If I'm Not Here, I'm There. . .

If I'm not writing here, it's because I'm writing over there. On my other blog: http://occasionalpiece.blogspot.com/

I'm spread too thin, and trying to consolidate.

If I weren't addicted to blogs and writing and people like you, who also write, it would a lot easier, but I enjoy your writing.

Thanks for making it hard, she says, with a big smile. You're all terrific.

Elizabeth

The Great Divide

One benefit that linking into Two Writing Teachers provides is a window into elementary education and blogs and sites that address their concerns and issues. One such is the Infinite Thinking Machine, and his latest post, about the reaction to his daughter's commentary on Obama's speech, was a fascinating look into our "attention economy." Although that term implies a monetary system, in reading further I think it also could be applied to an "attention society," or as he put it, a society where everyone just wants to be recognized. The use of YouTube and the multiple discussions about Web 2.0 in the classroom leaves me feeling slightly queasy (see The Natives are Getting Restless, a series of notes on Wesley Fryer's blog).

I teach in a classroom that has too many student desks for the room size, dirty floors, two whiteboards (one has a row of student desks in front of it), a series of pull-down charts (one titled Muslum Leaders up to 1100; that spelling is theirs) but no pull-down projection screen. I also have two overhead projectors on moveable carts that are positioned at the front corners of the room; only one works and that was on the higher cart that blocked views of the students, so I switched them out. I wheel them carefully between backpacks, student desks to project, then return them to the front. There is no Smartboard, no computer, no digital projector, nothing that would indicate that this classroom exists, not in 1972 when it was built, but rather in this century.

So what will happen when a student, who has had access to a classroom at the elementary and/or secondary level with its digital bells and whistles, comes into mine? While I try to change up activities, engage them in discussion, there is no way I can match the level of interactivity and awareness that they've experienced in their fully-funded classrooms in their prior educational venues. Do the teachers at those level wonder how they fare when they finally leave the halls of high school and move on?

I'm in the middle of grading their first essays. The error rate ranges from 1 error to 39 (the most so far) in a three-page paper. I wonder what happened in their earlier curriculum that they think turning in such an error-laden essay is appropriate, and this after they had a peer-review with a rough draft. Many cannot read at a college level (our text is not dense, but rather a "friendly," conversational-style text, fairly free of political issues). About five of those well-schooled in the "attention economy" carry most class discussions, and even allowing for natural shyness or reticence of some students, I have to assume the rest have not even cracked the book.

I feel like I'm my grandmother, teaching in a one-room schoolhouse, addressing the basics of a good education: reading, writing, disucssion and most of these students are unprepared. I know several of them are skilled video bloggers, all of them have cellphones and are proficient in texting (it shows in their emails to me) so I can't say they aren't fully in the web mesh of this day and age.

While I appreciate that the cutting edge of web technology is changing our classrooms, our children's approach to gathering information, and our teaching, when they hit a classroom without Web 2.0, can they still function?

Is it too much to ask of them?

Welcome Back to My Real Life

I returned to the classroom yesterday after our second international trip (this time to Munich). I was feeling pretty jetlagged, but ready to go again. We had Peer Review on their first essay, which is a section of class where they bring in their essays, trade with a classmate and then evaluate each other's essay. Not only does it 1) give them an earlier due date so I don't have to read first drafts, it also 2) gives them a chance to have someone else take a look at their essay and 3) improve their editing skills.

See? I've thought it all out.

Except what do you do Student A brings in the SECOND essay to be reviewed? The essay that I'm going to assign tomorrow with a spiffy assignment packet, a presentation and all sorts of tips and strategies?

I met with Student A, a highly decorated (tattoo-wise) military veteran who is in his late twenties, and gently asked him why he chose to do the second essay.

He unfolds a note from his orthopedic doctor explaining that he's going to have surgery soon and he'll have to get up and move around, may not be able to sit. I said that's no problem, just please take a seat on the very back row so you don't disturb others if you have to move. And it's okay to get up and walk around OUTSIDE. As a teacher, can I just say things aren't looking real great?

So I herded him back to the subject at hand.
--Why did he do the second essay?
--Because I want to get ahead.
--But you can't really do that one yet because we haven't finished the first one. Besides, I haven't given out the assignment sheet yet.
--I looked in the Course Calendar and read what you said and went off of that. (He pulls out his notebook, stuffed with papers every which way.) See? Here's all my research for my paper on Tattoos.

