Hamlet (edition, Facebook)

Hamlet (by Sarah Schmelling)

Enjoy!

A Pulse! (signs of life from planet Anno)

Wild winds racing across the fields, kicking up anything not firmly rooted to the ground: dried weeds, tree fences we just tacked into the ground until we could get around to nailing them down more securely, the occasional bucket inadvertently left in the garden. Winter is coming, and the temperature is dropping fast!

Sustaining us against the seasonal changes: homemade cinnamon rolls (from The Breadmaker's Apprentice), a rich buttery dough brightened with a subtle touch of lemon zest (or lemon extract), not too sweet, perfectly gooey, completely lovely. And completely worth the effort of starting at 5:30 a.m. to have the scent of cinnamon and coffee warming the chilled corners of the house (right, M?).

My father continues to improve and will probably move out of skilled nursing sometime this weekend. The experience has aged him considerably, though, and it seems unlikely that he will recover the same level of mobility and independence he enjoyed just weeks ago. Even though I'm glad he'll be returning home to my mother, I sure wish they were still living nearby where I could more easily check in on both of them.

Currently reading: She's Come Undone, finding it just about as good as I did the first time around. Next up: Loving Frank (Nancy Horan).

Currently thinking about (more than you could possibly imagine): the sum of the interior angles of polygons, and its relationship to the sum of the exterior angles. Fascinating stuff (really!), and mysterious, too.

Just right for a spooky night...
Happy Halloween!

Sunday Scribblings: Junk

Just returned from a week at the hospital bedside of my father who is now in stable condition and more comfortably situated in a skilled nursing facility much closer to my mother. This is good news, and we are all much relieved.

Overall, it's been a rocky couple of weeks around here, beginning with the failure of my anti-lock braking system, continuing on to the brutal felling of our mailbox (just one of those things that seems to happen in rural areas), and culminating in a late night phone call about my father's health that sent us barreling southward in our other vehicle, which, as it turned out, was also blighted by a tire that kept losing air.

As for us, we are safely home now, though, and happy to be here: even the cheesecake I had baked just before we left still tasted fresh, as if it had been happy to wait for us. This is also good news.

The bad news is this: between Geometry and aging parents and the perils of m's junior year, there are times when writing seems to have no part in my life. No time, no inclination, no interest, no heart-aching yearning, no desire. Pretty well kills any possibility of words making their way onto paper. Nonetheless, I catch myself noticing writing moments, storing them up perhaps, like junk in the attic, hoping that someday they might be useful.

So here they are, dusty relics of the last few weeks:

--Sitting at a window table at a campus cafe: a young couple walked by, hand in hand, the woman obviously distracted, looking in the window, swiveling her head in search of ... what? friends? predators? a better possibility? The young man with her suddenly tugging her hand, a clear signal: I'm here. Damnit. Here.

--At the same location: a group of professors/consultants talking very seriously -- all double chins, scowls, and earnest arrogance; if they had beards, they would have been talking into them -- are interrupted by a young woman (student?) and the entire tenor of the group changes: smiles, laughter, beaming faces. She leaves, and all seriousness resumes.

--My dad, in a moment of apparent lucidity, suddenly asking my brother about the pistons for our Pinto, a car we had more than 30 years ago: "What size were they?"

--Another hospital/dad moment: mustering all the indignant outrage possible to a 79-year-old man in a hospital gown: "Who are you?" he demanded of the two physical/occupational therapists who had arrived to help him begin to walk again, "Am I paying for this?" That's my dad, ever cost-conscious: was one sure sign he was feeling better.

--Wandering through Jungle Jim's -- the only grocery store I know of that is also a tourist attraction, groups of them carted around on safari trucks -- rooting for comfort food, enjoying various strange encounters: the giant stuffed lion dressed like Elvis, strumming a guitar and growling "Love Me Tender..." the Campbell's Soup can swinging on a monkey bar, chatting to customers, occasionally bursting into song, "Mmmm mmm good/ Mmmm mmm good/ That's what Campbell's Soup is/ Mmmm mm good." Also, as m. said: his lips moved.

