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I just woke up from an hour nap with E. Napping with your son on a Tuesday afternoon is a very nice thing indeed. His mom is off burning things at U.M.S.L. I had to run up to Petsmart for her as they are doing a makeshift trashcan and pine shaving firing today - they'd run out of shavings. The first time she ever did this technique there the local fire department was most put out at not having been forewarned, but they are used to her annual end of semester pillar of smoke at this point - at least I hope they are.
We have extra - as yet not planted - plants as a result of our weekend. We went up to the ville for Friend M. Rice's bachelor party and we hit the Spark Brother's Customer Appreciation Day at their nursery in Louisiana, Missouri on the way home - they gave our family a free apple tree with our five dollar purchase (twenty five dollars in blueberry and raspberry bushes). The bachelor party was a low key affair involving a pontoon boat, many men, a tilt-a-whirl boat dock, and some very tasty grilled steaks. Jes hung out with Jen all weekend doing all things knit related while I was off with the boys playing freshwater, cool weather lake-pirate. Our adventures ended of an evening in Adirondacks with Partagas sipping a probable beverage of island pedigree- not bad.
baby calls - more rich prose anon
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At some point a person lived here who was a good gardener; however, what survives of that seems to be random. The peony are doing well, I bought a double level wire support for them yesterday. I also did the first mow and power washed the back deck. We have this odd wooden platform at the back of our yard, opposite the garage. I borrowed Gary's power washer in the fall and just got around to doing the deck yesterday. I had no idea how well that would work, the deck looks like we just put it in and I haven't sealed it yet. I might do that tonight after Jes gets back from teaching her class.
Power washing is labor intensive. The deck is small and it took me two tanks of gas and a chunk of the afternoon to get things how I wanted them. I'm sure my neighbors are loving how much debris I hosed into the alley. Ah well, I wonder when the sweeper will come. We've been getting so much rain of late that I doubt the mess will long remain.
In answer to your question, yes we felt the earthquake Friday morning; it woke us up. Our cheap Ikea bed was swaying like a Coral Courts' magic fingers special. Oddly, my school had an earthquake drill scheduled for third hour Friday and my grammar class was doing a worksheet that was unintentionally all about earthquakes. It was also, according to my writer's almanac, the anniversary of the great San Francisco quake.
Junior needs lunch, so I am off.
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I have had an intense entropy field around me for the last few days (weeks?). The truck battery died maybe two weeks ago and the leads were too corroded to save. I had to jump it from the Forenza several times to get it to the garage and in the process perhaps I killed the Forenza's alternator... or the bad serpentine belt in the Forenza killed it. Regardless, I was driving home from U.M.S.L. on the highway with the kid in the back when everything electric in the Forenza went dead. By keeping the revolutions high, I got close to home before the engine died in the middle of an intersection with a school bus honking at me. Luckily, there was also a fire truck at the four way stop and the whole fire department helped me push the car uphill to the curb. I had the stroller in the trunk, so E and I just walked home.
It took more than a week for the dealership to fix the Forenza - new serpentine belt, new alternator, and a recalled water pump for 188 $ under warranty. We got it back last night and I was driving to see Kim's new baby after school today (boy - Alex - born last night), again with E in the back, and in the middle of a rainstorm, on a busy highway, the driver's side windshield wiper broke loose, it broke the passenger side blade loose, they fought it out on the hood - in rush hour rainstorm traffic by the airport - and the passenger side wiper blade ripped the driver's blade off the car and pitched it off behind us into the speeding traffic. I did not retrieve it. I pulled over, dislodged the broken-but-surviving blade, and made a bee line for the #$##$$##$$ local garage that put them on improperly three weeks ago during our inspection. We got two new ones for free (he broke two during his attempt to do the driver's side) and the garage owner made a further show of contrition for nearly killing us by yelling at his employees and apologizing profusely.
