Running bug

I think I've caught it. Now that I finally got back to it, I REALLY don't want to give it up....Ever....Again.

There's a race in Louisville KY in February that I've got my eye on. We'll see if I work up the courage to do it.

I LOVE running. I keep wondering why I ever took a hiatus....and then the reality of pregnancy and postpartum jumps into my mind. It will be interesting to see how I handle it next time around. Hopefully no more 5-year gaps!

I've been reading about women and ultramarathoning. Women have a better chance of keeping up with men in longer races (the longer the race, the narrower the pace gap gets). And older women often beat younger women. This gives me SO MUCH HOPE in terms of being able to keep doing this, and do it better than I do now once I can devote more energy to it (ie, when my kids are older, so the long runs early in the morning won't make me a bad mom because the kids are grown up and on to other things).

I really think that this could be appealing to me for a number of reasons. My first basis is just how much I loved Tecumseh two weeks ago. It was breathtakingly beautiful to be out in the woods hearing the wind and the snow falling. And the distance and mental coping that the hills required were such a fun game for me. The idea of running races all over the place, meeting lots of people and swapping stories, jokes, and battle scars....it just all seems like a whole lot of fun.

Going home

Have you ever wanted something for so long that when it finally happened you couldn't quite get your mind around it??

This morning they called Ben to tell him he had gotten a job in Blue Ash, Ohio. When he called me, I had just dropped Bee off at preschool. It was one of the only times in my life that I've been truly speechless....I see now where Kristeva and some others talk about non-language. All I could do was scream excitedly, laugh, and cry.

Some of the not-so-rosy realities (double-renting for up to 60 days, figuring out where we'll live, BUYING a house, needing a new preschool, losing WonderLab, losing the University library) have started to sink in.

But I'm going home. All those not-so-perfect elements pale in comparison. It's going to be so good. I can't even stand it!

Oh.....my.....gosh

I woke up this morning at 7:15, looked out the window and thought "2 inches my eye."



And thus began the adventure. We got ready, me in my cold gear and Ben and kids in coats, and took off along a snowy and a little slick version of the roads toward where the race was supposed to start.

Anyone hear anything ominous in that sentence? There was a change of plan because of the snow, and they started the race from the finish and made it into an out-and-back rather than a point-to-point. This nearly made me cry, as I was convinced that when I got to the new starting line AN HOUR LATE they wouldn't let me run. Luckily, they were planning for those few of us who drove up to the REAL start (I guess since they didn't send out any notification they expected miscommunication....go figure). I gave my bib number and name to an accommodating young woman with a blue clipboard, and a very nice man named Rick and I were off. He kept a really fast pace, and had interesting things to talk about. It was a nice first 8 miles, though the slickness of the packed-down snow made things interesting. After that, he took off and I dropped back and, for most of the rest of the race, was alone. I passed people, both those who were far ahead of me coming back after the turnaround and those who were slowing up, and occasionally would swap a joke with someone, but that was about it.

The woods were beautiful....the snow was the wet sticky kind that settles on individual branches. And quiet. I could hear the snow falling. It was eerie in a good way, ethereal...I did lots of praying and talking to myself.

Things were MUDDY for the second half of the race, coming back. What do you expect when 500 people or so trample snow on the way out, and then do it again coming back, right? The best part was a hill with ropes strung along the trees like banisters to help us go down and then (coming back) pull up along. I think my favorite part was the really big spruce trees....I think they were mile 9-ish going out (so then mile 17-ish coming back).

The runners were awesome. Everyone was courteous about the trail conditions, getting out of each others' way so people could pass, cheering each other on. At one point three of us backed up on one side of a stream crossing and two other runners were on the other side. It was WAY too wide to jump, and there was no way anybody wanted wet feet. So we took turns, one from each side, until we all made it. Just stopped and waited like good little turn-takers! I said to the guy in front of me "It's so nice that people are nice!" He said "Yeah, it's good that people are nice." That, to me, is a testament of the better parts of human nature.




Oh, and I finished it in 4:51:40....unofficially. I just took an hour off the clock time at my finish, since I started an hour late. We'll have to see how I did for real once they adjust for everyone and post results. I was shooting for 5 hours as a "hooray, wouldn't it be nice if it's nice weather and I can do really well!?" So I'm proud of myself.

I'd love to do one on the road after this....I bet I could kick the crap out of it.

Tecumseh

I've been running like a crazy person, long runs like I'd never run before. I've been absolutely excited and overjoyed at the prospect of running my first marathon, especially one on a trail. I love the environment of trail running, I've always been better at it than at road running.

In looking at the results from the last few years, I learned something....men usually outnumber women by about 3-to-1 at this race. I started to get a little intimidated.

And now,on the eve of the event, I have to admit that I'm more than just a little skeptical/afraid: the weather forecast is calling for a high of freezing, 6 mph winds, and snow. From 7 am til 7 pm. Effectively the whole race.

And yet, I'm going to do it. Attempt it, at very least. I've never, ever, EVER had a "did not finish" result. I hope that tomorrow won't change that.

604 miles

Out of curiosity, as well as a desire to NOT work on my proposal, I just added up how many miles I will have run from the time I started training until the day I finish the marathon.

I'll have run all but 16 miles of the distance from my old house to my Aunt Ann's house, where we used to go to visit every summer. It was a looooooooong drive with four little kids, but we loved seeing her, her husband and girls SO much. I miss them a lot, and I think I'll always associate the ocean with memories of them and their house.

So maybe the weekend after the marathon I'll have to do a 16 miler, just to finish it out and remember and be glad.

I love to grade....

"Me encantan los papas que mi madre cocina. Para el postre, comemos los gallitos."

I think I'd like to see this menu, really. :-)

Balancing act

I feel like I'm balancing well these days. Sometimes my life overwhelms me...I feel like I'm doing a really good job at one of my roles but none of the others, or a passable job at most of my roles with one seriously neglected, or any variation on combinations of those.

Lately I've had time to run, kept up with my house, done my visiting teaching, read my scriptures, made cupcakes for Bee's class, taken J to all sorts of museum-y places, written on my proposal, had great talks with Ben, run a race together (well, sort of), and managed to do all of my teaching stuff on time or early.

I feel so different than I did at this point last year, when I was drowning in lists and exams and dying for a house and hating teaching because the classes were mediocre and sleep-deprived because I was nursing a baby and hating myself because I felt overweight and unattractive and angry that I couldn't help Bee work through her anger issues any faster....etc etc etc.

I'm thinking that the ebb and flow of life is a good thing, because if I didn't have years like last year (that are horrific), I wouldn't enjoy the moment I'm in right now NEARLY as much. I'm grateful for the pendulum swinging. Hope it never gets stuck in an "I hate my life" phase.

Teaching

There's not much that I love more than putting finishing touches on a lesson that I feel really good about, one that I know will keep my students interested and will teach them the material effectively.

I love food, and I love listening to my students talk about food. It's a lot of fun. It's a rare thing that I'm truly excited about teaching, even though I always enjoy and look forward to it. Tomorrow should be a good day.

