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When I'm not here, you may find me wandering the pages below. (If I'm a regular visitor to your site and I've left your link off or mislinked to you, please let me know! And likewise, if you've blogrolled me, please check that my link is updated: thisroamanticlife.blogspot.com. The extra (a) makes all the difference!)

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Body: in sickness and in health

I won't lie; this body and I have had our issues with each other for many years. Body image -- sure. Physical and mental overextension -- comes with being a Type A kind of girl. I still struggle with these things, so they show up from time to time in my writing.

More recently, illness, pure but not simple, has added itself to the mix in a multi-system sort of way. And the challenges in figuring out exactly what's gone wrong are many. As problems have revealed themselves in the last few years, beginning with reactive hypoglycemia in late 2008, I've documented them here, partly to gain a little clarity on managing complex conditions but mostly to give voice to vulnerabilities I feel but don't normally share with anyone face to face. Better out than in, they say, right? (Oh yes, humor is one way I deal.)

The links below cover the different angles I've examined (and from which I've been examined) within that experience.

Travel: neither here nor there

When the person you're married to lives two time zones away, you log a fair number of frequent flier miles. And if you blog about commuter relationships, you log quite a few posts en route too.

Since we're no longer in separate places, I blog less often from airports. But we do travel -- together now! -- which is much more fun to write about. So in addition to thoughts on our years of commuting, the links below cover the places we've been as a pair and, in some cases, the adventures that have happened on the way.

Writing: the long and short of it

Why do I do it? Good question. Maybe it's not so much that I like to write but that I have to write, even when the words refuse to stick to the page. Believe me, I've tried doing other things like majoring in biochemistry (freshman fall, many semesters ago). Within a year, I'd switched to English with a concentration in creative writing and wasn't looking back.

After graduating, I taught English for a few years and then worked as an editor, which I still do freelance. In 2007, I applied and got into an MFA program at a place I like to call Little U. on the Prairie. I finished my degree in 2011 and have been balancing tutoring and writing on my own ever since.

The following links cover the writing I've done about writing: process, content, obstacles, you name it. It's not always pretty. But some part of me loves it, even when it's hard. And this is the result.

Heart: family and friends

I'd have a hard time explaining who I am without being able to talk about the family I grew up in as well as the people I've met beyond its bounds. But even with such context, it's not easy! In the simplest terms, I'm a first-generation Asian-American who has spent most of this life caught between cultures. That, of course, doesn't even begin to describe what I mean to, but there's my first stab at the heart of it all.

That's what this group of posts is reserved for -- heart. The essential parts of my life whose influences I carry with me, for better or worse. The links below cover what I've written as I've learned how these forces work within me, for me, against me, in spite of me. They anchor me even as they change me, and they keep life interesting.

Recommended reading

What do I do when there's too much on my mind and my words won't stick to the page? I escape into someone else's thoughts. Below is a collection of books and articles that have been sources of information, inspiration, and occasional insight for my own work.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Let's be careful out there


My physics teacher used to say that before every lab -- with good reason. My lab partner and I actually set one apparatus on fire when we failed to release the brake on a (so-called) frictionless wheel to measure the acceleration of gravity. Who knew a dot timer could be so incendiary? Then D, who was also in my physics class (but not my lab partner), took a projectile launcher's hammer to the hand when his partner released it too soon. To top it all off -- and this one actually elicited a laugh from our usually poker-faced instructor -- my sister clocked herself in the back of the head with a cork while trying to measure its angular momentum. I wasn't there for that last incident (we're six years apart in age), but let's just say that this history of mishaps in a controlled environment has reinforced, for me, a certain wariness of the forces of nature in the real world.

All this is to say that I hope my students have their heads screwed on properly this weekend during all the Halloween hoopla.

My particular class has had what seems to be an abnormally high number of emergencies this semester -- and not from any poor decisions on their part. So far there have been three medical emergencies from chronic conditions requiring hospital attention and two family deaths. Last night, one of my students e-mailed to say that a family member had been in a car accident and that she needed to go home right away (the most recent update is that the family member had not woken up yet by lunchtime today). Then this afternoon, another student e-mailed to say that she would have to withdraw from school for the rest of the semester for health/personal reasons. Would the universe kindly lay off my people already???

I've been so busy getting my students ready for this last push before Thanksgiving break that I've had to leave my writing at a standstill in the middle of some serious work on an essay due next week. But tomorrow -- TOMORROW shall be the day I get back to it. Really.

