Merry Christmas (for real)

Saturday night I finished some whirlwind gift preparations, kissed Ben and drove off into the darkness. I was surprised at the number of other cars on the road, given that it was 11 pm on Christmas Eve. As I turned onto the little street just across the river, I looked up at the old Catholic church that the poorest people in our community at the time (Irish canal workers - some of them related to me distantly) built in the 1850s. It was the only thing lit in the darkness, with beautiful wreaths hanging over the doors and stained-glass windows. I couldn't help but slow down to look at it as I drove by to turn into the parking lot.

The feeling of sacrifice, beauty, dedication, and ceremony attached to that building has always impressed and inspired me. I snuck in just as the choir was finishing their first song, and settled into the pew next to my mom and step-dad......my aunt and her children followed about five minutes later (their dad was already there conducting and soloing in the choir - thank goodness for his "Oh, Holy Night"). I love that even though only some of our motley family group are actually Catholic, the choir members always smile when they see us and welcome us for the music. And oh, the music. It's just beautiful. The choir in Gran's little parish practices like no Mormon ward choir I've ever heard. The men do more than their share of carrying, and the acoustics in the building amplify the sound. So we sat blissfully reveling in music, and singing our part in carols.

My favorite part of midnight mass is when they ring the bells to herald the "official" start of things. This year instead of only ringing the bells for a few chimes each, they rang them through the entire first verse of Silent Night. I felt the Spirit so strongly, it was a wonderful way to begin my Christmas mindfulness. Usually I stay for mass, but since we actually had a Christmas service this year (I think it's funny that Mormons, who in my experience attend church much more regularly than their Catholic counterparts, are much less likely to be in church on Christmas itself because of the only-on-Sunday service thing) I crept out just after the processional and the first hymn.

Sunday morning we practiced our family musical number, which we managed to pull together at the last minute. I managed to learn the rather difficult accompaniment and play it with only three mistakes, and the gifted singers in my husband's family all complemented each other nicely.

The worshipful music I participated in served as the perfect counterpoint for the running to and fro that we did to make it to family functions in four different places. It was quite the day, and I think could have been very stressful. But the kids held together well, and we managed to make it. All through the day I went back to that midnight "Silent Night" with ringing bells and Mary's iconic image at the front of the church, holding her newborn baby. And I was both awed and grateful.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

I'll do another, for real post later.

For now, this comic is hilarious:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1457

Enjoy! And Merry Christmas!

Working women are not disobedient

Or at least, their working is not what makes them so.

I'm up in arms over a 1993 talk by President Packer that I just read where he repeats the "women should only work when they have no other choice" routine.

May I just say. I have a choice. Here it is.

1) Live in a tiny house/apartment downtown in a big city (thus saving on rent and only needing one car because of access to public transportation) that we would either not own or have no hope of reselling because of the condition that a one-salary price-range necessitates. Use government assistance for health care and utilities, perhaps even for food. Send the kids to an inner-city school district with high incidence of violence and higher dropout rates. Build no savings and leave Ben working into his 70s.

2) Live in a modest house we will own in 15 years in a small, relatively rural suburb, with high hopes to resell because it's a growing area. Pay for our own health insurance and utilities (but not cable TV or satellite because, well, I hate its influence). Buy healthy, whole foods that I can make into good, nutritious meals from scratch, knowing that they're not laced with additives and pesticides. Send the kids to a school with good test scores and dedicated teachers, most of whom grew up in the area and are personally invested in the school district because their kids attend. Pay off student loans and build savings to retire early.

Given the choice, I'll take number two. And I only have to work two days a week to make the difference. I think it's easy for Church leaders, speaking from the relative privilege that most of them have enjoyed during their lives, to miss this conundrum.

And yes, I know, if there were fewer women in the work force then men would make more because labor would be in higher demand and all that blah blah blah. But. That's not the way it is. And my leaving the work force will not make it so. And I'm not willing to sacrifice my children's future just so that I can have the "Stay At Home Mom" label. Especially when the difference is so easily made - the kids spend the days I work with family members and at school.

And yes, I know, the Church leaders have to speak generally so as to teach correct principles and let us be guided by personal revelation. They can't cover every exception. And yet. People (even leader-type people) in the Church tend to look down on us "working mothers," without much concern over the time and energy that we've put into working out a balance that works for us and, as far as we can tell, Heavenly Father.

So. Please, just let people work it out. Please don't make snide comments or put yourself up as the authority about The Right Way To Do Things. I don't criticize you for medicating your kids because you don't feel like dealing with them, for feeding them frozen or prepackaged foods, for choosing to not seek medical care in borderline cases in the interest of saving money....etc etc etc. It's your life, your choice, and I welcome you to it.

Now can you let me make mine?

Thanks.

Exams

Much as I hated taking them as a student, I think the instructor gets the raw end of the deal.

For example, yesterday my students presented me with 37 6-page exams (1 page an essay), and 47 5-page exams (.5 page an essay). That's a total of 457 pages, 60.5 of which are essays.

I spent three hours yesterday grading, and another today, and have finished 3 pages of the set of 37, for a total of 111 pages graded.

That means I have yet to complete 346 pages.

Doing the math (are you impressed that my language-y self can do math?), that's 27.75 pages per hour, or 2 minutes per page. Which means that I have 692 minutes of grading yet to come.

Yeah, that's 11.5 hours.

Even if you think strictly in terms of time invested, exams are worse for teachers. But beyond that, there's the fact that grading is almost mindless in its monotony. Gets tiring very quickly.

I think the possible exception to this rule is PhD qualifying examinations, and I might be willing to stretch the exception to cover MA exams.

Happy end-of-semester, everyone! Once I'm done grading, maybe I'll post about something interesting.

One of those days

Today was one of those days. In a good way.

I had a meeting with my advisor this weekend, excellent stuff. She's pleased with dissertation progress/direction. She liked my suggestion that will end up saving me some writing and headache. And is not worried that I have no interest in being on the job market this year. Both of those things sort of shocked and amazed me. Turns out, she's just happy that I've found a place that lets me teach higher-level courses, and that I like their teaching philosophy.

So I've been sort of soaring from that.

We got the tree up (I think Ben should do a post on it, since he nobly fought the battle of the enormous Christmas tree), and all but the top 3 feet decorated. Yeah, you read that right. We need to borrow Dad's super-tall ladder to finish off. And we need more lights. Because the tree is 11 feet tall. HA! I love it. We went out to Gran's to pick it out, then after much planning, sweat, and valiant effort on Ben's part (with some help from my brother), it's ours. We'd never have been able to buy a tree this size, I was so grateful to Gran for letting us swipe one. And while we were planning for a big tree, we did NOT do a good job of estimating its size. So that's been a surprise that caused some work and crisis....but now that we're mostly settled it's really nice to sit and stare at the lights. Reminds me of getting up in the middle of the night at Christmas-time, wandering downstairs, and settling on the couch to sleep for a while....as often as not another sibling, or Mom even, was there. It was nice. And still is.

On top of that, I got a whole pile of grading done, went ahead and knocked out this round of grocery shopping, dropped off the Goodwill donations and the recycling, cleaned the house, did all the laundry (bright and shining moment! Everything was clean and put away for a whole four hours!), and got dinner done in time for Ben to get home.

And now we've got the kids settled and we're going to watch a movie.

Pretty much the best day in ages.