Note to self: add "tattoos" to the list of banned topics. And I'm wondering if while in the service, that not only did he enjoy the local tat parlor but also the local drug dealer? *Focus, focus.*

I start him on brainstorming some topics to write about. He reassures me that it's no problem to write an essay about the first time he served in combat--It will be a wonderful essay, he says. Really wonderful.

Wonderful.

Jetlag

In spite of the picture above, I believe it's easier to adjust to jetlag when I'm heading out on a visit to Europe, excited about finally seeing all those sights I've noted in my guidebooks. I swallow a melatonin on the plane, skip their meal, set my watch ahead and try to adjust quickly. Of course, I've not gone to India or Hong Kong lately, which is completely inverted from our day.

We arrived home Friday from our trip to Italy (you can view our travel blog--click on the link to the right). The plane arrived at 1 p.m. Our luggage arrived at the carousel at around 2 p.m. and we were through customs about 5 minutes later, even in spite of my candied citrus peel and wrapped Italian candies for my classes. We arrived at home at 4 p.m. after enduring LA traffic. I was at the grocery store at 4:15 p.m.

I stared at the meat counter. I was jetlagging, seriously jetlagging. I looked at the chicken breasts and didn't think I could remember how to cook those. The fish looked too complicated too. Definitely couldn't face crab, real or fake. The man behind the counter looked at me. I looked at him. I shrugged my shoulders, smiled wanly, and moved on. We had pasta that night, a pale imitation of what we'd had in Montepulciano for lunch, even though I'd bought the expensive, imported pasta in the store that day.

Last night was worse than the night before. I'd taken my melatonin, but the weird thing is that even though my mind insists that it's dark and I should be sleeping, I awake at midnight, hungry or something, or at 3 and find my way to the bathroom, or 5 and decide I'd better give up. I finally got up at 7:30 a.m. groggy as I was when I turned in at 9:30 the previous night.

The worst thing is I can't seem to get traction in my own life, the teaching/grading life that begins again tomorrow full bore. It's going to be an interesting week.

It's Thursday

It's Thursday and that means two papers on the driveway--we have the LATimes weekend subscription and greedily dive into real news.

It's Thursday and my Fix-It man can come and put in the light switch in my laundry room that's eaten up 5 hours of my time, four runs to the hardware stores, three different purchased switches.

It's Thursday and it's supposed to be cooler today, but the morning was sunny and hot when my husband and I took our walk.

It's Thursday and I finally got the dead bananas on the counter made up into two loaves of Banana Nut Bread.

It's Thursday and I think I have enough energy to tackle three little almost-done chores around the house: living room curtains, bathroom curtain, quilt backing.

It's Thursday and I heard my daughter's voice today, clear and lilting, with a hint of a smile. Yesterday she went into surgery to cut the child-bearing machinery off at the knees and her heart, already hurting from her peripartum cardiomyopathy hurt more because as she said, "I have no choice in this matter."

It's Thursday and I woke up early, remembering our last phone call last night. I wandered around the house in the early morning, the dawn beginning to break, wondering how she fared on her anti-emetic medicine that she said made her chest hurt even more. I planned her funeral, throwing open my mental closet about what I should wear, how I could help her husband, how to keep in touch with her little children as they grew.

It's Thursday and when I told her all this, she gave the smallest laugh, saying "No Amazing Grace at my funeral. I want the pallbearers to dance down the aisle like they are in that wedding video on YouTube."

It's Thursday and that laugh was what I needed to hear.

It's Thursday and it's already a better day than yesterday.

Hmmm.

Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.
Ray Bradbury

That about takes care of my writing for this summer, I guess.

I've been compiling quotes on writing for use in my first day of class. I used to do some sort of a game, where they'd interview each other and introduce each other and names, and jokes, and people liked it. But in reality, no one remembered anyone's name, and unless they had some sort of fascinating hobby, like being a bouncer in a bar, no one paid much attention. And it takes sooo much time and while it broke the ice, I'm ready for a change.

So I'm compiling a series of quotes--some short, some lengthy--and I'll pair up these students, have them talk about it, write about it for my First Day Writing Sample. Then they'll get up and talk about it a little, and intro their partner.

In reviewing all these quotes, some taken from a writing journal I kept for one of my classes, it reminds me that I once wanted to be a writer. Yep. I did. I have an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing and then went back for an MFA in Creative Writing (CRWT). All so I can make a pittance a month (I figure I'm safe from pink slips as we adjuncts make practically nothing at all, so we're the last great bargain) and teach English, in which I have no degree in at all. I have offered (begged) to teach CRWT, but those plum jobs go to the full-timers, of which there are NO slots for us adjuncts to slide into. I've tried that one too.