The desktop computer upstairs fried last night. It has a fatal error in the operating system. I have no back up as my brother accidentally kicked the external hard drive and killed it. A limb fell off the tree in the back and dented our fire pit during the same storm in which the wipers rebelled. The dog pooped in the nursery several times this week as ongoing fallout from his pseudo stroke - often at three a.m. The cat peed in two different laundry baskets - one of them had several visits. The movie we rented last night was scratched and kept skipping... etc.
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It's been some time since my old friend insomnia came calling. I went to sleep before nine and now here it is only a few hours later and I am wide awake with the weight of the world on my shoulders. I have a line from Simon and Garfunkle running through my head, "Kathy, I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping". I can interpret that easily enough as an expression of the conflicting desire to talk to my wife while knowing that she needs her sleep - so I'll talk to you instead (and her later). If I had anything important to say I'd wake her - how's that for a teaser? Have I sold you on reading further with that sub-textual promise to say nothing of consequence? It's not the destination, but the journey that matters - so let's wander/wonder.
What ails me in this long dark tea time of the soul (that's the Adams tag)? Only that I can't breathe. I took the day off from school today and may well do the same for tomorrow. Both E and I have a nice spring cough combined with feelings of the general crud variety. I'm not sure if this is allergy or flu, but it sucks either way. There is something antithetical about spring colds, as though we should have shed all things viral with the winter.
I took several naps today, and I imagine that therein rests the cause of my erstwhile restlessness (is it erstwhile if it continues into the present? I think not). Of course, I am as ready as my students are for the year to be over. I hope to come back next year with renewed excitement for my profession, but this year has been a hard one. We've had several events that cause one to question both human nature and the validity of the educative enterprise - I can't/won't write about them here in concrete terms, but in the abstract suffice it to say that no one I work with finds teacher retention statistics remotely surprising. Very few new teachers remain in the profession.
I love teaching, but the demands are... demanding. I'm just not sure what else I am qualified to do. The bookish and verbose, sans ambition for more than happiness, are never in high demand - a fact much touted by the non-demanded historians observing such things throughout the ages. I know I'd make a good lottery winner, so here's to hoping that tax on desperation pans out for me. I shouldn't complain. The bills are paid, we're all in relatively good health, I'm just not feeling all that actualized - damn that Maslow and the hierarchy he rode in on.
At times I feel like a chrysalis looking at his watch and wondering when nature will get around to that whole apotheosis thing. Perhaps that's the problem, there will be no external trigger for my personal getting-my-shit-together moment. I have this son now, and if ever there was a reason for me to get transcendent - he and his mother both deserve to have a husband and father who is happier than I am.
My work exhausts me and that is no fun for the people who love me. The general wisdom is that this gets easier the longer that you do it... I've been teaching on and off since 1997 and I haven't gotten less stressed - if anything my increased skill has made me more stressed out. There has to be a knack to it that I just haven't mastered yet, I think it might have a great deal to do with procrastination. The stress originates for me in the labor forestalled - everything I have to put off until later since I have no time or energy for it today.
OK Joe, you old hero with a thousand myth based rationalizations, how do I follow my bliss when I don't know what my bliss is?
Joe says, "Be open and then follow the call, it's as simple as falling or falling in love."
Great, thanks Joe. I love those cryptic "you'll know it when you know it" responses. Why does ultimate truth always have to get dressed up in solipsisms? Chicken meet egg, rinse repeat.
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
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Owwwww. This weather change stuff is giving me a headache. We had a cold front come through last night with a freeze warning so I covered the peony with a sheet, the butterfly and rose bushes each got plastic tubs over them, and all the tropicals came in off of the front porch. Our living room looks like a botanical garden and the kitchen looks like an English herb garden. It feels like the same radical movement is going on in my sinus cavities...ugh literal headache accompanies metaphoric one, film at eleven.
