Seven Quick Takes: It's-Sunday-But-I-Don't-Care Edition

One: Megan, my housemate, is in Christmas mode. Employing what I (rather in Dave Barry style) have dubbed the Late-Thanksgiving Defense ("By this time last year, Thanksgiving had already happened!"), she has switched her car radio station over to the all-holiday-music-all-the-time stations, bought a pine-scented candle, and has described where she'll put our tree when we get it. Oh, and she's warned me that Stella, the cat, always gets into the ornaments, even though Megan tries to put them up high.

I have steadfastly refused to play any Christmas music myself, but I think I pretty much am ready for the Christmas season to begin. Our candle doesn't actually work very well (plus, we're told it smells a little like a cleaning product), and we're not really supposed to be burning it anyway (our landlord, her dad, is a firefighter/EMT and doesn't really like any open flames in the house), so last night, inspired by a coupon that apparently fell out of my pocket before I got to use it, I bought some pine-scented refills for our plug-in air freshener. If I may say so myself, the one we're currently using works a lot better than the candle.

Two: Yes, the rumors are true: Albert and I are coming soon to visit a town near you, as long as your idea of "near you" encompasses central and western New York State. Those of you with Facebook may want to check your accounts for details.

Three: Here are three things for which I would not like to hear or read any spoilers anytime soon, even though I mostly can't tell you when I'm going to get around to watching or reading them: 1) Catching Fire; 2) the most recent Doctor Who special (despite the fact that I'm not even confident I'm ever going to care enough about Doctor Who to seriously watch a whole couple of seasons' worth); 3) the next season of Downton Abbey (for those of you who've illegally watched the BBC airings, or know anyone who has). Thank you.

Four: Speaking of things on TV: who's ready for the 2014 Winter Olympics?! I am, and here at the house, we actually have a TV to watch them on and everything. I can't tell you much about any of the athletes actually competing, of course...but then, why should I be able to? That is what NBC's coverage is for.

Five: To a lesser extent (and substituting ABC/ESPN for NBC), see also: World Cup 2014. But it is so much more fun to watch it around people with actual international connections (which is almost the same as saying "people who actually care about the World Cup") that, seeing as my summer leave from work might start not long after the Cup does, I may just have to schedule a Binghamton event around then for a few days, so as to relive the glory days of...good gravy, was that really 2010? It was, my friends. It was. I was working as church secretary and off of adjuncting for the summer and everything. Among other notable moments, we got up early one Friday morning and went to Crepe Heaven to watch a game or two at seven-thirty AM...and even at that hour, there were about fifteen of us there (although, to be fair, about five or six of them were Kennedys). The 2010 Winter Olympics seem far enough back in the past, but the 2010 Cup? That feels like just a couple of years ago. I would've just moved into Carrie's house earlier in the month, and a bunch of us still would've been doing trivia on Monday nights, and oh gosh what a summer that must have been, despite my very small budget, which I probably repeatedly overshot (thank you, O my merciful parents). And despite the fact that, if you read my blog archives, it sounds more like an unhappy one instead, even though I can think of even more exciting things that I must have done (including, but not limited to, being in Jodi's wedding).

Six: And because you all know better than to expect me to write any quick-takes post without talking about what I've been cooking lately: last Monday I, with insignificant omissions/alterations (and some orange juice I borrowed from Albert), made this sesame orange shrimp recipe for dinner, and it was delicious enough that I'm pretty sure I've actually thought about it at least once a day ever since. Also, that same night (because, thanks to the way the shrimp recipe works, I had two spare egg yolks to do something with), I made BooMama's grandmama's chocolate pudding, except that I used 1% milk instead of whole. For the record, I stand by that choice, because a) it was still basically the best chocolate pudding ever, and b) one can pretend that eleven fewer grams of fat spread across four or five servings makes a difference, even though, thanks to the butter and egg yolks that are also in those servings, it probably basically doesn't. So, in review, my cooking that night: WIN.

Seven: Which brings me to your homemaking tip of the whenever: it turns out that you can, in fact, get burnt-black chocolate pudding (or scorched milk, or whatever it was) off of the bottom of a stainless-steel saucepan, even after your dishcloth and fingernails really haven't gotten very far. I have the internet to thank for this tip: you put some water in the pan, dump in some vinegar (the internet will tell you how much if you're curious; I kind of eyeballed it because I'd put in a lot more water than the directions would have assumed), and bring the pan to a boil. Boil for a few minutes, then scrape the burned parts with a wooden spoon or something. They'll actually start coming off! And then, after you've turned off the heat and cooled things down a bit, you can finish the job. As Kate once said of something similar, yay, science!

And with that, it's time for me to figure out what to do about tonight's dinner. I should probably resist my slight wish to just make more of that chocolate pudding. Probably it's oatmeal-smoothie or leftover-ham-and-pineapple-over-rice night. Cheerio!

Marked

It's worth noting that exactly a year ago - Saturday, October 27th, 2012 - I moved out of Binghamton. Technically speaking (and as, it turns out, I mentioned in the entries closer to that time), I didn't move that day to Rhode Island; technically, that wouldn't be until midway through January of 2013, after I'd landed my job and officially started renting here. But I ended that day in a bed in Rhode Island - although not the one at the house where A. grew up; rather, it was one in the hotel room that my mom, who'd come to help me move, had gotten not too far away.

In that year, I've gotten a job, all but formally joined the church I expected to, joined a young-adults group. I've seen that church enter staff turnover; I've hired writing-lab employees and seen a few leave - one because of me. I've seen Binghamton several times, although not, I believe, since this past March; it's possible, though I'm not sure it's definite, that I've seen Alfred not at all. (We didn't go to the square dance; I'm trying to think of when else I might have gone. Leah and I stopped there once during the August before the move - could that really have been it? Or did I find some excuse to get there during my summer travels?)

I listened via internet radio to the Bills game today, ignoring the potential easiness of just turning on the TV and watching the Pats; I sort of want the Red Sox to win the World Series, maybe, I guess, but probably only because of wanting a city that's been bombed to have an extra thing to cheer about. But when it comes to my mind's definition of "the city," that is starting to change from New York to Boston, and I appreciate and am starting to embrace a new identity as a New Englander.

I remember being in fourth grade, missing Gates-Chili, but liking the new house and I imagine also the new school district - wishing that I could have the old friends in the new place, that I could have the best of everything. I feel much like that now. If only living in New England didn't mean not living in New York. If only I could measure the distance in minutes, like Chili Avenue to Westside Drive. If only I could have all the old people in the new place, or (more ideally) A. and the new job and some new people in the old place.

Still, most every weekday I get on the highway to a job that's better than I probably ever imagined that any college job I held could be. And, most of all, within twenty minutes' - twenty minutes'! - drive is a boy who used to be six hours away.

I don't think there's a tidy way to hold both of those things in the same hand. I still feel new to this place. I don't like being gone from New York. But still it's true that I like being here.

Update on Summer Achievements (and Fails)

To be checked off as complete:

#1 (at least presumably, as appointment is booked - but of course it's hard to guess ahead of time whether we'll be on more of a wavelength, as desired...we'll find out)

#5 (seriously, so good)

#9 (ate about all I dared, considering the rather high fat content per cup of sauce; the rest is currently in the freezer, and I am rooting for some kind of group dinner or something, so as to feed a bunch of people something tasty on the cheap...and, admittedly, pawn the fat off on them instead of just on myself)

#20 (we'll call this checked, since even though I got on the T in Greater Boston - Braintree, to be exact - it at least wasn't Metro Boston, and I did do something interesting in Boston: I met up with John and Libby and saw the Shakespeare on the Common production of Two Gentlemen of Verona)


In progress:

#2 (the "hang full-length mirror" part, by the way, met with something of a setback when I didn't attach enough wall-hanging strips or whatever to the back, and the mirror promptly fell off my door and broke)

#6 (I'm all the way to the second chapter! That just might be a record!)

