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. 

making do

This cold weather is playing hell with the utility infrastructure around here.  The ice last weekend caused trees to snap and fall on power lines.  Many people are still without power.  Fortunately, my house still has electricity and cable/Internet.  What we don’t have is water.  The freezing cold causes old, brittle main water lines to break.  We’ve had no water since yesterday afternoon.  Some people I know have not had water since last week.  Now we’re to the point where it’s difficult to find bottled water in stores. 

To make do, I’ve been collecting snow from the yard and melting it on the stove in a big pot.  It’s fine to flush toilets with and wash up in.  We’re using paper plates and plastic silverware until we have water again.  Someone is not adjusting well to the inconvenience.  He wants us to just use our dishes and let them pile up until we have none left.  I’m sure that’s a fine solution for someone who has no intentions to clean dirty dishes that have been sitting around for days (or it could extend into weeks…who knows)?  He’s a city boy.  He doesn’t like camping because he doesn’t have conveniences of home.  I like conveniences, but I can survive without them (well most of them….I get cranky without Internet access). 

Growing up, I spent lots of time at my great-grandparents’ farm in the country.  They didn’t get indoor plumbing until I was 9 years old or so.  Until they remodeled a bedroom into a bathroom, and even after that, they had an outhouse at the far corner of their yard.  It really was a horrible thing and I hated to use it.  You may have seen pictures of outhouses with a moon or star cut in the door to let light in.  Their outhouse had no such feature.  The only light that came in was the tiny rays that leaked through the cracks between the boards.  At night, you took a flashlight with you.  In summer, the stench was disgusting.  Giant spiders made their homes in there because outhouses, by their nature, attract flies.  I remember looking up once and seeing a bat hanging upside down in the corner.  I couldn’t exit quickly enough.

Erin's bat

       

We were instructed to make lots of noise before opening the door and to inspect the floor and look up at the rafters before entering.  The neighbor got bit by a copperhead in his outhouse.  He startled the snake by opening the door and plowing in before giving any wildlife a chance to scamper.  My grandmother told me that once when she was young, she was sitting “on the throne” and a snake fell off the rafter onto her back and into the hole below.  That was a story I definitely didn’t need to hear.  I always worried about snakes being down in the hole and finding a way up.

 

Needless to say, I never lingered in the outhouse…not intentionally anyway.  One of my older brother’s greatest pleasures in life was to lock me in the outhouse, corncrib, or shed.  Really, being locked into any place that was dark or had threat of snakes and spiders would get a rise out of me, just what he wanted and I never disappointed him in those circumstances.  I confess, I’ve done my fair share of purposefully-mean things to my brothers.  They deserved it so I have no guilt about things I did or caused intentionally to happen to them.

brothers

For now, we have plenty of clean snow on the ground.  The temperature is supposed to warm up 10 degrees above freezing this weekend.  I sure hope we have our water service restored by then.  

winter slam

We were slammed this week.  Mother Nature dumped about 14 inches of snow on us in less than two days.  We’re still digging out of that while the temperature has plummeted to well below zero – very, very unusually cold for this part of Kentucky.  Today, the sun was brilliant and the world looked bright and clean out my window, but it’s bitterly cold.  Molly did not go out this morning and Gracie only went out long enough to do her business and wanted right back in.  It’s just too cold for man and domesticated beast to be outside.  Our roads are finally becoming decent to drive on in most places, but we have another front moving through tonight.  The weatherman has promised us another 6-8 inches of the white stuff overnight.  I’m ready for winter to be over, but that snow tomorrow is supposed to be wet.  This old lady might just go out and build us a fabulous snow-creature, perhaps a large snow-dragon or snow-insect of some sort.  We will see.

View from my office window this morning

I had to teach my class Wednesday afternoon.  The university was closed Monday for a holiday, and then closed every day this week except Wednesday for snow or too cold.  Wednesday morning, four of my fourteen students in the class emailed me and said they were unable to attend because of slick roads or being unable to get out of their driveways.  That was OK because it was no easy task getting my car to the main road and to the office that day.  Many of my students commute from the boonies (i.e. rural areas).  As it turned out, only three students came to class.  We had a very informal, fun class.  All three had already completed the week’s project and scored 100% on it, so it was mostly review and talking about when or why they would want to use some of the things they did in the project.  It’s interesting that the three students who came are top students.  Perhaps they are top students because they are so dedicated to being good students.