But trying to get back to the person who wanted to be a writer from the person who now teaches English and is tired most of the time seems like a grand yawning canyon in the space-time continuum. I almost believe I can do it sometimes. I think of Frank McCourt, who taught writing in high school for years--years!--and then wrote Angela's Ashes and Teacher Man (the latter book which I recommend highly, for all you writing teachers out there). Another over-60 writer was Harriet Doerr, who began at 67. Norman Maclean was 78 when A River Runs Through It was published. Tillie Olsen began publishing in her 70s; although she did write a brilliant first chapter of a book when 19 (which was published in the Parisian Review), work, children and housekeeping responsibilities kept her from the writing world until she was older.

What keeps me from leaping over that chasm? I've identified a few things:
Unwillingness to hurt others with possible revelatory writing
Fatigue, of brain, of body
Grading papers during the semester
Lethargy
Internet
Letting other people's needs/wants/desires/hopes cut to the head of my line of needs/wants/desires/hopes.
Belief that I can't be an Evil Knievel and glide over the divide of my life
Belief that I can't be disciplined enough to write, daily
Belief that I can't rise to the top of the publisher's slush pile, even I did write
Belief that I can't.

I happened on the NaNoWriMo site. It almost makes me believe that I can.

A Quilt, or Two

I couldn't really talk about these before because they were both gifts. The one above was for my son and his wife. When I made the first round of HUGE quilts, they'd just gotten married and weren't really sure they wanted a quilt (she told me later her grandma made VERY traditional quilts, and she's more of a modern gal). But after seeing some of mine, we all went down to the fabric store last Thanksgiving and picked out the pattern and fabrics; I added some from my stash when I needed to broaden the palette.

I gave this to Matthew and Kimberly this weekend, and they seemed happy to have it. I'm sure they'll send me a photo of it on their bed soon (hint, hint) and I'm happy they like it.

I didn't really have a name for it when I sent it off with them, but today I had some time to think about it. . . and go through my favorite quote book. I couldn't resist Marlowe's verse, from The Passionate Shepherd to his Love:

Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That valleys, groves, or hills or fields,

Or woods and steepy mountains, yield.

While it's everyone's mind runs to the obvious (we are so conditioned) I read it on a different level. The quilt has zig-zags, that when looked at from a sideways direction, looks like little mountains, so the name is Steepy Mountains. And for Matthew and Kimberly, who are one of the Most Alive Couples in the universe, they will have lush groves in their life, mysterious woods, rolling valleys, but also the steepy mountains and fields and fields to sow and tend and harvest. Of course, I wish them cuddle time under this quilt, but I wish them most of all, that they live together forever and ever and be each other's love.

This one, titled Sun and Sand was made in honor of the marriage of my son Peter to his love Megan this past weekend. While they both live in Davis, the wedding was held in Monterey, where a lovely confluence of beach and tide pools and sun and sand occurs. The colors of beigy/yellow of a warmed beach and delft blues of a clear summer sky I thought would represent the world around them on the weekend of their wedding.

It was begun in a class I took last summer, and I wasn't quite sure about it initially. It's hard to see the final project when you've just spent hours at the sewing machine. I bothered my friend Rhonda in Washington, DC until she said finally: "Get it quilted, and then decide!" I took her advice (she's an award-winning quilter with impeccable taste), and when I brought it home from the quilter's, I fell in love with it. I'd already decided it should go to my newlyweds, but boy, did I have a hard time parting with it!

And isn't that how love happens? We begin, we stitch our lives together, not always knowing how things will turn out, but over time, we blend our hopes and dreams and fears together, and our love changes a few disparate pieces, a lump of wadding and some raw materials into a sun-bursting of a quilt. And we like it, and each other. (Of course, this is all rather cheesy, but hey, I've just been to a wedding and I'm all aglow.)

I first discovered this experience when I was stitching a quilt at the bedside of my mother, who had just had a heart attack. I had just pinned the quilt top to the batting and backing and struggled to get it in the hoop to quilt it. I sat there day after day, visiting, working. As I put more quilting stitches in, the quilt sandwich ceased to be three separate pieces of fabric and instead started to behave as one piece.

Enough of the metaphors. . . I just know I send my love to these two couples with my hands and heart and quilts.

