Inexplicable

Something I really do not understand is my affection for soap operas. Young and the Restless holds an unending fascination for me, and I am not sure why, exactly. When I was young, Days of Our Lives, Another World, & Santa Barbara were what my Mamaw watched, and I, of course, watched with her. Somewhere along the line, I picked up Y&R & The Bold and the Beautiful as well-- probably because they were more interesting than talk shows and local news.

So I recognize there is an element of nostalgia. But that can't be the entirety of the issue because she also watched The Price is Right. But what is the appeal? It is certainly not the high quality writing and acting. Perhaps it is the fact that the characters provide friend drama without the time commitment. And none of it is really secret-- they show the whole nation, after all-- so there is no consequence for knowing the secret. And if you have a friend who also watches, you can gossip without fear of consequence. Does Sharon's husband know that she is secretly in love with Brad? We can discuss away-- no danger of Jack finding out from us.

But maybe it is even deeper. Y&R provides the community that I miss, living away from where I grew up, and the church where I grew up. I mean I know people here, but I only know their lives from the past few years; I don't know the history behind them. Unlike Y&R, in real life, people don't show flashbacks to explain the current story. No one rehashes their friends' lives in the coffee shop every time they see them. Y&R provides, in an odd way, a replacement for the community I lost when I moved away from the one I grew up in.

So much to say...

I really have had a great holiday, despite the drama. And truthfully, my drama is petty, especially when I compare it to my friend's homeless sister or my other friend's disturbed brother. I have a family that speaks to one another and basically feels compelled to see each other during the holidays. In other words, I am blessed.

My baby cousin (who is now 30) came to see me tonight. She is working at Fairfield Bay this week, and decided to drive into town to see us. That was really nice. I hardly get to see her anymore. She and I were close for years-- we both spent a lot of time at our grandmother's house, and as the oldest girl, it was my job (spoken or not) to look after the younger cousins. Not that I minded. I've always enjoyed looking out for people. So I baby sat here, I listened to her rattle about her friends and sisters and boyfriends. Our relationship changed when I married my husband and acquired my step-daughter. My cousin and step-daughter bonded, and I became a grown-up to her; her friend's step-mom, rather than her big cousin and friend.

So now, what we have is a changed relationship. She and my step-daughter drifted apart. But that's okay. What we have now is an adult relationship. And I think a good one. We talk mostly on Facebook, since I am not really a phone person. Anyway, tonight was nice.

Now, I should quit blogging and cleaning off my DVR and go to bed.

Re-evaluation

So, I dropped the cooking part. With Kroger and their wonderful bakery down the street, just a couple of blocks away, who needs to cook? Maybe I am not quite as dumb as I look...

I hung the new home theater speakers, except the one in the corner I can't reach. It will drive dh crazy enough to do it soon, since it is unbalanced. :)

The house is a clean as it is going to get this weekend. Which is not to say that you should consider eating off anything but my kitchen table. But I am no longer having an anxiety attack over the idea of someone seeing it. I have some baskets that are overstuffed. And magazines stacked on a bookshelf. But I can live with this. Which is a good thing, because people are coming in half an hour!

Post-Christmas

Well, Christmas has come and gone. We had, of course, family drama. What's a holiday without drama? This is my brother's year to go to his wife's family for Christmas. Fine. I think that is a fairly stupid arrangement, but whatever. On years they come to our house, his wife's mother frequently comes along. Which is great. We love her. Anyway. I thought that, since he would not be coming to our parents' home for Christmas, that we could just all get together on Christmas eve at my house, have dinner, open presents, etc. Together. Nope. Not happening. He and his wife and daughter did come over and we had lunch with my parents. His family and mine exchanged gifts. My kids opened their presents from us (we always do this on Christmas eve). My step-daughter and her husband came over and opened our presents to them (they don't buy presents for us). Then we packed our stuff and traipsed to my parents' house for Christmas. My brother and his wife and his wife are having Christmas at our folks' house today.

I, on the other hand, am at home getting ready for a Christmas party for my college friends (at least the ones in the area), at least a select group of them; i.e., the group that all speaks to each other. So, I need to clean off the coffee tables and pick up around the edges of the house. And cook. Definitely cook.

Snow Day!!!

Yesterday, I was out visiting a couple of our partner schools without my cell phone. I am not a cell-phone-glued-to-my-ear kind of person, but I do like to have it when I drive. Anyway, visited one partner school in the morning, killed some time at Barns and Nobel and visited the other school.

