mom's. He had no desire to come home and not mess up his room.

The Pond

Mike, from the National Writing Project of Central Arkansas, (and who is not my cousin) came to our institute on Monday and led us in some great writing exercises.

One was to draw a map of where we grew up and then mark places where interesting things happened. Then write about one or more interesting places.

These are the assignments that I never try, because I cannot imagine them working, but I felt compelled to play along, since I had invited him and I was in charge (at least nominally) of the institute.

Anyway, this is what I wrote about...

The pond was forbidden. Partly because it was nasty. I mean, we could see the cows standing in it, so we knew it was foul. The other reason is that my mother and my grandmother both had a deep abiding terror of us drowning.

Of course, that made it all the more interesting.

On the whole hilltop, my brother and I were the only kids. In the days before VCRs and satellite tv, boredom was our constant enemy. My cousin, Mike -- his parents called him Julio for some reason I could never fathom-- occasionally came over to our grandparents' house. We lived for these visits. Mike was an expert at keeping boredom at bay.

So when he came over, us kids would go outside and play. Some places, of course, were off limits. Off limits were the chicken house, the "smoke house," the garden, the haybarn, the hog barn, the old barn and the pond. Those were places where work was done-- except the old barn and the pond. They were just dangerous. Work, or anything resembling work, we were content to avoid.

Danger was another matter.

We used to sneak over to the old barn. It was built in the 19th century, about the same time my Granny's house was built. The barn lost its roof to one of the very few wind storms that we had in the Ozarks back when I was too young to wander the farm by myself. We weren't, however, stupid-- just daring. We stuck to the log pens where the roof was totally gone rather than where the roof was only partially gone. But my grandpa still scolded us every time he caught us there.

The pond was also forbidden. It was spring fed, so it always had water in it. The spring wasn't big enough to cause the water to move a lot. Still, the orange water beckoned us. We knew that we would be beaten if we were caught playing in the water, tempting as that was on an un-airconditioned July day in Arkansas. So instead we haunted the edges.

One summer, we had enough of a drought that Mike decided that we could get to the stump that was in the pond. This was no ordinary stump, you understand, but a giant stump that was the remains of an ancient tree. It was not intact, but instead had a multitude of levels supported by gigantic roots suspending it as an island in the pond.

We wanted to conquer that stump. It was just big enough for the three of us to sit on it. So we waited until the grown-ups were busy talking about who had the best tomatoes on the creek and what calves might be selling for in the fall to head out for the pond to make that stump into our domain.

We stood by the edge of the pond. There was a rock positioned fortuitously between the shore and the stump. If we could just stretch our legs out far enough, we could catch that rock and jump over to the stump. Mike and I were not quite sure that we could do it, so we put my little brother up to trying. Craig would do anything to win our approval, so he blithely bounced over. Mike and I followed.

Everything we talked about sitting on that stump, every stupid game we played crackled with the excitement of sitting on our perch that was both surrounded by the pond and above it. We did this every time Mike came over that summer.

Until, of course, our grandfather caught us. Our pleas that we were in no danger went unheeded. We were supervised for the rest of the summer.

And so boredom defeated us. That summer.

There are details here that I made up, but the pond, the stump, and the barns were real.

House for sale update...

So Wednesday afternoon, I came home and the house looked worse than it did when I left. Todd and Mea decided to hook up the other room-sized air conditioner, and they broke a window pane. Then spent all day cleaning it up. So I called my realtor and asked her not to come.

Today, she could have come, even though the house is far from perfect. But she was busy, so is coming in the morning.

So, still selling my house

My Realtor probably thinks that we are lying to her. That we don't really intend to sell. That we are the most disorganized people on the face of the planet (well, that part is true anyway).

Well, she just called. She's coming by on Wednesday to advise about what our priorities should be.

Now I am off to pack up more of Miss O's stuff. Did I mention that that baby has more stuff than I do? Every time I look up, there is another box of her crap to pack up.

New post

I stabbed myself installing lino tiles in Mea's room. That makes me an idiot. I stuck a band-aid on in instead of going to the emergency room to get stitches because it was still attached. (Mea laughs as I write this, but I don't think it's funny).