Olive Kitteridge

This is a reading summer, among other things. First summer I've had to myself since before I started grad school, about five years ago, and I'm really enjoying it. I have one more week before it all ends and have two more books to read--wonder if I'll make it? Don't expect this many book reviews from me for a long time--I'm such a sludge in the reading department when the grading begins.

Anyway, I finished Olive Kitteridge this morning. Written by Elizabeth Strout, it is an episodic novel about a retired school teacher, Olive, but it's also about her town. The New York Times puts it this way: "The presence of Olive Kitteridge, a seventh-grade math teacher and the wife of a pharmacist, links these 13 stories. A big woman, she’s like a planetary body, exerting a strong gravitational pull. Several stories put Olive at the center, but in a few she makes only a fleeting appearance."

"In one story, Olive bursts into tears when she meets an anorexic young woman. “I don’t know who you are,” she confesses, “but young lady, you’re breaking my heart.” “I’m starving, too,” Olive tells her. “Why do you think I eat every doughnut in sight?” “You’re not starving,” the girl replies, looking at this large woman, with her thick wrists and hands, her “big lap.” “Sure I am,” Olive says. “We all are.” (from the NYT)

Some other favorite lines--
In discussing an older couple, Strout writes: "He put the blinker on, pulled out onto the avenue. 'Well that was nice,' she said, sitting back. They had fun together these days, they really did. It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert."

Olive goes on a trip to New York and from the plane she saw the landscape: "fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, father out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats--then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat. . . seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed."

She's not an easy character, with her constant inner judgement meter running, the abrasiveness she demonstrated sometimes, her moodiness (which gets her into some sad situations), but she's a woman who has a generous heart, most of the time.

The Times noted that the weakest chapters are those where Olive only appears briefly, and I agree. But I loved the discussion of these characters who are past the hot bright burning-out of youth, who have to live with their faults, and with the faults of others. As a mother-in-law, I got a kick out of her reaction to her daughter-in-law, that uneasy push and pull feeling of losing a son, and not knowing how it will all turn out.

In grad school, I read so much coming of age stuff, that sexual passion lit that drives the under-thirties. Sometimes I found it tedious; as the oldest student in the program it was so much yesterday's news. I longed for novels to read that explored the landscape of the middle-aged character, with a life of, as Olive puts it, "big bursts and little bursts."

Read the book to find out what she means.

Commerce, Downtown LA-style

Between Ssexxy Accessory and TU-TU fashion, I knew I'd arrived in the garment district of LA.

Unlike how I imagine NYCity's district, with racks of clothes being pushed around by runners between showrooms and ateliers, I also knew I was in LA's district by the smell of grilled onions, fresh for the pupusa take-out lunches. Other tip-offs are the mannequins, neatly lined up, bottoms-out, advertising their wares in a cheeky fashion, pockets and decorative stitching all in a row. There were also extremely fluffy dresses for First Communion, stacks of white T-shirts and colorful socks, as well as hanging garments lapped shoulder to shoulder so they looked like a headless-legless line of chorus girls, flapping in the hot LA breeze.

I was traveling up Maple Street to Michael Levine's--any sewer's mecca. I needed large buttons and Jo Ann's and Hancock's weren't offering anything with any kind of style. Getting to LA is half the adventure for those of us out in the sticks.

Most of us on Highway 60 were pushing 70 miles per hour when a small white car suddenly swerved right, overcorrected, swerving to the left, sideswiping the pick-up truck in front of me, then hitting the cement median wall. At that point, the principles of physics took over, scattering the bumper pieces into the faster lanes, and propelling the car back across four lanes of traffic, where it screeched and crashed into the right-hand wall; several cars stopped to help. We all crept slowly around the debris, then like true Angelenos, picked up speed again. A car with the license plates "Ms. Spedy" swept by me on the right. It was a miracle no one was pulled into the accident. The cynic in me supposed, "texting."

It reminded me of the pick-up truck traveling next to us when Mom/Dad were taking me to the airport last week. A loud explosion, and the shreds of the tire went flying--one right over our windshield. Dad pulled over to the right to give the swerving truck a chance to maneuver, then we slowly moved back into the traffic and on our way.

Back to the buttons. I crept around the block, looking for a meter and found one! Quarters to the rescue, but it wouldn't accept them. I pulled forward the next empty one. Ditto. The two shop owners brought me out a bag to put over the meter, and said, in a lilting reggae-ish patois: "Some folks park here free all day." I hurried over to Michael Levine's, bee-lined for the buttons, where I found what I was looking for. On the way out, I noticed their quilt fabric section. Another day, I thought, until, walking back to my car I noticed a parking lot right next door. One free hour's parking with purchase from Michael Levine's.