#13? (had a good streak going for a while; got kind of lazy for some of this week; got back on the figurative horse this morning)

#23 (resolved to try Eskimo King, which one of my tutors had told me about, which I occasionally pass on this or that errand. Duly stopped on Sunday night as I drove back from seeing some Russian/Kazakh/Georgian musicians/dancers, but found that it was cash-only, so had to scrape together enough change...and was really only in the mood for a twist cone anyway, so it might not have been a fair visit to a place that's probably known for its proliferation of flavors)

#25 (well, sort of...looked on Google Maps to know area a little better, found a farm stand I'd been hearing about, bought some sweet corn from it not long after)


Probably or actual to fail:

#14 (she's not free)

#15 (missed the peak temperatures; not sure how I feel about swimming in a cold pool)

#19 (I don't know if I even really wanted to do this when I wrote it)

#28 (a failure already - I borrowed Libby's sunblock at the play, but probably didn't give it enough time ahead of time to sink into my skin...alas)


As for the others, we'll see. It's been a fairly lazy couple of weeks, and I'm not sure whether I feel fine or not-fine about that.

In Short

There may be nothing like a heat wave to make you almost believe that a pixie cut might be worth the trouble of growing your hair back out later.

But not quite believe it, at least if you're me, at least at present.

Numbers Three, Ten, and Twelve...Check

Here's photographic evidence for #3 and #12:

The shot of the berries may still bear some thanks-to-Picasa adjustments in lighting and contrast. I think not, but honestly, I can't tell. And I don't have evidence for #10, but believe me, my fridge contains a considerable quantity of chickpea vegetable curry right now. My insides do, too.

I felt like checking those aspirations off today (well, we'll say "today" even though the official timestamp means that I should be saying "yesterday"), so I did them even though the temperature was already something like eighty-five degrees by the time I got to the fruit farm sometime around 11 AM. By the way, though I don't have any complaints about the quality of the berries (the riper blueberries that I sampled off the bushes were delicious and, as it turns out, possibly pesticide-free), and the picking experience itself was fine, I don't think I recommend the place unless you've made up your mind to get the experience (it is a pretty place) and/or the goods no matter what the cost; the berries are very expensive, the blueberries even more so than organic ones would have been at the supermarket. (The same may be true for the raspberries as well, but I didn't check.) The farm market's prices (I don't mean for berries, but other things, like sandwiches) are also high.

I used the majority of said blueberries (I'm not sure yet, though I've got an idea or two, what I'll do with the raspberries) to bake the pie, which you see in its state before we Thrivers ate it. I'd wanted to bring it anyway, but by the time the meeting began (well, as early as this morning, really), it'd officially become Ryan's birthday pie, hence the ice-cream accompaniment. As you may have guessed, I didn't look up how to do lattice-top crust...it would probably have looked better if I had.


So picking and cooking made up a lot of my Tuesday. Now it is my intention to grab a snack, brush my teeth thereafter, take my contacts out, and read myself to sleep.

Return of the Well-Intentioned-But-Possibly-to-Be-Largely-Fruitless Listing of Summer Resolutions

Well, after a fairly epic two-ish weeks of hosting family and friends, traveling hither and yon, and tending to have a good but busy time, I still have just over four weeks left of vacation from the community college. To that end, here are twenty-eight things I'd like to do with it, in mostly no particular order:

1) find a doctor (not that I'm actively sick, at least as far as I know, but because I should have one here now that I'm a real live medically-insured New Englander), preferably one with whom I can be on a little bit more of a wavelength than my previous one

2) start/finish most or all of my bedroom mini-projects (get more books on new shelf, hang full-length mirror, start photo display, get rod to hang Alfred hanging that Jess gave me about two or three years ago, etc.)

3) pick raspberries and blueberries (this isn't two items; I'm hoping to do both at once)

4) tour Adams National Historical Park (because I am just that kind of John Adams fangirl, apparently...thank you, David McCullough and possibly the musical 1776)

5) reread the aforementioned McCullough biography of John Adams

6) actually get through the Thomas Jefferson biography I bought

7) restart my public blog

8) be better about updating this blog

9) make this...

10) ...and this...

11) ...and, if I can get my hands on some decent cider that isn't too expensive (also a candy thermometer), these...

12) ...and, if it ever becomes cool enough to use the oven, bake another pie (perhaps blueberry?)

For the record, I've made #9 a few times before this, and have eaten and possibly made #10 before as well. They're winners, although I'd better have some omeprazole standing by when/if I make the curry, as it (said curry) probably did me no favors last year in my last days (hours?) before the gastritis struck.

13) get regular exercise (in part to counteract the effects of such things as #11 and #12!)

14) have Leah visit

15) go swimming at my cousins' at some point

16) get up early at least a few times to go do interesting things, whatever they may be

17) spend at least a little bit of time with my feet (and possibly more of me, but we'll see) in salt water

18) kick back and read at the good library

19) learn to check my car's fluids

20) take the T into Boston one day and do something interesting there

21) write back to the several people whose "what are you up to?" Facebook notes I've accidentally blown off for months at a time

22) read a liiiiittle scholarship for work (because I want to)

23) find excuses to eat non-supermarket ice cream

24) be better at keeping in touch with Carrie and the Kovacs and possibly Tom

25) get to know my new town better (since most of what I know of it spans just two roads)

26) catch up on at least some of the Good Shepherd sermons I've been meaning to hear over the past months

27) ditto backlogged podcasts

28) keep from getting sunburned


All right - I wonder which ones I'll actually do.

It's Almost My Steel Blogiversary

Apparently the eleventh-anniversary gift is steel. For strength, they say. Well - why not?

I figured I ought to write something at last, since I keep meaning to put down all of my (very fascinating, I'm sure) thoughts, and then I keep not doing it.

Well, my first semester at the community college is just about over, and it's been a good one overall, though certainly it's had its challenging and occasionally boring parts. Looking forward to next semester even though it's shaping up to be much busier.

My life is pretty busy, too - probably fewer commitments than in Binghamton, but it's surprising how much more time-consuming some of my current commitments feel. After all, prayer meeting at Good Shepherd was only (theoretically) an hour long, and I was only five minutes away. Red Cross stuff was only about an hour long per time, and only about three to five minutes away. And Carrie and I could interact in low-stress, casual ways (or leave partly-finished crosswords on the table for the other to work on). Here, all my drives to church are twenty minutes long, and midweek church commitments are 90 minutes or more. Driving to Albert's, too - even though, thank God, it's only twenty minutes now to get to him instead of 50ish, or 360-plus - takes the same twenty minutes, and is time-bound in the sense that I can't just start dinner at 5ish anymore and eat at 6:30 or 7 with Carrie. And as for Megan, well, she's even busier than I am, so most of our interaction is a quick mutual greeting in the morning (sometimes no more than an average of 1.5 words each: "Good morning." "Hi"), whatever time we clear for Downton Abbey or whatever, and very practical things related to running the house.

