give me strength

This is not going to be a fun week, work-wise.

I have my first exam for one class to write. (As I hand back the exams - unlike some of my colleagues - I have to write new, from-scratch ones every semester. Which takes time.).

All day tomorrow is taken up with the Sept. 11 remembrance thing which I now wish I hadn't volunteered to work at. (And after that - I got kind of roped into something. One of the ladies at my church - who is a representative of one of the Major Home-Based Cosmetic Concerns - came up to me and told me that she felt like I needed a little "pampering" [this being after the whole mess with the youth group, which I think - hope - has corrected itself]. Turns out she wants to do a facial and "makeover" on me. Well, I am of two minds. One part of me says, you meet people where they are, and to her, she is trying to do a very nice thing for me, something that she'd regard as pampering. Never mind that I'm kind of touch-averse [the facial] and my general feeling on makeup is that the less you wear, the better - I wear it mainly to camouflage a little unevenness in my complexion. But I feel like if you're pretty to begin with, makeup doesn't add that much, and if you're not, there's not much point - kind of the old painting a mud fence thing. [and I've still not decided which camp of those two I fall into - "doesn't need it" or "it won't help anyway."] So I don't know. I'm going to go, and I'm going to be polite, but at most I will buy a lipstick from her [if there is, in fact, a hard sell attached to this thing]. I'm a long-time Clinique user, I like it, it does well for me, and I'm not willing to change just to make a friend happy.)

I got the WRITING part of the paper rewrite done, and got set to attack the figures. Unfortunately, my idea of "will just take a little work to fix up" and my co-author's idea of "will just take a little work to fix up" are very very very different. What he proposes be changed will require, I expect, about 15 hours of grueling, eye-crossing labor over the computer. And I can't push it off on him as I'm the one who has the software package that allows the map generation. I sort of want to cry; I feel like no matter what I do to the damn diagrams it's not good enough for him. He seems to think I'm magic and the only reason I've not made them PERFECT is because I'm stubborn or something. No, I've not made them PERFECT because your standard of PERFECT is almost impossible given the limitations of the program.

I will be going nuts with grading this weekend. Why did I choose to give a short-test in one class, collect a major homework in another, and collect a project proposal in my third on the same day? (I've made the short-test as much multiple choice as I can possibly justify to myself. I feel bad about that but I fear I have no choice).

Finally - for those of you who teach - how do you keep from Homer-Simpson-style strangling (or at least being distinctly uncivil and chilly to) a student who has a smart remark for EVERYTHING? I feel like I shouldn't be ticked off at this guy because I genuinely think it's how he relates to the world, that he can't be serious about anything, and that he HAS to be the center of attention by making his cracks. HE thinks he's funny, but his humor's getting on my last nerve. The thing is, when I react less than jovially, he gets all hurt, like I'm rejecting him.

On second thought - heck yes, I am rejecting him. I am too tired and too old to put up with a constant stream of peanut gallery remarks.

I've explained to students (including him) on a number of occasions that things that seem like they're funny and new clever remarks (Like: "Not many people in class today! Are you going to give us bonus points for being here?") are actually very old to faculty who've been teaching more than a year, and are not at all funny. (I use the analogy of this: you're a checker at wal-mart. The checkout system's on the fritz and things won't ring up easily. Every time something won't ring up right, the person you're waiting on says, "Oh, it must be free today! Ha ha ha!" I ask them if they would find it funny the fifth time someone said that. Yeah, maybe I should just suck it up and not say anything but I SWEAR I am going to go medieval on someone's backside someday if I hear one too many "Are you going to cancel class" cracks.)

(And I know - were I posting this on a certain bulletin board I visit, a certain person would immediately pipe up that the guy who's annoying the hell out of me is probably an Asperger's Syndrome person, and I should just suck it up and try to be nicer to him. There's someone I know where that's her response to everything - no one's ever a jerk; everyone who's annoying has some kind of syndrome that excuses them. Look - I know all about autism; I briefly had an autistic kid in Youth Group. There's a difference between Autism/Aspergers and being a total git, and I think I can identify total gits when I see them).

And I have a meeting tonight from 6:30 until dog knows when. And I woke up at 4:30 this morning and could not get back to sleep, so I just got up and worked out then, since I would have had at most another half hour to lie there.

Oh, and I had a weird dream last night - one of my colleagues and I were on some island somewhere doing research, and we saw this porthole/door thing. Looking in it, I realized that there was a meth lab set up in there, and that we were probably in some danger to us, because the meth-lab people (who were in there at the time) saw us and gave us evil looks.

Then Fred Thompson (?) came walking along and said, "It's okay. I'll sit on the porthole here and keep the people from getting out until you can go and get the police."

Huh? At least that's better than the dreams I have where I'm trying to find something and I can't, or where everyone's misunderstanding what I say and everyone's angry with me even though I'm trying to be nice.

That said - sometimes I wish I didn't dream, or at least didn't remember my dreams - they tend to be pretty exhausting.

RIP, Madeleine L'Engle

I saw on Sheila's blog that Madeleine L'Engle had passed.

I wanted to write something here, but couldn't think of anything good - and I wanted to be home, with my copies of books she wrote, to take a few stories and quotations from them.

I only read 2 of her books - "A Wrinkle in Time" and the sequel (the one with the mitochondria and farandolae) - before the age of 20 or so. I didn't know of her as an essayist or a writer on faith until fairly recently.

But I did love "Wrinkle in Time" - not just for the language, not just for the concepts, but for the underlying worldview, I think.

Two of my favorite books of L'Engle's essays are "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art" and "The Rock that is Higher."

In "Walking on Water," she brings up a couple of concepts that I carry with me now, every day of my life: the idea of cosmos vs. chaos, and the idea of being "named."

...all art is cosmos, cosmos found within chaos. At least all Christian art (by which I mean all true art, and I'll go deeper into this later) is cosmos in chaos. There's some modern art, in all disciplines, which is not; some artists look at the world around them and see chaos, and instead of discovering cosmos, they reproduce chaos, on canvas, in mysic, in words. As far as I can see, the reproduction of chaos is neither art, nor is it Christian.