And that's all for now: nothing but junk.

Sunday Scribblings

Tuesday Teaser: A Book Meme

Just saw this over at Oh's place, and immediately thought: wow, here's something even I can do!

It's Teaser Tuesdays, a weekly bookish meme hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Everyone's invited to play along! Here are the rules:

Grab your current read

Open to a random page

Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

So, without further ado, here's mine:

"You put cyanide on that ore, the silver leaps out of it," he would say. "I have enough cyanide there to kill Cincinnati."

--Annals of the Former World, Book 1: Basin and Range (John McPhee)

Pretty lively stuff for a book about geology...

Sunday Scribblings: First Kiss (because a repost is just about all I can muster)

It was unexpected, that was for sure.

At 15, I was not the kind of girl that anybody just kissed. For one, you would have had to catch me first, and I moved pretty fast. For another, it would have been hard to get past the stack of books I carried. Or the thick glasses I wore. Not to mention a withering sarcasm that successfully repelled most advances.

Also, having grown up with the novels of Grace Livingston Hill, I had ideals.

Grace Livingston Hill was a Christian romance writer who published in the early 20th century. Her novels all feature demure, young heroines whose steadfast virtue won the heart of the rich and manly hero over the more aggressive wiles of the lipstick-wearing Jezebel harlots who were the inevitable antagonists. They all conclude with wedding bells and a kiss--in that order. She wrote hundreds of these books, most of them housed in our church library. I read every single one.

I was prim, reserved, and very judgmental; voted “Most Likely to Correct Your Grammar.” Hardly approachable.

Theater Guy was in my German class. He was a year ahead of me, and until we ended up in a combined 4th/5th year German class my junior year, we’d never spent much time together. From my perspective, he had a couple of strikes against him. He smoked; I disapproved. He was part of a creative and noisily expressive crowd known more for exuberant parties than for strong academic records. Again, I disapproved. He took special efforts, it seemed, to draw attention to me, frustrating my attempts to remain invisible. He made me blush.

He was the third of four children, from a family known for being brilliant, if eccentric. His older brother was the scientist, already in advanced studies at U-M, the recipient of numerous academic scholarships. His older sister was a talented cellist who was also a far more accomplished pianist than I would ever be. Theater Guy actually was an excellent student; he just didn’t advertise that fact too widely, preferring to be known for comic goofiness than for the deceptively understated insights about history, technology, and economics he shared with the few people who knew him well. There are, as it turns out, many ways to hide in high school.

At that time, the few boys who tried to impress me made their attempts through extended political and literary arguments. It was obvious bragging, and easy to dismiss: whatever motivated them seemed to be more about their own egos than anything to do with me. Theater Guy, though, made me laugh. He drew cartoons on my homework; made up awful puns and fractured grammar. He knew things about trees and stars, things we hadn’t learned in classrooms, things that quickened my pulse to the possibility of a greater world. Having him in class woke me up a bit, even if his attentions occasionally panicked and embarrassed me.

We knew each other from class, where he sat in front of me, but it took a dance to bring us together. It was one of the first dances of the year, sometime in early October, just a few weeks before my 16th birthday. I had gone with friends, only to be abandoned late in the night, by the inevitable "Stairway to Heaven."

So there I was, alone, clinging to the gym wall for support, when Theater Guy appeared in front of me. He extended a hand. With the noise in the gym, no words were possible; for the invitation he was extending, no words were necessary.

Oh, why not? It was not like there was anything else for me to do. It was late, and my resistance was low. The high school gym was dark; everyone else was preoccupied with their own heightened hormones. With only a little wariness, I took his hand, and we danced. He smelled like cedar and autumn leaves, like woodsmoke and dreams; his flannel shirt was soft and warm.

It felt inviting and comfortable, but it signaled intentions that confused me. In my experience, expressing interest -- whether in attending a party or hoping to attract someone's attention or even simple things like hoping to perform well in a recital or get a part in a play -- only led to immediate disappointment or heartbreak or derision. My very survival depended on containing and corralling feeling, on maintaining the appearance of aloof detachment. As long as no one knew of my desires, I could at least hold onto the hope of attaining them. This invitation to relax my guard felt dangerous, wildly dangerous.

