diversion

Sarah had a gig in town last weekend which gave her a reason to stop by home.  How wonderful to see her, even if only briefly.  We had a very quick belated celebration of her birthday.  I even baked a cake (instead of buying the usual birthday cake from the bakery) to surprise her, and decorated it myself.  Alas, there was no time to light fire to candles and blow out them out, but she opened presents and took the cake with her.  It was my first attempt to decorate a cake with a nifty-thingie I bought at Hobby Lobby.  It was fun, but Emily said I got a bit carried away with the green stars.  It’s OK…it was fun.

My Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera) finally bloomed.  Take a look!  It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened with my plants in months.  I bought this little plant like three years ago, on clearance of course, because that’s when I usually acquire plants.  Finally it has rewarded me with a blossom and another bud which will hopefully be just as lovely. 

Christmas Cactus in bloom - finally!!!

Erin and Emily have been home at the same time for Spring Break.  It was not supposed to be that way, but University of Louisville rescheduled spring break so as to free up parking spaces for the basketball tournaments going on there this week.  My favorite team is playing today – University of Kentucky.  Kentucky has an awesome team this year – we finished our regular season undefeated, won the SEC tournament, and now the NCAA tournament is going on.  Go Cats!! 

We didn’t plan any spring break trips, but I did take a vacation day last Wednesday and drove the girls to Easton Mall in Columbus, Ohio.  It’s a very big shopping area – all spread out.  Most of it is not enclosed, so on a rainy day it’s not a great place to be.  Fortunately, it was sunny and fairly warm Wednesday.  I took my iPad and figured when boredom set in, I would find a place with WiFi and pass time.  As it turned out, they ran out of money in a matter of two hours and were ready to go.  I hadn’t even explored all the shopping districts by the time they texted me.  We had a late lunch before heading back home…best of all, we were out of town before the traffic got bad.

Emily and Erin - lunch at PF Chang's

This weekend, I’m preparing applications and cover letters to apply for adjunct teaching work at two universities.  It’s a lot of work to apply.  I was going to hire a service to do this for me, but decided to do a few myself to convince me that the service is worth the cost.  Already, I’m convinced.  I’m already too busy with everything else going on.  All work and no play makes me…what I already am.  Tired.  Tired of all work and no play.  And now that I’ve pissed away 30 minutes writing a blog post, it’s time to get back to work.    

         

hearing voices

Lily Groesbeck, an 18-month-old miracle survivor of a disaster, is in the news this week.  She was strapped in her car seat in the back of her mother’s car, when her mother drove off a bridge and the car went into an icy-cold stream below.  The car landed on its roof (upside down).  The mother died, but the baby survived 14 hours alone in her carseat.  Several reports say her head was just inches above the water.  Regardless, she was unconscious with hypothermia when the rescuers pulled her out.

What is most interesting about this story is that all the rescuers heard a voice from the car, somebody calling for help.  One of the rescuers even called back to the person, saying they were trying their best.   But…the woman had long been dead and the baby was near death.  What was this voice they heard coming from the car?  The rescuers are baffled.

At the risk of sounding like crazy KYLady, I had an experience where I heard “a voice”.  Yes indeed.  It was the weirdest thing ever, but thank God it happened.  I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was a typical evening.  Erin and Emily were babies, about 12-14 months old.  I had put them in their cribs “for the night” and they were quiet, Sarah was locked up in her bedroom, Someone was lying in bed watching a ball game on the TV.  I used the term “for the night” which means I didn’t expect either to want or need anything for at least 5 hours or so.

little girls in their "big girl" bed

  

Everyone was on the second floor, so I went to the basement to run on the treadmill.  I had no iPod then, so I started a CD - the same CD I’d listened to for weeks when running.  I turned it up loud and started my usual run.  Mind you, this was before we finished the basement so it was a big, mostly dark space.  The stairs were directly behind me.  It was a bit creepy down there, but it was a good private space to work out.

 

About 20 minutes into a run, a heard a voice from very near my ear.  It seemed to come from a man a bit taller than me, and from directly behind me.  He exclaimed, “OH SHIT!”  It startled me so much that I turned to see who it was and lost my footing at the same time.  I grabbed the side rails of the treadmill to keep from falling and punched the kill button.  I quickly scanned the room – nobody.  I stepped off, stopped the music, and listened.  I was convinced a man was in the basement with me.  I walked around, checked that the door was still locked, searched for anywhere a person could hide – nothing.  I told myself it must have been something in the music that I just had never heard before.

I left the music off and went back to running, but not for long.  I couldn’t shake that feeling that something was wrong.  I shut the treadmill back off and went upstairs to search the first floor, like maybe somebody who had been in the basement had already gone upstairs.  Stupid, I know.  We’ve all seen enough horror movies to know the evil intruder could have easily stuck an axe in my head before proceeding upstairs to find other victims.

 

I crept around the first floor investigating every conceivable hiding place.  All clear.  I shrugged and heaved a sigh of relief.  But, just as soon as my hand touched the knob of the basement door, the thought entered my mind that the intruder was already upstairs.  Why wouldn’t he be?