I know there are perhaps things to quibble with there. I don't think you have to be a Christian (or even a Deist) to try to find the cosmos - the pattern, the meaning - in the universe. But I do agree that there are some (and probably not just confined to "modern" art) that only want to keep showing us the chaos, without any sense of cosmos.

It's interesting... that I should be reading these words again so close to the anniversary of September 11. (In fact, I just saw a bit on television of the firefighters of the 54th being interviewed, and footage of them carrying the remains of one of their men out of Ground Zero. And I found myself tearing up again, feeling both sad and angry for the monumental loss). You can look at that event and see the horror - the loss, the lives destroyed, the security shattered. Or, you can TRY (and I realize it's hard, especially for those who directly witnessed it) to look at it and see the thousands - millions - of Americans who rolled up their sleeves to donate blood (even if they knew that was an entirely symbolic gesture - and the first time needle-phobic I ever gave blood in my life was shortly after September 11, 2001). The people who comforted the fearful, who tried to console those who lost loved ones. The outpouring of artwork - maybe it wouldn't be called "art" by some, as it was entirely amateur-made - by people memorializing their loved ones or trying to make some sense out of what happened (I think, again, Sheila posted some photos of these).

Or you can see it as a wake-up call, a reminder that we need to be vigilant. That we need to define who and what we are, that we need to protect that which we hold dear.

But we (or at least I) can't look at the event and just shut down, just stop going forward, just say "This is how the world is." (As one of my friends said: "I prefer to think of God as not being in the towers falling, but of God being in what the people did to try to pick up the pieces afterward).

L'Engle also talks about the concept of being Named. Which, if I understand her meaning, is similar to being loved, being a part of God's creation - she also introduces the idea of Naming and being Named in "A Wind in the Door" (one of the Time Quartet novels). In it, at the very end...not to give too much away, but one character has to Name another character, a character who has done his best to make himself unlovable...and there's something very deep about it - realizing that we are at times pretty unlovable ourselves, and yet there are still those here on Earth (and, if you believe in it, Beyond) who would Name us and call us their own.

...the act of Naming is very closely connected with the act of loving, and hating is involved with unNaming - taking a person's name away, causing anyone to be an anonymous digit, annihilating the spirit.

When we are unNamed, we are broken; all around us we see fragmented, mutilated people. And the world offers little help for healing, for knitting up the "raveled sleeve of care."

I think she also is saying something about the anonymity many of us feel in modern society. I describe it as feeling "invisible."

Another, unrelated quotation that I find in my copy of "Walking on Water":

Children don't like anti-heroes. Neither do I. I don't think many peopl do, despite the proliferation of novels in the past few decades with anti-heroes for protagonists. I think we all want to be able to identify with the major character in a book - to live, suffer, dream, and grow through vicarious experience. I need to be able to admire the protagonist despite his faults, and so be given a glimpse of my own potential. There have been a few young-adult novels written recently with anti-heroes; from all reports they are not the books that are read and reread. We don't want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don't want to close a book with the sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination

(emphasis in the original). Again, some might quibble with this. But it's something I personally agree with. The books I tend to press on people are the ones with, as L'Engle says, protagonists I can admire despite their faults.

At any rate. (And I have not read all of her works, for that matter. I still have a goodly chunk of the Austins books to read, and also the other three Crosswicks journals (I read the one dealing with Spring). And I recently got a copy of her Genesis trilogy). I've re-read both the books I referred to above (Walking on Water and The Rock that is Higher) a number of times; they are books that I keep on hand for when I feel kind of beaten down by the world. Or when I feel that dark night of the soul opening up to me, when I wonder - how on Earth and beyond can there be a loving God when people are so evil to each other? Or when I feel like the odd woman out - I think I said once before I pretty much ALWAYS feel weird, because I'm a bit too theologically-liberal in some ways to run with a lot of the Christians around here, but I'm too much of a person of faith to run with many of the academics. Reading L'Engle (and also, C.S. Lewis, and to a lesser extent [merely because I have to think so hard while I am reading him] Chesterton) comforts me - makes me feel "less weird," and tends to assuage my doubts. And reminds me that God really doesn't want me to "check my brain at the door," which is what some flavors of Christianity (or at least the stereotypes of them) seem to suggest these days.

I am a little sad I never thought to write a letter to Ms. L'Engle; that I never wrote to thank her for what her writing has meant to me. (I am sure, however, that many others did the same; it seems that a great many people love her writing very deeply and that gives me hope). Her books - especially the books of essays on faith and life - are among the small number of books I re-read, and among the small number I'd take with me if I had to move, say, and could only take two boxes of books or so with me.

Open letter

Dear yarn purveyors, especially purveyors of beautiful handpainted yarn:

Could you please take a vacation for, like, six or eight months? Could you maybe stop for a while turning out limited editions of new beautiful things that I convince myself I MUST have? Because, you know, I have no more room to store stuff and even I realize that I don't need eighteen different fancy scarves. And when I buy NEW beautiful stuff, I don't knit up the beautiful stuff I already have.

Thanks.

And while you're at it, could you ask the book publishers - especially the ones publishing fascinating books that are "layman's versions" of science-y and history things I'm interested in, to go on vacation with you? And the people writing the mystery series I read?

Because, you know, I can't NOT look. And it's sooooo tempting when there's wonderful new stuff out there, and I just got paid, and my "entertainment" budget for the month's still flush.


So could you maybe slack off a little, and let me enjoy the stuff I have now before you tempt me with new stuff?

k? thx. bye.

--ricki

stuff that makes me laugh

* The whole trash-talking, sad-boo-bye generating business over at Tracey's "best thing ever" game.

* My students. Today, before one of my classes, a couple of guys in the back row were discussing something, and a guy in the row ahead of them kind of butted in, giving his "expert" advice. (I have a lot of people who are self-styled "experts" on various things, from the best hunting sites to the best kind of truck to which of the females in their classes are "hot."). One of the guys involved in the original conversation glared at him and said, "This is a tacos and burritos kind of conversation. In other words: Nachos!" (not yours)

hahahahahaha. Sometimes it's hard not to bust out laughing right in front of the class.

