Light and Momentary

Seven Quick Takes: Countdown from Seventy Edition

Okay, I'm doing that thing again where I use a quick takes post as a nudge to keep on grading. I have 32 final exams to grade, and 38 papers but I think they're going to have to wait for Monday. If I divide the exams into batches of 5 and write a quick take after each one, then I'll be done with grading final exams when I'm done with this post. Onward!

1. I have been working on my neglected garden, in which I was mostly growing creeping charlie and maple seedlings. When we had that crazy warm weather in April I put in some herbs; I have some volunteer frisee along with some of the allium gang that showed up for a return engagement (onions, garlic, and leeks). With some help from my Petely, I have put in seeds for radishes, beets, peas, and letttuce, along with seedling zucchini, tomatillos, acorn squash (which is not my favorite, but the lone butternut squash plant didn't look very healthy; I am optimistic that I will enjoy it more if I grew it myself), an unfamiliar variety of sweet pepper, and seven basil plants. Mmmmmm, I love summer pesto. I also moved the two healthiest volunteer tomato seedlings from out of the shade of the asparagus ferns into full sun. Pete is snuggled up next to me, helping me remember what we planted. Still to come: more herbs, kale, chard. Pete assures me that he's on the case.

2. This week I am the resident whip-cracker. We wound up accelerating my oldest son in math this year, with the result that he is required to finish up an online trigonometry course before he returns to school in the fall. Since he's going to be gone most of the summer (he's a CIT! so excited for him!), we want him to push hard to get it done early. I think he is waiting for the Trigonometry Fairy. She, mysteriously, seems no more reliable than the Grading Fairy.

3. We just had a birthday party, and I am sad to say I was not looking forward to it. Sometimes I worry that my children will look back on their childhoods and remember me as a sour-faced pucker-mouthed shrew shrieking "NO FUN ALLOWED!" Well, not shrieking. I don't shriek very often. I wonder, though: will they remember how much fun it was to set off the firecrackers, or will they remember me saying that we should stop before the carelessness intensified and save the rest for Fourth of July?

4. One of the items on my summer list is getting Stella out of diapers. She has zero interest in this process -- zero. Everybody says girls are supposed to be easier than boys, but that is not the case for this particular girl. Although -- maybe it's not a girl thing or a boy thing. Maybe it's a me thing. I am bad at the whole get-them-out-of-diapers deal. I expect I will manage it after a vexing week in which there is lots of peeing on the carpet, but we shall see. Neither the Dora underwear nor the sparkly princess underwear is proving an especially helpful incentive.

5. Oh, you guys! This never happens. I mean N-E-V-E-R. When I am grading I am always acutely aware of how many things I have left to grade. My inner calculator is constantly adjusting the percentage done/percentage remaining. But this evening I got a happy surprise: I thought I had six exams left to grade but it was only three. Whee! I'm finished grading the essay portion of the exam; all that's left is the papers. And a bunch of the papers (I've been interspersing papers with exams) have been really interesting, which is not the usual descriptor for student writing.

6. I just cooked a dinner that was delicious and good for us and inexpensive, and the kids ate it without a word of complaint. That also never happens -- N-E-V-E-R. I chopped beet greens and some radish greens finely (I wound up composting some of the radish greens from this week's CSA delivery, but I think I'm okay with that) and sauted them with green garlic stems and bulbs. That turned into brown rice pilaf, which got a flavor boost from homemade beef stock. I marinated skirt steak in olive oil and lemon juice and garlic, and ran it under the broiler until it was medium rare. The meat-eaters ate it on top of the pilaf; the vegetarian had chickpeas instead. Everybody had baby beets with butter and lemon juice. A hit, with minimal hands-on time.

7. The sun hasn't gone down yet, and Elwood left half of his beer behind when he left to take the boys to a movie. (A documentary about a sushi chef, which all four of them were eager to see. Weird, huh?) I am going to finish his beer and eat my salad, and then perhaps I'll grade a few last papers before Monday. Over and out from the lecturer who is almost done wearing the Dr. Gladly hat for the summer, and who is eager to be just plain Jamie for a while.

I smell freedom

Oh, internet, guess what I did this morning? Guess!

Did you guess "gave your last lecture until August"? Because you would be right. Huzzah! I'm giving a final in the morning and then I will await a visitation from the Grading Fairy because I have been very good all semester and then I will launch into summer with capital-G-Gusto.