I just woke up from an hour nap with E. Napping with your son on a Tuesday afternoon is a very nice thing indeed. His mom is off burning things at U.M.S.L. I had to run up to Petsmart for her as they are doing a makeshift trashcan and pine shaving firing today - they'd run out of shavings. The first time she ever did this technique there the local fire department was most put out at not having been forewarned, but they are used to her annual end of semester pillar of smoke at this point - at least I hope they are.
We have extra - as yet not planted - plants as a result of our weekend. We went up to the ville for Friend M. Rice's bachelor party and we hit the Spark Brother's Customer Appreciation Day at their nursery in Louisiana, Missouri on the way home - they gave our family a free apple tree with our five dollar purchase (twenty five dollars in blueberry and raspberry bushes). The bachelor party was a low key affair involving a pontoon boat, many men, a tilt-a-whirl boat dock, and some very tasty grilled steaks. Jes hung out with Jen all weekend doing all things knit related while I was off with the boys playing freshwater, cool weather lake-pirate. Our adventures ended of an evening in Adirondacks with Partagas sipping a probable beverage of island pedigree- not bad.
baby calls - more rich prose anon
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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Sunday, April 20, 2008
The tulips that I did not plant do not seem to be reacting well to the Ortho Napalm that I spread on the front lawn yesterday - I wont do the back in deference to dog and child. As this is our first spring in this house we have no idea what bulbs are in the ground, so the tulips in front and the daisies in back were a surprise - the weeds in the front were no surprise as the house had been empty for some time before we bought it - foreclosed and then flipped.
At some point a person lived here who was a good gardener; however, what survives of that seems to be random. The peony are doing well, I bought a double level wire support for them yesterday. I also did the first mow and power washed the back deck. We have this odd wooden platform at the back of our yard, opposite the garage. I borrowed Gary's power washer in the fall and just got around to doing the deck yesterday. I had no idea how well that would work, the deck looks like we just put it in and I haven't sealed it yet. I might do that tonight after Jes gets back from teaching her class.
Power washing is labor intensive. The deck is small and it took me two tanks of gas and a chunk of the afternoon to get things how I wanted them. I'm sure my neighbors are loving how much debris I hosed into the alley. Ah well, I wonder when the sweeper will come. We've been getting so much rain of late that I doubt the mess will long remain.
In answer to your question, yes we felt the earthquake Friday morning; it woke us up. Our cheap Ikea bed was swaying like a Coral Courts' magic fingers special. Oddly, my school had an earthquake drill scheduled for third hour Friday and my grammar class was doing a worksheet that was unintentionally all about earthquakes. It was also, according to my writer's almanac, the anniversary of the great San Francisco quake.
Junior needs lunch, so I am off.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
Breakin 2: The Electric K.J.
I have had an intense entropy field around me for the last few days (weeks?). The truck battery died maybe two weeks ago and the leads were too corroded to save. I had to jump it from the Forenza several times to get it to the garage and in the process perhaps I killed the Forenza's alternator... or the bad serpentine belt in the Forenza killed it. Regardless, I was driving home from U.M.S.L. on the highway with the kid in the back when everything electric in the Forenza went dead. By keeping the revolutions high, I got close to home before the engine died in the middle of an intersection with a school bus honking at me. Luckily, there was also a fire truck at the four way stop and the whole fire department helped me push the car uphill to the curb. I had the stroller in the trunk, so E and I just walked home.
It took more than a week for the dealership to fix the Forenza - new serpentine belt, new alternator, and a recalled water pump for 188 $ under warranty. We got it back last night and I was driving to see Kim's new baby after school today (boy - Alex - born last night), again with E in the back, and in the middle of a rainstorm, on a busy highway, the driver's side windshield wiper broke loose, it broke the passenger side blade loose, they fought it out on the hood - in rush hour rainstorm traffic by the airport - and the passenger side wiper blade ripped the driver's blade off the car and pitched it off behind us into the speeding traffic. I did not retrieve it. I pulled over, dislodged the broken-but-surviving blade, and made a bee line for the #$##$$##$$ local garage that put them on improperly three weeks ago during our inspection. We got two new ones for free (he broke two during his attempt to do the driver's side) and the garage owner made a further show of contrition for nearly killing us by yelling at his employees and apologizing profusely.