I finally got Camtasia and SnagIt loaded onto my PC.  I’ve used SnagIt at work every day for years to create documentation or to help my end-users with their problems when a picture really is worth 1,000 words, but the software I bought is like the Cadillac SnagIT.  It’s incredibly awesome and has all sorts of graphic add-ons and effects.  I love it!  The version we have at work is complete shit in comparison.  I wouldn’t have purchased it at all for myself, but it was bundled with Camtasia and the price was so attractive that I gave in to impulse.  I knew it would be better than Paint (what I used up until now at home), but my expectations were fantastically exceeded.  Thank you TechSmith.

Let me tell you about my Camtasia adventure.  On first site when I opened it, it was like “oh…this looks complicated.”  Then I watched about 15 minutes of quick training overview videos conveniently linked to right from the main menu, and then I was in business.  I actually made a usable 30-second training video to show students how to sum numbers in a column using the Quick Access Toolbox in Excel.  I even made it ADA compliant (meaning it has closed captions for hearing impaired).  I edited the video to remove the “oh shit” that I interjected inappropriately when Molly jumped on my back and dug her claws into my shoulder, and to delete the muttering at the end when I fumbled around to stop recording.  Tonight, I might insert a slide at the front that identifies me and the video’s topic.  It’s great!  But I can do better.  For one thing, I need to zoom in before I hit the record button.  I only used a few cells for the demo, and I didn’t use anything on Excel’s ribbon.  There’s no need to confuse people by showing them more than what they need to see. 

Someone has no regard for the joy I get from learning to use a software tool for something useful.  I made him watch my finished video.  He thought the closed captions just happened automatically and correctly without me doing anything.  HA!  His response was, “hm…boring.  Is this what your students have to learn?  I’m glad I’m not in your class.”  Hey, me too!!  I am with Someone the way the kids are with me.  When they see me trying to set the DVR to record something, most likely they’ll snatch the remote from my hands and just do it for me.  When Someone is on the computer and trying to do some simple something he can’t figure out, I try to be patient with him, but it’s really, REALLY hard to maintain that professional cool I have with my clients at work.

It's the weekend at last; the days I live for.  Despite the wicked forecast and deaf to my pleading, both Erin and Emily came home for the weekend.  I love having them home, but already I'm worried about how they will get back to their respective campuses with so much snow on the way.  But oh well, what's done is done.  The future is not here yet.  

hair today, gone tomorrow

It’s funny how my hair can just be there, all inconspicuous and no trouble at all for several months at a time, and then suddenly it becomes an alien enemy combatant.  As of two days ago, I’ve been fighting my hair all day long.  Today is the same, and surely it will remain this way until Monday when it gets cut.  It’s entirely my own fault for not scheduling haircuts more frequently.  I just tend to ignore things until they become a problem…like now.  The dry winter air creates a mess of static.  I can shake my head and hear my hair crackle, but I don’t do it often because it makes the static even worse.  Conditioner helps, but it’s not a cure-all.  Even Someone, who rarely notices anything, asked last night what was up with my hair.  It must be really bad.

Curriculum Vitae, aka CV, aka nightmare.  Having worked in business my whole life and being still very new to the world of academia, I submitted my CV to a consulting company that specializes in helping lame-ass people like me find teaching jobs.  They reviewed it (for a nominal fee) and gave me feedback to improve it.  Yes indeed, their advice was to completely rewrite the shitty thing.  Mine is too brief, too much like a resume and not enough like a CV.  Since I’ve accomplished so little with my life, it seems extremely incorrect to have a heading with one puny item under it.  This is what they’ve told me to do.  I will have several headings with one item.  In my mind it’s like having a list with one bullet point.  NO! Just no!  But it’s what I must do.  They are the experts.  I paid for their advice.  The CV must be rewritten before I can apply for more teaching jobs.  I must get more teaching jobs before I can retire.  Life is just so F*ing complicated sometimes. 