I've been having trouble deciding what kind of structure will best serve the story I'm trying to tell, so the essay is really kind of a mess. With impeccable timing, this week's memoir reading for one of my classes offered an amusing example of how to apologize for it:

The apparently haphazard chronology of this memoir may need excuse. The excuse, I fear, is Art. It contains a number of surprises, perhaps I may call them shocks, which, as history, came to me rather bunched up towards the end of the story. Artistically shocks should never be bunched, they need spacing for maximum individual effect. To afford them this I could not tell my story straightforwardly and have therefore disregarded chronology and adopted the method of ploughing to and fro over my ... life, turning up a little more sub-soil each time as the plough turned. Looking at it with as much detachment as I can command, I think I have not seriously confused the narrative.
~ J.R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself

Well, here's hoping I have enough to turn in such that it appears to have some kind of chronology, haphazard or otherwise.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Getting into the spirit of things

Well, the packing list has been made. D will be here Friday night, and since it'll be Halloween, he's bringing his costume, along with my winter boots and foodstuffs from Trader Joe's (they don't have TJs out here, so we get the benefit of their discount dry goods by importing them in D's carry-on luggage). I'm not going to reveal what D's chosen to be yet, but the photo is a clue to his identity. Any ideas as to what's in the picture? Correct guesses (of the item and/or the alter ego) will win you celebrity mention on this blog. Sorry, no monetary awards -- we are still trying to save for a house, and the economy is nuts at the moment, as you all know. I'm refusing to look at my IRA until at least after Election Day.

Speaking of houses -- the one that D and I loved has disappeared from the market. It's been gone for a few weeks now. We weren't sure if the owners had temporarily taken it out of the pool or if it had actually sold, but we're watching to see what else catches our eye. I recently noted one place that was quite inviting in its photos online, but we haven't had the opportunity to check it out in person (and if you ask a realtor to take you to tour something, he or she won't leave you alone afterward).

On a completely different topic, my students informed me on Monday that it SNOWED over the weekend. I was inside the entire time, so I didn't actually see it happen. But gaaah. It's too soon. Didn't we just get through those endless months of weather delays?

Sunday, October 26, 2008

On long-standing relationships

I'm not someone you'd call a shoe fancier, so when I find footwear I do like, I tend to stick with it -- for a really long time. These sandals have been with me through five cities in the last eight years. They've had three sets of new heels, one set of new soles, and tons and tons of miles under them.

I'd been looking for a long time for replacements and hadn't found anything I liked (much to my mother's dismay -- "Can't you just throw those away?" she kept asking after about Year Six, when the soles had to be relined to keep them from scraping the balls of my feet). But without a successor for my wardrobe staple, I couldn't really justify tossing them. And they still did their job and were more comfortable for walking than any other sandals I had. Never mind the stitching that was coming out, the cracking leather, the fact that the straps had stretched enough for them to be a pedestrian hazard ...

Then two weeks ago, I happened upon this version of the style while I was running errands. I knew as soon as picked them up from the display table that my old pair was doomed. I took D to see them when he was visiting and he confirmed the worst: they were perfect.


These have a slightly higher heel and a dressier look, but they'll serve the same purpose. So it's time to say goodbye to my faithful friends. It's amazing how many major events in my life these shoes have witnessed: college graduation, starting my first job, starting my second job, my honeymoon, a cross-country road trip. They almost need to go into the "family museum" -- a collection of retired objects my sisters and I have saved from the garbage because of their long history in our lives. Included among these are a wooden spoon my mother used to scoop rice with (washed so many times that it was on the verge of cracking because it had gotten so thin), a white plastic one-cup measure we used to use every Sunday when making pizza (the bottom broke), and the comb my dad used on his hair every morning for at least thirty years (a gift from his mother before college -- I think it either lost too many teeth or snapped in two).

The store didn't have my size in the new sandals, so I ordered a pair. They arrived this week, so now there's really no excuse for hanging on to the old ones anymore. Eyes, look your last! Oh, silly sentiment. In honor of favorite things past their prime, check out these verses by Jack Prelutsky (wonderful children's poet). He knew what he was talking about.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Brisk days

That's what we've been having here in the last week -- weather finally cool enough to start turning the leaves and a midterm crunch so severe that somehow I've made it to Thursday again without posting and I hardly even noticed. I should be in bed right now, but I was missing the blogosphere. So here I am. I know you've been checking back faithfully for new entries too (thank you, Sitemeter and Blogpatrol), and I appreciate the encouragement. Say hello if you haven't already! I'm very curious about who's out there.