Meanwhile, Conway schools dismissed due to the weather. And the business in Little Rock started shutting down. I leave Hall High, which is in West Little Rock and get on the interstate (this is normally a 10 minute trip). An hour later, I got to the Cantrell exit, where I just got off. I poked my GPS until it found me a route out of Little Rock that did not require being on interstate anything.

So I head out through Perry County. In the dark. And the ice that has by this time accumulated on the road. I put the car in low gear down Wye Mountain, and made it down alive. I left Hall at about 3:15 and made it home after six. That was a long long trip.

Today, of course, we are all home. And it has been a pretty good day. I installed a new memory chip on my computer (for a total of 2GB of memory!), got permission from my adviser to take a Children's literature class and have it count toward my degree program, and got my grade for the class I took (A-, which is a bit better than I expected). I have not, however, managed to make my house presentable. That is okay, though. Tomorrow is another (snow) day!!

A sigh or relief; Or It is all over but the shoutin'

I just turned in my final exam. Two questions out of the three listed. I could list them here, but really they are still too painful to think about.

My niece's birthday is this weekend, so we have family stuff. And next weekend is the weekend before Christmas? How did time pass so quickly?

I gave up and bought a new Christmas tree this week, because my old one is in the back of a large storage unit. My plan this spring is to empty that and sell the stuff inside. The problem is just having the time to go through it.

On to other things. Monday was probably the worst day I have had recently. My class that I was planning to take this spring was canceled. And while I was thinking about, well, fretting about that, and about scheduling a get together with my college friends and compromising on a Christmas date with my brother, I backed into our neighbor's mail box, shattering the back glass of my van.

Todd had W at his therapists, but I called and cried to him. Todd got me some plastic to tape over the gaping hole. I still had to take the kids to 4-H for the Christmas party. And where I somehow became the grown-up in charge. So I packed them up and threw them out we all went home.

The rest of the week? I have worked on my final. But now it is over. OVER!!!!

Jubilation?

My semester is almost done, for better or for worse. I am sitting here at my desk making instant coffee, writing because I promised myself I would.

What is on my mind? I am panicked about money, for a change. One of our credit cards-- an offer that came in the mail, (If you don't know, don't ever accept those. There are always better ones, but you have to look.) has gone over 30%. We have not missed payments, and our credit is average (too many student loans, mostly). So I really need to pay that off. And my van has been in the shop three times in six weeks, and I had to have some expensive medical tests done to find out that I don't absorb vitamin B very well. And I lost the fight with the insurance company, so I am paying retail for my son's ADHD medication. And, well, we're teachers. And I am in grad school, so I don't have time to pull in any freelance jobs.

On the bright side, Christmas shopping is done. One more small gift for a party is all I have left. I do however, still have to thoroughly clean my house. And possibly paint my living room, because that Ace-bandage pinky-beige is on my last nerve. I don't want to hang anything on those ugly walls. So all the stuff that belongs on walls is leaned up in the corner. Adding to the clutter in my living room.

So, yeah, that is what's on my mind.

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.

Quick update (and a bit of whining)

The class I am taking this semester is an overview of the entire field of English studies. Which is kind of funny, because our degree program only has two tracks: Professional Writing and New Media & Rhetoric and Textual Studies. Evidently "Textual Studies" will eventually be "literature."

Anyway, I careen blindly from one topic to another, trying to catch up. This, catch this, is supposed to be an introductory class. And truthfully, I would probably resent it less if I were new, just immersing myself in the discipline. Just careening wildly from one topic to another was kind of what I did... Now, though, I have areas that I like better than others. Areas where I know the players. And my final paper will be over one of those well-trodden fields. Thank Goodness.

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.

Adventures in Computing

I have a lovely custom desktop at my house. I built it. So I really chose carefully what goes in it. It has two gigabyte of memory and a 250 gigabyte hard drive.

I have a teenaged son. He likes to look at p*rn. Animated p*rn, to be precise. I found this out because he likes to look at it on my computer. This bothers me because this is not the p*rn that I remember my brother and my guy friends looking at. Evidently, tasteful p*rn is more expensive than really tacky p*rn produced by drunken amateurs. I was of course, horrified. What mother wouldn't be? Especially since, and this is important, it is on my computer. In my cache. Popping up when I am trying to do other things. So I bought Cybersitter. I did my research. It claimed to block sites that I wanted to block and allow sites that I wanted to allow. And sure 'nuff; it did. For months.