* I saw a truck near a construction site. Name of the trucking company: Beaver Express. The truck was driven by a woman. I blame Kurt Vonnegut for the fact that I laughed at that.

* This:


* And finally, upon hearing that Osama bin Ladin is releasing another video tape, my immediate response to bin Ladin and his posturing are pretty well summed up by this photo (The expression, as much as the finger placement.) The fact that I can think something like THAT, rather than being scared, makes me laugh with relief.

iPhone iNsanity

So, apparently Apple's decided to drop the price on the iPhone (yee gads, it was $600? Just for the phone?).

And apparently the people who went out and bought them at $600 are unhappy, and feel they are entitled to some money back.

I have but one thing to say to them:



HA-ha < /nelsonmuntz >



More seriously: Have you EVER seen a technological item that didn't become cheaper as time went on? My father talks about the first calculator he ever bought (in fact, I believe it was called a "desk calculator," rather than a "pocket calculator," because it was about a foot square). It was about $100, and as I said - about a foot square. A couple years ago, when he renewed one of the newsletters he reads, he got a "freebee" calculator with the renewal - that was more powerful than the $100 calculator from the 70s.

Okay, that's an extreme case. And I suppose the iPhone iPhreaks didn't expect the price to come down quite so fast. But as someone who knows someone who actually WAITED IN LINE to have one of these on the first day and has been subjected to "look at this! look at this! Isn't it cool! Don't you wish you had one?" (answer: no, not really), I'm not that sympathetic to claims that they're due some kind of restitution from Apple.

Back to my father. One of the most valuable pieces of advice (well, one of many) that he gave me over the years was: when you are planning to buy something, ask yourself if it is worth the price to you. If not, find a cheaper alternative or wait and see if the price comes down.

That's why I have the el-cheap-o cell phone offered by my cell-phone company for a penny with my monthly plan. It doesn't have a camera, it won't surf the web. I don't even have text messaging enabled on it - because why would I need to do that? I have a phone. If I need to get in touch with someone I will call them - or I will go to my computer and send an e-mail.

I mainly have the phone so that if my car breaks down when I'm out in the middle of nowhere, I can call someone to come help me. (Although I will admit I've used it more than once to order carry-out ahead as I'm leaving work at the end of the day).

I guess my attitude is this: either you really wanted the iPhone, and so the $600 you paid should be seen as the cost of having a really cool thing before everybody else, or it wasn't worth it to you and you didn't buy it at $600.

But don't demand money back just because "I'm a really big Apple supporter and Steve Jobs OWES it to me!" No, he doesn't. He's in it to make money. Obviously you were willing to help him do it.

This is not like some shady furniture store that sells you a couch one week for $1000 and the next week sells it for $500 without any hint that there will ever be a sale - we all know that the price of technological stuff drops over time.

And even then - if you bought a couch for $1000, it must have been worth $1000 to you at the time. It's not like there's only one couch supplier on Earth, and it's not even like the couch is necessary to the continuance of your life. (Now, if the water company started jacking up prices - without any reason why - and prevented competition, even in the form of bottled drinking water, THAT might be a problem. But we're talking about cell phones, not water.)


And even at the cheaper price, I really don't need an iPhone (nor do I really want one), so I won't be getting one. The little blue Nokia that my cell-phone company issued me is just fine.

You know, I do a lot of things for other people. I do a lot of things I probably do not have time to do (but I make time). Some of these tasks are basically thankless, most of them don't "advance" me any (in the sense that devoting time to doing good teaching and research "advance" me). Many of them are tasks that others, with fewer things on their plate, could undertake.

But still, I do a lot of things.

Part of it is - and the odd thing is that I learned this from an article on "8 problem personalities of Youth Group Kids" from "Group" magazine - is that I tend to be what "Group" calls a "Dear Abby Type" - the one always quick with advice, the one always quick to help.

I'm not going to go into the full-depth analysis (mainly because I don't have my copy of the magazine in front of me and I don't want to get it wrong), but basically, that type of person has somehow learned that they way they get warmth and love is by doing things for other people. That people will love them less - or will not love them at all - if they aren't jumping through a bunch of hoops for them. I suppose a simpler term would be "people pleaser."

I don't know whether that behavior is more innate or more learned. I do think there's a certain part of our personality that's genetically coded for and is hard to change; but I also think some of my early school experiences did help contribute to my general people-pleasey nature.

Not to be all whiney, or all psychobabbly about it but: I was an unpopular kid. I was the kid who ate alone in a darkish corner of the cafeteria because the more "popular" kids would not let me eat with them. I was not assertive - it never occurred to me to go up to the popular kids and ask them who made them King (or Queen, as the case may be).

But I was popular with the teachers (which probably, in retrospect, didn't help my popularity with my peers any). I was a "good" child - quiet, nondisruptive, did my homework, generally knew the answers when called on. I learned early on that if I couldn't have my peers' love (for whatever incomprehensible reason - loser pheromones, maybe, or I failed to wear the proper brand of clothing on one particular day. Who knows how and why kids decide who is "acceptable" and who is not?), at least I could have the "grown-ups" love - my parents, my teachers, people at my church. I think that's partly how I became a people pleaser - my Prime Directive as a child was Do Not Disappoint The Grown-Ups. Because, if I did, I felt like no one would love me and I'd be all alone. (Well, at least no one here on Earth would love me. But when you're a pre-teen, having someone tell you "It doesn't matter that you're unpopular in school; God still loves you" doesn't really help that much. Sorry to say.)

But anyway. I think a certain amount of the frustration I deal with is related to the fact that I'm a people-pleaser. And there are some people, no matter how many tap-dances you do for them, no matter how many times you bake their very favorite cookie in the whole wide world and let them eat them ALL while you stand there and watch, are not going to be pleased.

And it's kind of exhausting sometimes, being a people pleaser.

And it makes you prone to question yourself when you deal with people who resolutely refuse to be pleased - the kid who sits in the back of class with her arms crossed and refuses to take part in the discussions you are trying to get going, who rejects the class activities as "stupid," who sleeps during lecture. You ask yourself - why am I not reaching her? What do I need to do better?