I'm managing to stay on top of my work for teaching, and it's continuing to pay off -- my students are really taking ownership of our discussion time and developing a group dynamic that makes me so proud of them. Can't say this has been good for my sleep quota, but hopefully this weekend will help me catch up.

I did procrastinate a little last Saturday between grading and planning. If you check out the sidebar, you should be able to see a new section on photography with a slideshow sampling pictures that D and I have taken, working together and on our own. The color in the Cascades is apparently gorgeous right now, so D has been taking some field trips to scout out nice panoramic shots. The rainy season is setting in, though, so his windows of opportunity are shrinking and he's had to settle for mostly close-up work (sometimes off the side of the road -- the shots above and below happened at an intersection on his way to the gym!). Anyway, it's been nice to watch the change of season on his side of the country through the images he's been sharing.

He's also shared images of his Halloween costume, which, I have to say, is going to be terrific. Stay tuned for the unveiling within the next week! I also have something in the works from high school -- it still fits but doesn't look trashy like so many of the get-ups out there. Who knew it would come in handy again a decade later? My mother will be amused (she made it for me for a themed dance). D may also bring a second option for me when he flies in on Oct. 31, something to coordinate more with his character. Now, if we could just find a Halloween party to go to -- nothing's been announced yet, but I know the creative types I hang out with aren't the kind to let the holiday go by unfeted, especially since it'll be on a Friday.

Okay, this girl is bushed. More after I get some quality Z's.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

An apple a day

... would be delicious if I could have any of the kinds we got over the weekend.

D and I went apple- picking at a local orchard about 20 minutes away from Little U. on the Prairie. It was the last warm Saturday I think we'll have till spring, so everyone seemed to be out and about among the trees. Coinci- dentally, BOTH of my sisters went apple-picking in Illinois and Ohio over the same weekend (nope, we didn't consult beforehand).

D and I did our best to pick varieties we can't normally find in the grocery store (this place claimed to have around 150!). The ones in season that we got were Keepsakes, Liberties, Horalsons, Suncrisps, Spigolds, Golden Glories, and Autumn Golds. Each of these tends to be a sweet-tart, crisp-fleshed apple -- excellent for munching fresh or using for pie.

Which is, of course, what we did.

I borrowed a recipe from Martha Stewart Living for an antique apple pie and altered it for convenience and to accommodate D's hypoglycemia. The end result: ambrosia. The apples contained enough sun-infused sweetness such that replacing the sugar in the filling with Splenda in half the required amount was perfect. We used a frozen pie crust, which worked out nicely (especially since we didn't have a lot of time and also because it had only a gram of sugar per serving in it).

We used about six apples in our pie and divided up the remaining ones so D could take some back to Seattle -- it's only fair, since he worked quite hard to get some of them! Many of the trees we wanted to pick from had been well visited, and the only fruit left was at the very top (with no ladders in sight). D boosted me up onto his shoulders to scrabble around in the higher branches, and at one point, he climbed up himself while I spotted him from below. "Am I near them yet?" he kept asking. It's hard to see where you're going when you have a face full of twigs. Both of us have the scratches to prove it ...

In the end, it was well worth the effort. The apples with the best sun exposure were at the top, and the bugs seemed to have left them alone (compared to the numerous pockmarked ones lower down).

We cleaned each of the fruits in cold water once we were home and were surprised to find out how different their skins were. Apparently, Iowa has really dirty air -- every apple was uniformly speckled with brown spots that were probably the product of dust sticking to the skins after a recent rainstorm or a humid night. Here's our harvest after a good scrub:













And here is our pie:


Mmmmmm. So good, it doesn't even need ice cream.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Hooray for husband weekend!

I'm adopting the phrase one of my colleagues recently coined, to my amusement, when he asked me if D was coming into town in the near future. There have been mumblings about having a married couples' dinner at his place (his wife is in school here, and there are at least two other grad students with spouses). Perhaps next time D visits, which will be during the first weekend in November. And then three weeks after that, I'll be going home for Thanksgiving! I'm so glad this semester is moving along.

In the meantime, I have piles of things to grade, some of which I'd really like to get rid of before D lands this evening. I've been pretty good about doing a little bit every day, but I was too drained from workshop to be very productive last night on things like papers. So I opened up some hard lemonade and dispatched a bunch of quizzes instead. Only one low grade! Everyone else did pretty well (and no, it wasn't a product of my being extra lenient with alcohol in my system -- my students earned it).