Someone tried to simplify our lives by buying a lottery ticket this week.  I’m sad to report, we lost again.  Someone and I both know we have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning on the moon twice in the same day than winning the lottery, but he still plays it every week.  Long ago, I used to play it every week, but finally and somehow broke free of the habit.  It got to the point where I risked life and limb to get my ticket for fear that they would draw my numbers when I hadn’t bought a ticket.  I remember loading little baby Sarah into the car one evening just hours before the drawing.  There was ice on the streets and snow coming down, but still we went out to get my ticket. 

The pot was several hundred million this week.  Someone bought extra tickets, like that would matter.  He even talked about who he was going to call to drive us to collect our winnings and how we were going to invest all that money.  I looked at Someone incredulously.  He was obviously in some crazy fantasyland.  Good for him.  Meanwhile, I’m in my personal hell wondering how I can make the house payment, pay for insurance, continue our cell phone bill, help the girls with college, and pay our taxes while working as a college instructor.  On top of that, my van has 160K miles on it, and I promised Erin I’d get her a newer used car this summer.  No wonder Someone doesn’t want me to change careers.  He’s in love with my paycheck.  So am I.  

    

rock star wanna-be

February has already come.  I’m pleased to announce that as of last night, February 2^nd, Christmas is packed away and things are back to their usual state of chaos at least on the main levels of the KYLady household.  The basement, however, is a sad story.  Holiday decorations have a place in the big closet under the stairs.  I promised myself that this year, I’ll empty the closet, sweep it out, get rid of things we haven’t used in years, and restack everything in there nice and neat.  Right now, the closet is half empty with contents piled and stacked around the doorway.  I should get right on it, but when I walk down there to start on it, it’s overwhelming and completely depressing.  Perhaps it would go better next time if I put on some loud music and take a bottle of bourbon with me.  When things get too dismal and that urge to run comes on, I’ll take a big swig.  Heck, if I get a large-enough bottle, cleaning the basement might just become a new hobby.

 

Mondays are such a drudge for me.  Dread begins the moment the alarm clock starts its assault.  Yesterday morning, after I cursed the clock and silenced it, I forced myself to slide out from the soft, warm cocoon that is my bed, and dragged my lazy carcass to the shower.  Is there anything as wonderful in the morning as a hot shower?  So it was the usual morning ritual for me, off to work on a dreary very cold morning, park the car, and trudge into my office.  But as soon as I walked in, my spider plant grabbed my attention.  Over the weekend, it had put forth a delightful little blossom to greet me.  It’s funny how something so small can just completely turn around my day.  I could start at least 75 new plants from the babies on this one.

Beauty is its own excuse for being - R. W. Emerson

Bunches of spider plant babies.

    

Mondays are bad, but not as bad as they used to be.  Starting last month, I use 3 hours of vacation time on Monday afternoons to go teach (my other job).  It’s getting better and easier for me, thank heavens!  Yesterday, the chapter we covered was short, so after we reviewed it we had an hour to kill.  I devised a game for the students to play, and brought a sack of candy to use for prizes.  We drew names randomly for teams – that was a good thing because it quickly became apparent that students really didn’t know who each other were.  This realization was a bit of a surprise to me because many of them have been in the same program for a year and share lots of classes, our class is only 15 students, and yesterday was our 5^th class already.  The game was purposeful in that it helped them prepare for their first test next week, but better than that, the teamwork forced them to interact and learn each other’s names (at least those who were on their team).  Most students had fun with the game.  The hour flew by for me, and we even went a few minutes over (for those who wanted to stay, which was all but one) so that everyone could finish up the last round and pick out some candy.  It was a successful class, it seemed.  It made me feel like a competent instructor to see them engaged in learning together.

    

I’ve gone from feeling worthless, to having a sense of mere survival, to feeling competent after teaching a class.  It’s a vast improvement, even if it all goes to hell next week.  I’m somewhere around the middle of the instructor self-assessed self-defined competency continuum, at least regarding yesterday’s class. 

KYLady's competency continuum

It’s time for me to revamp my Curriculum Vitae and launch Phase 2 of Changing My Career.  I’ve got to find more work, the sooner the better.  But like everything else in my life, I’m procrastinating.  Why is success so f*ing hard for me?  You’d think I’d be doing everything in my power to get where I want to go.  I’m my biggest obstacle.  I will get started….tonight!