The music stopped, and the dance was officially over. Some couples drowsily extricated themselves with the slow sleepiness of newborn kittens. Others, longer-established, clung together in full-body embrace, swaying silently in their own private worlds. For us, the question -- what next? -- lay heavily between us. I waited a moment's breath too long to recollect my usual armor, and Theater Guy, sensing.. what? hesitation? desire?... drew me closer. And then he kissed me.

In the pantheon of kisses in my life, it was not my all-time number one. It may not even make my list of the top ten. But it avoided many errors. It was not lip-mashing or brusque, not slimy or sweaty or sticky or clammy. All in all, it was very nice: an attentive, I-like-you-and-I’d-like-to-know-you-better kind of kiss. More inquisitive than a declaration of passionate ardor. It had potential.

Or it might have if it hadn't shocked me into remembering all the reasons -- the smoking, the lack of academic seriousness, the irritating teasing -- this was a match that could never work. I shoved him away, staggered backwards, and dragged my sleeve across my mouth, glaring. I must have looked quite a sight.

He smirked.

It was the wrong response. If I had been the kind of girl who slugged people, I would have slugged him right then. My first romantic encounter, and already I was discovering a dark new range to my emotional register. Perhaps sensing these violent possibilities, he stepped back further, out of reach, laughed, and disappeared into the crowds.

That is what I remember, anyway.

And afterwards? Not much. By my birthday, it was over, and we hardly spoke the rest of the year. He took up with one of the chestnut-haired, gazelle-like nymphs I suspected he had been more interested in all along, while I spent the rest of the year arguing the Equal Rights Amendment in German class with Harvard Boy. It would take nearly three more years, but our lives would once again collide... to far more catastrophic effect.

Sunday Scribblings

Notes from a busy week

-- During a retrograde, beware of that apparently perfectly functioning chalkboard compass that came with your geometry curriculum: just as you are about to use it for the very first time, its chalk will become jammed back to the level of its plastic holder, rendering it unusable and requiring major surgery to restore it to its proper level. Relieved to have it repaired, you will attempt to continue, and then the suction cup that anchors the compass to the board will pull away from the body of the compass, exposing bare screws, and causing you to scramble for tiny sharp parts that have dropped to the floor. You will be reduced to asking your students to imagine that you were making accurate marks.

-- My students, though, were gracious and wonderful, and possibly grateful for the delay of serious academic instruction.

-- Nonetheless, one of the first things I did Monday evening was order a new chalkboard compass.

-- Also a whole bunch of literary essays/ historical works about Geology: John McPhee's Annals of the Former World, Bedrock, The Language of the Earth, and Hard Road West: History & Geology Along the Gold Rush Trail. A couple of others, too, that have yet to arrive. Because when you're teaching science, you can never have too many interesting supplemental material lingering about.

-- Something I learned: just because a drawing sketched out on a sheet of paper seems to demonstrate the principles you want to illustrate doesn't mean that the drawing will work on the scale of the blackboard that's in your room. A couple of times I found myself drawing lines on cinderblock because that's how my drawing was scaled. Make a frame drawn to scale; use that as your template.

-- From the "There's always one" department: I'm demonstrating their first construction, how to copy a line segment, and one of the students -- the one student who raced ahead after our introductory class on Monday and did all the problems for all the assigned sections before I even handed out next week's homework assignment after our first real classroom discussion on Wednesday -- pipes up, "Hey, I think I figured out how to bisect a line segment!" And he was right. This is the one I'm gonna have to watch out for...

-- You can never have enough colored chalk.

-- Teaching two days a week is way different than teaching one day a week.

-- I have missed everyone -- kids and parents -- more than I realized. It feels like a small miracle to be part of a community that is so welcoming, so affectionate, so supportive. It is an amazing place, and I feel fortunate to be part of it.

-- The intense communication storm of the first week seems to be subsiding into something just more normally busy. For me, this is good.