As for interests, you would be surprised how distracted I've been lately about my "garden," by which I mean, "my series of four planters out on the back deck," not to mention "the project for which I did not even come close to budgeting enough money this month, but have greedily if joyfully gone ahead with anyway." I'm growing these and (if they indeed sprout and grow) these, plus one of these (not from seed, so the picture doesn't necessarily match the brand; I bought it in young-plant form from a plant sale on campus), and also various herbs and even a few of these for edging (I suspect I'll wish I'd planted more). I am so looking forward to the time when I have eggplants and strawberries and herbs to harvest, and zinnias and marigolds to admire, even if I perhaps also have to fight with the local fauna for the rights to the flora. Also, I've probably never been so concerned about the threat of frost.

I'm up this late because I'm cooking applesauce chicken in the crockpot, and hit the awkward window where it's too far along to just go to bed, but not nearly far enough along to stop the cooking process. But I'm going with it, since I need a dinner tomorrow that won't take more than a few minutes to put together, since the rest of my post-work time is probably going into making crescent-roll apple dumplings (possibly with only half the butter and sugar...but possibly not) to take to the contra dance that some church friends and I are planning to, God willing, attend tomorrow night. That, and once again turn my car's backseat flotsam and jetsam into trunk flotsam and jetsam. I wonder if I can find some vacuum somewhere to use, too.

I'm tired, though, so I'll check that chicken again in a few minutes and hope against hope that it's done early. May you have a good one yourselves.

Is There Any Other Song to Sing Besides These Blues

Part of this post may sound a little awful. I'm sorry if it does, but I don't know if I can help it.

I learned from the Boston bombings that I've made quick progress toward feeling like a New Englander. Not that I was likely to have actually even gone (thanks to my dislike of driving there even when the traffic isn't as terrible as I presume it'd be on the day of the marathon), much less to've been around the marathon itself, but I had thought earlier last week about going to Boston over my Monday off of work, rather than going to New York State, as I ultimately did. And when I'd heard (flipping randomly about the AM radio stations as I drove from Binghamton to Red Hook, on my way to have dinner with Jodi before returning here) about the Boston Marathon tragedy, I thought of the city not just as where John and Libby live, or where I went in high school with choir, or where the hospital is in which Albert's father spent the last days of his life. I thought about it as being close to home, a place where some of my college's students might have been - pretty much local news. I thought of how, if I hadn't gone to New York that weekend, and if Jodi hadn't tagged my Facebook that morning with an excited status update about how I was coming, family and Binghamton friends might have wondered if I'd somehow been caught in the madness (and, as aforementioned, there would have been some chance, however small, that I'd at least have been stuck somewhere in the city).

But I didn't feel it as a New Englander exactly, either. I was sobered, and that night, driving along the MassPike, I put on Redeemer Pres's "Service of Hope" (from 2001, their first Sunday service after 9/11) - but in my head I was making a movie essentially about how, if Aquidneck Island ever underwent a tragedy, this was the kind of service I might put on if Megan and I and other people were holed up in the house, apparently a la Winter Storm Nemo, and collectively grieving. In other words, the Boston tragedy isn't really my own, although in some of its patterns I see echoes even of the Binghamton flood - memories of continuous radio coverage, of how everyone was first riveted and helpful and sad, but then soon, too soon, people wanted someone to blame.

The truth is that, given the shape of the world, what I'm mostly experiencing, I think, is tragedy fatigue, akin to the compassion fatigue from 2011, when it seemed like every place in the world experienced a natural disaster. When it comes to feeling any genuine horror, or deep anguish, or amazement that the world could be like this, I feel like I'm on the outside looking in.

Because, really. I was shocked, as an eighth-grader, by Columbine - the first major American tragedy that I can remember, the Oklahoma City bombing not really having been on my fourth-grade radar. Everything about such horrible events was new to me then. And September 11th was that multiplied - I remember spending much of social studies that day watching TV (bless Mrs. Hoelperl for not having kept it from us), including seeing footage of the second plane hit. Coming home, and not believing that the footage was airing of figures leaping from the towers. Later, or I think the next night, being alone upstairs in my parents' room, watching the coverage, genuinely feeling (quite possibly for the first time ever, as I'd always been made a big deal of by teachers and my parents and such) that my life was insignificant (though I don't think that lasted all that long). The feeling of change went on for months - I have poetry (bad poetry) from afterward, clumsy exploration of that day from both my own perspective and that of imagined others; and I remember noting somewhere (a journal? An e-mail to Elizabeth?) that one unexpected aftereffect (also noted by some newspaper columnist, experiencing it herself) was how I found in the following months that it took less to make me cry.

But after so many other floods and tsunami, hurricanes and tornadoes, shootings and general disasters demanding my attention and asking for my grief - New Orleans, Virginia Tech, the Binghamton shooting, the Binghamton flood (or floods, plural, to some extent), the Aurora shooting, Sandy Hook; they only represent a sample, of course - I just don't have much genuine grief to offer. It's not that I don't care, but I can't get a lot of strong emotion behind it. There's been too much shouting for a decade now, too many Facebook screamers posting graphics howling badly-researched "facts," too much political and rhetorical capitalization on every freaking unhappy thing. I know those things don't seem to necessarily relate to my capacity for grief, but it feels like they do, though they're not the only (and maybe not even the main) causes. I have very little energy left for hip-shot opinions; for people who want heads to roll; for people talking past each other; for people feigning indignant surprise at every new insult to injury by the stupid freaking Westboro Baptist Church (as though, after deliberately choosing hurtful and deeply offensive responses to every tragedy of the past fifteen years, they were likely to turn around and declare that today they're all Bostonians at heart), though that "church" deserves about as much of a hearing right now as a two-year-old having a tantrum.

We didn't spend time on the point, but the workbook that some of us at my new church have been using for Bible study pointed out tonight the essential unreliability of the idea, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I'll tell you, I'm with him on that one. What doesn't kill you doesn't always make you stronger. And that's also true, maybe doubly true, of that which doesn't kill you, but does kill others.

We Who Are About to Try (to Stay Calm and Confident While Confronting an Out-of-Line Employee Tomorrow) Salute You

Ugh. I don't really want to talk about it.

So instead I'll talk about the Asian-ish soup I invented (well, I'm probably not the first to think of it, but you know what I mean) for dinner, using some leftover ingredients from the homemade wonton soup I made Albert for his birthday about ten days ago (mostly following this recipe, although my wontons ended up in a range of probably-not-what-Jaden-Hair-intended shapes), plus some leeks left over from a soup I'd made maybe the weekend before that.

Asian-Inspired Leftover Soup

-four(?) leaves of bok choy, green leaves and white stems cut apart from each other, stems sliced
-two leeks, sliced crosswise and washed (white and whitish parts only; green tops discarded)
-a tablespoon of butter (less would be fine, and this isn't an Asian ingredient, but I don't think we have any peanut or even canola oil at the moment)
-a drop of sesame oil
-four(?) cups chicken broth
-black pepper to taste
-some leftover wonton skins, sliced into noodle-shapes (so I sliced them lengthwise, maybe into thirds, and then maybe again crosswise)
-two eggs

1) Melt butter and drop of sesame oil in medium saucepan and throw in bok choy stems (let the leaves be for now) and leeks. Fry until leeks are soft and translucent and the bok choy stems look headed in that direction as well (but they don't have to be there).

2) Pour in chicken broth. Season soup with pepper (now or later, whenever, I'm not picky). Bring to boil, then simmer until vegetables are tender.