Then it started malfunctioning. Someone, somewhere, forgotten to share with me an important truth: Norton 360 and parental control software cannot exist on the same computer at the same time. If an unsuspecting person tries to force them to, one of them explodes. I have had this experience before, with daughters instead of software, and a single bedroom instead of a computer. A similar result ensued, though, and we moved into a house with an extra bedroom.

So I try to uninstall Cybersitter. But I had waited too late. There was no patching things up at this point. Cybersitter and Norton 360 were duking it out. They were headed to divorce court. But neither one would leave the house.

So not only do I have these two programs completely blocking my access to the internet (and my email-- this marks me as a digital immigrant), but in trying to use the Repair function that comes with Cybersitter, it got stuck in a loop, refreshing an "information" box (a.k.a., an idiot box) every second. So I couldn't do anything on my computer. I could not get Cybersitter to open up to disable it.

Then I do what any self-respecting nerd would do: I try to boot Windows in Safe Mode. Not happening. Cybersitter had hijacked my safe mode. Fine, I thought. I went into my BIOS to changed the boot order. The computer should not have been able to boot from my hard drive.

But it did.

At that point, I gave up. We took it to the shop. They were able to work their magic and uninstall the divorcing programs. This magic, however, was not free. I spent $40 on the program and $50 removing it.

And now, I am back to having to look at a Princess Jasmine, topless.

War Eagle

War Eagle Craft Fair is, truly, one of the reasons that I love living in Arkansas. Located in the middle of nowhere is this old mill where a craft fair has been held every fall since the 1950s. War Eagle, is a bit different from a typical craft fair. While there are quilts, carved wood spirits, embellished sweatshirts and hand poured lip balm, there are also museum quality Shaker boxes (starting at $20-- I kid you not!), metal sculptures, and home furnishings made from salvaged lumber.

We meant to leave early-- right after I dropped Mea off at school. But instead, I decided to drop by Kroger and pick up some food for breakfast and lunch, so we wouldn't have to eat out. That took about a half hour, of course. Todd had taken a personal day, and we took the younger kids out of school so they could come (and we wouldn't have to make arrangements to get them picked up). We finally got out of the house about 9. We started west on I-40. And drove and drove. We stopped at the park in West Fork for a picnic lunch (which Olivia didn't like, of course).

Another hour on from West Fork, we got to War Eagle. Going on a Friday is infinitely preferable to going on Saturday. We drove right up to the parking area and parked with minimal fuss. The boys and girls basketball teams from Elkins were directing parking to earn money for new uniforms.

At the main fair, there are four huge tents. Each tent has four rows of crafters inside. Booth after booth of (mostly) wonderful items. I do have to say, though, that I am not sure that the organizers juried as strictly this year as in years past. Some of the items for sale did not look to have significant hand work done on them, at least to my eyes. And I am not exactly a novice. But other items were amazing. I bought a box from Got an Idea Primitives, made out of beautiful wood. Judging from their website, it seems likely that the wood is salvaged, which just makes me happier. I am on a green kick right now, especially in terms of furniture. I hate particle board (and with my kids, it is really a waste of time to even bring particle board home), and I am too poor to afford "fine" furniture. So I have acquired a taste for mid-century vintage furniture to combat this. But salvaged from a house being torn down? Even better.

High school drama is not high school musical comedy

High school drama, is, I have decided less fun than a high school musical comedy. There are fewer cute teachers and a lot less singing and dancing.

This all started because I suggested that Mea invite a group of friends to see the new Michael Cera movie because one of her friends felt Neglected. So my dear Mea's starts making up a guest list on Facebook, because that is where teenages do such things these days. God forbid they actually make phone calls. Anyway, said Neglected Friend has decided that since Mea invited people that Neglected Friend does not like, that obviously means that Mea is selfish and inconsiderate. Bear in mind, that only two of people that Mea invited Neglected Friend does not like. But one of them is Boyfriend to the ShyFriend that we drive home from band. The other one that Neglected Friend does not like is friends with every other person in the group. What evil must this disliked girl have perpetrated on Neglected Friend? She said something tacky a couple times in 7th grade.

So Mea is obviously a Bad Friend. Would you believe this consumes hours of my time? Mea tries to make peace. With everyone. She doesn't want to hurt people's feelings by leaving them out, which happens when you invite everyone you hang out with, but the people that Neglected Friend does not like. However, Neglected Friend makes so much drama out of every imagined slight, that she kind of bullies her other friends into doing things her way. On the bright side, one of their other friends got to hear the drama for the first couple of hours, cause Mea was with me and W and Miss O at 4-H. See why I want the singing and dancing? Really, whoever did the music for Wicked could totally do the music for High School Drama- The Musical Version. It couldn't be worse than Springtime for Hitler, right?