(Never, of course - what does SHE need to do better. Never, of course - why is SHE not showing ME respect?)

But anyway. It's something I'm beginning to recognize. Maybe someday I'll be able to be a cranky old lady who tells people where to go when they aren't respectful. Or maybe someday I'll be able to tell someone who makes petty, meaningless criticisms of something I've done "Okay - then YOU do it next time."

Maybe I'm on my way.

Last night, at church, one of the ladies stopped me in the hall. We do an annual "first responders" lunch on September 11 to honor the police and firefighters and EMTs and highway patrol dudes and people like that. I had already volunteered to help out at the lunch, as I don't teach on Tuesdays.

And the lady asked me: "Hey - could you bake a cake for the Tuesday lunch?"

A cake. Could I bake a cake? When would I bake a cake? Part of the situation is that I'm trying fairly hard to push through the last few bits of a paper rewrite, hopefully so I can get it to my co-author (and dear God I hope he likes the changes I've made this time) by the end of this coming week. So I didn't immediately say yes. (Also I was flat exhausted - teaching for 5 hours solid will do that to you - and had a headache).

Before I could say anything, she added "...Or do you not have time?"

And I realized: yes, that's exactly it. I do not have time. Oh, I could make time. But that would mean taking time from somewhere else. (And in the end, the time you make is NOT equal to the time you take). It might mean my paper rewrite doesn't get done as rapidly. Or that I don't have a chance to revamp one day's stuff for teaching (I kind of revamp stuff each semester - discarding what doesn't work, trying new things in the hope that they do, polishing up the stuff that worked in the past). Or it would mean a chunk of time when I don't get downtime. And these days, what downtime I get is something I want to jealously guard. (yeah, yeah, I know: it's just a darn cake. It would mean 50 minutes of effort, tops, on my part. But still.)

So I blinked, and then I heard myself say: "No...no, I don't have time. Sorry."

And the world did not collapse in on itself.

And the lady said, "Oh, that's okay. I'm sure G. [another lady from church who is retired, widowed, and all of whose children are grown] can do one."

And I didn't even feel guilty about saying no.

So...baby steps. I need to remind myself that it is okay for me to say "no" to things that I really don't want to do and that someone else could do (perhaps even more easily than I).

12 hours....

I have been at work (prepping teaching) for an hour.

(I have been AWAKE for three hours...woke up before the 5 am alarm, got through the hour's workout, cleaned up, dressed, packed a lunch, ate breakfast, and drove over here).

I can go home "for good" (outside of the quick run home to get the mail and grab the stuff for tonight's youth group lesson) in 12 hours from now. If I'm lucky.

I have 3 lecture classes plus a lab (plus, probably, lab set-up - why do the student workers I agree to so often flake out on me?). Then youth group. And, if I'm lucky, home in time for Mythbusters and to fall into bed to try to scratch out 8 hours of sleep before tomorrow.

I hate Wednesdays. I feel like if I make it through Wednesday, the week's essentially over for me - Thursday and Friday are easy by comparison.

It's like some kind of cosmic joke that I have youth group - which I really need to be "up" for - on the same day as ALL of my classes.

random newsy things

A couple random newsy things:

* Normally, I roll my eyes at celebrity-ish doings and rich people indulging their fantasies being a part of the news.

But you know? I really hope Steve Fossett turns out to be OK. I hope he just decided to touch down in some remote area and run to an In-n-Out Burger just to see if he could do it without people recognizing him. Or that he went to meet a mistress. Or something.

I'm really not an aviation fan but I think what he did - the round-the-world flights and all - was pretty cool. So I'd be sad to think he crashed somewhere.

* When did we start calling that part of Pakistan "Waziristan," and why?

I admit to being somewhat immature about this but whenever I hear the name "Waziristan," the first thing I think of is Wizzo the Wizard from the old Bozo show in Chicago.

* I'm a bit fearful that Fred Thompson - considering all the delays and all the problems with getting his campaign going - may turn out to be "all hat and no cattle," as they say in Texas. I know, that's heresy to some of you, and I also know that may be what the media WANTS us to think, but...I'm just a little leery of the fact that he's kept putting off entering the race formally.

* Speaking of candidates - given John Edwards' talk of "mandatory preventative health care," I dearly dearly hope he's not the next president. Because I can see a day coming when those of us who are slightly fat - even if we try to watch our diets and get exercise - being forcibly put on strict diets, or that alli crap (which, quite literally, is crap for some people - makes them soil their pants). And who's going to pay for all of it? And what about people who, for whatever reason (religious beliefs, or someone who's really old and of the "let me just GO" temperament), don't WANT the health care?

And what about failed treatments? Like - they put you on some statin drug and it makes you have memory loss or some other horrific side effect? Can you decline treatment?

actually...

It turns out (thank goodness) we do not need to test the fume hoods. (But we are supposed to note if the hoods have been tested, and there is nowhere that I can find that the testers record the date of testing and status of the hood).

And we may get a student worker in future months to test the emergency showers. (And yes, I asked: they do need to be TESTED in the sense of being turned on. Turns out the student workers the university had before never bothered to do that.). We still have to do it this month because student worker schedules are up in the air. And we may have to continue to do it if our student workers flake out or quit, which sometimes happens here.

And the eyewash stations are not a big deal. But the whole "do a monthly inspection and report" thing kind of irks me...just because there are so many other things we're being asked to do. Yeah, yeah, it takes 15 minutes, but still...it takes 15 minutes. And my having to remember to do it probably pushes something else out of my mind. I hope it's just one of the random "Simpsons" lines I have stuffed in there, and not something important, like how to tell if a mushroom is poisonous or not.

I know all of this is done to ensure stuff is safe for the students. But when I'm having to bust people EVERY SINGLE STINKING WEEK because they want to bring food and drink into the lab - after I've explained, and explained, and explained how it's dangerous and how we could get in big trouble and all that - I'm less willing to inadvertently subject myself to a wet t-shirt contest testing showers and eyewashes and things. Oh, and I'm also frustrated by the students' lack of compliance with the safety-goggle regulations: they forget to bring them, they take them off in the middle of class. I don't like playing cop and I don't like that I have the reputation as a mother hen (because I'm always after them to put on their stinking goggles).