-- I am exhausted.
-- Exhilarated.
-- Exhilarated and exhausted.

And now I'm off to read. Something fun. Something not for school. And this weekend, we might finally get to see Julie & Julia -- hooray!

And you? What weekend adventures are ahead of you?

Weekend Update

In the way of all good soap operas, the old dramas in our lives -- remember our broken cooktop, the failed transmission? -- seem to be resolving even as new crises clamor for immediate attention.

For the record, M. installed a new cooktop, and our vehicle was repaired at considerably less expense than we had initially feared. Were we thrilled & delighted. Yes, I am happy to report, we were. But only momentarily, you see...

Because school started this week. Or at least the classes we're doing at home with m. This is the week we use to get a head start on things before her far more interesting teachers at the co-op begin co-opting her attention; also the week we use to work out the glitches.

Unlike past years, the math & science materials we picked seem to work well, both for m. and for me & M., who will teaching her. We are all breathing huge sighs of relief over this.

The biggest glitch came, as glitches always do, from an unexpected quarter: her online German curriculum, which last year we counted as a huge success. It was a great program with interesting if sometimes unintentionally amusing materials nicely pitched for even sophisticated high school students, and it included a half hour weekly conversation with a German professor at a state university. We'd signed up for this year's program back in April, before last year's program was even finished.

Unfortunately, the program this year seems to be a victim of its own success: enrollments are up by nearly 500% (yes, 500%), and the structural organization to support the increase does not seem to be in place: materials are late, we're getting important information about the program from grad students instead of the program directors, etc. Given that m's third-year German program depends on conversation and longer writing projects that require evaluation by knowledgeable people, this lack of organization made me uneasy. People I knew who'd gone through the third-year program last year confirmed my uneasiness: the coordination was tricky last year; from what I described of this year's program, everyone feared the worst.

And so it is that this first week of classes, I find myself frantically scrounging together a German curriculum, not what I had planned to be doing during a week that was already short (due to the Labor Day holiday), constrained (by the lack of a car), and overscheduled (with copying, collating, stapling, and otherwise organizing materials for the math classes I'll be teaching at the co-op, starting Monday). As of this morning, though, we've found some good opportunities for conversation practice, and I think I might have found a reasonable basic text. Things seem to be falling into place, which makes me think that maybe we made the right decision.

The addition of this class to my teaching load this year, though, has prompted a kind of identity crisis. What do I -- with a background in history & religion -- think I'm trying to do, teaching two math classes, one science class, and a German class. Just what part of me raised my hand and volunteered for this little project that's already taken most of the summer for me to prepare? What is this prim little voice that keeps insisting even in the face of my raging desire to flop on the sofa with a pulpy mystery thriller and a bag of cheese curls, "well, it's interesting, isn't it? and isn't it a good thing to do?"

And there you have it: it is interesting, every bit of it, although I could do without the copying & collating & figuring out how to organize everything, which I've learned is 9/10ths the battle; and it is a good thing to do. But, damn, it's hard. I miss feeling competent, I miss doing things I think I can do well: long cafe dates, for one; writing an occasional post, for another. I feel frazzled and jangled, caught in a crossfire of loud chaotic noises: unnerved and scared.

If I'm honest, that's how I always feel whenever I'm making anything at all, whether writing a post, a planning a class, or even cooking a meal: I'm confused by the mess and often find it hard to believe that that anything worthwhile could come of the effort. It is not a langorous or seductive process at all, nothing half as much fun as dinner at the wine bar, nothing so relaxing or rejuvenating as a day at the spa. It is hard work, with uncertain outcomes. Sometimes, though, it surprises you. But only afterwards: that shock -- I did that? Really? It can keep a person going.

During times like this last week, I'm glad to be as old as I am, with plenty of experience to turn to that says to keep on going, there's something worthwhile here. Give me a week or two; maybe I'll find my groove. Or at least maybe I'll have driven out of my rut.

In the meantime, I'm still figuring out how to get the dog to the vet. I think he's overdue for his rabies vaccine.

Hope you are all looking forward to a peaceful & restorative weekend!