If only their papers looked as good ...

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Prosit!

It's Sunday night, and I've graded a grand total of one paper out of many more that needed attention this weekend. But that's okay, because in the last 48 hours, I planned my lessons for the week, read 300 pages out of a 400-page novel, and cleaned my shower.

Oh yes, and I drove to D's parents' house for their second annual Oktoberfest.

The lederhosen shown above are actually D's from his toddler days. His parents moved to Austria to teach right after they were married, so they knew where to get the genuine article when he arrived several years later (they had returned to the U.S. by then). Apparently, there is a picture of D in costume with a little Alpine hat on his little blond(!) head -- hard to imagine since his curls are now the color of espresso. Next time I go to his parents' place, I'll have to dig that photo up to add here.

The party itself was Saturday evening. There were, of course, sausages galore (see below), including one seasoned with curry that I'd never had before. D's mother also made some beautiful breads (also below) and desserts, one of which was called a Marmor Gugelhupf. Sounds exotic, but it's actually a simple marbled Bundt cake. New languages (German being one of them for me) always make things so much more fun ...












I had a good time meeting people (mostly D's dad's friends from work). The town where I spent a decade before college is relatively small and has a long local memory. Some of the guests there had children at my former high school -- we talked about the experiences I had in common with their kids as students, even after so many years. It's nice that there's continuity. I always feel a little sad when I go back to visit because of that overwhelming sense of time having moved on. Even though the town feels more or less the same, it's changed just enough to remind me that I'm no longer a part of it. Feeling connected to it through the people who are part of it now is comforting.

Tomorrow has much in store -- my department is holding an informational meeting on theses, which the students in my program are very glad about. The process for selecting a thesis committee isn't exactly transparent (even after you've read through the guidelines in the program handbook), so a little Q&A time will be helpful. I've already asked a professor to be my thesis director, thank goodness, so I won't have to worry about the mad rush to secure advisors that might very likely occur after this meeting. I do need to start thinking about my prospectus and secondary readers, though. Part of me is very reluctant to go forth on the topic I think I'm going to write about, but another part of me wants to do it very badly. I'm committed to it, either way.

I came across something helpful last week in a memoir by Mark Doty, which I'm reading for a class. "Why tell a story like this?" he writes as he talks about an unpleasant memory his mother tells him on her deathbed.

A writer I know says, Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what. Sometimes I think that's true; difficult experience can be redeemed by the powers of language, and words can help us to see what is graceful or human where loveliness and humanity seem to fail.

But other days I believe it's the other way round: say it beautifully, or at least precisely ... and you will make it clear. ... The older I get, the more I distrust redemption; it isn't in the power of language to repair the damages. ...

What we remember, wrote the poet who was my first teacher of the art, can be changed. What we forget we are always. ... We live the stories we tell; the stories we don't tell live us. What you don't allow yourself to know controls and determines; whatever's held to the light "can be changed" -- not the facts, of course, but how we understand them, how we live with them. Everyone will be filled by grief, distorted by sorrow .... What matters is what we learn to make of what happens to us.

And we learn to make, I think, by telling. Held to the light of common scrutiny, nothing's ever quite as unique as our shame and sorrow would have us think. But if you don't say it, you're alone with it, and the singularity of your story seems immense, intractable.
~ Mark Doty, Firebird

I won't go into any details about my topic here, but this singularity that Doty describes is what I want to be free from, being alone with "it." Amazing how he captures that idea so clearly -- hence my choice just to quote him at length instead of trying to put it in my own words. Will I be able to stand the light of common scrutiny, as he says, once the story's out there? Or will I regret it and wish I'd kept silent?

Maybe this week's reading will have answers.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Everybody Loves Furballs

If this blog were a TV show, that's what it would be called.

In actuality, the blog is known as the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee, which I've been following for a while. The IBKC takes kittens from its local Humane Society and cares for them until they're old enough to be moved to permanent homes. While waiting for the kittens to reach that point, the IBKC puts pictures of them on the blog, which is enormously effective for attracting potential parents. Now that we're determined to move me back to Seattle in May, the possibility of actually getting a little ball of fluff from this foster family is quite real -- they're located in Tacoma. The latest batch of babies will be gone before I return, but I'll be watching and waiting come spring for new ones.