I think this is the semester I start throwing people out of class, instead of just pleading with them to leave their cokes outside and put the damn goggles on. Because being nice and pleading aren't working, and if I'm going to be the Safety Nanny, then by gosh, I'll be the Safety Nanny. Only I'll be more Nurse Ratched than Mary Poppins. about it.

foolish economy?

Well, my college has decided on a new way to save some money. They've eliminated the student workers who go around and check lab equipment (like the eye-wash stations) and asked the faculty to do it instead.

So now, every month, we're required to go into our labs and check the hoods, the eyewash stations, make sure there are no fire hazards (??? Is a poster on the wall a fire hazard? Technically it is. Is a box of equipment a fire hazard? Technically, yes - the box is cardboard and cardboard burns). We also have to test the safety showers. For which, ahem, no drains were installed (oversight or costcutting? I don't know).

So we now have a big plastic trash can to lug around and discharge the showers into.

At least we don't have to test the fire extinguishers ourselves. (But if we did? I'd bring in a twelve-pack of pop every month and treat everyone to a cold pop, Mythbusters style. [alcohol is banned on campus, plus I don't drink, so it wouldn't be beer]).

This is beginning to get ridiculous. We are really not hurting that badly for money as a college, certainly not more than we were a few years ago when we managed to have someone whose job it was to do all this stuff. But this is just one of those needles-under-the-fingernails things. (We have a CFO who LOVES to save money, even if it means burdening people with additional unpaid chores or tacking on additional "user fees" the students should not have to pay)

It's just another task. We've already had four or five new tasks loaded on to us - some shoved off of the plate of someone else, some that were developed brand new as a way to promote the college.

My biggest concern is that I have periodic trouble with my shoulders and upper back - an old injury from swimming in high school. What if I re-injure myself lifting the heavy drum filled with the discharge water? Will they pay for my PT or whatever I need, or will they just shrug and say I should have done it more carefully or asked someone not prone to injury to do it for me.

And I just object to having more and more little chores. They want us to be "outstanding" teachers. They want us to be "available" to the students to the tune of 10 hours a week. They want us to do ever-increasing amounts of research. They want us to serve on campus committees. They want us to represent the college publicly by doing "good works" out in the community.

What's next? We do our own custodial work?

I'm sorry, but there's a set number of hours in a day. I usually get here at 7 and leave between 4 and 5 (sometimes later) - plus sometimes put in time on the weekends and in the evenings. Every additional task I'm asked to do takes time from my other tasks (or requires me to come in earlier and stay later, which I'm kind of unwilling to do. I know as a single person there are those who believe I'm not entitled to a life outside of work, but I disagree).

If they want us to do everything, they cannot expect excellence. I can do a few things well or a lot of things crappily.

And if I hurt my shoulder lugging around gallons upon gallons of water from testing the showers, I want them to pay for a massage therapist and rehab exercises.

(What I really want them to do? Hire a student. There are many students all over campus who'd be happy to make some cash doing that testing.

....actually, that gives ol' capitalist me an idea. I can just sidestep the bureaucracy (until they expressly tell me I can't) and pay someone to do the monthly testings for me. It would take all of 15 minutes to do - I think $10, cash, would certainly be a sufficient incentive.)

Another thought: what does this do, liability-wise, having all of these disparate, untrained people doing the monitoring of equipment? I certainly don't know all the ins and outs of inspecting a fume hood to be sure it's working right. I haven't done the safety-shower trial yet because I'm not sure I know how to turn it off. (And one of the cardinal rules of things like that is to be sure you know how to turn it off before you turn it on. I don't even know why we have a shower in my lab; we never work with chemicals hazardous enough to require a strip-down and scrub if someone got them on them.)

What if someone needs an eyewash station, and it turns out the person who inspected it was doing it wrong, and the station didn't work? Wouldn't the college be liable?

Maybe this idea is just bad enough that it'll go away.

oh...

So, Joel, straight men in Seattle are like women in Alaska?
(I was told once by a female friend that in Alaska, re: available men, "The odds are good but the goods are odd.")

I guess I wasn't aware of that but I will say from personal experience that men in my age category who are available, interested, and don't have some kind of serious personality impairment are kind of difficult to locate. So maybe times are tough all over, at least once you pass 30. (But hell, maybe some of the men in my dating pool would describe me as having a serious personality impairment, so I don't know.)

But as I've said: my life is pretty good, and it would take someone who would make it even BETTER (and I mean that in a totally non-material sense) for me to consider changing my marital status.

And no on the classical. Where I live, we have "both kinds of music" (a la The Blues Brothers). And FM reception is generally the pits - I don't know why but I cannot pick up stations that are fairly nearby. There's a station that plays some classical (when they aren't playing the more irritating sorts of NPR shows) about 40 miles from me but I cannot pick them up. There's a really nice jazz station not terribly far from me but I cannot make it come in in my house. And there's a famous, well-renowned classical station in the large city to the south of me, but I can't pick it up here. So Internet radio it is. Until I break down and buy a Sirius receiver.

Dear KING-fm

Dear KING-fm,

I love your classical music goodness. It helps me work better and keeps me at least marginally happy when I am herding electrons in the office.

However, I must inform you that if you play that ad again from M*tch.com - the one with the klaxon alarm and the "attention men this is not a drill, M*tch.com has too many women!" I am going to rip the speakers out of my computer, catch a plane to Seattle, find the person who approved you running that ad EVERY SEVEN MINUTES and insert the above-mentioned speakers into a bodily orifice belonging to that person. I will decide which one when I see them.

Surely you have other advertisers you can run once in a while? What happened to that creepy woman who was raving about "fasseroles" and "foup" and "spaghetti and feetballs"? Is she now stuck in the bathroom, thanks to her fiber over-consumption?

At least run a few begs for pledge money! Anything! I'd send you $50 just for a few hours' respite from that accursed klaxoning ad.

Thanks so much,

love,

ricki. (And you need to imagine the i's dotted with little hearts here; I can't do that using this font.)

campaign II

Just over a week ago (man, it seems a lot longer than that) I commented on the "Ozzy 4 President!" I saw written on someone's car window.