The desktop computer upstairs fried last night. It has a fatal error in the operating system. I have no back up as my brother accidentally kicked the external hard drive and killed it. A limb fell off the tree in the back and dented our fire pit during the same storm in which the wipers rebelled. The dog pooped in the nursery several times this week as ongoing fallout from his pseudo stroke - often at three a.m. The cat peed in two different laundry baskets - one of them had several visits. The movie we rented last night was scratched and kept skipping... etc.
Monday, April 07, 2008
This evening's seance guests include Joseph Campbell, Abraham Harold Maslow, and Douglas Adams...
It's been some time since my old friend insomnia came calling. I went to sleep before nine and now here it is only a few hours later and I am wide awake with the weight of the world on my shoulders. I have a line from Simon and Garfunkle running through my head, "Kathy, I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping". I can interpret that easily enough as an expression of the conflicting desire to talk to my wife while knowing that she needs her sleep - so I'll talk to you instead (and her later). If I had anything important to say I'd wake her - how's that for a teaser? Have I sold you on reading further with that sub-textual promise to say nothing of consequence? It's not the destination, but the journey that matters - so let's wander/wonder.
What ails me in this long dark tea time of the soul (that's the Adams tag)? Only that I can't breathe. I took the day off from school today and may well do the same for tomorrow. Both E and I have a nice spring cough combined with feelings of the general crud variety. I'm not sure if this is allergy or flu, but it sucks either way. There is something antithetical about spring colds, as though we should have shed all things viral with the winter.
I took several naps today, and I imagine that therein rests the cause of my erstwhile restlessness (is it erstwhile if it continues into the present? I think not). Of course, I am as ready as my students are for the year to be over. I hope to come back next year with renewed excitement for my profession, but this year has been a hard one. We've had several events that cause one to question both human nature and the validity of the educative enterprise - I can't/won't write about them here in concrete terms, but in the abstract suffice it to say that no one I work with finds teacher retention statistics remotely surprising. Very few new teachers remain in the profession.
I love teaching, but the demands are... demanding. I'm just not sure what else I am qualified to do. The bookish and verbose, sans ambition for more than happiness, are never in high demand - a fact much touted by the non-demanded historians observing such things throughout the ages. I know I'd make a good lottery winner, so here's to hoping that tax on desperation pans out for me. I shouldn't complain. The bills are paid, we're all in relatively good health, I'm just not feeling all that actualized - damn that Maslow and the hierarchy he rode in on.
At times I feel like a chrysalis looking at his watch and wondering when nature will get around to that whole apotheosis thing. Perhaps that's the problem, there will be no external trigger for my personal getting-my-shit-together moment. I have this son now, and if ever there was a reason for me to get transcendent - he and his mother both deserve to have a husband and father who is happier than I am.
My work exhausts me and that is no fun for the people who love me. The general wisdom is that this gets easier the longer that you do it... I've been teaching on and off since 1997 and I haven't gotten less stressed - if anything my increased skill has made me more stressed out. There has to be a knack to it that I just haven't mastered yet, I think it might have a great deal to do with procrastination. The stress originates for me in the labor forestalled - everything I have to put off until later since I have no time or energy for it today.
OK Joe, you old hero with a thousand myth based rationalizations, how do I follow my bliss when I don't know what my bliss is?
Joe says, "Be open and then follow the call, it's as simple as falling or falling in love."
Great, thanks Joe. I love those cryptic "you'll know it when you know it" responses. Why does ultimate truth always have to get dressed up in solipsisms? Chicken meet egg, rinse repeat.
New Plaything
So..... the wheel..... I think I am beginning to understand. If I apply kinetic pressure I seem to get an equal, although opposite, reaction. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......
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