Knobstone mini

I registered for this at the last minute when I found out that it uses some of the same trail as the Tecumseh marathon. I had started to seriously doubt my ability to finish the 26.2 on a trail in under their cut-ff time, so I thought I'd check it out and see how I did. This is the first trail race I've ever done. I mean, I ran cross-country in high school, but this was a whole different animal.

I'd have to say that the highlight was miles 4-7 when I ran in a little mini-pack with a girl named Heather and a guy I called 98-marathon-man (he said something about doing 98 marathons) until I met him after the race. He was a great pace-keeper, and we had some decent race chatter. I only used my iPod for the first 40 minutes or so of the race.

When I started up the hill after the 7-mile mark, I was seriously wishing for some excuse to not finish. It was a doozie, nothing like you'd expect in a "flat" Midwest state. But I survived and kept going.

There was a turn-off point at mile 10 when you could finish and just do the ten-mile race or go the last three miles to make the 1/2 marathon. I think that's cruel and unusual....mile 10 is my drop-dead point. But I kept going, and from there I had no alternative but to finish. I fell on a tight, tiny switchback at around mile 11, and then twisted my ankle pretty good someplace in the 7 minutes after that....was NOT happy at the close spacing. It was okay, though....recoverable.

They had great cookies, soup, hot chocolate, and apple cider, besides the usual water, Gatorade stuff. The kids really liked it....the hung around with some friends while Ben did the 5K, and then Ben kept them busy til I finished.

I finished in 2:16. I think I'll be able to do this marathon....maybe. :-)

Fear

The older I get, the more scared I seem to be.

When I was in high school and just starting to figure out running training, I would just put on a pair of cotton shorts, one of my Dad's old Hanes t-shirts, and whatever running shoes I happened to have at the time. I had no brand loyalty, didn't wear a watch, didn't listen to music, ran alone and unarmed. Took no water, just busted out mile after mile with no worries. I once ran 13 miles cold (with no training for it) as a 12-year-old just because my cross-country coach wanted to see how far I could last, and we stopped because HE was done, not me. He told me "Well, you may not know it, but I think your parents genetically engineered a distance running machine."

I don't run fast. But I can run for a really long time. And I LOVE it! It makes my life so much better for so many reasons.

But these days I'm scared and encumbered. I'm still pretty low-maintenance clothing and shoes-wise...cheap Soffee shorts, cotton shirts and (for the moment) Saucony running shoes (which completely make my day every time I lace them up). But I take an iPod, which would have been unthinkable for me before...sometimes I need the music to drown out the anger and frustration that running helps me deal with. When Ben and I are struggling or I'm worried about how I manage the kids or my school work, it's good to not dwell on the problems for the entire 2+ hour run that I'm working on. I wear a watch now; Ben has a deadline for getting to work, so I have to make sure I'm home in time for him to leave. I'm scared to death of cars in the pre-dawn half light, so I wear my red flashing light. There are some sketchy trailers back in the trees on one section of my run, so I carry pepper spray. For my long, LONG runs (more than 8 miles) I finally gave in and bought a belt to carry two water bottles so that I don't die of dehydration. None of this used to be a problem, and it sort of frustrates me that it is now.

It almost feels like the only way for me to have that "I just love to run and be free" feeling is to run an organized race. The race takes care of over-thinking things (I focus on the race instead), the timing (they do it for me), the half light and traffic (they block it off), the scary people (there are other runners on the course and the course is usually closed), and the water issues (lovely aid stations!). So I get to just GO.

But why does it have to be that way? I hate being scared of all the extra stuff that threatens to keep me away from something I enjoy so much.

The worst thing is that it's not just running. I worry about nearly everything. And I try to keep focused on the moment, but sometimes it just doesn't work! I think the worst parts of growing up/old aren't the physical things, but the mental ones. Hopefully I can manage to keep keeping it together.

Stupid people suck

Aren't I so articulate?

So, despite my wearing white and a blinking red LED flasher light that's visible for over 1/4 mile, some idiot ran me off the road today. I fell and skinned up both hands, hit my left hip pretty good and I think maybe twisted my left ankle (we'll see how it stiffens up, it might not be too bad). The thing that ticks me off is that we were on a straight stretch of road where there's good visibility in both directions, there was no oncoming traffic in the other lane, and I interfered in this guy's morning for all of 15 seconds!! I mean, seriously, can't they give me 18 inches? He seemed to think it would be funny to flip on his brights and then run as close to the edge line (which I was on the BERM SIDE of) as he could. I get really pissed off that other people being stupid ends up with me getting hurt.

And I know, that's just how life goes sometimes, but it still makes me angry, and makes me feel victimized.

So I just hope that I can make it through six more weeks of early morning runs without some idiot killing me, so I can actually run the marathon and mark it off my list!

Bee loves Toy Story

So much that we buy her the "boy" pull-ups that have Woody and Buzz Lightyear on them, rather than the Dora the Explorer ones she used to prefer. And she has a Toy Story scooter.

Today, from the back seat, she made her baby doll (that looks nothing like Woody, but she treats as though it is him) say "Somebody's toys in the water hole!"

I roared with internal laughter, but didn't dare let her hear for fear that she'd never say it again. :-)

MARATHON!

I've decided. For sure, shelled out my $65, decided. I'm going to run a marathon (barring injury and disaster) on December 4th. I must be out of my mind.

But having a race on the horizon will make it easier for me to keep running regularly and with purpose. I'm excited about this! Scared too, but mostly excited.

Hmmm....this combination of feelings is a lot like what I felt coming into graduate school, but without all of the feelings of unconquerable inadequacy. With this I at least know that I can run myself into shape for it. I don't know that any amount of thinking myself into shape will make me feel like I actually know what I'm doing as an academic!

Half marathon

I can't believe I didn't post about it this weekend! Better late than never, though.

I finished the Air Force 1/2 marathon on Wright Patterson Air Force Base on Saturday in 1:55:44. I was 838th overall(of 4300), 217th for women (of 2246), and 46th in my age group (of 363). I finished faster than I had even hoped...I thought two hours would be pushing it. It was a great day, good race, really well planned and well supported. The course was nice, though I'm excited about trail running...I'm always better at that than road racing.

I had two favorite things. The first was the fact that they printed our names on our race bib (apparently that's what they call the number these days...I'm so out of the loop), and all the people on base standing along the route (security, families out on their lawns, whatever) would cheer for us by name. It was pretty cool. The other was the fact that they had all sorts of planes out along the finish, and others doing flyovers. J kept pointing and saying "Pane!" It was great.

Even though at mile ten I felt a little like the road-kill opossum that I barely avoided running through (yuck), I'm really proud of myself!

"This class is BORING!"

So maybe it's not my job to entertain you, it's my job to teach you Spanish, and that means that some days we will do actual work in class on concepts that are difficult. I am NOT a comedian, a reality TV star, or a video game. Sorry about your luck.

GAH!!!

Tutor lab

It's the bane of my existence. I have to come and sit in my office for an hour each week...an hour which, of course, has no relationship to the other blocks of time that I'm on campus...and wait for students to come drop in for help.