And I asked for slogans, other than my not-so-great

"Ozzy: because sadly, we COULD do worse"

and

"Ozzy: why NOT a foul-mouthed, drug-addled rocker for a change"

Well, Kate P. suggested:

"Ozzy: the scandalous behavior's up front" (sigh. The more things change, the more they stay the same...I don't know whether to laugh over the fact that the latest disgrace involves someone from I-Da-Ho or to cry over it)

Ozzy: because political speeches go down better when they're barely intelligible"

And Joel said:

"Ozzy: watch what he does to that old Clinton bat!"

(And this is kind of sad - I first read that as Clinton'S bat - as in, a particular body part of the male half of the Clinton team that got a lot of press back in the late 90s - and I was kind of "the heck?" until I re-read it)

I came up with two more, also:

Ozzy: because fat, drunk, and stupid apparently IS a way to go through life.

(That said: I'm not at all convinced Ozzy is stupid. Makes bad choices in some areas of his life, certainly. But the fact that he's still alive - and still making money off of his persona - suggests a certain level of canniness).

But my favorite? The simplest of all:

Ozzy: Why the $#)(%*# not? (Which could translate on radio or tv to "Ozzy, why the BLEEEEEP not?" Unless the ad's running on HBO, of course.)

(I feel moved to make a disclaimer: no, I don't think Ozzy would be a viable candidate in any way, and there's not just that must-be-born-here requirement that's making me think that. However...given some of the candidates we've seen in the past (coughKucinichcough), I do think there's something humorous about the thought of Ozzy running...)

perspective

A lot of things are a matter of perspective.

I am one of the Sunday school teachers (for the adult class) at my church. Because of a couple of deaths, it's basically down to one other woman and me as teachers for the class - we alternate weeks.

Well, this is the first week of the new quarter. And the quarterly books we use haven't come in. (This is not the first time this has happened). Or so I assume; no one's told me one way or another since I last asked on Wednesday.

I had asked the church secretary to call me to let me know one way or another. She never called. (Which I kind of grumbled about a little, I will admit).

I went to the publisher's website (as I said, this has happened before, so I kind of knew what to do). They have the Scripture citation up. (But not the lesson; so I have to kind of "fly blind" and do the best I can with my own interpretation and what I can find to read on it).

The scripture this week: Genesis 1:1-25.

Okay, I have to remind you of something here. I am a natural scientist. I am more inclined than not to accept the straight, basic, evolutionary model for how life came to be. I do not necessarily see that as being in conflict with being a person of faith. I tend to look at the science as giving an explanation for "how" and faith as more giving an explanation of "why" or an explanation of "now you're here, so what is to be done with the life you have?"

The problem is - we do kind of have a diversity of beliefs in the class, from people like me, who are willing to kind of shrug and go either "Maybe God used evolution as a tool" or "well, maybe evolution explains how the physical part of us got here, and Creation is really talking about our souls" or something like that. But there are others who take a more literalistic perspective.

And I have to admit, the whole thing makes me deeply uncomfortable. I don't like arguing creationism vs. evolution, because it seems that (a) no one's mind is ever changed and (b) it's a way to get a lot of hurt feelings or a lot of people who will then go "wow, they're really not a Christian after all" or "wow, for someone in the sciences, that person's really an idiot, because they believe in God."

And you know? After this week I don't feel like I want anything else that might ding what I feel is my already-shaky credibility in the church.

At one point I actually shook my fist at the website that gave the Scripture topic. "Okay, God," I said, "Do You WANT everyone to hate me? Do You want me to be the source of bad dissention in the church? I'm not going to just smile and pretend I don't accept evolution, because I'm not going to lie." And I felt really bad about it - kind of put-upon, like OF COURSE it would be the one passage out of the Bible (with, possibly, the exception of that odd bit of Paul's about women not being allowed to teach) that is the most difficult and most uncomfortable for me.

But I sat down and started writing on the lesson, figuring there was nothing to be done - the thought of perhaps whipping up a quick migraine tomorrow morning (and being too ill to go to church) also would be lying.

I wrote the lesson. I consulted what books I had and a lot of online commentary (including some Jewish commentary on the Torah). I kind of glossed over the whole "creation of life" thing (well, actually, my section ends - thank God - before Adam and Eve make the scene). I talked about the big bang and how it was actually first articulated by a priest (if my online source isn't lying to me). And about how a lot of people who seem to be at the limits of our understanding - the real theoretical physicists and such - are more prone to accept the existence of God.

(There was an article - by turns interesting and discouraging - in this month's American Scientist - about beliefs of scientists. And I'm reminded again of just how "weird" I am among my peers - a life-scientist who believes in God, and even follows a fairly "conventional" faith-path. So - I'm "weird" to the hardcore literalist Christians, and "weird" to the hardcore reductionist scientists. I'd fit in just great on the Island of Misfit Toys.)

And I kept going. I cited Madeline L'Engle and her ideas about "cosmos" vs. "chaos" (and yeah, some of the more hardcore Christians don't believe SHE'S a Christian, but whatever). And I put together what I think is a decent lesson even though I had no "official" guidance.

And I learned a little bit.

And I hope it will generate some discussion but won't wind up with someone looking at me, shaking their head, and going, "You're wrong!" on some of my interpretations.

But I do think I've overcome my own objections, and my own feeling of put-upon-ness. And heck - perhaps I made a more challenging lesson than what was in the book. (But I may ask in the future for the task of ordering the books to devolve onto me so they actually get ordered in a timely fashion. I'm kind of tired of dealing with this no-book-at-the-start-of-the-quarter thing).

So I don't know. I just hope the lesson is received okay. I really don't want another surprise meeting of "what are we going to do with her and her non-conforming Sunday School teaching."

Better

Thank you all for your support (and prayers!) during this past week's meltdown.

As I said - time. Time is what I need to get over stuff like this. I tend to be a very strong reactor - I'm the person who tends to break down wailing at the news of the death of someone I care about, I'm the person who tends to have their anger flare suddenly and violently when I see some injustice, I'm the person who can be totally set back by some kind of personal reversal and walk around for days thinking, "things will never be right again! I will never be happy again!"