Speaking of 4-H, it has changed a bit since Doc Blanchard and Linda King, Newton County's extention agents, used to come to Mt. Judea school once a month to hold meetings. In those days, dad stopped by the courthouse in Jasper and picked up a project book, for free. I suspect they just pointed him to the file cabinet and told him to get what he wanted. These days, I have to order the materials online, and they are so not-free. I spent, seriously, like $50 on project books for my three kids! (Did I mention that these used to be FREE?). Anyway, Mea and W are both officers in the 4-H chapter, so I guess that we are commited, possibly for life. Oh, and my sister-in-law's sister is the co-leader of the chapter, so I was probably in trouble long before the election.

So...

So my life is kind of settling out. No crises lately. Mind you, we are still living out of boxes, but no crises.

My home phone is now working. During my furor at AT&T, I switched to voice over ip (VoIP) through my new cable internet. (Which does not, incidentally, work as well as DSL. Download speed seems to be okay-- upload speed not so much). It has technically been connected since the 6th, but I couldn't get it to work. Changing a router setting and power cycling everything seems to have done the job, finally. Best part? $15 a month, for caller id, voice mail, call waiting, etc. Lot less money than I was paying. I just have to gut out the cable internet.

Todd & I went to the homecoming festivities. It was fun seeing former students on the homecoming floats & then we got plates & headed over the Honors tent to hang out with my friends. Except then the lousy country cover-band started playing. Loudly. And kept playing. Why on earth did someone book a band to play during the tailgating? We couldn't talk to each other. Believe me, none of us would have walked across the street to hear that band play (not that we would have needed to), but we had spent time planning to be together at Homecoming to hang out. And so we tried to get our visiting in during the breaks between the songs. Not fun. But the food was good.

W had a quiz bowl tournament today. Not that he competes, but he is an alternate. Anyway, when he got home, he only made a half-hearted effort to get in touch with us before walking home. Well, of course, it takes him forever. So we worry and worry and worry, and finally cut the tailgating short and headed off to look for him. Before we got out of the parking lot, though, (of course), Mea called to tell us that he made it home. But we still left. Didn't want to haul all that stuff back up to the tent.

Really, some days, the kids make me crazy.

So...

Site visits are fun. I get to see what other teachers do and what other classes do. Tuesday, I went to Clarksville. Good teacher, great students. Good stuff.

I had the bright idea that I was going to head up to my parents' house from there, since it is in the same general area. (Clarksville is in Johnson County-- parents live in Newton).

I set my borrowed TomTom GPS for their house and took off. It led me down the road and out of town. Then it led me down a dirt road. I approached this road with a bit of trepidation. But I know, from growing up in the country, that sometimes short stretches of dirt road connect two paved roads. So I headed on. And on. After a while, I decided I must have done something wrong. Or if not, I still could not manage this; my spare is inoperable. Dirt roads are, well, bumpy. I was concerned about my tires. And my well-being. The van has been in less-than-perfect-running-order of late. So I check the settings on the GPS. Turns out, I had told it to take me to Vendor by the shortest route. So I told it to take me by the fastest. And I went down the road again. As I got more dirt roads, I told it to just take me back to Clarksville.

So it led me further into the woods. Eventually, I started noticing how pretty the area was, how clean, how... dust free. No trash in the brush. The road was a bit washed out (not that uncommon here); then I drove over a broken culvert. At this point, I start looking for a place to turn around. I gear down, because the hill is steep. Eventually, I get to the top of the hill. The map shows that it is not that much further, so I thought I might just follow it. Then I saw the tree. Across the road. So I turned around. The last thing I need to find is someone's patch, or worse, lab.

So I get to the bottom of the abandoned road, and just head for home. Dirt road or not, as long as I saw houses, I figured that I would be okay. At Hagersville, Strawberry Loop (the county road I eventually landed on) turned into a paved road, and I was home free on Hyw 123.

So I made it to my parents' house, where I saw for myself that my dad survived his eye surgery. He had, in his fearless way (I come by my idiocy naturally), punctured his eye brush hogging the field. His eye fluid was leaking, but he finished what he was doing, then he put the tractor up and drove home, then called Mom. Mom left school and came and got him & took him to town, where he saw the optomitrist. Who referred him to an opthamologist. Who sent him to Springfield for emergancy surgery. That was Monday. On Tuesday, when I saw him, he had one stitch, and some eyedrops. And could see out of that eye.