Does it surprise you to learn that I have Plans? Some are short-term, like vanquishing the 91 emails in my personal inbox (I was managing inbox zero from January until the end of March, when the kids' spring break + stomach bug + traveling husband undid me) and cleaning my LOATHSOME house and finally getting in a bit more of a garden. But I also want to see all the Shakespeare that's on offer in this town this summer, and go to a baseball game even though I am not what you'd call an enthusiastic baseball fan, and smack down all the knitting projects I currently have on the needles (that one might be a little crazy)--

--okay, hold on, I have a question. I invited my students to a potluck picnic tomorrow after our final, and I told them I'd bring a pan of brownies. I have this giant batch of brownies in the oven -- a Nigella Lawson recipe in which the baking time is clearly wrong unless your goal is salmonella sludge -- and I am wondering: if I accidentally give my students salmonella because I didn't want to dry out the brownies on the edges, can I plead "good intentions" and get off lightly?

--anyway, leaving my impending imprisonment aside for now to return to happier topics and finish my abandoned sentence above-- ...and gleefully tackling my teetering TBR pile. Wolf Hall, you're up first.

Tonight I took the kids to the pool for the first time, and picked up our first CSA share. That's another goal for the summer: to use every scrap of every CSA share. That one will take some attention and a change in my current kitchen habits. Working a lot wrecks my cooking mojo, and I have been working a TON -- late nights, early mornings, lots of time in between. But not for long!

I told Joe I would be done with grading soon, and he said, "But what will you do while we're at karate?"

What indeed? Maybe I'll...work out? Read a magazine? Work out while reading a magazine because I'm wild and crazy like that?

The possibilities are making me a little bit giddy.

8/9

Oh, you guys, I am SO TIRED. This summer class is wearing me out. But! I am almost done. One more class on Tuesday, one final on Wednesday, and then it's all over but the grading. Which I refuse to think about right now.

Seven Quick Takes: Body in the Hostas Edition

1. I am doing some rather grim grading tonight. The quizzes don't take long to grade, but it's kind of a bloodbath. But! If I grade four quizzes for each quick take I write, I'll be done at the end of this post. Off we go.


2. So this morning I had a meeting scheduled with my chair, who had fielded some complaints about this bloodbath quiz (and about my general tendency to write hard tests). It's completely legit that my students were unhappy about this quiz, and my chair is a very reasonable person, but I was tense anyway. And then I saw the body.


3. A body! A woman's body, face down in the hostas in my neighbor's yard. I thought at first that the lady who owns the house had collapsed gardening. I went right over and realized I was mistaken: this was a young blond woman. I shook her by the shoulder. "Are you all right?" I asked her. I shook her by the shoulder again. No response. I put my hand on her back so I could feel her ribcage for a long moment.
   
   Nothing.


4. At last she took a long breath. "Are you all right?" I asked her again, shaking her shoulder. Slowly she began to respond, groaning and shifting. Finally she lifted up her face, revealing an abundance of smudged black eyeliner, and exhaled a long boozy breath into my face. Then she settled back into the hostas, face down.


5. "You can't lie down in the yard," I said to the back of her head. "Do you need help? If you can't get up, I'm going to have to call and get some help for you." It took some coaxing, but she picked herself up again. I brushed a scurrying spider from her arm. "Do you need help?" I asked again. "No," she mumbled, "Vince is sending a hot dog for me." I said, "What?" "Vince is sending a hot dog for me," she said again. I must have looked perplexed. "Is that bad?" she asked. "Should I not have said that?" I was having trouble understanding her, but I wondered for a minute if Vince, the always pleasant student who lives next door, might be running some kind of -- I don't know -- prostitution ring? "Is there a place where you can go and rest and be safe?" I asked her. "Do you need a ride somewhere?" She said no.


6. After a little more back and forth, she got to her feet and walked down the driveway, slowly but not unsteadily. I turned around to get Stella buckled into her carseat (she asked, "Why she was sleeping on the ground?") and when I had finished, the woman was gone. I suspect that she crashed on Vince's porch swing, but it's an enclosed porch and so I'm not certain. I hope she's all right. Say a prayer for her, please.


7. My meeting went pretty well, proving once again that dread is a colossal waste of time. I have to say, the landscape in higher ed has changed enormously since I was an undergrad and a master's student. The idea of a student complaining to the chair of the department about a difficult quiz would have seemed laughable then -- but not these days. I can't complain too much about my students, though, because they really are a good bunch. One day last week Pete said, "Mom, are students annoying?" This suggests to me that I've been doing more grumbling about them than they deserve. "No," I told him, "not usually." Which is true.

More quick takes at Jen's.