There's something very delightful and relaxing about soft, furry things -- even inanimate ones. In an effort to encourage more spontaneous discussion among my students, I made my own Koosh ball out of some leftover yarn from a scarf I knit for D several years ago:


I took it to class on Monday, where we wrapped up our study of Hamlet by talking about our own questions about the play. The only rules were that whoever had the yarn ball had to contribute something to the discussion and that once you were done speaking, you had to toss the ball to someone else to keep the discussion moving. It worked amazingly well -- having something soft and fluffy flying around loosened up the atmosphere such that some of the shyer students were willing to participate more than usual, even asking for the ball voluntarily! Whoever thought of this teaching tool first was a genius (it's been around for a long time, but this was my first chance to try it out).

No other major news. D and I had a great weekend, and he'll be back in just under two weeks. My own classes are going smoothly, and I got lots of great suggestions on the piece that I workshopped last Thursday, which may be something that could become part of my thesis. I do wish I could get more motivated to write, but lesson planning conveniently fills any time I have if I let it. Must do something about that ...

Speaking of distractions, I finally finished Wendy Werris's An Alphabetical Life on Friday -- I had picked it up before moving from Texas (which seems a lifetime ago) and hadn't gotten around to cracking the cover until last week. It's a quick read. I can't say it makes the top of my list of must-read memoirs, but there's a great quote in there by Fran Lebowitz that Werris uses at the beginning of a chapter: "If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass."

This is absolutely true. Time to stop noshing on those Hershey's Nuggets after dinner! The ones with toffee bits in them are my favorite. If you look closely at all the planning debris in the picture above, you can see an incriminating wrapper hiding there ...

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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Let's be careful out there


My physics teacher used to say that before every lab -- with good reason. My lab partner and I actually set one apparatus on fire when we failed to release the brake on a (so-called) frictionless wheel to measure the acceleration of gravity. Who knew a dot timer could be so incendiary? Then D, who was also in my physics class (but not my lab partner), took a projectile launcher's hammer to the hand when his partner released it too soon. To top it all off -- and this one actually elicited a laugh from our usually poker-faced instructor -- my sister clocked herself in the back of the head with a cork while trying to measure its angular momentum. I wasn't there for that last incident (we're six years apart in age), but let's just say that this history of mishaps in a controlled environment has reinforced, for me, a certain wariness of the forces of nature in the real world.

All this is to say that I hope my students have their heads screwed on properly this weekend during all the Halloween hoopla.

My particular class has had what seems to be an abnormally high number of emergencies this semester -- and not from any poor decisions on their part. So far there have been three medical emergencies from chronic conditions requiring hospital attention and two family deaths. Last night, one of my students e-mailed to say that a family member had been in a car accident and that she needed to go home right away (the most recent update is that the family member had not woken up yet by lunchtime today). Then this afternoon, another student e-mailed to say that she would have to withdraw from school for the rest of the semester for health/personal reasons. Would the universe kindly lay off my people already???

I've been so busy getting my students ready for this last push before Thanksgiving break that I've had to leave my writing at a standstill in the middle of some serious work on an essay due next week. But tomorrow -- TOMORROW shall be the day I get back to it. Really.

I've been having trouble deciding what kind of structure will best serve the story I'm trying to tell, so the essay is really kind of a mess. With impeccable timing, this week's memoir reading for one of my classes offered an amusing example of how to apologize for it:

The apparently haphazard chronology of this memoir may need excuse. The excuse, I fear, is Art. It contains a number of surprises, perhaps I may call them shocks, which, as history, came to me rather bunched up towards the end of the story. Artistically shocks should never be bunched, they need spacing for maximum individual effect. To afford them this I could not tell my story straightforwardly and have therefore disregarded chronology and adopted the method of ploughing to and fro over my ... life, turning up a little more sub-soil each time as the plough turned. Looking at it with as much detachment as I can command, I think I have not seriously confused the narrative.
~ J.R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself

Well, here's hoping I have enough to turn in such that it appears to have some kind of chronology, haphazard or otherwise.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Getting into the spirit of things

Well, the packing list has been made. D will be here Friday night, and since it'll be Halloween, he's bringing his costume, along with my winter boots and foodstuffs from Trader Joe's (they don't have TJs out here, so we get the benefit of their discount dry goods by importing them in D's carry-on luggage). I'm not going to reveal what D's chosen to be yet, but the photo is a clue to his identity. Any ideas as to what's in the picture? Correct guesses (of the item and/or the alter ego) will win you celebrity mention on this blog. Sorry, no monetary awards -- we are still trying to save for a house, and the economy is nuts at the moment, as you all know. I'm refusing to look at my IRA until at least after Election Day.