3) Put in bok choy leaves. Simmer until they seem softish, then put in wonton skins. Try to make it so that the skins don't clump together into, like, two megawontons...but I was not successful in doing so, so if that doesn't work, I won't judge.

4) Crack eggs into soup and scramble with some implement that won't do your pot too much damage (I used a butter knife, but worked to not scrape the pan itself...I also messed around with the second egg, separating it in the shell and letting the whites just drop into the broth, then cooking the yolk in the broth for a bit before I tried scrambling it, but my culinary reasons for doing so, to the extent that I even had them, were questionable).

5) Cook for another minute or so. Ladle some into a bowl. Decide that it's probably low-calorie, even with the butter, and eat a lot of it. As if its not being low-calorie would have stopped you. Optional, and probably not culturally authentic, but still tasty: eat homemade banana pudding for dessert.

Four-Quick-Takes Friday Night: Anticlimactic Edition

One: So I had an unexpected snow day today. The MA South Coast was getting it worse than we did here on Aquidneck Island, so things looked okay when I started out from home (chalking up the reduced traffic, once I hit Massachusetts, to the fact that I was running late, Friday being a day when it's possible for me to go from one end of it to the other without meaningfully interacting with anyone, and HR and my dean not really caring if I'm somewhat late as long as I still put in the 7.5 hours). Then I got to campus and found that the plows had pushed snow across all the parking lot entrances and that the lots themselves were empty. I pulled over and called the college's main line, and sure enough, somehow I'd missed the website update, and everything was closed. I turned around in a nearby neighborhood (unplowed, but needing to be plowed) and went home.

Two: One of the things I did today: played a fair amount of Just Dance for Wii. Who's got two thumbs and can four-star for at least three of the four characters on "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"? This girl. It's going to be a while before I five-star, though...if ever. Longer than it took me to double-A at DDR, I'll bet. (Or did I ever triple-A? Is there such a thing? A little shocking that I don't remember anymore.)

I'm also pretty good at the odd-but-delightful "We No Speak Americano," which song I have liked ever since I saw this (my first introduction to the song...and to hand dance):



I think I speak for most of us when I say, yeah-h-h-h-h!

Three: So...I may or may not have also watched the entirety of Season 1 of Downton Abbey (you may want to say to yourself, "Finally"), even though that would be over seven hours of television, which would be more television in one day than I'd have watched in...oops, wait, in only something like a month. Not that I watched seven hours all in one day last month, but Megan and I did get through The Forsyte Saga at a pretty good clip back in February.

So what I'm saying is, please, no spoilers about future seasons. Except for one episode I saw with Carrie and Ife and only partly remember, this is as far as I've gotten. I'm about to watch Season 2 with Megan, since she's borrowing it from a friend. Apparently our theme as housemates has become, "If It's Not a British Period Drama, It Need Not Apply."

Four: I'm over a week past, if you can believe it, the four-month mark here in Rhode Island. I miss everyone...and I'm starting to miss my cookbooks. Luckily, I look to be getting a little of both soon: my mom (and maybe my dad) will come later this month to visit and should be bringing more of my belongings with them.

And I'm going to stop there, because I'm out of things I care about saying and I want to get in bed before midnight.

But I do miss you guys, and am sorry I'm not a better blogger these days. I keep having brilliant ideas for posts, but, among other problems, no time to actually write them.

Three I'ms (I'm's? "I'm"s?)

1) I'm still alive (thanks be to God).
2) I'm still liking my job (ditto).
3) I'm doing a bad job remembering about Lent and what I resolved to do.

More soon, I hope. After all, long weekend and whatnot.

#satisfaction

Finally hooked up my desktop computer, here on about my tenth day at the new residence (people who aren't Albert: will provide address as soon as I can get my act together). I've been playing Beatles music while I clean parts of my room (it won't really be clean until I get my bookshelves out of Syracuse and figure out my storage situation a little better)...well, and blog.

But I've also cleaned in a more exciting way: among the things I've dragged off my computer's desktop are - ::brief dramatic pause:: - the various files and folders related to my job search. Threw the files into the job-search folders, then threw the job-search folders into my catch-all "Etc." folder.

After spending so many months since the end of last February looking for a New England job (it wasn't exactly an eleven-month search, because I didn't apply to jobs during all of those months), it's a little weird to have actually succeeded.

Meanwhile - computer, recycling bin, a shortcut to iTunes, two folders (designed for varying degrees of miscellany), a shortcut to Google Chrome, and a notepad file: a seven-icon desktop is pretty satisfying.

Friday Night

The first week of my new job is over. Today was a little more stressful and draining than I expected, and I've spent a lot of time alone in the lab, and I feel quiet.

It really is a comfort to have inherited Megan's memory-foam mattress pad (her parents apparently bought her a bigger one to match the double bed they wanted to give her, which had probably been around the house or something), and it's really nice that the house is warm even though outside it's very cold. Those two things make bedtime so much better.

I'd like to get up early enough tomorrow to have the house - really, almost the world, the way it sometimes feels - to myself for a while - to start some laundry, fry myself an egg and bacon and lay it on a toasted English muffin with a slice of Swiss, and maybe have it with hot chocolate if I'm in the mood. I'd like to not talk at all aloud, and not even much to myself. Food, 1 Samuel, winter morning. And then I'd like to go somewhere public - run an errand, maybe - but still feel all that quiet internally.

All of this, of course, is unlikely. I'm behind enough on sleep that I'll probably try to catch up, even at the cost of solitude. Plus, Megan gets up fairly early. Plus, even if she didn't, privacy and quiet would still be unlikely because of Stella, Megan's vocal and shin-rubbing cat.

Still, I'm glad it's the weekend, and though I'm also very glad for the job, and it's a fairly enviable one (although, envy being sinful, I hope you don't), still I'm glad when the days there end.

Quickly, Before I Go Back to Moving

This! (By which I mean, the link that should be visible when you hover over that word, if right now there appears to be none there. Hard to know how things'll show up sometimes.) You should read it. None of my readers are stay-at-home moms, and of course neither am I, but the reminder of the hidden difficulties of twenty-first-century life is valuable for all kinds of people. And, for Christians, probably we should take some of this post as a warning about some of the false messages we may sometimes be reinforcing - both to the secular world and to each other - about what suffering and gratefulness are.

Backstory for those who haven't heard: Jen, the author of this post, is a former atheist who converted to Catholicism back in 2007; her blog is about a lot of things, but the majority of posts set forth things she's learned or learning about the Christian life. Right now she's expecting, and though, as with the previous pregnancies, she's been on medication to stave off problems from a clotting disorder, this time the medicine appears not to have kept the clots away. She was hospitalized earlier this month, and though she's now home, it's going to be a long recovery. But the two long posts she's written since coming home (the other is here) have been, I'd say, especially good.

I'm grateful that God has used her illness in the way He has.

This Good Endeavor

I got the job - and, more amazing to me still, I was the panel's first choice. It will give me both a living and, I hope, a vocation. A difficult job, to be sure, and a busy one. But a place to be, and financial independence for just about the very first time.

It's not what I expected. As I've mentioned, I thought I was done in academia. Working in property management was difficult, too, but it definitely had its advantages. It was more like a job and less like, I don't know, a deformed version of parenting, or something. The days, at their best, went relatively quickly, but were fairly rewarding; at the end of the day, my time until bed was my own. No lesson-planning. No dragging myself through grading. No undercurrents of guilt and dread in my supposedly-free time. No waking up early on Monday mornings to make up for the gap between misspent Saturdays and sabbath Sundays.