Sunday evening scramble

One of the surprises that came with putting the kids in school was how much of a fuss they made about Mother's Day. It used to be a really low-key event around here, but the teachers have the kids make cards and gifts and then they decide to do breakfast in bed and the next thing you know the dishwasher is swishing away in the kitchen and I hardly put any of the dishes in it.

So it was a good day: crisp bacon and scrambled eggs and a sectioned grapefruit and steaming coffee on a tray at 7:30 (this makes me feel especially loved because my husband, who was the one getting the bacon crisp and the grapefruit sectioned, does not do 7:00 on Sunday mornings, like, ever), and 9:00 Mass with the whole gang, and a picnic in one of my favorite spots, and that newish pirate movie with the kids in the afternoon, and really fantastic steaks from our quarter-cow on the grill in the evening.

One of my favorite parts of the day, unexpectedly, was the 30-minute drive to the picnic spot. Stella didn't want to get in the van, but Alex offered to sing her a princess song. I assumed he was planning to wing it (perhaps "twinkle twinkle little princess, put her in pants and see how she flinches" -- Stella's label for all skirts and dresses is "princess"), but he had a plan: Princess Pat. "Mom," said one of the boys, "you do different motions." I explained that I did the Girl Scout motions, also known as the correct motions, but he wasn't buying it.

We also played B is for Botticelli (which I described here, ages and ages ago). It's fun to listen to the big boys asking stumper questions. The two littlest kids are mostly left out, but everybody else can play along. Unexpectedly, I got a huge kick out of losing early. If you've never played Botticelli, you might not know that it can last for hours -- that's part of what makes it fun for car trips. It was a surprise when Elwood guessed my identity five minutes into the game: I was Johannes Brahms. He went next, and it was an even bigger surprise when I guessed his identity on my first question: Gandalf. I guess in 19 years of marriage we have developed pretty similar ideas about interesting-but-not-too-obscure people the kids will probably know.

While I was trying to find the post in which I described B is for Botticelli, I happened on a very different post that still makes me laugh. Enjoy? Maybe?

I am teaching a three-week summer class that starts first thing tomorrow, and when I sat down to write this post I thought I was going to tell you all about how nervous I am. For the first time, I am teaching something I really love instead of something I'm qualified to teach but not on fire about. (I think I may take part of my archives down temporarily, so my students don't find my blog while they're googling for their group projects!) I have strong opinions and pet ideas and so I have more of an emotional investment in the class. Say a prayer, please, for a fruitful and low-stress three weeks.

And then! Summer! And no job until August! Perhaps I will make it a goal to blog every day...

Oh, that's why

The 3yo is lying in the floor, wailing, "I wanna go outside!" Darling, I say, you can't go outside with no pants on. "Whyyyyyyy?" she wants to know. Alex, explain to your sister why she needs pants to go outside, I say wearily. He doesn't miss a beat. "Because," he booms out, "Mama hates fun!"

Still waiting

I took down the post I wrote last night, about deciding to call CPS in a case of suspected child abuse. Elwood said the kid in question might not want it posted, and I see his point. Here's a follow-up, though, for anyone who was curious.

I hit publish as the phone was ringing: a social worker called me back at almost 11pm. Turns out that I don't have enough information for them to open an investigation. Parents have the legal right to spank their kids, and I don't know if he's being hit with objects or if there are bruises I can't see. I said, "Don't you intervene in cases of emotional abuse? Because this is not the same kid I've known since 2006. He is in a bad way."

She said yes, they do investigate emotional abuse. But I don't have the credentials to prompt that investigation -- the information needs to come from someone with mental health training. She said I could call his school and report my concerns to his counselor -- ask them to keep an eye on him. She said I could get more information about the physical stuff and call back.

It's a good thing that they don't open investigations casually. (This conversation, though, makes me wonder what exactly that neighbor lady said to the social worker she talked to in the summer of 2008!) I didn't feel brushed off at all, but she was pretty clear that they need something more substantial before they can proceed. I'm not quite sure where that leaves me.