Speaking of houses -- the one that D and I loved has disappeared from the market. It's been gone for a few weeks now. We weren't sure if the owners had temporarily taken it out of the pool or if it had actually sold, but we're watching to see what else catches our eye. I recently noted one place that was quite inviting in its photos online, but we haven't had the opportunity to check it out in person (and if you ask a realtor to take you to tour something, he or she won't leave you alone afterward).

On a completely different topic, my students informed me on Monday that it SNOWED over the weekend. I was inside the entire time, so I didn't actually see it happen. But gaaah. It's too soon. Didn't we just get through those endless months of weather delays?

Sunday, October 26, 2008

On long-standing relationships

I'm not someone you'd call a shoe fancier, so when I find footwear I do like, I tend to stick with it -- for a really long time. These sandals have been with me through five cities in the last eight years. They've had three sets of new heels, one set of new soles, and tons and tons of miles under them.

I'd been looking for a long time for replacements and hadn't found anything I liked (much to my mother's dismay -- "Can't you just throw those away?" she kept asking after about Year Six, when the soles had to be relined to keep them from scraping the balls of my feet). But without a successor for my wardrobe staple, I couldn't really justify tossing them. And they still did their job and were more comfortable for walking than any other sandals I had. Never mind the stitching that was coming out, the cracking leather, the fact that the straps had stretched enough for them to be a pedestrian hazard ...

Then two weeks ago, I happened upon this version of the style while I was running errands. I knew as soon as picked them up from the display table that my old pair was doomed. I took D to see them when he was visiting and he confirmed the worst: they were perfect.


These have a slightly higher heel and a dressier look, but they'll serve the same purpose. So it's time to say goodbye to my faithful friends. It's amazing how many major events in my life these shoes have witnessed: college graduation, starting my first job, starting my second job, my honeymoon, a cross-country road trip. They almost need to go into the "family museum" -- a collection of retired objects my sisters and I have saved from the garbage because of their long history in our lives. Included among these are a wooden spoon my mother used to scoop rice with (washed so many times that it was on the verge of cracking because it had gotten so thin), a white plastic one-cup measure we used to use every Sunday when making pizza (the bottom broke), and the comb my dad used on his hair every morning for at least thirty years (a gift from his mother before college -- I think it either lost too many teeth or snapped in two).

The store didn't have my size in the new sandals, so I ordered a pair. They arrived this week, so now there's really no excuse for hanging on to the old ones anymore. Eyes, look your last! Oh, silly sentiment. In honor of favorite things past their prime, check out these verses by Jack Prelutsky (wonderful children's poet). He knew what he was talking about.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Brisk days

That's what we've been having here in the last week -- weather finally cool enough to start turning the leaves and a midterm crunch so severe that somehow I've made it to Thursday again without posting and I hardly even noticed. I should be in bed right now, but I was missing the blogosphere. So here I am. I know you've been checking back faithfully for new entries too (thank you, Sitemeter and Blogpatrol), and I appreciate the encouragement. Say hello if you haven't already! I'm very curious about who's out there.

I'm managing to stay on top of my work for teaching, and it's continuing to pay off -- my students are really taking ownership of our discussion time and developing a group dynamic that makes me so proud of them. Can't say this has been good for my sleep quota, but hopefully this weekend will help me catch up.

I did procrastinate a little last Saturday between grading and planning. If you check out the sidebar, you should be able to see a new section on photography with a slideshow sampling pictures that D and I have taken, working together and on our own. The color in the Cascades is apparently gorgeous right now, so D has been taking some field trips to scout out nice panoramic shots. The rainy season is setting in, though, so his windows of opportunity are shrinking and he's had to settle for mostly close-up work (sometimes off the side of the road -- the shots above and below happened at an intersection on his way to the gym!). Anyway, it's been nice to watch the change of season on his side of the country through the images he's been sharing.

He's also shared images of his Halloween costume, which, I have to say, is going to be terrific. Stay tuned for the unveiling within the next week! I also have something in the works from high school -- it still fits but doesn't look trashy like so many of the get-ups out there. Who knew it would come in handy again a decade later? My mother will be amused (she made it for me for a themed dance). D may also bring a second option for me when he flies in on Oct. 31, something to coordinate more with his character. Now, if we could just find a Halloween party to go to -- nothing's been announced yet, but I know the creative types I hang out with aren't the kind to let the holiday go by unfeted, especially since it'll be on a Friday.