Fortunately, my trip home was less eventful.

Afterword on my DSL debacle

So my phone company calls me today-- more than a month after I started trying to get DSL moved to my new house-- and tells me that they are ready to install it. Because, yes, indeed DSL is available at the neighborhood at the corner of Prince and Salem.

A cable modem and new Lynksys router after I had given up on them completely.

Evidently no one had actually been reading the notes on my account. Or if they were, no one knew what they meant.

On the bright side, the Rhea Lanna 1/2 price sale started today and I got a ton of stuff for my 6yo. And the best part? She has not yet figured out the difference between a consignment sale and Old Navy. Yes, I *am* savoring this while it lasts.

In other news...
So, in my interim position that I am not qualified to apply for when it comes open, I had to talk to someone today. In, like, an authoritative way. I am not sure that I am comfortable with that. I think I had rather confront plagiarizing students three times a week than have to be an administrator forever. I am much happier in my life when I am just arguing with students that yes, indeed, they do have something to say and they need to discover how they need to say it without me giving them an organizational plan.

My eight year old van is acting kind of iffy. I don't want a new one, because we are still paying for my husband's truck. I really would like to pay that off, then wait a year, and then buy a new family vehicle. So that probably means a substantial repair bill. And another two years.

So I really need to think of something good to counterbalance all this negative.
Let's see... I figured out why my groupwise was almost overflowing. I am forwarding my messages to my gmail account because groupwise was so wonky this summer. And all of those sent messages were cluttering up my server space. So I went from over 75% full to somewhere around 40%.

I talked with a couple guys I knew from college on Facebook today (besides the one I talk to regurlarly).

Mea had a good night at band. And her shy friend has a date for Homecoming. (Mea has a dress-- probably skipping the date).

All my kids are home and safe. And Todd dropped the boy off first so there was no awkwardness. (Boy who likes Mea needed a ride home from band; the shy friend always rides home with us).

Closing

So we finally closed on September 17. We passed all the inspections. We paid all the cost over-runs. So now we officially own our house (well, us and the bank).

We walked away about even, with only the Home Depot credit card remaining for what we owe on the old house. I promptly spent money that I should have spent on something else on a flat panel television, because I am a complete loser I want to have a tv that I can hang on the wall rather than taking up our floor space.

Right now, Todd is installing the bracket. The $80 bracket, mind you. Who ever heard of an $80 bracket to hang a tv with? He has spent the last 30 minutes drilling one hole out of the three that has to be drilled.

I am, while he does this, trying to write a paper outlining the debate about what the content of FYC should be. Should it be literature? Essays? Student work? Works from the disciplines? Fun, right?

Great News!!!

It took a plumber, but everything on the ADDI list is done.

As soon as the inspector can make it back, and he clears the house, then we can close. I can quit paying both my early occupancy fee AND my mortgage for the house I am selling (we let the buyers do some repairs in lieu of early occupancy).

I loved that little house on Oliver Street, but I am relieved that this will soon be over. I only need two things in life right now-- to close on our house and get my DSL hooked up.

To add to the fun, the city code inspector came and left my brother a list of code violations that their house has. Their house that they live in, that is... My parents actually own the house. So guess who is technically responsible for the work? My parents.

In other good news, I am going on the Honors retreat this weekend with the Alumni Association. I am taking my work that I need to get done, and should have peace and quiet to work on it.

I am presenting at the Ozarks Conference again this year. I have written the paper, of course, but I need to make it a presentation. Cut it to eight pages. And somehow explain Kenneth Burke to a lay audience.

I definitely need some time to work on it.

Forgetting, for the moment, the people who have real tragedy

Three more calls to the lovely people who may or not provide DSL service to PRINCE and SALEM. If anyone in Conway has DSL, shouldn't it be the neighbourhoods at the corner of Prince and Salem?

Neither here nor there.

I have my PVX program on my husband's computer. Because Polycom is not made up of idiots. The software I downloaded worked with the license & serial numbers I already had. Now, if I can get the drivers all aligned on the Lenovo, I'll be in business. The Lenovo came with the Vista pre-installed. For a number of reasons, that needed to be changed. But, as I feared, (and the reason I put off installing XP for eight months) drivers for XP are not as easy to get together as they could be. So I am downloading drivers and configuring his computer. Tonight I think I will go over to Craig's house and test it, with him there to open ports for me :)

All this just to go to class tomorrow. Oh, but am I prepared? Not exactly. Because what have I been doing? Trying to get DSL set up.