Seven Quick Takes: Sweet Pete Edition

1. Today Pete is 7. He is the sweetest boy you ever saw, thoughtful and earnest and slender and wide-eyed. I can't even complain that this disrupts the 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 thing we had going with the kids' ages.
2. I went back and read his birth story and I am so glad I wrote it all down.
3. He was my first blog baby -- I posted about him from the positive pregnancy test onward.
4. One of his brothers wants to give him a birthday present that seems ridiculously expensive to me -- a super duper Nerf gun. "Talk it over with Dad," I said. Elwood said, "Talk it through with Mom." Neither one of us wants to say, "No, you can't use your own money to be that generous to your brother!" It would be an awfully big gift, though.
5. I complained when the school said we couldn't bring in homemade treats this year, but there's something to be said for the policy. At 2:17 I realized with a gasp that I should have stopped grading 10 minutes earlier if I was going to get to school on time with the promised ice cream sandwiches. But I raced to the car and thence to Kroger, and I pulled into the school parking lot at 2:30 precisely. No fan needed, no dishes to wash. (I thought that at some point I had posted a picture of my kitchen after I made a batch of spiderweb cupcakes to send to school, but I don't think I wanted to be reminded of the carnage. It was always pretty ugly.)
6. Oh, darn it, did I just say that I am appreciating the DECLINE of WESTERN CIVILIZATION? I think I might have said that. Accidentally.
7. I don't often post to Facebook but I've been doing it all day in between grading, remembering little snippets from the day Pete was born. Here's one I thought about but didn't post: Seven years ago tonight my midwife arrived and said, "Almost 9!" And I thought, "Wait, what?! Nine?" (I was guessing 4, and Elwood agreed. Best surprise ever! But I feel a little funny talking about my cervix on Facebook, so I'll talk about it here instead.)

More quick takes (probably cervix-free ones) at Jen's.

Adrenaline Surge

Stella has begun easing outside unannounced. She puts her shoes on, sort of, though they're usually on the wrong feet with the tongues smushed way up into the toes, and then she slips out the back, Jack. She loves to be outside and the boring grownups usually say "wait" or "maybe later" when she asks, so she takes matters into her own hands.

So far it hasn't been a big deal. I've dealt with escaping preschoolers before and I had been pretty relaxed about it. She's always easy to spot; I tell her she needs to let mama know when she wants to go outside. Our street is blocked off at the moment (because it caved in, which is another story), so street safety isn't really an issue.

This morning I was tying Pete's broken shoelace at the front door when she decided she might like to head outside with her brothers. I figured I'd find her in her usual haunts when I saw the back door open and her shoes missing, but she wasn't anywhere that I could see.

I looked inside again -- she likes to climb up in her brother's loft bed, she likes to go in the teenager's room and soak up the ambience. But she wasn't in any of those places.

I asked the construction guys if they had seen a little girl in a green shirt -- a little shyly, because WHO misplaces a DAUGHTER? They had only seen the boys, walking unaccompanied to school.

I tried to pray, and I tried to think clearly. Should I walk around the block to see if she had gone to visit Mason the friendly cat? Should I call the police? Could she be trapped inside the house -- maybe in a closet? I had no idea where she could be. I envisioned myself calling 911 to say I had lost my daughter. I made one more circuit inside: not upstairs, not downstairs, not in the basement. I made one more circuit around the house, and this time I noticed a flutter of movement in the back of the van.

She had opened the van door (didn't know she could do that) and closed it behind her (sure didn't know she could do that) and climbed up in Pete's booster, which she covets. She took one look at my face and said, "You sad?" I scooped her up with a long shuddery sigh and brought her inside for breakfast. My hands are still shaking.

Spouses Have Words About Words With Spouses

Okay, everyone, I promise not to keep blogging about Words With Friends but it deserves one more post.

First, I need to post about it because my husband feels he has been slandered. He feels I do not actually understand his secret heart. He just likes to play Scrabble, is all. No inner bloodthirstiness, no drive to obliterate. He would like you to know that I win at least half of our games (which is totally true if half means <0.33 in your dialect). He would like you to know that he is at a disadvantage, because he is a math major up against someone with an undergrad literature degree. He contends that most of his high scores have happened in games that he wound up losing (to, um, me). He thinks, in short, that he got a bad rap.

However, I also need to post about it because I am still reassembling the fragments of my exploded head from last night. Brad commented about my hypothetical and actual racks, and I had a moment of feeling pleased with myself because Brad is the King of Scrabble, or at least the Archduke of Scrabble, and his recommendation was exactly what I played. (I should have seen CIVIC too, but Vs are my least favorite Scrabble letter and two of them on my rack at one time = guarantee of Scrabble panic.) Good, I thought. Maybe I couldn't play UNENUREE (but what else, I ask you, would one call a person who was re-sensitized?), but at least I had come up with a Brad-approved word all on my own. I was a little grumpy because you just can't wring many points out of ENURE, but I was moving on with my life.

Until. Oh, until. I checked my iPod and discovered that Elwood had played OXLIP with the X on the triple letter and the P on the triple word. For 98 points. Ninety! eight! points! OXLIP, I ask you.

...I think my threat to take this game back might have been a leetle premature.