Okay, this girl is bushed. More after I get some quality Z's.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

An apple a day

... would be delicious if I could have any of the kinds we got over the weekend.

D and I went apple- picking at a local orchard about 20 minutes away from Little U. on the Prairie. It was the last warm Saturday I think we'll have till spring, so everyone seemed to be out and about among the trees. Coinci- dentally, BOTH of my sisters went apple-picking in Illinois and Ohio over the same weekend (nope, we didn't consult beforehand).

D and I did our best to pick varieties we can't normally find in the grocery store (this place claimed to have around 150!). The ones in season that we got were Keepsakes, Liberties, Horalsons, Suncrisps, Spigolds, Golden Glories, and Autumn Golds. Each of these tends to be a sweet-tart, crisp-fleshed apple -- excellent for munching fresh or using for pie.

Which is, of course, what we did.

I borrowed a recipe from Martha Stewart Living for an antique apple pie and altered it for convenience and to accommodate D's hypoglycemia. The end result: ambrosia. The apples contained enough sun-infused sweetness such that replacing the sugar in the filling with Splenda in half the required amount was perfect. We used a frozen pie crust, which worked out nicely (especially since we didn't have a lot of time and also because it had only a gram of sugar per serving in it).

We used about six apples in our pie and divided up the remaining ones so D could take some back to Seattle -- it's only fair, since he worked quite hard to get some of them! Many of the trees we wanted to pick from had been well visited, and the only fruit left was at the very top (with no ladders in sight). D boosted me up onto his shoulders to scrabble around in the higher branches, and at one point, he climbed up himself while I spotted him from below. "Am I near them yet?" he kept asking. It's hard to see where you're going when you have a face full of twigs. Both of us have the scratches to prove it ...

In the end, it was well worth the effort. The apples with the best sun exposure were at the top, and the bugs seemed to have left them alone (compared to the numerous pockmarked ones lower down).

We cleaned each of the fruits in cold water once we were home and were surprised to find out how different their skins were. Apparently, Iowa has really dirty air -- every apple was uniformly speckled with brown spots that were probably the product of dust sticking to the skins after a recent rainstorm or a humid night. Here's our harvest after a good scrub:













And here is our pie:


Mmmmmm. So good, it doesn't even need ice cream.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Hooray for husband weekend!

I'm adopting the phrase one of my colleagues recently coined, to my amusement, when he asked me if D was coming into town in the near future. There have been mumblings about having a married couples' dinner at his place (his wife is in school here, and there are at least two other grad students with spouses). Perhaps next time D visits, which will be during the first weekend in November. And then three weeks after that, I'll be going home for Thanksgiving! I'm so glad this semester is moving along.

In the meantime, I have piles of things to grade, some of which I'd really like to get rid of before D lands this evening. I've been pretty good about doing a little bit every day, but I was too drained from workshop to be very productive last night on things like papers. So I opened up some hard lemonade and dispatched a bunch of quizzes instead. Only one low grade! Everyone else did pretty well (and no, it wasn't a product of my being extra lenient with alcohol in my system -- my students earned it).

If only their papers looked as good ...

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Prosit!

It's Sunday night, and I've graded a grand total of one paper out of many more that needed attention this weekend. But that's okay, because in the last 48 hours, I planned my lessons for the week, read 300 pages out of a 400-page novel, and cleaned my shower.

Oh yes, and I drove to D's parents' house for their second annual Oktoberfest.

The lederhosen shown above are actually D's from his toddler days. His parents moved to Austria to teach right after they were married, so they knew where to get the genuine article when he arrived several years later (they had returned to the U.S. by then). Apparently, there is a picture of D in costume with a little Alpine hat on his little blond(!) head -- hard to imagine since his curls are now the color of espresso. Next time I go to his parents' place, I'll have to dig that photo up to add here.

The party itself was Saturday evening. There were, of course, sausages galore (see below), including one seasoned with curry that I'd never had before. D's mother also made some beautiful breads (also below) and desserts, one of which was called a Marmor Gugelhupf. Sounds exotic, but it's actually a simple marbled Bundt cake. New languages (German being one of them for me) always make things so much more fun ...












I had a good time meeting people (mostly D's dad's friends from work). The town where I spent a decade before college is relatively small and has a long local memory. Some of the guests there had children at my former high school -- we talked about the experiences I had in common with their kids as students, even after so many years. It's nice that there's continuity. I always feel a little sad when I go back to visit because of that overwhelming sense of time having moved on. Even though the town feels more or less the same, it's changed just enough to remind me that I'm no longer a part of it. Feeling connected to it through the people who are part of it now is comforting.