But in the end, I am. I'm pretty resilient. (Sometimes I think that perhaps my tendency to react strongly to things at first is part of my resilience - it's kind of like getting a fever with a virus - you feel like hell when the fever's going on, but once it breaks, you're on the way to getting better). I've survived worse than this, and I'm sure I'll have worse to survive in the future.

I know I'm feeling better because I was singing as I got ready for work this morning. (I'm trying to remember what it was - probably something stupid. No, not "Something Stupid" - I think it was some old Mamas and Papas song or something.)

Anyway, whatever. Some other big thing will happen in town and that will be the source of gossip, rather than the youth group. It's not like people are always going to be looking at me and thinking "poor dear..."

(Actually, it's the potential for gossip that unsettles me most. There are a couple people who - I don't know if it's inadvertent or not - but everything is magnified by about 20 times when you hear it from them. So someone who's in the hospital for, say, a routine gall bladder surgery is ON DEATH'S DOOR and HAS HAD TO HAVE ALL THEIR INTESTINES PULLED OUT. That kind of thing. I've kind of learned to discount it... but it's different when you think people are saying that kind of stuff about you.)

But anyway. Whatever. It's Friday. I have a butternut squash in the fridge that I'm going to pull out and chop up and bake for dinner, and I think I'm going to make some biscuits to eat with it. It's cooler here and I actually SLEPT last night without waking up every two hours, sweating and with a pounding heart because of my asthma. (I had said to myself - if I didn't stop doing that in a few days, I was going to the doctor over it. Even if they put me on Prednisone again. Because it really sucks to feel like you can't breathe.)

I've planned my route for tomorrow. I don't feel too much like exploring totally new places (which sometimes disappoint) but there is an area about 1/2 hour from me that has copious antique shops (which I've not had time to browse in a long, long time). And there's a Hobby Lobby and a Jo-Ann Fabrics, which, if nothing else, are good for picking up the newest issues of craft magazines. The other bonus is there's a good grocery store in the general vicinity, so I can stock up on some things and get the supplies for Tuesday Lunch (which we've decided to revive in my department - once or twice a month we do a potluck lunch. This is partly so we can avoid frequent faculty meetings [it's easier to discuss minor issues quickly over a lunch than to have to discuss them at 4 pm on a Friday. There's a set number of meetings we're "supposed" to have but more often than not we can fulfill that obligation by having lunch and calling it a meeting] but also partly because there just aren't that many restaurants around, and often we don't get a chance to just sit down and socialize. It's a pretty collegial department [political differences notwithstanding] so it's nice to be able to just sit and shoot the bull with people. It certainly beats hunching over my little carton of yogurt at my desk like I usually do).

I just have to finish a bit of grading and I'm out of here. I've even decided to not worry about the "1 hour of research work per day" rule I have set for myself for today - I plan to come in on Monday (day off) and I can get more than 1 hour done then. And I can get Saturday's hour done then (wait, that's three hours...oh well. I can come in early and get it done.)

Mr. Yuck

Nightfly - the guy on the badge is the infamous "Mr. Yuck," which was proposed (in the 80s, I think) as a replacement for the old skull-and-crossbones on poisonous substances. The argument was that children didn't understand the skull and crossbones as being a symbol for "this could kill you," so they wanted to replace it with something kids were more likely to respond to.

I think it was mainly an effort east of the Mississippi - or maybe just in the Great Lakes states - I seem to remember it as originating in Pittsburgh?

It never really caught on.

However, now considering that the skull-and-crossbones is a fashion statement (without, apparently, any of the memento mori semiotics), perhaps we need to revive ol' Yuck. I'd hate to think of a child contemplating that drain cleaner was making a fashion statement.

Merit badge

Sometimes, you just need to award yourself a virtual merit badge for stuff.

Or, at least I do. I was a Brownie Scout and a Girl Scout (well, for a while - I quit when they started the strong-arm "You WILL sell x boxes of cookies" tactics). So merit badges have a certain meaning to me.

Oh, and I know - I've survived worse. I will probably face worse in my life. But still - the week is (as far as I'm concerned) over, so I'm giving myself a badge for having made it through with a minimum of tears (and those fairly private tears) and NO cussing anyone out. And no running screaming from the room.

Time

That's what this is going to take, time.

Time for me to get past what happened
Time for the memories of what was said and done to fade.

Another thing I've decided is that maybe I've been looking at this a little bit the wrong way. Instead of expecting the other "grown ups" to act, well, grown up (or at least more grown up than me), I have to remember that people are all a little messed up in different ways (sometimes in ways you cannot see) and that sometimes something happens that pushes those messed up buttons. And probably that people are doing the best they can, but we all have blind spots, and when all of those blind spots collide, it's a big pile of - who is it that uses this term, Nightfly? - pferdkaese.

And I also am going to keep Hanlon's Razor in mind: never attribute to malice what stupidity can explain. (Or: I'm going to be nice here and say "poor communication" rather than "stupidity.")

So I'm going to remember the good advice of a sweet, old (and now gone on to her Reward) African-American member of my parents' church: Keep on keepin' on.

She used to say that to me when I was having difficulties, or (particularly) when I ran up against some obstacle in finishing my graduate work: Keep on keepin' on.

So, L. this is in part in your memory. I know you dealt with some bad crap (being, you know, black and all) during your life but you were never bitter or demanding or angry about what had happened in the past.

I'm gonna keep on keepin' on and I'm going to look towards the future and be hopeful. And I'm going to do my damnedest not to let this make me bitter, or make people want to "pay" in some stupid, passive-aggressive way (like suddenly being "busy" on a day when I had already volunteered to help with something)

I also think - this being Labor Day weekend and all, and I have 4 days "off" (as I don't teach Tuesdays and I get Monday off from class) that I need to get out and do something on Saturday. Either go to a town I've never been to before (that has something interesting going for it) or go somewhere I haven't been in a while. Go out and do some antiquing, and shop in some nice boutiques, and get lunch out somewhere. Because, as much as I love staying at home sometimes and sewing or knitting, I'm afraid that staying home this weekend may allow my mind to travel down some rather gloomy paths that it's been traveling of late.

