RL(ong)BOC

• One of the small stones fell out of my engagement/wedding ring the other day. I could feel it rough on my finger all day, but it often does that when it starts getting cold and my hands shrink. But it suddenly felt rougher and I looked down and the little triangle shaped side stone was gone! Luckily, it was in the chair I was sitting on and I found it immediately. It was one of the smaller of the diamonds, but it would have been a pain in the neck, I imagine, to find one shaped just that way and I probably would have had to redo the whole setting. And I feel lucky that I found the stone; it seems like a good omen overall. :)
• Tuesdays are less hectic days for me; I only have the one class to teach and it's slightly later in the morning. I also have most of the lectures for that class already made up from last Fall, so not as much to do. I do update them, fiddle with them a bit. Especially the ones from earlier in the semester. And last time, I got the author totally wrong (I thought we were doing Ralph Ellison when they were supposed to read Robert Frost. Oops! Luckily, I glanced at the syllabus right before class!) but mostly the lecture was fine. A Youtube video I had used last time was missing but it was recoverable. Anyway. My point is this: I'm kind of feeling relaxed and good today. Babies are mostly ready for school & I'll take them in a minute.
• I was going to post about a weird dream I had, but nah. Keep the strange Freudian crap to oneself, I vote today. :)
• Speaking of voting, I did mine (absentee ballot since we're still Texas residents) yesterday. Get on out there and do your thing, folks. This is, one way or another, a historic election.

Memed! AKA Daddy Would Have Gotten Us Uzis!

Maudie has tagged me!

The Rules:Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.

Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird.
Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Because I'm a terrible "meme-r" I'm not tagging anyone, but anyone who reads me who feels like doing this should let me know, cause I like reading them.

7 Things about me:

1. I am eating an awesome Waldorf Salad right now. With strawberries added because they're yummy.
2. I'm thinking about getting fake nails later today, painted black, for my witch thing later this week. But I'd have to get them repainted for any potential job interviews and that's going to be annoying. Hmmm. And I generally hate the fake nails because I can't type in them, but it's SUCH a good part of a "sexy-ish" witch costume to have lonnnnnng fingernails. Which I cannot manage naturally anymore.
3. I'm being so lazy in most of my classes this week. Showing Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the "Hush" episode) in most of them. But there's a really theoretical reason behind it. Seriously. I'm teaching film & popular culture analysis. (Heh Heh).
4. Night of the Comet is one of my all time favorite movies. I wish it were out on DVD.
5. I did an online Tarot reading last week before the job I'm applying for was listed and it predicted good things. I'm hopeful. I know Tarot is just hooey but still maybe it's going to be real!
6. I still want to be a ballerina. But not enough to take classes. I'd just like to magically morph into a Prima.
7. I've got pistachios, too! mmmmm. Addiction is my friend. (Can you tell I skipped out on some of my office hour today to go to the store?) :)

Maia reads Go Dog Go

It's too cute. Then dad ruins it by talking. :)

Sean, Maia & Mommy

Amuck Amuck Amuck!!

Next week is my favorite holiday of the year: Halloween. I love the potential of the holiday-- dressing up, feeling the excitement of the air suddenly grown crisp. In Shreveport, we're beginning to get the leaves changing color, and it will be gorgeous in a few more weeks.

I'm going to dress up as a witch (albeit, a somewhat sexy one with pink fake eyelashes) and my students will all have a free day and watch movies. I'm also giving a presentation-- sort of a dramatic interp reading-- my part is about witches-- with two other engaging faculty members. One of them plans to do a ghost story & the other plans to do a short story she wrote. It'll be really fun, I think. I will probably give my students extra credit for showing up, but then that will also make me kind of nervous. It will, however, pack the room if a bunch of them show up and that's a good thing.

We're also going to have a Halloween party for the little rugrats & their school friends. I need to finish printing out the invitations for it, but it will be "fun" and possibly a bad idea. :) After the party we went to (with 2 ponies! ) and a dozen under 5 kids running amuck I am a little nervous about having that many kids in my house but man, it's all good.

So what are you planning for Halloween, if anything?