Tomorrow has much in store -- my department is holding an informational meeting on theses, which the students in my program are very glad about. The process for selecting a thesis committee isn't exactly transparent (even after you've read through the guidelines in the program handbook), so a little Q&A time will be helpful. I've already asked a professor to be my thesis director, thank goodness, so I won't have to worry about the mad rush to secure advisors that might very likely occur after this meeting. I do need to start thinking about my prospectus and secondary readers, though. Part of me is very reluctant to go forth on the topic I think I'm going to write about, but another part of me wants to do it very badly. I'm committed to it, either way.

I came across something helpful last week in a memoir by Mark Doty, which I'm reading for a class. "Why tell a story like this?" he writes as he talks about an unpleasant memory his mother tells him on her deathbed.

A writer I know says, Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what. Sometimes I think that's true; difficult experience can be redeemed by the powers of language, and words can help us to see what is graceful or human where loveliness and humanity seem to fail.

But other days I believe it's the other way round: say it beautifully, or at least precisely ... and you will make it clear. ... The older I get, the more I distrust redemption; it isn't in the power of language to repair the damages. ...

What we remember, wrote the poet who was my first teacher of the art, can be changed. What we forget we are always. ... We live the stories we tell; the stories we don't tell live us. What you don't allow yourself to know controls and determines; whatever's held to the light "can be changed" -- not the facts, of course, but how we understand them, how we live with them. Everyone will be filled by grief, distorted by sorrow .... What matters is what we learn to make of what happens to us.

And we learn to make, I think, by telling. Held to the light of common scrutiny, nothing's ever quite as unique as our shame and sorrow would have us think. But if you don't say it, you're alone with it, and the singularity of your story seems immense, intractable.
~ Mark Doty, Firebird

I won't go into any details about my topic here, but this singularity that Doty describes is what I want to be free from, being alone with "it." Amazing how he captures that idea so clearly -- hence my choice just to quote him at length instead of trying to put it in my own words. Will I be able to stand the light of common scrutiny, as he says, once the story's out there? Or will I regret it and wish I'd kept silent?

Maybe this week's reading will have answers.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Everybody Loves Furballs

If this blog were a TV show, that's what it would be called.

In actuality, the blog is known as the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee, which I've been following for a while. The IBKC takes kittens from its local Humane Society and cares for them until they're old enough to be moved to permanent homes. While waiting for the kittens to reach that point, the IBKC puts pictures of them on the blog, which is enormously effective for attracting potential parents. Now that we're determined to move me back to Seattle in May, the possibility of actually getting a little ball of fluff from this foster family is quite real -- they're located in Tacoma. The latest batch of babies will be gone before I return, but I'll be watching and waiting come spring for new ones.

There's something very delightful and relaxing about soft, furry things -- even inanimate ones. In an effort to encourage more spontaneous discussion among my students, I made my own Koosh ball out of some leftover yarn from a scarf I knit for D several years ago:


I took it to class on Monday, where we wrapped up our study of Hamlet by talking about our own questions about the play. The only rules were that whoever had the yarn ball had to contribute something to the discussion and that once you were done speaking, you had to toss the ball to someone else to keep the discussion moving. It worked amazingly well -- having something soft and fluffy flying around loosened up the atmosphere such that some of the shyer students were willing to participate more than usual, even asking for the ball voluntarily! Whoever thought of this teaching tool first was a genius (it's been around for a long time, but this was my first chance to try it out).

No other major news. D and I had a great weekend, and he'll be back in just under two weeks. My own classes are going smoothly, and I got lots of great suggestions on the piece that I workshopped last Thursday, which may be something that could become part of my thesis. I do wish I could get more motivated to write, but lesson planning conveniently fills any time I have if I let it. Must do something about that ...

Speaking of distractions, I finally finished Wendy Werris's An Alphabetical Life on Friday -- I had picked it up before moving from Texas (which seems a lifetime ago) and hadn't gotten around to cracking the cover until last week. It's a quick read. I can't say it makes the top of my list of must-read memoirs, but there's a great quote in there by Fran Lebowitz that Werris uses at the beginning of a chapter: "If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass."

This is absolutely true. Time to stop noshing on those Hershey's Nuggets after dinner! The ones with toffee bits in them are my favorite. If you look closely at all the planning debris in the picture above, you can see an incriminating wrapper hiding there ...