But, on the bright side, I found the makeup that both Clinique counters in town swear has been discontinued. Where did I track down this elusive makeup? Ebay? A flea market? An obscure foreign makeup website? Nope. The Clinique website. And what makeup product do I so diligently seek? A special shade of lipstick? A particular eye shadow? Volumizing mascara? Nope. City Stick foundation. I am feeling really boring as I write this... How lame is it to be this excited to buy foundation? (And yes, I do wear it, lots of times, especially at the beginning of a semester-- not so much after mid-term). And next semester, I have to talk to grown-ups, not just students. So I'll have to wear some makeup, right?

Moving before moving

So we have told our realtor that she can walk through our house on Wednesday.

That sentence causes my chest to tighten.

We have done some landscaping in our front yard.

We have hauled out several pickup loads full of stuff.

Our house does not look any less full.

Right now, it sounds like a dandy idea to tell her that we need a month. Or three.

We have to empty rooms in order to paint.

We have to paint. No option.

And now Olivia is crying. Dissolved on the floor. And I am not sure I care why. She needs to go to bed.

I need to go to bed. Barring that, I need to do some laundry.

Maybe I should dissolve on the floor crying. But I am pretty sure no one would care why.

So, selling my house

We have made an offer on a house-- a nice house in a nice neighborhood that looks like it was decorated by my mother in law. Not that there is anything wrong with that; my mother in law has great taste. Anyway, that means a marathon to getting our house ready for people to see it. Including our Realtor.

In other news, we were approved for the loan we need for the new house. I was a bit worried about that, simply because I forget to pay bills on time occasionally. And we owe too much money to everyone in the world.

We landscaped the front of our house today. We had a couple of flower beds already, but they were kind of empty. So we lit out at the crack of dawn this morning and went to a nursery in El Paso (just past Vilonia) and bought some shrubs. Then we went to Home Depot and bought some huge ferns. Then I painted part of the front of the house (where I am not longer sure we will be able to put scaffolding) with a roller. That takes forever.

Tomorrow, I need to finish tiling my bath tub. And decluttering. And, more decluttering. This does not strike me, right at this moment, as my smartest move ever.

Allure-ment

Is anything more alluring that stolen moments to write? Right now, I should be coding my research project, which is due on Tuesday. But I am not. Here I am instead, with too much to say and everything wanting to come out in a jumble.

The news of today? The county I grew up in has some of the cleanest air in the nation. That does not surprise me in the least. But I can't help but think back to high school when one of my friends did a science fair project on acid rain, and discovered that nowhere was safe from it, not even Newton County, of the A air quality rating given by the American Lung Association.

In other news, I have decided that I desperately want to sell my house. And truthfully, it is not that I don't love my house-- I do! But I need a four bedroom house in a way that is hard to express. Miss O occupies our bedroom, Mea's bedroom and the living room. I so want *one* room where all of her stuff can reside! I even know the house I want. It has four bedrooms and was built in the 1950s, and was never updated. Paneling everywhere! And a pink bathtub in one of the bathrooms. Pink! 1950s cotton candy pink. And you know what? I would totally leave it.

This is so, by far, not everything I want to say, but I have miles to go before I sleep.

Cattle

We came home (to Big Creek) for the weekend. We drove up last night after the Tennebrae service at church for Good Friday. I skipped it to pack (and order a new camera), but the kids said that it went well. The purpose for this trip, other than Easter service with my family, was to work cattle. By work, I mean vaccinate, spray for insects, mark, tag, fly tag, and, ahem, castrate as necessary. Todd and the kids did not have skilled jobs in this program. Instead, they chase cattle, and help separate calves. Actually, Mea had a skilled job. She organized all the supplies, and handed tools as necessary, kind of like a surgical tech.

My contribution to this operation was documentation. I took my video camera and filmed an hour of their work. One of the neighbors, Phillip, came over and helped out. He works around for different folks on the weekends. Phillip is amazing to watch. Dad was, too. I wonder if those skills will be around in 30 years. I know when I taught in St. James, the farmers had already switched to a service instead of doing it themselves.

Closing tabs (and up too late)

I just put the Vino on a CD to send to press. It took longer than I expected. A couple of people had technical problems that slowed things down. I guess I need to remind everyone that they are welcome to use the Vino computer for editing ; )

The Skidmore Writer is guide to college writing for students. I find the section on Understanding Professor's Comments to be interesting and can see where it would helpful for a first year student.