What I Got Done

Computer organizey things. We now have TWO desks downstairs with two setups, one for me, one for Andrew. And a laptop upstairs-- all new & shiny. We are a three computer family. :) I also got a wireless printer. I haven't gotten it all set up yet properly (the printer) for wireless printing but soon.

I'm pretty pleased with the day's work. BUt man oh man I HATE putting desks with awful instructions together. There was a moment of much very vulgar swearing...but it's together and things are good. Hooray! More work tomorrow; we'll see.

To Do List: Hollyday Day 1

The first day of my Hollyday is rainy and a little muggy. Blech. But, since nothing I truly need to do is outdoors, it'll be okay. I do have an absolute TON of things I need to get done. I do have several days for these chores but what I don't get done today is just going to pile up on me.

• write myself into a grant being written by this Librarian at work. If I piggyback on her grant, I may be able to get some money for new A/V equipment at work. I'm torn about this since I want a "real job" elsewhere and why do a bunch of work when I'm leaving, right? But it will look good to have done it. Getting grants makes one attractive on the academic market. So. Write myself in there. DONE (mostly)
• clean sort toss a bunch of old baby toys. They're a mess & Andrew hates it and we need the storage space for other things. My house is such a good candidate, in some ways, for one of those storage experts you see on TV. We have some real messes here and there, and lots of actual space, but much of it is poorly used. We need some organizational gadgets, but damned if I know how/what to do with it.
• Purchase gifts for kids' birthday party we're attending on Sat. There will be a pony. Cool, but a little freaky. I feel like a character in Steve Marn's Parenthood so many times. DONE
• work on applications for jobs. You already know way more about this than you want to, I'm sure.
• get van cleaned out. On our recent road trip, about a cup of Quick strawberry powder got spilled on the floor. It's not a pretty sight. Contrary to what one might think, it doesn't smell like strawberries either.
• Check on a new laptop. My old one, Pele, died over the trip to San Antonio. In a very dramatic and annoying manner, in fact. I'll have to tell you about it sometime. Maybe. DONE
• On a related note, I need to figure out a better organizational scheme for the computers I already have. Yes. ComputerS. Two of them. And printer and fax/scanner. They're set up in such a way that makes them somewhat unusable. What do I do about it? So far, procrastinate. La lalalallallalalala. DONE
• Grade papers. (A Perpetual issue).
• Finish lesson plan for next week on Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit." So far it's a cool lesson; it just needs a bit more juice.
• Feel icky because Andrew made me drink too much wine last night. Seriously. He's such a wanker about it. Forced me and everything-- poured it right down my throat. :)
• Fix the upstairs toilet. A flapper broke-- it's a minor annoyance, but I have to get the right kind from the Hardware store and it's one of those weirdly shaped ones. Not the "standard" which Andrew bought already. Trip to hardware store. Blech.
• I'm sure there are more things that I'll think of later. But for now, I'm going to scan the news headlines, check my email, drink my coffee, and decide which thing gets to be done first.

Holly-Days

When I was 17, the marching band (yay Vikings!) that I was a superb member of went to Arizona for a band competition & parade. We also had a day trip to the Grand Canyon. During that trip, one of the blond girls named Holly made some crazy stupid remark about cows and vacations. She was totally serious, and it was a "blond moment." We all teased her about having a "Holly day"-- a day when you get to vacay from being smart.

Well, Thursday & Friday are Hollydays for my campus. We have what they call a "Fall Break." So I've got "no class," as Rodney Dangerfield would have said. Yay!

I have SO many things to do and probably will not get half of them done but I am going to try. Mostly I'd like to just loll around on my couch, read some kind of stupid addictive vampire book and eat pistachios. Sigh. I guess that's for December. Counting down the days. 'Til every day is a Holly Day.

Blech: 2 things I hate about today

I feel awful today. I don't know if it was just the weekend road trip or I've just picked up another of the interminable bugs that children drag home to you when they are young. I've sipped some chicken broth & ate a bunch of saltines and drank some water so I feel a little better than I did when I woke up, but I hope that the food doesn't come back to haunt me.

I'm also crazy tired and just want to take a nap.

I spent the morning googling things about the upcoming election and feeling irritated about generally the political climate. I think it's just me, but it seems like it's worse this time than it usually is. More negative rhetoric, less about actual issues.