But before my last semester at Broome, when I was wondering whether to teach at all, I was pulled back from the brink of resignation by making a list of things that, as at least one smart Christian has said, make me deeply glad, trying to find the place where "[my] deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." I don't remember much of what was on the list; it probably included the kinds of things that would be on mine today. Truth. Knowledge. Making people feel at home. But I saw that teaching was the best intersection I could think of between what I wanted and what the world needed.

Still, I was glad when cut hours and the resulting need for other work gave me a break from it. I didn't miss Broome, and I was relatively good at my other job. I did, as time went on, sort of miss the act of teaching, but it seemed as though one didn't necessarily need to be a teacher in order to teach. There must be, I figured, some other way.

For whatever reason, though, here I am again - and yet not. There still will be some teaching, and plenty of things to make me nervous...and probably plenty of "homework" within my new job, to my dread. But not in the same way as before. Better this time - a class to teach that, oddly, more directly aligns with my goals than the kind of course I actually studied to learn to teach (though I think I have more of a heart for intro-comp than many English instructors, and honestly, somebody needs to); still some work in writing, where hopefully I can geek out a little about things I love so much; plus a lot of the non-teaching college work I've most wanted to get involved with: retention. Making people feel at home. Helping them to find their place in a college community, a topic that's fascinated me since my own vivid, emotional, lonely, anxious, exhilarating freshman year.

I'm trying to not hope for too much too soon. Hard work comes first, and at a point in my life when I'm trying to do a lot of other important things at the same time; if I get through these first months without basically melting down once a week (I will try-to-try to do better than that), it will indeed be from God. And I'm reading Tim Keller's new book, Every Good Endeavor, trying to formulate a good Christian understanding of work - which seems almost amusingly, at times, like his and his wife's book on a good Christian understanding (and execution) of marriage, which, for all its great framework and insightful advice (seriously, I think almost every Christian should read it), also makes abundantly clear that a lot of hard work and frustration are inevitably and very much involved (thank you, sinful nature...except for that part about thanking you).

But it was Greg Jao, in his 2011 address to InterVarsity staff (please listen to it if you've got the forty minutes), whose talk led me to make that list of things that made me deeply glad. He said so many things about his vocation, and about being a Christian serving students on a college campus, that I have been drawn to ever since; tipped off to its existence by Carrie, I downloaded the mp3 of it, and I listened to it over and over, over the resulting two years. I can't help being excited about this job. Though I cannot proclaim the gospel in words in my official capacity, there are so many ways that God can use me to bring His kingdom into my new places. I am scared, but joyful and hopeful, to have that world, Greg Jao's world, Carrie's world, the grand and dangerous and heartbreaking and beautiful stage of the college world, as my vocational home again.

Thank you for praying; please, if you see fit to do so, continue it. I will need all the support, and all the help in turning to God, that I can get.

The university is the site of our deepest joy and where we as a movement...sense the world's deepest hunger. This isn't the future I planned for myself - but it's the only one I can imagine worth pursuing. It's my call, and it's our call, to proclaim in word and deed on the university campus [paraphrasing Abraham Kuyper], "This is Christ's, and this belongs to Him." Amen.
   -Greg Jao, opening address, InterVarsity-USA Staff Conference 2011

Night Before

Tomorrow I interview - the final interview; I'm one of only three remaining candidates - for a full-time position at a community college within range of where Albert lives.

When I applied to the job initially, it sounded good, but by the time I actually scored a real live interview, I wasn't sure that it was really what I wanted. What I wanted was what such a job would give me - a permanent position and the income to establish myself here. The job itself seemed like it might be, above all, emotionally draining - back to a lot of things that used to stress and wear me out, and back to students who often either aren't interested in the subject or have big obstacles to their learning. But having done some research about the school, it seems to have structures that are so.much.better than the ones I've experienced before. I know that all material that a school writes to advertise itself is usually only one side of the story, but it seems as though they're really trying, at least, to help their students succeed. They're a community college that seems to act quite a bit like a four-year school.

And the job I'd have would be a lot of a little things - a fair amount of teaching, but less grading than I used to do; some tutoring and training other tutors; some choosing of writing-lab materials; some academic advising. Other things, too. I like that idea.

Long story short, I think by now I also want the job for the sake of the job. I think it'd be a better place to work than the last community college at which I've worked, and in some ways it could be really nice to be back in education again.

My interview is tomorrow (Wednesday the 2nd) at 2 PM. Should you happen to read this in time, would you pray for me? It may be that, against my hopes, this is the wrong job for me, so you needn't even pray that I actually get the position. But please pray that I represent myself truthfully and well, and that that might somehow please the vice-president before whom I'll be interviewing. Even if he ends up going for someone else, I'd like to have interviewed well - though not all for good reasons; a lot of that, of course, would be sheer vanity! Still, I appreciate any supplicative assistance you may be moved to offer.

And I hope you have a happy New Year!

Veni, Veni

So...this isn't your typical Christmas fodder. You can save it for some other day if you're not up for loose ends today; I seriously don't mind.

And I did start this on the 24th. I don't know why Blogger wouldn't save the draft properly.
_

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.


2012 has been a big year for transition, from the kickoff in January ("A third year of slogging through adjuncting, and a third consecutive semester of having to live off my parents to greater or lesser degrees? Thanks, but I'm going to try temp work") to deciding with Albert in late February that I was going to be the one to move (although, honestly, I think I remember the moment when I really started surrendering to that probable eventuality, and that'd been back in, like, October 2011), to the temp job from late March to mid-October (my first forty-hour-a-week job that lasted longer than fourteen days!), to the late-October leaving of Binghamton. Now, almost two months into trying to become a New Englander, I've interviewed for a (very-possibly-a-long-shot) full-time, tenure-track job at a community college (technically not as faculty, but as something not unlike it in some ways). This either means that I'm headed, against my expectations, back into tutoring and teaching and some other things, or I'm going to still be jobless in January with about three weeks to decide what to do before my New York State insurances become void.

So it's also been a big few months, if not year, for self-absorption. I'm sorry about that, if you've noticed. Thus the carol above: I think it was the first one this season to actually make me feel like I was addressing God, instead of just coasting (or, that downfall stemming through my many consecutive years in singing groups, performing) through the carol, or the hymn, or half-listening to the sermon, in the midst of everything else I was trying to think about and process. I don't feel a lot of day-to-day anxiety, but I certainly have been distracted by a lot of metaphorical shiny (and not-so-shiny) objects - as well as sometimes some self-righteous crankiness.

Plus, it's been poignant to finally enjoy time with my immediate family more, just as I'm moving away. And it's hard not to want to protect them, too, except that I keep not even trying to do that even to the extent that I can. For 2012 was also a year in which my heroin-addict cousin died of an overdose, another cousin allegedly strangled his wife to death (I don't know whether the trial's yet gone through), another cousin had her husband separate from her and had some family stuff go down, and an uncle had a completely unexpected mental-illness episode (never happened before) that his wife (my aunt) appears to be using as an excuse to separate from him. This is the year in which I began to see (even without any big immediate reason to do so) that someday my parents really will die, and as they celebrate thirty-five years together and shop together for new wedding bands (which looked so sweet until I found out that my mom doesn't actually necessarily want them, and she and Dad don't really agree on how the buying process ought to go, and they've been trying and failing for months now to commit to some decision), I think of all the other things in the extended family that have fallen apart over the past year or two, and of how apparently no family without God's grace is either safe from or equipped to rightly handle tragedy, and I wonder how close we're coming to some edge. I have wondered on and off, for some time now, how I could even begin to witness to an extended family who hardly knows me, really, and shows no sign that they have any idea, in some cases, that they're not Christians already, or what Jesus and following him are really like. I look at the swath of brokenness, and I am overwhelmed by my complete inability to form words around everything in my head, and I fall guiltily, damagingly silent.