Which they don't. Ever.

Biggest. Waste. Of. My. Life.

Today's run

Today I did the last really long run before the half marathon in two weeks.

I won't narrate a mile-by-mile because 1) I'm not that dedicated, 2) My memory isn't that good, and 3) It would be really boring.

But it was really nice, 68 degrees and breezy, really blue sky (and my route went through a lot of corn and soybean fields). My slowest mile was about 10:45, my fastest about 8:30. I averaged 9:53.

And I ran 10 miles.

I'm feeling really sore, and stiff, and like I'll only ever want to drink (not eat) ever again. I'm just glad I did it and lived to tell the tale. :-)

Marathon?

So, running has been good to me and good for me all my life. I really enjoy it, and I've loved getting back into it! I'm so glad that Cara gave me the excuse...tagging along for this half marathon is probably the only thing that could have made me actually start training again.

And, in true craziness fashion, I've started to consider doing a marathon. I think a road marathon would kill me right now, because people go so fast. My whole life I liked running in the woods better than on the road....I think because of growing up in the valley. So there's a marathon in December here in Bloomington that I'm thinking about doing.

It's called the Tecumseh Trail Marathon, and they have it in December. The race details look pretty gory, but pretty awesome...and trail running is my kind of running. I'm getting excited about it. I think that if I finish the half well, and have kept running through school starting (which will be the biggie) that I'm going to do it. Advice, any of you runner-type folks??

Slow and steady

It does not win races. I mean, who are we kidding? There's always someone out there that can do "fast and steady." I realized this, like most of any worthwhile thoughts I have, while I was running (WITHOUT my iPod) on Saturday.

Like today. I got up early and ran, got kids breakfasted and me bathed and dressed, and then out to play for a while. Settled J for naps, got Bee set up for movie time (she chose "Finding Nemo" for today), cleaned up the house, washed diapers and another load of laundry. Woke J up, did lunch for everyone, left to go buy Gran's computer. Went to Target to get the tent so we can go camping, deposited a check at the bank, filled up the car with gas, bought a parking pass for this semester. Got Ben from work, dropped off recycling, came home, did dinner. Bathed and put kids to bed, cleaned up the house (again), did some spot deep-cleaning (sinks, toilets, dining room floor). Started another load of laundry, put away important papers, paid two bills that can't be set up for automatic pay, finished my presentation for Friday (don't even want to talk about it).

That's a lot, right? Well, I didn't get an abstract sent to AL, I didn't work on my proposal, I didn't get any of the washed laundry folded, and I didn't read my scriptures.

Slow and steady makes progress, and eventually gets things done. But it's not enough to get everything done all the time. I get frustrated about not being good enough, or whatever you want to call it, since I never finish. But. I guess I'll just keep going, and eventually it will come together.

Wildflowers

Yesterday was my turn to host book group. I made fun food that I never get an excuse to (cheesecake, featherlight muffins, chocolate crinkle cookies, fresh fruit with honey, cucumber sandwiches on rye bread...yummmmm.....) and got my house in shape. It was GREAT fun.

As I was at the farmers' market in search of cucumbers, I saw a lady selling bouquets of flowers. They had bright yellow black-eyed Susans, dark purple butterfly bush blossoms, and queen Anne's lace. I asked her for two bunches, and she responded with a sort of surprised look on her face, "They don't last very long!" And I said that I didn't mind, that they reminded me of home. Because they did.

I love wildflowers, and the untidy, unkempt bunches they make. Reminds me a little of my life - chaotic and mismatched, hodgepodged together, full of stray bugs from the field, but still pretty nice. And an overall beautiful thing.

Ha, beat THAT!

This morning I ran 8.3 miles. It took me about an hour and thirty-five minutes. Now, sixty-four ounces of water and twenty-five minutes of rest later, I think maybe I'm okay. :-)

It's not an Olympic accomplishment or anything, but I'm pretty proud of myself. I haven't run that far since I was too young to know the difference (about 13 years old, I think).

I love to run.

Running playlist

So. Sometimes when I run I take my iPod. Not always, because I like to keep pace without any help. But music adds another dimension to all the things that I wrote about in the last post.

Today I put it on shuffle (which I hardly ever do). Here's the playlist it built for my 4 mile run today.

Juanes "Un dia normal"
Dolly Parton "Wildflowers" from the Trio album (I listened to it twice)
Brad Paisley "The Cigar Song" (which is hilarious)
Beatles "I'm Lookin Through You"
Nickel Creek "This Side" (I liked their first album the best, but this is my favorite from the second album)
Linda Ronstadt "The Pain of Lovin You" (hugely ironic/fitting for this moment)
Nora Jones "Sunrise" (LOVE her voice...try to play her piano, fail miserably)
Vince Guaraldi "Linus and Lucy" (can't even comment on that one)
Ismael Serrano "Caperucita" (Thanks to AL for that one...still cry EVERY TIME I hear it)
Avril Lavigne "Anything But Ordinary" (odd that I sympathize with a teeny bopper pop star, no? Mostly for nostalgia and Brina's sake, but still something to it. :-) )


Anyway. It was a good list, and a really good run. And I'll save you the trouble of adding up the length of each song to see how long it took me to run the 4 miles (because I know you all have the time and interest to do so :-) and say that I ran it in a little less than 35 minutes. WAHOO!

6 miles

Well, actually, it was more like 5.8. Not near as impressive as 2374. But the 5.8 I RAN!

I'm training for a half marathon. My mother-in-law (who I think is really cool, by the way, different though we may be) is doing one, and invited me to tag along.

Finishing will be a stretch, and I haven't run like this in years. But it feels great to be running regularly again, and timing and training instead of just sort of ambling along when I get the whim. I love pretty much everything about distance running - being outside, the rhythm, the solitude, the thought processes, the mind games...

Hooray for running!

Flowers

I had beautiful, lush, full flower pots. My first attempt at potted plants, and they looked GREAT! I planted them in March, and they were still flowering because I was careful to "dead head" them often. They were snapdragons, oreja de raton, ivy, a cultivar version of forget-me-nots that is hardier, and a tall plant in the middle that I'm forgetting the name of.

Why all the past tense, you may wonder? Well, despite the fact that no matter which way he came into the house he walked by one pot or the other (since I placed one pot on each porch), Ben killed them while I was gone.

2374 miles

I drove all of them. Alone with my kids. How adventurous, right? So many of the moms I encountered on the trip made comments about the impossibility of the trip, how (fill in adjective, some positive some negative) I was, etc etc. Basically I just feel like if I want my kids (and particularly Bee) to feel like they can be independent, I need to show them that things like this can be done.

The last two weeks were a whirlwind of changing plans. I usually don't operate well on a "let's fly by the seat of our pants" sort of course, but this worked out all right. Ben's extended family has a reunion in Bethany Beach Delaware every year in July. Then his immediate family (or what parts of it can make it) go to a second beach week somewhere else. It amounts to two weeks of Bee saying "I'm just going to the beach WITHOUT sunscream."