"How to Create Scoring Rubrics" from the Teagle foundation has information on creating and using scoring rubrics.

So... Saturday Morning

Why can't I sleep late on Saturdays any more? Is this an unforeseen (and even unforetold?) curse of oldness? Bah.

The remote control for our cable box has disapparated. Evidently the cat snuck in an ate it. I say this because none of my children have seen it. My husband swears that I was the last person to touch it. Of course, if this were true, it would be in one of the places I leave it (which it is not). Miss O had a knock-down drag-out tantrum last night because she hadn't had a "tv turn all day." And no remote.

We ended up watching Muppet Show (season two) in my bedroom. With the crisis over, she was asleep within ten minutes.

So, up, with everyone asleep, remoteless, I am watching Lost in Translation.

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.

Sound Essay

This was done for the New Media Theory and Practice course that I am taking... I have no idea how the grade will be, but I love the result. (Crossposted from http://cybernatedlearning.blogspot.com-- dreary class blog)

I knew what I wanted to write about from the beginning of this assignment. I believe passionately that people should write and tell their stories. Or just tell their stories. I draw heavily on my past and on my cultural heritage to make meaning of my life and experiences. So it was very important for me to try to pull in someone from my hometown.

I have some video of my grandmother, who passed away in 2005. She was our next door neighbor, and was consequently very important in my life. She often talked about her past, but of course, she never considered herself to be a writer, and she never wrote. Rarely did she even write letters, as the telephone was so much more immediate. My video, however, would not import (after about eight hours of trying), so I did not get to use my grandmother's voice.

Something that I did have, though, was an interview that my daughter did for her history day project with Mrs. Marshall, a friend of my mother's. Mrs. Marshall and my mother ended up talking about the stories they knew from childhood, and how telling stories made it easier to cope with the death of loved ones. So after 14 hours of attempting, I finally re-imported Mrs. Marshall's interview into Adobe Premiere Elements, which allowed me to extract the audio.

My audio essay was originally a lecture that I gave to our Honors College freshmen class about writing memoir. It was based heavily on a piece by Patricia Hampl that we all read. So I removed most of what came from the reading, except one little piece that I quoted.

I also went looking to see if I could find Donald Murray talking about writing. He has been the most influential theorist on my teaching. And I love the way he approaches writing, especially if I trying to encourage someone to write. And I did find an audio interview with him by Chip Scanlon.

I used Mediaevel Baebes' Veni Veni as a background track.

I am really pleased with how this turned out, except that I am afraid that the volume is not even throughout. That was hard to get right because the Murray clip was posted online, and he was on a telephone. The interview footage with Mrs. Marshall was from a video camera without a separate microphone. The difference in inputs makes it hard to get the volume right. If I only had a mixing board.

I was really surprised by how many problems that I had with the technology. I usually have way more problems with the concepts than with the tools, but this time the concept came pretty easily and the tools nearly killed me.

Audio Essay: Writing Your Self

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.

Funerals

This began as a comment about Tim's really wonderful piece about Southern Funerals.

My family is about as bad. I know which funeral home will be called, and where my family members will be buried. I even know which florist various members of my family will use. I think we are all leaving the songs up to whoever is stuck planning the thing (and paying for it) though.

And I don't know where I'll be buried and funeraled, which I find distressing. Everyone I really know is down here, but "our" funeral home is in Harrison. The older I get, the less I belong in Harrison (or the surrounding areas). So what do southerners do who have lost their place in the world?

Joe Kenneth died week before last. It is not like he and I were close, by any stretch of the imagination. But Joe Jr. and Craig were best friends all the time we were growing up. And when Jr came over, I played GI Joe with them (I got to be Scarlett) until Algebra destroyed any free time that remained in my life.

When my parents called me to tell me that he died (okay, so Dad emailed me-- we are just that dysfunctional) my question about the arrangements was "when" because I knew where. And who would officiate. And I wish I could have gone. Right now, my life is not arranged in such a way that I can just take off. Although when Aunt Dorotha died, I made a flying trip to Harrison for the visitation.

There is something comforting about going to a funeral in my hometown. I know the people who are there, many of whom I care for a great deal. I know what will happen. (Well, except the time I almost pulled out of the "family side" of an icy parking lot at a funeral home). But a funeral, for better or for worse, is a ritual. And as such, it reinforces our place in the world.