Which is not, of course, to say that nothing good has happened this year. Of course it has. Leah and I reconnected. I got a full-time temp job. I had a really good Easter and a nice birthday. My parents moved to a house I like, and we all celebrated their thirty-fifth anniversary. Ife got engaged. We had a gorgeous autumn. I got to go live near Albert. Jessica got married, and Albert and I saw Ken, Julie, Dave, and Christa for the first time in (depending on whom you're talking about) years or ever. Joe and Andrea had a baby. Lots of other stuff, too.

So my world has been pretty big, and I often haven't done a great job of handling it. But I'm trying to trust God, and I'm interested to see what happens.

Merry Christmas to my new friends from property management, both the ones I managed to give nicknames to (Ben, Jake, Vince, Cal, etc.) and the ones I didn't (like Yosra, whom I pretty much wanted to give the alias of Shoshana even though that doesn't reflect her background). And to Lisa, Janell, Sarah M., Abby C. (wish I could have gotten to know her better before the move!), Patricia, Mona, and Ryan. Merry Christmas to sponsor children and especially to military members everywhere - if Erik is still in Bahrain, as it appears he is, I hope his holiday is especially bright.

May God grant all of us peace in the new year.

In Progress

Because I don't know what to say on the other blog (ugh, if I ever successfully update it again) about this, and am trying to decide whether I can really suitably post anything about such things at all.

Grace is not her real first name, but it is part of her name.


The last Saturday before Thanksgiving, Albert and I got in his car on that day's sunny midmorning, he in a slightly mismatching suit jacket and dress-pant combo, I in a weirdly-cut black skirt (a little help from the internet suggests that it may have had a fishtail-style hem) that was the only semi-suitable one I had clean, plus a normal dress shirt. We remembered things to read beforehand, but I'd forgotten a snack. I consoled myself that, if all else failed, I could fall back on a cough drop.

We were heading to the funeral of someone we'd never met. Grace, older sister to two church friends of ours who're slightly younger than we (I think M. is twenty-five, and R. a few years younger than that), had died during the previous week under complicated circumstances, and attending the service (besides the card we'd somewhat belatedly sent) constituted more or less the extent of what we really knew to do for them. M. and R. belong to a tricky friendship class - friends towards whom you feel warmly, but with whom you haven't yet hung out in a formalized way; the ones you sit with at church functions or have been around for some weeks in a Bible study, but have never yet had over for a game night, or gone with for a post-church lunch. Albert also knew their mother from working with her for a fairly short time, but didn't really know her very well, either.

We arrived early at the church that Grace had attended - early enough that the only people up in the sanctuary were the members of the worship team. Among them were M. himself, who's good with a guitar, and Heather, who with her husband Adam (who I think was running sound in the booth) had hosted the Bible study at which I'd met M. in the first place last summer. I was maybe a little surprised - and yet not - that M. had chosen to sing. I might have wanted to myself, in his place; the trouble would have been actually getting my body to do it. When Heather Rivera had died back in college, it was one thing to practice a certain song or two with Chamber Singers for the memorial, another to actually sing without choking up.

But when the service started some time later - the sanctuary full by then, with chairs in the aisles because the pews weren't enough - the worship team sang true. By that time Albert and I had read the program; he'd noted how very close in age he and Grace had been, born in the same year.

Jenny, another friend of ours, had joined us at the near end of the pew, and had apologized in advance at the likelihood that she'd cry. I'd replied that I had tissues; eventually, as the service progressed, she did take some. So, a bit, did I - probably some combination of the dry-faced brothers (reminding me of a memorial long ago, John steady before Fernando's sobbing girlfriend - some people do tearless grief so bravely that it adds to my tears) and trying to imagine the unimaginable, what it would be like for my family to lose my only sibling.

About all I remember of the singing was the odd tableau of a swell of song, the thought of how we looked from right to left along the pew: Albert singing full-voiced, worshipful through sadness; me singing when I could around my tight throat; Jenny silent, either unable or not wanting to give voice to the moment at all.

Grace's body had been taxed by more than the diabetic coma that ultimately overcame her. She'd also struggled with an eating disorder and with heroin addiction - both, as I understand it, contributors to what had happened - and there was probably still another factor in the case, this one very private (the family does not know that Albert and I know), over which I can only draw a curtain.

With deaths like that, the family has a choice to make, from a wide variety of possibilities, about what story it wants to tell about the one who's passed. And I say with deep respect and admiration that Grace's family and pastor told hers vulnerably, evenly, and well. They traced out Grace's personality - her authenticity, her stubbornness - and the directions she took when, years ago, she was slammed with juvenile diabetes and her parents' divorce within months of each other. They recounted difficulties, hope, progress, relapse, and many things to love about her. Among the paintings (her own work) displayed along the altar, the sermon and eulogy sketched and colored her in: a troubled follower of God, fighting against a body of death.

Christ was her hope, and is her family's. They, respectfully but undeniably, said so, compassionately, assuring the gathered (as M. did) that they weren't trying to capitalize on the moment, but doing their best to give a reason for that hope. It was a gutsy move, and the right one.


After the service, Albert and I waited in a long line, which wrapped around the corner and down the stairs, to the fellowship hall. When we got there, the family was there to receive us all, and Albert and I tried to say helpful things before gratefully having the meal. Albert spoke to Grace's mother, proofreader to proofreader, praising the eulogy's content - offering, if she wanted it, a brief chance to be a craftsworker for a moment, instead of a bereft parent. We hugged the guys and offered to hang out sometime if they wanted to get out of the house. They haven't taken us up on it, but we hope it was some comfort to know that they could.

In the days since then, we've seen M. at church things - he's back to worship team, back to talking to us after the service. He seems to be doing all right. It's hard to say; we know him only so well.

But today, almost a month later, twenty-seven people were gunned down; twenty children's families are left to, perhaps, stare at a pile of presents and sob; and again we're all trying to find something to say, something to somehow encompass a dizzying expanse of heartache, find a way to resolve the unresolvable. How do you speak to someone of a perfect Answer when the Answer is so big you don't always know how He works? I don't dare say as much as I should, but some things are so true that I do want to say them - here, at least - about floods and tsunamis, about drug-laced tragedies, about the slow desolation of so many people I should love so much more truly: what I said to J. last month, both her divorced parents in the hospital from separate accidents, her own marriage in pieces, the only words that seemed to be of use to her, of all the ones I said: this is a good world that was broken. And what Reverend Matt wrote this afternoon about the shooting: this is why Jesus came, and this is why he will come again.

So As Not to Leave You Hanging

I am, in fact, currently working a short-term temp job at a decent place that pays good money. So there was something in not getting the other job after all. And by "something" I mean "this is a lot better."

And now, having internet-ed my evening away and then some, I am going to bed so I can get up and work tomorrow.

The Ten-Point-Four Percent

I probably technically don't belong to it, seeing as my permanent residence is still in New York. But tonight it feels like I do.