It was the best trip I've ever had with Ben's family....the sisters-in-law all (well, missing Alta, which was sad, but all of us who were in the state at least) finally had a good long late-night talk. Ben's older sister was the missing link in the equation, I think. It was finally made okay for all of us to participate in corralling all of the kids, regardless of who they belonged to. The result was more peace than we've ever had (still LOTS of chaos....9 kids on the beach for two weeks, you sort of have to expect it, right?), and just lots of revelatory conversations for all us girls....oh, and Eric and Joel too. :-) So Bee didn't get beat up (which usually has happened) and I kept my sanity because we all started actually communicating with one another! This helped me in a lot of ways, but I think that it mostly changed my understanding of these people who had been so mysterious to me.

I'm really glad that I decided to change my plan and stay for the second week. My kids are now all bronzed (though J is a little sand rashed....he liked to eat it, and so it ended up in his diaper) and quite happy. After that trip, I'm ready (at least I think) to finally go back to real life....writing and working. I've finally recovered (thanks to a wonderful family experience) from the horrific year that I lost to my exams, and feel like I can move forward.

Interesting

I've said a few things about immigration before, but not much because the issue is so volatile and I feel like I don't have anything other than my mission experience on which to base an opinion.

That said, I think that the majority of immigrants to this country these days are well-intentioned and come here out of a desire for a better life (not to run drugs a la Jan Brewer's ridiculous claims).

Along those lines, I think that this article is really interesting. Especially the fact that rather than take the jobs, people are sending hate mail. Take that, all you people who claim that the "American work ethic" (whatever on Earth THAT is) is just fine.

*sigh*

What . . . a . . . trip

Sanibel

Ben and I dashed away for a quick trip last week. We spent Friday-Tuesday on Sanibel Island in Florida. I've wanted to go there ever since I was a little girl, and given the impending doom that BP has unleashed on the Gulf, Ben was kind enough to put our Glacier National Park trip on hold so that I could fulfill a childhood heart's desire.

We opted for bikes, and I think it's largely the way to go. The "Ding" Darling wildlife refuge, for example....I'm sure it would be fine in a car....really, fine. Okay. Probably not. It was great to be able to hear all the birds and other wildlife before we came up on them so that we could slow down, get out the camera, be quiet and see them before they ran away. We also saw mangrove crabs and some enormous fish that I'm sure we would have missed were it not for the need to take some water breaks.

The shelling was great (of course, a number of people told us that it's better in winter, and that this year is an off year....whatever. It's still better than anything I've seen in my whole life). I have a bathtub full of shells upstairs soaking and waiting to be packed away. I want to use them to decorate a house someday, if we ever manage to get into one! My prize find was a murex shell, all bleached white, about the size of my thumb and in really great shape. It made the early morning of the last day we were there worth it (sand flea bites and all!). I got up at 4:30 to be out on the beach at 5 for a 7:15 low tide. Yeah, I'm a little obsessed. I found such great shells, though!

We went to the Jacaranda to eat (good, but nothing great), and Ellington's for dessert and jazz (we were later getting there than we planned, and I WISH we could have heard more). The chocolate mousse was up there in the "best things I've ever eaten" category, and the group was really good. It was sort of funny, the bassist, drummer, and trumpet player were all sort of late-middle-aged or older, and the pianist/singer was my age. They were excellent, though.

Ben's request was that we go kayaking. I was trepidatious at best, and was pretty sure we'd drop the camera to the bottom of Tarpon Bay. But once we got going, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed myself. We saw a few birds, but mostly some pretty crazy jumping fish! My favorite thing of the day was the Anhinga we saw. They're birds that can dive down into the water, swim a while, come up to look around, dive down again, and repeat the process a number of times before they fly up out of the water again. I was flabbergasted by them.

It was a great trip, and great to have some time with just the two of us (thanks to Dad and Lisa and Chip and Cara for keeping the kids!). I hope I can get there again some day. It was wonderful to look for little treasures, and listen to the ocean, and not think about anything else.

Patience

I just don't have a whole lot of it. I'm a planner, constantly looking forward to the next thing. My wonderful mother, thankfully, has taught me a lot about enjoying the journey and just relishing the time that I have now, wherever and however it is. But that hasn't changed the looking forward...at least not a whole lot.

We still don't have jobs. Well, in Ohio. We have them and can continue living comfortably as we are for quite sometime. Which is a nice sort of safety net.

Despite this fact, we went to look at a house in Ohio yesterday. A 170-year-old farmhouse with a 10-year-old addition. An awesome hodgepodge house with interesting angles, odd little quirks, and wasted space as only old houses can have (a room almost like a closet that's on the second story above the tiny entryway, with its own door to close itself off from the rest of the landing of the stairs, and a giant church-style window). It is NOT in good shape. They're selling it for cheap, and we could probably offer a LOT less than they're asking and get it. But then there would be plaster to strip off walls, wiring to re-do, moisture barriers to install pre-drywall, painting, a dehumidifier or other similar system to solve some basement issues, floor to re-sand and re-finish, more painting.....we would be MARRIED to this house...do nothing but pour money into it for years and years to make it livable.

I've started looking into types of loans to make that possible. And I'm not even sure I WANT to do the work! AND WE DON'T HAVE JOBS HERE! Which makes the whole thing moot.

I love the house. Or at least the idea of it....a cool house for my kids to grow up in, that would have a great story to it. And character. And no cookie-cutter similarities to any others around it.

And despite the fact that it's completely a non-issue, I will proceed to worry about it until someone else buys it before we get jobs and can do it ourselves.

That's just what I do. I guess I might as well accept it.

I really love....

......when General Relief Society Presidents validate my existence. It's even better when they did it in NINETEEN SEVENTY FIVE!

"The Church places no restrictions on a woman's going into the marketplace and into community service on a paid or a volunteer basis, if she so desires, when her home and family circumstances allow her to do so without impairment to them. Women are encouraged to develop their full potential as women, and the Church affords abundant opportunity for them to do so. Well-directed compassionate service, which is according to the nature of women, is but the law of brotherhood in action. It is Latter-day Saint doctrine. "

- Belle S. Spafford

Now, I'm not by any means saying that all women need to/should/have to/whatever work. Just that I really wish that when it comes up that it's ME in school, not Ben, the missionaries we've invited over for dinner don't go. "OH! YOU'RE in school? What do you study? What are you going to do with that?" And when I say teach, they assume high school. Not college.

Anyway. I'm not up for a full-out rant. Just wanted to say that I think it's cool that Sis. Spafford thinks it's allright for me to be a professor, even if the missionaries don't. :-)

The Dalai Lama...

...waved at my kids today. Granted we were in a big crowd of people he also waved to, but I think Bee will remember it.

Pretty cool.

Baby J

I shouldn't call him Baby J any more, I don't think, because he's getting really big! He stood up all alone for about six seconds today. It made me smile. He's just the sweetest little guy, I think he's a gentle soul like Ben. He gets really upset if I show anything like anger toward Bee. Which is a good thing for me...helps me behave myself. It's really interesting to me that a child so young can have/show compassion/empathy/whatever it would be in a baby!