I'm not dumb. I moved the car, and headed back into the store.

After a pleasant interlude, I headed home, trying to escape the city. It's common knowledge that if you're not out by early afternoon, because of LA traffic, you won't get home in any timely fashion (as reported on the news radio on the way in: most commuters in Los Angeles spend--waste--70 hours per year in traffic, down from last year's 72 hours).

No mishaps on the way home. I used to do these little jaunts more often, but work, family and church responsibilities had filled my time. So, a sort of an adventure--silly little one--but a welcome respite from the norm.

Collections of Nothing

I've decided to have a real summer, complete with summer reading (besides my Slicer compadres--it seems we've all relaxed down a notch, beginning with the tale of Tracey's stay at the beach , Juliann's thoughtful notion about being intentional about summer plans, and Lisa's reading on a rainy day--a perfect way to begin a summer). My sister runs a book review website for me, my three sisters and my mother, encouraging us to read and share our thoughts. So here's my thoughts on my most recent book.

Let's start off with the review from the New Yorker:
"What makes this book, bred of a midlife crisis, extraordinary is the way King weaves his autobiography into the account of his collection, deftly demonstrating that the two stories are essentially one. . . . His hard-won self-awareness gives his disclosures an intensity that will likely resonate with all readers, even those whose collections of nothing contain nothing at all."

Collections of Nothing, by William Davies King is small book, with his collection of envelope liners on the dust jacket, one of his quirky collections. He's collected cereal boxes, stamps, keys, dictionary pictures, food labels, and gears among other things, a vast collection that ended up in his garage where his soon-t0-be ex-wife deposited them. And that's how the book opens.

A verifiable collector of collections myself, I found many things reverberated with me in this little tome. Some notable quotes:
The essence of most collecting is to have the world in miniature, and I was determined to be a King (11).

Collecting is a constant reassertion of the power to own, an exercise in controlling otherness, and finally a kind of monument building to isure survival after death. For this reason, you can often read the collector in his or her collection, if not in the objects themselves, then in the business of acquiring, maintaining, and displaying them. To collect is to write a life (38).

"To have and to hold" is a resonant phrase for a collector. Ever object that comes into a collection experiences that wedding ceremony. . . . We are born wanting to be had and held, born collectible, and with a little luck we never stop being prized possessions (74).

Life marches on, while collectors trail behind, carrying a shovel and a sack (145).

Only one chapter was slightly boring to me, where he speaks of his senior thesis and quotes one of his villanelles; plow through this chapter and you'll find the rest of book an interesting dialogue between him, his collections and the reader.

It is published by The University of Chicago Press, and is a quick read, but a book you could dive into again and again.

Fifty Lessons

A columnist for a regional newspaper, Regina Brett wrote: "To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolls over to 50 this week, so here's an update:
(My favorites are in dark pink.)
1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.


6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.

16. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.
17. You can get through anything if you stay put in today. 18. A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do. 35. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

36. Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.
38. Read the Psalms. They cover every human emotion.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

41. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now. 42. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
43. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
44. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
45. The best is yet to come.

46. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
47. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
48. If you don't ask, you don't get.
49. Yield.
50. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

If I were writing this list, I agree with all of the above, plus:
Happiness is an inside job (a variation of hers, I suppose)
There are no answers to the "why" questions.

What would you add?

Packing up a Carnival--A Recap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Obviously, I'm still dreaming.

The Impossible

A good writer always works at the impossible.
--John Steinbeck

I don't have any salient thoughts, any giddy-up-and-go ideas. I was cleaning out and found this old scribbled note. Along with the above quote, several scribbled out phrases are one on side of this paper, as well as a phone number that I don't recognize, and a crossed out phrase,"You write by sitting" with no end punctuation.

And on the backside of the page, this, with no attribution:
"When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without" and again, no end punctuation. New York, of course, being a reference to the publishing world, to fame, fortune and riches.

These small missives from my past thinking are always a mystery. What was I thinking? What was I working on? What was hard then?

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Postscript: The quote is from John Updike.

"...By contrasting so sharply with his creator, Henry Bech also defined Mr. Updike more distinctly, particularly his determination to stick to the essentials of his craft. As he told The Paris Review about his decision to shun the New York spotlight: “Hemingway described literary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other. When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teenaged boy finding them, have them speak to him. The reviews, the stacks in Brentano’s, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.”

Two Roads Diverged into a Green Wood

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crisis du Jour

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

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


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

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

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

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