A word on the job search: ugh. Not that all days are like that, but some days feel productive and hopeful, and then some days you realize that even the national retail and food chains to which you've applied don't want you. Some such days, you find yourself trying to convince a staffing-agency employee to give you a job for which you'd have to drive about an hour each way just to do what sounds like basic receptionist work (phones, greeting, filing), for a four-to-six-month period, which would kill your getting a permanent job anytime before spring unless this place hired you on for good, but if they did, even splitting your apartment location equally between job and boyfriend would put you too far from both. So, all things considered, it's probably not a job you should take, but out of impatience and temporary despair you jump at it, even though you've still got one temp agency to follow up with today and another to go meet with tomorrow. The job came up on the employees' mailing list, and you call for it less than thirty minutes after the e-mail's been sent, possibly in time to be the first to volunteer for it, which should give you the edge.

For the record, since she's openly concerned about the long commute for so little money, the staffing-agency employee won't give you the job. She puts you off, not saying no, but presumably waiting for someone more suitable to volunteer. This is without your even having bothered to alarm her with the news that, in addition to living an hour away, you're also overqualified, a possessor of a Master's degree.

Not that you can really blame her. You'd be skeptical in her place - can this girl really get there on time every day? Is she really not going to bag it after two weeks, after she gets sick of the commute? Is she really going to do that for four to six months and not ditch out for some other job? After all, presumably a certain percentage of people doing temp work are doing temp work for a reason, because they can't get a job on their own, maybe because they've got something to hide.

And so you do, in most job-application contexts these days, but it isn't alcoholism or a past forcible termination: it's a Master's degree and a failed first career.

Quick, Before it Flickers Out

From probably some of the same fine people who brought you #PoetryImprovedByCustard, please go check out #MiddleEarthBands.

A Little News

Well, I've moved out of Binghamton. Technically speaking, so far I've only moved to my parents' house, which is in Onondaga County in New York; theirs is my new permanent address. But the idea, of course, is ultimately to move to Rhode Island or Massachusetts. I do have a potential job interview coming over the horizon; we'll see if that comes to anything.

In the meantime, I've started a public blog. Now, don't worry, the beginning of that one is definitely not the end of this one. After all, there are just some stories and opinions that are for one's close friends, not for one's acquaintances (or for any random person with a friend who links to a friend who links to a friend who links to my new blog). Besides, after ten years here, it'd be lame to shut this down.

So if you'd like my new URL, great - you can get it through Facebook, starting tonight, or I'm happy to e-mail it to you or something. But if you'd sooner not, that's fine. I'll do my level best to keep a better posting pace, and probably you'll get some deleted scenes as well.

Now it is my intention to either apply for a job (might as well, whatever happens with the position mentioned above) or clean the bathroom or some other room. Cheerio!

Seven Quickity-Quickity Takes: This-Could-Almost-Have-Just-Been-One-Long-Post Edition

One: So it turns out that the quickest way to shut down my blogging is to have me promise to address a certain topic the next time I write. Part Deux of the tenth-birthday blogging (which happened, oh, nearly FIVE MONTHS AGO) will eventually be addressed. Or not. But not this time, either. Sorry to keep unintentionally lying to you.

Two: I'd like to talk about this before it actually happens, so here we go: I'm moving to Rhode Island in a couple of weeks. Well, technically I'm moving to Syracuse, to my parents' house, but I'm spending up to the first three months of that in Rhode Island to find a job. But the idea, at least, is that I'll find a job and then the move to Rhode Island will be finalized and carried out. Since so far I haven't been able to get such a job through searching from New York State, I'll be staying with Albert's mother and looking in person.

Three: So how do I feel about the move? Excited, and also kind of sad, but mostly it doesn't feel quite real yet. I mean, fifteen days from now I'll have left Binghamton. But work and life have been so full of other things that the past month has really been more about focusing on one day or week at a time. I don't think it'll be real until I've left work; next Friday will be my last day. And then...I'll have to pack in earnest. But I'm hoping to start at least getting my books off the shelves before then.

Four: By the way, I've pretty much come full circle at the job. Having started during the last week of March as the interim maintenance coordinator, I was moved around mid-to-late-June to "special projects" (defined as, "whatever my supervisors wanted done that nobody else really had the time or specialized knowledge to do"), and then even did a stint in September as, essentially, the interim communications coordinator. But the guy they hired in maintenance after me has had to miss a lot of work for a lot of reasons, and last week they went ahead and let him go. So, for the closing two-and-a-halfish weeks of my position, I've been and will be back in maintenance, training my new successor (who's been with the company for a long time and theoretically will be around for a while), although I'm also still helping the new communications coordinator a little bit, too. I'm actually glad to end in maintenance, as (believe it or not) it's my favorite of the three, for various reasons I won't go into here. It'll be really tempting to log into Field Force, of a quiet day in Rhode Island, and see what Ben, Jake, Vince, and Cal are doing. I should probably tell my bosses to change the password.

Five: I am also trying to do those last-chance things. I may run off to Ithaca this weekend for one more glorious trip to the farmers' market, the Friends of the Library book sale, the Cornell campus, and Collegetown Bagels. I may even buy myself some kind of t-shirt or something. But I'm also going to try to get to Kopernik Observatory, which is doing public events this weekend. I'm likely to do that even before I do Ithaca.

Six: Things that will happen soon after I arrive in Rhode Island: (1) Halloween (I'd like to be a hobbit again, but don't think I'll be able to get it together); (2) Election Day. Judge me all you want, but my plan so far is to deliberately and unapologetically miss the deadline for getting an absentee ballot. Nyah-nyah.

Seven: It's getting cold, which means at least two things: that I don't want to hang out downstairs (I'm always bad about doing my dishes on time, but in cold weather, the chill in the kitchen is a big reason why), and that I'm suddenly way more into tea than I...dang! I just remembered, writing this, that I left some tea on the counter to cool, and - ::tasting:: - now it's pretty much lukewarm. Oh, well...let that be a lesson to me!

Off now to go do stuff. For more takes, go see Jen!

Seven Quick Takes: Early-Exit-from-Work Edition

(I got out of work at 2:45 today because of a follow-up visit to the nurse practitioner who sees me for primary care - you'll soon be able to guess why. By the way, I do still intend to write up the Part II of my Tenth Blogiversary celebration. Hopefully that'll be soon, but...well...)

One: This deserves to lead the quick-takes pack. Praise God - that's all I have to say about it.

Two: To some personal business: as I've certainly mentioned off-blog, I developed last week what the urgent-care doctor who saw me on Wednesday night diagnosed as acute gastritis (even though I seem not to have gotten it via any of the more obvious ways, which tend to involve food, drink, or substances that I don't consume on a regular basis). What's that like, untreated? Basically, a lot of severe abdominal pain, sometimes with nausea, et cetera...even when all I was trying to do was drink water. It didn't start out as bad as that, but that's basically where it ended up. I've been taking proton-pump-inhibiting medication (that is, stuff that shuts my stomach-acid pumps down to some extent, although apparently not to such an extent that I can't digest things) and a fair amount of liquid store-brand antacid. (Question: if mints are supposed to aggravate gastritis, why do they use it to flavor antacid? Unless, I suppose, it's just artificial flavoring.) Also, for the record, a low-acid diet is way harder than it looks. Thank the Lord above for bananas, in-season watermelon, saltines, and chicken broth. If not for them, eating almost wouldn't be worth it at all.

Three: Things I would like to be eating again soon: spaghetti and sauce (tomatoes are too acidic), pizza (tomatoes, plus I'm still a little iffy about milk/cheese/etc.), anything involving chocolate (prohibited because of potential acid production), cereal with milk (milk and I apparently haven't made up yet), and basically anything containing more than nine grams of fat (not because it's precisely prohibited, but again, just because my digestion's been all funny).