He has six teeth now, and is really strong.

Oh, and we're done nursing! He's drinking goat's milk these days (I've read that it's easier on their little tummies than cow's milk, but still has all the fat and other stuff they need). I have pretty crazy mixed feelings about being done. There's part of me that's loving being able to pass him off to Ben for an evening bottle, wear my old clothes again, not mess with nursing bras etc, and not have to wonder if I'm going to get bitten every time we nurse (he'd developed a bit of that tendency, yikes!). But then there's the part that misses the snuggling, and the "ha, only I can do this" sort of pride...and just knowing that I was doing something good and (in some small measure) self-sacrificing for my baby because I love him and want what's best for him. All in all, I guess it's just time. And that's the way it goes.

Bee has started playing mom to me and to J. She's pretty good at it, though sometimes it worries me how bossy she is. I know I have some pretty high expectations for her, but I also know I don't stamp my feet and holler at her to do whatever it is I'm asking her to! It's pretty funny...J just stares at her like she's nuts and then crawls away.

On a completely unrelated note, I got to go for a run this evening. I went barefoot, and with music, right as the sun was getting big and orange. It was GREAT, and I managed to go a whole three miles. That's more than I've managed in a long, long time. And I got in before dark so that the crazies wouldn't snatch me. :-)

Is there such a thing as "too feminist"??

Sometimes I think I am. There's a guy in the ward that I have some pretty serious struggles with. I really like his wife, and though their older daughter has a sort of love-hate relationship with Bee, I think it's good for Bee to be around her to learn to deal with it constructively. Anyway. I try, and I mean really hard, (so much that Ben even acknowledges that I do well) to just ignore some of the ridiculous and obnoxiously abrasive comments that this man makes.

I about lost it today, though I did manage to contain myself with just a deep breath and a reddened face (Ben noticed, the offending party didn't). In conversation he brought up (and trust me, it wasn't even relevant to the discussion...Ben and I tried to find the connection for a while and then just gave up so that we could save our sanity) the story in 1 Nephi 17:1-2. He said he thought it was interesting because it's one of the only moments in the Book of Mormon where we see any glimpse into spousal relationships (I think he must not be reading the same book I am), and that it's pretty cool that the Lord could take a "bunch of whiny Jewish princesses" (not my words, I imagine anyone reading this would know that, but just in case) and make them change their hearts and shut up.

Being the kind of woman I am, I had always interpreted this verse in the context of how I would feel if I suddenly had to leave my home and way of life and go out into the wilderness because the Lord said so. I know I'd be sore, tired, sunburned, and not all that happy about the whole eating raw meat thing. That said, I also know that after having borne children in really comfortable circumstances and then recovering in my nice house with lots of good help (thanks, Hannah and Mom and Gran) and STILL suffering through nursing....well, doing that in the freaking desert I would have been murmuring a little bit. Not out of any lack of faith, and not because I'm a "whiny princess," but because it really would suck. The thing I've always thought was cool was that even though the women DID complain, God blessed them for being obedient until they got to the point that they DIDN'T complain any more, helping them transition into a completely new lifestyle.

So rather than read it as "God is so amazing that he managed to fix these whiny women," I think I would much rather read it as "Wow, these women did a really hard thing as best as they could, and then God helped them do the rest. Isn't it amazing how He loves His daughters?"

But maybe I'm just too feminist.

HOOOOOOORAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!

I passed my exams. All of all of them. No re-writing. Done. Finished. Books going back TODAY.

YES!

Rainbow

I was in a little bit of a huff because of the plane ticket fiasco that I just resolved (yes, on a Sunday, can you believe it? I'm down to close enough to the trip that I thought it would be a crisis to let it wait until after my exam tomorrow...especially since I'd probably forget due to brain frazzle). Bee wanted to go outside because the pouring rain let up.

She said "Mom, Dad, a RAINBOW!" This exclamation resulted in our going outside (me, Mom, Ben, J, and Bee) and playing in the puddles and rain running down the storm drain. Erased the crisis. Hooray!

I love my kids, and I love that they're the good part of my life. Not that school is bad (it's not, I enjoy it a lot), or any of the rest of it either, just my kids are the part that I enjoy and love.

Panic (again, I think?)

I defend my exam and paper tomorrow at 9. They can only keep me for two hours. Then mom and the kids and I are going for ice cream before my students take their exam.

I just really want to be done, and am having all sorts of nightmares about how they can prolong this agony for me. I'm tired. :-)

ha HA!

I turned in my paper yesterday. So now I just have to defend it and my exam. Then I can take the 100+ books BACK TO THE LIBRARY! I'm going to need them when I'm writing my dissertation, but not all at once. And besides, I think there will be something extremely cathartic about dumping them all down the book drop.

We're at Dad's, enjoying a long weekend off (Ben got an extra day because of the INSANE 8am-3am day he worked a week ago). Among other good things, our poor sick-ish car is going to get repaired (we're hoping it's several small things rather than one big thing, or worse, several big things) Ben gets to play in a musical, which I think will do him good (and he'll have some ill-gotten gains with which to buy the new keyboard he's been wanting). We'll have J's birthday party on Sunday. And I'm going to go running. I always feel safer running here because I know a lot of the people, and I know where I'm going! There are great training hills around here. Just big enough to be tough, not so big as to be scary (like when I used to run the Y. I must have been insane).

I'm glad for a few days to think before I have to get ready for my LAST exam. Although, I did talk to my advisor while I was on campus to turn in my paper. She said she's read my exam and thinks that I'm "in really good shape." Hooray!

Hmmmm

Immigration has been a hard thing for me to get my head around ever since my mission. I'm hugely conflicted on a lot of the surrounding issues, and don't feel educated/involved enough to offer an opinion most of the time.

But I agree pretty heartily with this.

The Valley

That's what my family calls the place where Gran's house and the house I grew up in are.

I have so many happy memories of childhood and home:
Playing in the creek (on the condition that we were only allowed ONE change of dry clothes each day)
Dad making fires in the buck stove (this didn't happen often, but I was always fascinated by it)
Picking lilacs for Hannah's birthday....laundry baskets full. SO MUCH FUN!
Nick and Lou putting snakes in coolers and other odd places
Flour fights (as long as we cleaned them up) in the kitchen
The COLD, iron-y hose water in the summer
Building things out of sticks, moss, leaves, branches and (of course) jump ropes
Reading books up in the magnolia tree in the front yard, or the maple in the side yard
Nick asking "Why does this always happen to me?" every time he got hurt
Apple trees - blossoms in the spring and apples (just sometimes) in the fall
Cutting Christmas trees and greenery for the house (I even wound long-needled pine around the banisters one year...almost made me swear, and I never did it again!)
Putting baking soda paste on bee stings to take out the poison
Sand fights with Louie in the creek
Camping out up at the camp site in the woods
Putting my feet up on the ceiling while I laid on my bed (my room was under the roof/eaves)
Watching cars roll in down the lane and running out laying claim to one cousin or another (we used to fight over whoever was the baby...I love seeing those same cousins doing the same thing over my kids)

The list could go on and on. It's a safe place, and a place where I always felt loved (and still love to go home to). Not that my family is perfect...we're far from it. We're really open about most things (which in general is good), but we're pretty opinionated too (which can cause conflict).