The only bad thing is that gas has gone up 20 cents a gallon in, like, a week (what is causing this? There aren't any hurricanes in the area. I haven't heard that oil spiked up yet again. Is this because Total closed down a refinery? It's not just the Total places where gas is up). Then again - I'm telling myself that that extra cost of gas will still be cheaper than a therapist's bill if I really can't make myself snap out of this.

Of course, I also have the first volume of the "Animaniacs" set on dvd that I bought a while back with one of my Target "HSICBISSMSAYS*" discounts and haven't taken time to watch yet. That might help, too.

(*Holy (bleep) I can't believe I bought so much stuff at your store." With the Target Visa - which I use PURELY AS A CONVENIENCE and pay off in full every month, so I don't need a lecture about the rapacious interest of department-store credit cards - every time you rack up $1000, you get a card good for a 10% discount on anything you buy in one day. I think I've done this twice in the three or four years I've had the card.)

Well

...it kind of stunk. It started out okay, then the minister showed up to read the kids the riot act (after I had done it twice, my co-leader had done it, after several of the kids apologized).

I cried again after he left. I fought it as hard as I could but I couldn't help it.

I've done what I can to move us past this. Every time people bring it up again it's like a knife in my heart.

I've decided - if people keep bringing it up, if a month passes and people are still after me about it, I will conclude that that's a coded message for Youth Group - Do Not Want.

And I will bow out as gracefully as possible (maybe I'll try to drag things out until Christmas break, at least). I'll tell the kids that I'm extremely sorry but with lack of emotional or spiritual support from the other adults, I cannot keep going.

And then - if the church ever wants to start a youth program up again (to get the "right" kinds of kids, and good freakin' luck with that), it will be without me. Because I will be done. I will have taken the way I was treated as a vote of no confidence.

I e-mailed the pastor to let him know that I felt my co-leader and I had done what we could, that the kids were appropriately repentant, and that I just want to move on. I told him that having people keep bringing it up is incredibly painful for me. (I used lots of "I feel" statements, just like the pop-psych types teach us: don't complain, don't accuse, just say "I feel" and list what the problem is).

So we'll see. I have a feeling part of this is because of some little interpersonal conflict bubbling away somewhere that I have absolutely no part in, but have gotten caught in the crossfire of. That'll teach me to want to be everyone's friend. (sigh.)

So whatever. At least it's over for this week. I think I'm going to try to find something mindless and funny on television (well, Mythbusters is nearly over but maybe I can find a cartoon or something, and get in my jammies, and grab one of my teddy bears [yes, it's a terrible dark secret - I still have a few of my childhood stuffed animals around] and sit on the couch and hold the teddy bear and try to make myself feel better.)

not much to say

Thank you all so much for your good thoughts and prayers. It helps to know that there are people who give a bleep about me even though they have never met me.

I'm still kind of sad and kind of stressed. I recognize this because I cannot watch the news without either screaming at the television set or starting to cry. I cannot watch "Law and Order" or any of the other crime dramas I normally enjoy because they just seem proof of how evil and screwed-up people are. I can't even read mystery novels right now, because - well, someone gets killed in them. I get like this sometimes - it's like all the individual difficulties of humanity build up and threaten to crush me. And I look around and go, you know, why shouldn't the human race be wiped out and intelligent life on this earth be started over with, I don't know, the capybaras or something?

Maggie, especially - thanks. I think part of the reason this hurts so much is that these are people who OTHERWISE don't seem to have those blind spots. They do an awful lot of outreach for "not the right sort" of people. But because it's kids - or because they're right there in the church - or because there's an interpersonal conflict between one particular person and my co-leader, it just all blows up in my face.

Sadly, I often find myself thrust in the role of "peacemaker" between two people who really don't WANT "peace," or I find myself tugged between two people, both of whom want my loyalty, only NOT to that other person. (It happened in 5th grade between my two best friends. They hated each other and each didn't want me to be friends with the other. It was truly horrible. Now that I think of it, that was probably the beginning of my disillusionment with the concept of "BFF." I love the idea of BFF in the abstract, but it's just not something I can do, concretely. Because people change too much and are too unpredictable, and "forever" really doesn't mean "forever, especially when you're a 10-year-old girl.)

I don't know. Right now I'm just very down on humanity. (Didn't Linus van Pelt once say, "I love humanity, it's people I can't stand"?) It's the reverse with me. There are very specific individuals that I love to death and would fight to the death for if I had to. But humanity as a whole big puling mass just gets me down - the wants, the needs, the infighting, the self-absorption, all of it. It makes me want to run away from everyone and go live as a hermit somewhere.

I have youth group tonight. I'm prepared. One of the things that was said in the meeting was the realization that I needed more help. So I'm sort of dreading that fifteen people will show up tonight wanting to "help," and it will be more "help" than I can possibly stand. (Actually, I suspect that it will be a "let George do it" situation and no one will show up, thinking everyone else is doing it.)

I don't know. I don't want intermittent help. I want someone, the same person, every single week to come and help. Or two people the same. I've found that having people drift in and out almost makes it worse, and it's a lot of stress on me to wonder who, if anyone, is going to show up in a given week.

I also don't know what to do to get back into people's "good graces," if such a thing is possible. I contemplated going in and writing a check for the time the custodian had to spend cleaning things up, but somehow I don't think that would help. It doesn't undo what was done. I don't think my writing a letter of apology will help one bit. I'm not sure forcing the kids to write letters of apology will help.

It's like something got broken, and I'm afraid it's permanently broken.

I just hate dealing with people. I mean, dealing with them face-to-face. Everything's screwed up, everything's broken, it's like no one is really capable of either understanding others or making themselves understood. Maybe the capybaras really would do a better job of it than us.

Part of the problems I have is that I probably give TOO much of a damn about things - I care far too much about the success of things I'm involved with, I care too much about what people think of me.

Every time I have ever let myself care about something or someone, I've wound up getting hurt. If I could just learn how to not give a damn...maybe then I'd not have these periodic issues with the human race.