Four: Speaking of food, today I definitely saw a maintenance record (one not of my own making) that read, "Show[ed] building to burgers." At first I thought it'd been a typo for "burglars," but fairly quickly realized that that definitely couldn't have been it, either. Upon further consideration, I think Cal must have written, "Show building to buyers" - the building in question being for sale, if I'm not mistaken - and the person making the electronic version, D. or J., must have misread his handwriting, which isn't always the clearest.

Five: So 2012 won't go down in history as the year in which I watched as much of the Olympics as I would have liked, but I have caught some. Congratulations to Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings! I hadn't followed their Olympic stuff before, but I'm so glad they got their three-peat.

Six: I've been reading a lot of Dorothy L. Sayers's letters (I'll probably finish the volumes of her letters before I finish those of C.S. Lewis, even though I started Lewis's a couple of years ago and only have one volume - albeit a very long one - left), and if I could just quote some of them in full on this site, or any other, I might. However, since I can't, I'll say that a lot of problems in thought and rhetoric, and probably education, that I thought were fairly new (only since my parents' generation, say) have actually been in full force for a few decades longer at least. So that's a little troubling. I'll also say, a little less depressingly, that she takes the idea of work very seriously, and has some ideas about what work one should or shouldn't be asked to do in the service of Christianity that differ from, say, C.S. Lewis's opinions. It was interesting to see the two of them argue it out in letters (well, mostly her, since his reponses are only given in excerpts), especially as I wonder if they aren't both partly right. Rather than try to summarize the whole debate here, you can ask me if you're interested.

Seven: It's my brother's birthday, so I'm off to text him. I'm also going to give him a birthday present when I see him next weekend, but what it will be, I do not now have an idea. Wish me the best on that one!

You'll Notice I Didn't Specify the Weekend on Which I'd Celebrate

Since I've been at this blogging thing for ten years now, there are two things I'd like to do. This will probably be Part I.

First, given that in my last entry I linked to my first post, in which I, seventeen years old at the time, introduced myself, I should reintroduce myself a decade later.

My name is not Laurel, of course, and all three of my regular readers know it. (By the way, I believe I also started with three regular readers. Those were, of course, Zinni, 'Nanda, and Daf, none of whom read now.) There's no reason I couldn't use my real name, especially as I tend to use my friends' real names when I refer to them here. But somehow it just doesn't feel right. Call it an alter ego, I suppose - or, as I thought of it when younger, an imaginary twin.

I still look back on my high-school self with some admiration and fondness, even as I also giggle a bit over how sometimes I'm so good with language and sometimes I use the same slang word a gazillion times with no trace of irony. I still have some of the e-mails I wrote back then, especially to Zinni and 'Nanda - how I had such a memory for details of events and conversations then, I don't know, except to say that I was way better at getting enough sleep, and usually better about writing things up fewer than twenty-four hours after the fact. Also, of course, adolescence just feels so different - everything's in more intense focus.

As for the ensuing years, I think my biggest change has been with my relationship to God. I mean, I've been a Christian since sometime in the fourth grade, but that wasn't really challenged in any significant way until, say, college, when I found through trial and error that there really is no doing Christianity halfway. Among other things, I was dumb enough to date two boys who weren't really Christian (which, honestly, almost surprises me, because I knew, I knew better...but sometimes I am the kind of person who's too afraid to do the hard thing, tries to get around it, and makes things worse that way), and blessed enough that those boys were really honorable and that they and I continued to be friendly after the eventual breakups, which, essentially, were my fault because they proceeded directly from my eventually being unable to deny that the religious differences between us were too great. (Sometimes, even with boys whom I didn't go out with, they got greater: whereas some girls worry that they've turned boys gay, I have to worry that I contribute to turning boys atheist.)

I also, sophomore year, had to do more extensive reading up on apologetics and suchlike (and not for the last time, mark my words: it happened again, to a still greater degree, in grad school), and discovered to my delight that, while Christian doctrine may sometimes have to settle for a tie in an intellectual argument, it never loses (and really, most of the time I think it flat-out wins). I also went through a long space of time in which a lot of things happened (not even psychological, really - emotional, though, certainly, and to some extent physically), and the biggest thing I learned was that God really will rescue His people, as many times as necessary.

But on another note, I've also found that, while I can make better rhetorical cases than before, I've become typically too cautious to risk backlash about them. Everything political and religious is so polarized right now that I'm so tired of debate, so tired of arguments, so reluctant to be (inevitably) misunderstood and judged accordingly, and so hyper-aware of how easy it is to sound like that Christian (both to Christians and to non-Christians), even when risking my sounding like that Christian would be the most genuine and loving thing for me to do. I'm actually more conflict-averse than it looks like (for all I can get lecturey, I tend to only do it with people with whom I feel safe, and with the expectation that the person will take it either silently or without open scorn). One thing it's done, to be honest, is that it's made this blog pretty watered-down. I should probably think hard about fixing that.

There's been another big change over the past decade, too: having to transition from being someone whose life is largely organized around school to being someone whose life is largely organized around a career...although clearly, to this point, to call my jobs a "career" overstates the matter. In plain truth, for all college's virtues, it did not help me (though some amount of that was certainly my own fault) to figure out what I wanted to do, or even what could be done by an overscrupulous bookworm who'd spent all her school years with fairly unrealistic ideas about what the non-student world was like. So I went into teaching college English because that sounded at least potentially pretty decent, and then found that it wasn't; despite being academically successful, I'm extremely bad at the simple practical task of making myself do the hard thing on my own time and self-imposed deadlines. In other words, the actual experience of having to teach classes of students scared me too badly, and I didn't have enough help in it (though, thank God, Drs. Kinney and Strong did everything they could for me); though I learned things (some of them academically, many more in other ways), I wasn't willing to do what it took to really be successful. Besides, the compensation and prospects are terrible, and I'd prefer not to live off my parents' money for the rest of my life.

I'm not a career-oriented person, the way my father is. Like my mom, interpersonal relationships are just more important to me. And I need a starting point that doesn't involve more schooling. So right now I'm working a job I don't love, though it's certainly interesting, and I'm looking, in this terrible economy, for an ethical job I can see myself working, and I'm trying to be realistic. The trouble is, it's hard to be realistic when your carrying a Master's in English overqualifies you for a lot of things and your lack of experience underqualifies you for a lot of other things. (Seriously, people: don't ever get a graduate degree unless you mean it. If you're not committed to that career field for life, please think twice, and then think a third time, because gone are the days, assuming they were ever here, when one degree too many might be a good thing.) So I guess I'm trying to mix realism with the sense of this-is-who-I-am-and-I'll-wait-for-someone-to-take-a-chance-on-me that one can feel more genuinely when, like me, you're afraid to feel constant dread again about your job (seriously, it's so much better for the world that I'm not a teacher anymore), and when one has the luxury of generous upper-middle-class parents.

And just because I haven't brought up Albert doesn't mean I haven't wanted to. It's just that some places are places to get sincere and gushy about someone, and then some places are the blog of which your boyfriend is one of only three readers. But yes, for the record, well over half of the past decade has also been shaped by him, as Lewis-style First Friend and then as half of our couple. The most telling thing I can offer is this: I'm working to put Rochester, Alfred, and Binghamton about six hours away from myself, and I'm doing it by choice. Next time I'll close out the celebration. For now, echoing so many of the past thousand-plus entries here, I ought to go to bed.