But I went out to the valley with Bee, J, and Ben on Easter Sunday morning. We missed the first 15 minutes of the Sunday conference session, but I think it was worth it. Bee and I even got in the creek (the water was COLD!), and we picked some daffodils.

Late-night internet randomness

I (almost) always read articles breastfeeding when I come across them, because I feel pretty strongly about it....for a lot of different reasons. Sometime when you have too much time on your hands (since that happens to all of us so often) and are in the mood for a rant, give me a call. :-)

I nursed Bee until she got sick of it (the day before her first birthday). J is still nursing (he'll be one in 17 days!!). He gets a bottle from time to time (qualifying exams proved enough to cut into my milk supply with a decent vengeance....but only very recently, and not so much as to totally make nursing impossible, so we're in good shape!).

A woman wrote an interesting article in the Atlantic. Since the title was "The case against breastfeeding" you can imagine the raised hackles I went into reading it with. But there are some good points, one of which I've been thinking about because of the differences in my kids. By the time Bee was the age J is now, she had about 8 words in her vocabulary. When J says "MAH!," I get excited and try to encourage it. Anyway. She points this out:

The IQ studies run into the central problem of breast-feeding research: it is impossible to separate a mother’s decision to breast-feed—and everything that goes along with it—from the breast-feeding itself. Even sibling studies can’t get around this problem. With her first child, for instance, a mother may be extra cautious, keeping the neighbor’s germy brats away and slapping the nurse who gives out the free formula sample. By her third child, she may no longer breast-feed—giving researchers the sibling comparison that they crave—but many other things may have changed as well. Maybe she is now using day care, exposing the baby to more illnesses. Surely she is not noticing that kid No.2 has the baby’s pacifier in his mouth, or that the cat is sleeping in the crib (trust me on this one). She is also not staring lovingly into the baby’s eyes all day, singing songs, reading book after infant book, because she has to make sure that the other two kids are not drowning each other in the tub. On paper, the three siblings are equivalent, but their experiences are not.



I like the tone of it.

I think it's important to remember that every woman who decides to be a mother goes through different seasons in her life...and the kids will be along for the ride. Add to that the fact that each child is different, and this allows for some pretty dramatic variation in parenting and childhood experiences.

And I really think that it will all be okay. That's all! So thoughtful, no?

Relief

I took my written exam yesterday. I'm not even really sure how it went...I don't know exactly what they're expecting. I know I got at least one name wrong...attributed an idea to the wrong critic. But I'm hoping that the overall strength of my answers will outweigh it. The great thing is that I just feel so relieved! Pass, fail, whatever, at least it's done with.

Now I have to write my paper, but it doesn't have to be in until the 22nd. So I'm taking this weekend off....I'm going to dye Easter eggs with T and everybody tonight, take Bee to pick daffodils and narcissus at Gran's, and just enjoy General Conference. And SLEEP! Last night was the first time I've slept 7 1/2 hours since J was born. Pretty great.

When I left the building yesterday (after 6 hours in which I wrote TWENTY TWO PAGES!!) the sun was so nice, and I knew I was coming home to people who love and will take care of me....and I get to enjoy them! It was just such a relief. I can't compare much else to it. I'm so glad it's over!

Something different

I just realized that posting about my exams has taken over my blog. This probably has something to do with the fact that it has taken over my life, but it's not much fun to read.

So. Something different! We went to Iowa to visit Mom last week (Thursday to Wednesday). It was SO nice to spend time with her and Ron, and share their space. She has a guest room to beat all...just welcoming and nice and comfortable and comforting. She gave me a little jar of tiny seashells and a "You can do it" card that made me cry. It's so nice to have people who take care of me! And the kids had a ball. Bee was excited about her trip to the outdoors store with Ron, and J about drove Maggie (the aging, gentle beast of a yellow Labrador) insane because he loved her so much...he spent a lot of the week using her as an obstacle course and chewing on her back. :-)

We almost always go to Kalona when I visit Mom. I do sometimes think that there's something inherently magical in the place itself, but really it probably has more to do with how much Mom and I both love the sorts of things that are there....simple living, tidy Amish farms, squeaky cheese curds, chocolate crinkle cookies and giant dill pickles, quilts, and the Sisters shop. And the fact that we get to spend a day driving and gallivanting together. qw23e (J's addition) It's a good trip.

Anyway. Thank goodness for last week, a change-up that helped me remember what it's like to be a real person, and just enjoy my family. I even managed to get good sleep, because Mom was nice enough to get up with my kids in the morning after my late-night work sessions. Hopefully someday I'll be able to provide a similar refuge to someone who needs it.

Reality

I'm taking my exams in 12 days. Of course this means I've been reading furiously, right?

Ha, no. I spent most of Wednesday night, and all of Thursday and Thursday night cleaning up various disgusting bodily fluids created by my two poor sick children. (I've never seen an 11-month-old throw up....it's heart-wrenching.) Really that was only one day lost (I wasn't planning on working because we traveled all day on Wednesday), until BEN AND I GOT SICK TOO! Last night was miserable, and today has been a fog of "hmmmm.....maybe I can eat. Should I risk it??" combined with leftover brain-fog and achy-ness. I'm really sad to be losing a Saturday, since they're usually double work days (thanks to Ben's availability).

This has reminded me of the reality that, while I may be just as capable as some of my professional (single, childless) counterparts, I do not have the same freedom and resources as they do in terms of time. And that just has to be okay.

I'll take my exams, and it will be what it will be. I just hope I stop aching soon. :-)

It's official!

I will be taking my written exam on April 1st, will turn in my theoretical paper on April 22nd, and (provided the aforementioned merit it) doing my oral on May 3rd.

I had a companion on my mission that used to say "You can do ANYTHING for a transfer." (She was talking specifically about the fact that they put me in English work with a companion who also frequently taught in Korean, but she extended the thought to other areas.) That's what I'm down to....about 7 weeks.

If I may, I'd like to solicit prayers...I'm feeling more than a little overwhelmed by all the information that I'm responsible for, and the lack of sleep is starting to catch up. I do all my work after the kids go to bed...so I work from about 8:30-1:30/2, and then nap when J does, and Bee occupies herself with her busy box [thanks Mom!!] or a movie. It's not a great schedule (it's actually basically horrible), and I'm worried that I may need to find another way to finish this up. And then there's the whole "If you fail this exam you only get one chance to redo it, and then you just don't get your degree" thing, which while I'm not TRULY worried about (I don't think), it does nag at the back of my mind.

So, that's where I'm at. Boring-ness and all. At least I have a date, and I will be taking Easter weekend OFF!

Panic

I've sent emails to my committee and chair about setting a date for my qualifying examinations. I've also sent out several "would you be available to take the kids for me at random points when I'm going to break down during that WHOLE MONTH!" emails to friends and family.