 

I turned on the hall light and listened.  No sound.  I began up the steps and was almost to the landing when I looked up and saw….Erin’s gigantic eyes looking down at me.  She was sitting straddled across the gate at the top of the steps.  Before I could react, she said, “I stuck”.  I ran up the remaining steps and grabbed her, just in time too.  It was a cheap, wooden compression gate, definitely not sturdy enough for climbing on.  The rubber pads that held it in place had almost slipped completely off the wall from the excess weight (not that Erin was fat…she was like a wiry monkey at that stage).  To make matters worse, we had no stair railings at all.  The prior owners’ children were teens when they built the house, and our babies were still not given access to the stairs.  If Erin had fallen, she could have gone all the way down to the hard wood on the first floor. 

  

Erin was obviously grateful to be rescued.  Emily was standing by, partner in crime.  I asked them why they were out of bed.  Emily said, “Erin get my doll” and she pointed downstairs.  Yes indeed, she had sent Erin on a mission to retrieve her doll.  I got the doll for her and placed the girls back in their beds with orders to stay put.  Erin had been climbing out of and back into her crib since before she could walk.  For that reason, we always put a gate in their bedroom doorway at night.  Once Emily learned to climb out of her bed, we had an issue.  Together they were fearless.  Shortly after that incident, I replaced the baby beds with a double bed for the girls to share, had proper stair railings installed, and we got taller\sturdier gates for the top of the stairs and to gate the girls into their room at night.

partners in crime

What was the voice I heard that night?  A guardian angel?  Erin’s or mine?

And what about Lily?  Who or what was calling for help to those four men who heard the voice?

I didn’t tell anyone about the voice for a while.  Who would believe me?  I told the girls and Someone about it several months later.  Someone was most definitely skeptical.  I don’t care – believe me or not.  I believe those men heard what they say they heard.  I believe that Erin (and me) and Lily were somehow blessed by something we don’t understand.     

temporary escape

I had to go to Louisiana last week to sit in on a training class and attend meetings.  Traveling is just not as much fun as it used to be.  At least with this trip, I planned my schedule around delayed flights, meaning I gave myself intentional 3 to 4 hour layovers.  It’s a good thing because each layover was needed and there were no missed flights this time.  Most of the waiting happened while trying to leave airports in the mornings.  Another long wait was when Delta scrambled to figure out where my luggage was after my plane arrived in New Orleans.  Apparently they'd sent my bag to New Orleans by way of Washington DC rather than Atlanta.  They found it and it was in my possession before leaving the airport, so that ended well.  I travel light.  Whereas carrying on my bag is definitely doable, my laptop bag is heavy enough to lug around.  It costs $25 to check my bag, but I don’t care what the trip costs because I’m not paying for it.  Convenience is king when the cost is not coming from my own pockets.

I worked in Garyville, Louisiana, which is about 25 miles west of New Orleans – a place I hadn’t been since about half a year after hurricane Katrina.  It would have been nice to have seen the French Quarter again after it was rebuilt, but I didn’t have much time to do anything except work this trip.  One evening a group of us had dinner at a little seafood restaurant on Lake Pontchartrain, very close to where our motel was in the little town of LaPlace.  We agreed to meet at 6:30, but I went a little early so I could see the area before dark.  The restaurant was near a boat launch ramp and a swamp tour place.  I was hoping to see swamps and alligators, but alas, I saw absolutely no wildlife at all…plenty of swampland though.  Even right out my motel window, I could look down and see a swamp with dead trees and Spanish moss hanging off them and little flowers blooming along the edge.  The landscape in that part of the country is kind of bleak in comparison to our hills and cliffs of Kentucky – it’s all just very flat which makes the sky seem larger than it should be.

Full moon over Lake Ponchartrain, LaPlace, Lousiana.

Lake Ponchartrain is BIG.  

The weather was lovely the first days – sunny and 80 degrees.  On the night before I left, the temperature dipped to nearly freezing and the wind was incredible.  The wind chill was definitely like the winter of Kentucky.  I drove back to the airport the night before my departure to turn in my rental car and shuttle to a nearby motel.  Snow flurries were blinding and the wind was like nothing I’d ever driven in.  Fortunately the evening traffic was light.  Keeping my car in its lane was all I could do; big trucks were drifting out of their lanes. 

  

While I was out of town, we had a horrendous snow/ice storm here at home.  We had 2” of rain in an hour that turned to ice, followed by 18 inches of snow.  The rain caused some bad flooding.  Some parts of Kentucky got 2 feet of snow; much of the state was declared a disaster area.  The girls’ classes were all called off because across most of the state, only emergency vehicles were permitted on the roads (faculty and staff could not get into work).  Someone stayed home for three days and shoveled snow off our driveway and off our neighbor’s driveway.  By the time I flew home Friday, the roads were clear enough to drive on safely, but there were still lots of cars, trucks, and buses stuck in the snow along the highway.  The trees still had snow all over them and the landscape looked kind of magical.  Sadly, a lot of trees broke and uprooted from the weight of ice and snow. 

View from our front door

View from the back door

Snow on the sickly, rotting red maple tree

Hopefully, we are through with winter for 2015.  Spring starts this month.  Definitely, I’m ready for spring.  The temperature is warming up this week and the snow will melt.  I saw birds carrying twigs and straw today.  They are building nests.  The birds know spring is near.

Still no progress on hunting another teaching job.  I've been rewriting my CV per feedback I got from a consulting group.  It's a necessary first step to get it looking presentable.  My students are on spring break this week so in theory, it frees me up somewhat.  I have a lead on a job from a good friend who put in a good word for me.  It's time to get the damn deed done - do or die - pedal to the metal.