This time, I'm voting for Hello Kitty.

wicked witch poems

I'm going to do a presentation on Halloween wherein I incorporate several poems related to witches. What I have thus far is: "Her Kind" by Anne Sexton and "Witch" by Jean Tepperman.

Can you think of any other "witch" poems that I am forgetting? :) Suggestions in the comments.

Tiny Dancer

Last week, Maia took her first "ballet/tap" class. She's been dying to take classes ever since one of her schoolmates (who is in the class with her, actually) had a birthday party at the studio. On the way there, we were discussing frogs. I asked Maia if she was a frog and wanted to eat bugs.

She said: "No, mommy. I'm a ballerina." (As if I was a complete idiot).

Before even taking a single class.

Here is one of several pictures daddy took of her getting ready to go. Can we say Drama? Ah, the things we have to look forward to.

Hanging Over One's Head...

Things. Stuff that needs done. When I was writing my dissertation it was always that-- research, writing, editing. Send it to the committee. Wait (forever) for their input. Repeat. Then I was done! Unaccountably. After the self-induced computer inspired Tourette's of editing the damned thing to turn in to the graduate school I was done.

I had heard about the "you feel like you still have something to do" syndrome of post-dissertation land, and I felt it for a little while. But mostly, I DO have things I want and need to do.

• write novels (I have three or four of them in my head. Just like with the dissertation, I tend to get bogged down in research).
• finish the proposals for the two scholarly books I'm trying to get together
• write myself into a huge grant to get stuff for the English department that I want to use.
• write up applications for jobs
• figure out if I want to try for HS jobs
• clean my house
• prep for Halloween-- buy some pumpkins, costumes, etc.
• garden (my poor garden is ridiculously choked with weeds and tall weedy grass)
• revise several things for my Women Writers site
• things I'm clearly forgetting

Of this nice long list, I'll probably accomplish one or two things this week.

But today, I'm mostly thinking about cleaning. And being annoyed by the way Shreveport + service industry jobs work (or don't) together. Last time the lady who had been cleaning my house every two weeks came over, I essentially fired her, in my head. I didn't really tell her but I feel like she got the hint when I was as pissed off as I was when she left. And today would be the day she would have come by. I really liked having someone come and mop and do my bathrooms every couple of weeks. For the most part, minus munchkin clutter that happens on a daily basis, we keep the house pretty clean. But with all the hardwood floors, we need mopping regularly. But I was just sick of the drama that came with this lady. So now, she's supposed to call me and come by early in the morning (one of the bits of drama was perpetual lateness.) So now I'm thinking what I really want to do is have a babysitter come by and watch/play with the monkeys while I clean the house. It will end up being cheaper, and I like the way I clean. I just don't usually have the time and/or energy to keep up with the kiddos while I also am elbow deep in Fabuloso cleanser. (My favorite-- smells like lavender Kool-aid. And while that probably would not taste good, it is wonderful in the house.)

Anyway. Right this second I am feeling a little icked out by the smuggy smell of the air in the swampland today (we have sulfur-y swamp-y today. Mildew + Wet, a bit muggy, rotten eggs. At least it's not hot, but it's still stinky.) And planning to get myself dressed and clean the house and go shopping with the kiddos. Husband is working today so I'm on my own. Bleeeh.

But I really tend to feel guilty for that long list of things I'm not going to get done today. Let me add another list here so that I can at least get something checked off:

• Spoil my children.
• Love them crazily.
• Smooch and play with them.
• be amazed as Sean says more words than he used to (he sang "My Country Tis of Thee" the other day).
• Repeat.

Things We Lose

I am terribly sad about the fact that Kate Chopin's house in Cloutierville burned the other day. It's pretty much gutted, and many artifacts were apparently lost. It looks like grad students saved the originals to one of her collected works that was in the house (perhaps someone was studying it?) but the house is really gone. The best story online I found is this one from a local network: here. It's quite a loss, historically. She didn't live there all that long, apparently, but it doesn't matter.

I had always intended to go down there and see it, like when a friend who'd be into it came to visit. But I hadn't made the trek, and now I never will get the chance. Very sad, very sad.

I'm just a squirrel...

tryin' to get a nut.

To move your butt.

To the dancefloor, til your butt's up....

FYI.