This has made it real, and I'm starting to dream about things like cars with dials that measure pages read instead of miles per hour, outlines that reach out from the computer and wrap around my eyes so I can't read, and (of course) kids getting sick while I'm trying to take the exams.

This should be an interesting (and long) couple of weeks while I finish (or try to) reading!

My not-a-vacation

In a whole lot of ways, my trip to Texas this past weekend (that stretched into this week) was a vacation: I didn't have to clean my house, do laundry, teach, keep up with Bee, or cook. In many other ways, though, it was not a vacation at ALL: I didn't sleep a whole lot, I spent a ton of time rehearsing, presented parts of outreach to kids five times, did a longer presentation at a teacher workshop, and even mended the occasional costume.

Spanish Golden Age theater is very important to me. I feel like (even aside from its inherent value just as literature) teachers can use it in a number of ways to change their students' lives for the better. You can use it to teach grammar, verse, literary conventions of the day, to teach about theater, technique, presentation, performance. You can use it to show kids that their language (Spanish) has a tradition that has as much to offer as the dominant language tradition that they study in school (English), and has value. And much, much, much more. Who knew I loved it enough to get into costume and character to teach those things though? I didn't, until this last weekend.

Baby J was a trooper, and was so easy to travel with I can't believe it. But I couldn't have done my part of things without other people to help me! When they weren't in costume, AL and Kim and Sofi helped a ton, but I think Valerie and Melissa get most of the credit. We took a picture of him on the stage at El Paso High. The kids there did a great scene for us...I think it was the best one. Bee's favorite part of the whole thing was that I brought her back some converse. I'm glad that she did well while she was away from us. Before I left, she said "Mom, after you have your vacation in Texas, and I have my vacation at BaDa's, we will be nice to each other again." She's right so far!

And the whole experience was certainly not made any worse by the fact that I got to hang out with a whole bunch of my most favorite non-family people in the world. Everyone got along really well, had a positive attitude (or as much of one as can be expected at 3 in the morning before a 9 am performance, while you're still rehearsing!), and was just generally great to be around. I'm definitely grateful to Profs. Pratt and Hegstrom for the opportunity to go, and participate in some small way.
I decided I won't even try to narrate the whole experience (poor Mom had to listen to a rapid-fire ramble about it!), other than to say that we had a great time, the teachers evaluated us with high marks, the parks service folks were wonderful to work for and so accommodating, and I was more than impressed by everyone's presentations! I think that we did some good, and I'm hoping we've helped (in Jared's words) spread the gospel of Golden Age theater a little bit.

Distressing

We took Baby J to the pediatrician this morning. Fortunately, nothing about his health was distressing. But as we set up his next appointment, the receptionist gave Bee a sticker. Totally random happenstance, but it was an Ariel sticker.

Bee was excited (as she always is about the Little Mermaid), and I didn't think anything of it. I've tried to let the whole Disney princess thing be neither here nor there, so that it won't be a power struggle and so that I won't be one of those completely unhinged moms.

After we got home, as J was nursing, Bee pipes up (from her position laying flat on her back on the floor and looking up at her enshrined sticker) "I don't like myself. I want to look like this."

Let the unhinging begin.

It was totally unprovoked, I hadn't said anything at all about the sticker/movie/stupid-freaking-model-of-disobedience-and-lack-of-any-real-self-worth mermaid. So Bee and I had a talk about "Ariel is not real. I AM real. That means I am more special than Ariel, because Heavenly Father made me. Ariel is just a drawing, but I have a body." (To which Bee added "And a Spirit!" I guess Sunbeams has kicked in already!) I think I handled my deep-seated feminist anger well and didn't focus on it...I tried to just focus the discussion on Bee and how smart she is, how sweet she is, and even how pretty she is (which we usually don't talk about because I don't want her to focus on it....apparently we need to work on that!). It was a good talk.

But I'm still reeling over the power of a well-funded franchise over our little girl's perception of herself. I might have to become a little more obsessive.

Are you seious?

I ran to campus on Thursday with the kids (which I try to avoid doing, because it's just a hassle, and I get stares like there's not tomorrow) because I needed to drop off a hard copy of my reading list to one of my professors (really it was just a not-so-subtle hint to remind him I exist, since he hasn't responded in any way to the first copy of my list that I emailed to him before the semester break).

Anyway. I was grumbling to myself about taking the stroller down the 5 flights of steps from the top of the parking garage (Do they have an elevator? Yes. Was it working? No.) when a nice woman struck up a conversation with me. Turns out she's in another department with offices on the same floor as my department offices, and so we were going the same way. I don't really remember how it came up, but at some point she said "There are some students who do what you're doing...family, and school. And maybe neither one gets the attention they deserve, but it seems like you're putting your family first."

What a way to kill a perfectly nice conversation. I mean, I recognize the "you're putting your family first" as a possible attempt to make up for the preceding remark. But in five minutes of walking and talking, can she really judge that I'm doing that?

I always have this overly-defensive reaction to this sort of comment...I want to jump into how developmentally advanced Bee is linguistically and Baby J is physically, how I make them hats and clothes, how I quilt, how I make and can homemade jelly, and dry seal food storage things, how my house is always clean when I go to bed at night because of my obsessive need for order. And not to let my professional side be outdone by all that, how my grades are the same or better than my single and childless counterparts, how I've presented at three graduate student conferences and three professional conferences (one of them twice), how one of my papers has been published (albeit humbly, and mostly thanks to David Wiseman), how I am proceeding through my program ahead of schedule, and how I consistently earn "meets and exceeds departmental expectations" on my teaching observation evaluations (even the semester that they observed me when I had morning sickness so badly that I was sure I was going to fail the evaluation)!

But it's just that: defensive. It's completely self-serving to try to bring any of that up. So I usually just find a way to wrap up the conversation, and mosey on through the rain with my kids, to drop off my papers.

Why I love Melveena McKendrick

I'm doing work, I promise, I just had to shout out to the void! I really love to read Melveena McKendrick's work. (If nothing else, she has an awesome name!) She has a strong voice, and doesn't take her academia so seriously as to make her writing obtuse. She writes on cross-dressing women in Golden Age plays, a number of feminist theoretical concerns, and history of Spain in general.

Today, though, there are two quotes that are why I love to read this woman:

(She's talking about Lope's "El castigo sin venganza," a really good [never thought I'd put THAT adjective with the genre following...despite the unfortunate plot, great writing] wife-murder play)

"And although each of us may, quite legitimately, favour a specific interpretation, it is impossible categorically to deny validity to any of the carefully thought-out and observed readings so far offered us." (82)

"There is something about Spanish Golden Age plays that encourages us to try to become their master rather than their servant, whereas a great many of them, I suspect, are far more resistant to domination than we like to think. [...] If we try to stop trying to squeeze the play into the comfortable corset of our own moral perceptions and literary predilections, what we are left with is an ambiguous play and our own feelings of discomfort and puzzlement. Since we cannot very convincingly ascribe this to incompetence on Lope's part, we have to assume that he has achieved more or less what he set out to achieve. The play then stands as an aging man's statement on what he has learned about life - that there often are no reassuring solutions, no neat apportionings of blame." (93-4)

From BCom 35.1 (1983):79-95.

For your reading pleasure....

......more student errors! They're from last semester, but I got bogged down. I'm taking my day off today (I get one evening a week to rot my brain with TV, crochet on Lou's Christmas scarf that STILL isn't done, sew buttons back on, blog, etc)...usually I make it to Thursday. But not today. The thought of trying to cross anything off my reading list makes me want to cry.

SO! Here they are. The essay prompt was something to the effect of "How do you define the word America? What symbols do you associate with it?" I'm reproducing errors in grammar as well as revelatory cultural bias.

Primero, America es este pais y no otra pais porque norte America tiene mas recursos como America de Sur.

Yo incluyo solamente America norte en mi definicion porque America de Sur es muy diferente.

Si yo fuera EEUU, creeria los simbolos de America es nuestra bandera.

Los ciudadanos de Latinoamerica tienen perspectivas diferente que los personas de EEUU porque los no comprenden la pictura grande.

Un ejemplo geografico que representa los EEUU es la Statue of Liberty.

Have fun commenting, everyone! I know I almost had multiple blood vessels burst by the time I got through all 43 essays! :-)

Two random things

Sunday evening as I looked at my wreck of a house, I asked Ben "How do I let it get like this?," to which he calmly replied "You took a nap." I always forget that I do sort of repeated maintenance all day long, while he just lets it all go until the kids are asleep.

Yesterday Ben kept the kids and I went to the grocery BY MYSELF! (What a way to celebrate a Monday off teaching, right? Usually Tuesday is grocery day, and I go with both kids during the day.) While I was there, I saw a girl that made me wonder. Admittedly, she was really cute. She had dark brown hair with honey-colored highlights, was wearing a North Face fleece vest over a cute long-sleeved T-shirt, Ugg boots, and jeans with various colored patches on the butt pockets (here Bee would say "Mom, butt is not a nice word!"). The thing that made me wonder was when the cashier asked her how old she was and she answered "I'm ten." Who lets their ten-year-old dye their hair? And who has that kind of money to spend on clothes that kids outgrow in a few months?

I have no desire for people to think that Bee is a teenager when she's only ten. So maybe that's what has me wondering about the whole thing.

Thoughts on Haiti

I saw an article on CNN that mentioned Pat Robertson's comments on the slave revolt in Haiti in the late 1700s-early 1800, and its potential relationship to the earthquake. I try to look at multiple sides of things, so I found a statement from the 700 club trying to clarify the comments that were made. Following their advice, I searched for "the whole video segment." I finally found a bit on YouTube. (I couldn't find a longer interview on the 700 club site to provide more context, so this is the best I could do at watching "the whole video segment.")

First, some history. This is the only slave revolt in the history of this side o the world to abolish slavery, which makes it a case with nothing to compare it to. (And really there were some legislative things that happened, too). Robertson keeps talking about how "the Haitians" revolted and won freedom from the French. Really, we're talking about native Africans brought to Haiti and forced into slavery, communities of runaway slaves living in the woods so they can have some semblance of freedom, plus some leaders who were of mixed European and African ancestry, with varied levels of education. There weren't "native Haitians" around any more (Columbus and his early folk knocked out the indigenous population on the island pretty effectively).

So, those things in mind, I want to draw attention to a couple of phrases Robertson uses:

"Under the heel of the French." - If that even comes close to describing the fact that Saint Domingue had over half of the slaves in the entire Caribbean, denied them any rights whatsoever, and caused so many slave deaths through overwork and poor conditions that they continually imported new, native-born Africans to fill their labor needs.

"Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts." - Uh, I lived there for 4 months. Has he ever gone anywhere but the beaches "full of resorts" to see the poor kids? The slums? Probably not. I LOVE Dominicans and the Dominican Republic, and living there was one of the happiest parts of my life, but I would NOT say that it's a paradise that we should use to put Haiti to shame.

"They need to have a great turning to God." - I'm all for this, but he makes it sound like this will be what will keep more of the "cursed with one thing after another" pattern from happening. How bout suggesting turning to God for comfort instead?

I'll let that be my rant, and not go on and on about the ridiculousness of thinking any just God would punish people now for the actions of people over 200 years ago, the closed-mindedness of the idea that a voodoo ceremony (especially one from THAT LONG AGO when African religions in this hemisphere still had some contact, through influx of new people, with their tradition) automatically equates to Satan worship, and the paternalistic suggestion that this rich "Christian" white American guy has the answers that will save these poor "heathen" Haitian blacks....oops, I guess I just couldn't keep it in.

SNOW!

We had fun yesterday. I couldn't get J to sit up long enough to get a picture...he wanted to dive bomb into the snow. And Bee was WAY too busy to look at me.

It was a good time. And totally worth the aftermath.

Pomegranate vinegar

I'm taking advantage of Baby J napping, Ben "watching" football, and Bee reading stories to my incredibly patient 11-year-old cousin.

On Wednesday (after T was nice enough to let me and the kids stay all night with her and her clan) I made pomegranate vinegar with my Aunt T. We've done this for several years now, and I always look forward to the whole experience.

I really love being with T anyway. She and I get along really well, and she's a really good example to me. I've watched her parent, cook, clean, decorate, and just teach in general with her welcoming, kind way of being. She's so wonderful, and I hope that I can be like her some day. For now I'm content to drink tea and think of her, and do my best to imitate the sweetness she has.

Making the vinegar was icing on the cake, though. There's something about breaking open a nice crisp pomegranate, with a little splatter of juice that you can smell more than feel. I think that that particular red is one of my favorite colors. I love the texture of the arils, too...just waiting for you to pop them. Sometimes when I toss a handful into my mouth I feel like a little kid who's excited about popping bubble wrap! :-) Something about working to get to their wonderful-ness makes them even more fun, I think.

The recipe calls for 2 cups of smashed pomegranate arils (of course with the juice), 3 cups of red wine vinegar, 1/3 cup of honey, a tablespoon of coriander, and six 4-inch strips of orange zest. The only special thing you have to do is dissolve the honey into the red wine vinegar...then you just toss everything else into a jar, let it sit for two weeks, and strain it. It'll keep for a couple of months, with a little bit of fall all winter long.

I mean, doesn't that just speak for itself??? When you pour the honey into the red wine vinegar, there's some sort of initial chemical reaction that happens, and you can smell the edge coming off the vinegar and the honey smell comes through almost strong enough that you taste it. Then the pomegranate arils are beautiful, and when you crush them they turn a darker color. Zesting the orange sent a citrus-y smell all through the kitchen (I smelled delicious for the rest of the day!), and the soft, almost non-smell of the coriander softens everything together.

And it looks lovely in a jar.

The combination of textures and smells, plus being in a nice safe environment where I could revel in them (because T is just the same way!) was the highlight of this week. After we were all done, I had to pack up the kids and run on....but I told T thanks for letting me come to her beautiful home. I always feel safe there, and it's a nice home to be in since I can't go to my valley house any more.