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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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 ...

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.

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 ...

The waiting game

Three days until D's here for another weekend. Hard to believe that it's been nearly three weeks since his last visit -- keeping busy has its perks, I guess.

I'm also waiting to hear back on some bloodwork I had done two weeks ago. Either teaching is the next fad diet or I'm shrinking for other reasons. Since coming back to Little U. on the Prairie, I've lost enough weight to make at least one pair of pants too loose to go without a belt and one skirt too dangerous to wear, period (would make class too interesting if that were to fall down in the middle of discussion). If it's just the demands of teaching -- and it's possible since this happened to me in New York too, though not to this degree -- then next semester will require a wholesale wardrobe change. I'll be teaching two sections instead of one. Yikes.

But yes, some answers from my local M.D. would be much appreciated. He's the old-school sort who has practiced privately in these parts for decades and has a staff of two (nurse, receptionist). So he processes all of his patients personally -- but also more slowly.

Sigh.

In other news, D has been playing around with our camera lately, and a few experiments have produced some pretty pictures. Here's one I especially love (downtown Seattle at sunset from the top of a skyscraper on the Eastside as the city lights are just beginning to come on). The space on the blog doesn't do it justice, but if you click on it, you can see it in a larger format:


Coincidentally, while reading W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn for one of my classes this week, I came across a lovely passage that seemed written for that image. As translated from German by Michael Hulse, Sebald writes,

Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night ...

I get shivers thinking about that, the ephemerality of it all. And yet, because time is so elastic, our moment in which we sputter into existence and then back out again stretches beyond our field of vision. We are sparks in slow-motion, blinded by our own flame.

I guess it's nice that we get to have such a concept as "tomorrow."

On growth

The weekend, at last. It was so good to sleep in and not have to rush around this morning. I took quite a schedule-beating over the last few days -- but it was worth it to get my students situated well for the next few weeks.

Office hours were very good. Everyone came in with interesting paper ideas, and helping people narrow down the things they wanted to focus on in their analyses from the get-go felt rewarding. This will hopefully prevent eleventh-hour panic and students' turning in shoddy work. People seemed appreciative too of the individual time to check in with me, and I got to have some one-on-one conversations with students who are shyer in front of the class. All in all, a good investment of time.

It is such a surprise to me how different this teaching experience has been so far at Little U. on the Prairie, compared to my last stint in New York. Of course, I'm teaching a totally different age group, but I think it's also got something to do with just having had those extra two years under my belt. It gives me some kind of reassurance that I know what I'm doing (at least, with the basics of classroom management, lesson planning, grading, etc.). And that makes a difference in how comfortable I feel in front of my students -- the end result being that I'm more relaxed and therefore more approachable when students need help.

All this is to say that I think I really want to make this some part of my career when I get done here. I never thought I would say that or know that with any amount of conviction, but I think my last year here (writing without teaching) contrasted with just these first few weeks back on campus (writing and teaching) has made it clear to me: teaching is where I'm happier using my creativity. It doesn't mean I won't keep on writing. It just means that I don't want to be on a career path that requires me to pump stuff out for the sake of having publications. I'd rather write when the desire seizes me and channel most of my energy into the classroom. I get such a high from having a class go well, watching students respond to something I've designed to help them engage with what we're studying. It's a first for me. I almost can't believe I'm saying that, after so many years of not knowing what would fulfill me, but this is it. This is what makes me happy. Or at least, it's the beginning of something toward that end.

D finally sent me a picture of our irises, which we intend to plant in the ground when we get our first house. Right now, they're thriving in their pots. Here's a shot from the week I left for school (mid-August):


And here's how tall they are now:


Ah, May. It won't be here for a while, but it's so much closer than it was last year. I can almost taste it.

This is how I feel

Well, not exactly, but the picture was too funny not to post, and I do feel like bunches of things have suddenly dropped on me in the last week. Namely deadlines, some self-imposed.

This shot was actually taken over Labor Day weekend -- D took a solo trip to the Olympic Peninsula to check out some hiking trails, and he came across these three crabs on the Dungeness Spit, which is part of a national wildlife reserve. These guys are no longer alive, but it looks like they are (at least, the ones that are still intact). Poor things, I think they're shell-shocked from the sight of their friend ... sorry, couldn't resist. But don't they look appalled?


The hike along the spit is about five miles on nothing but beach. Beautiful, but tough going on the legs, says D. At the end of the spit is a lighthouse that looks out over the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Quite a nice summer retreat! If you apply to be a keeper, you can apparently stay there for a week for very cheap. The high season for tourism seems to be July and August, so finding a place for D to stay wasn't easy (and at the last minute -- he called me and said he wanted to check out more of the area if a room was available for a reasonable price). After some Googling, I located a hostel not too far away while D was driving back toward the ferry to Seattle. Oh, the benefits of cell phones and the internet ...


This is going to be a heavy writing weekend, so I'd best get to it. Next week, my students will be meeting with me to discuss their plans for their first formal paper, so I'll be extra short on time. I'm really enjoying how well lessons are going -- a first after my two years of teaching middle school -- but I wish I didn't feel so completely exhausted!

What is this "work-life balance" you speak of?

I know, I know, I've been a little quiet over here. Chalk it up to trying to figure out how to juggle being a teacher and student at the same time. Forget being a plain old citizen of the human race ...

Things sort of picked up rather rapidly after Labor Day, and D came to visit this past weekend. Less than optimal combination. But such is life -- D and I have learned just to work around my work. Sometimes I let things slide a little on my end, as I did this time, or we just treat the days together as if they're not going to run out any time soon (and I do what I have to do while he hangs out). That takes the pressure off most of the time. We learned last year that trying to use up every waking minute doing special things isn't realistic and that having a relaxed, "normal" weekend together is rejuvenating in itself.

Okay, so I do have some work-life balance.

But in terms of getting my own work done vs. getting work done for teaching, the teaching is winning out way more often. It's paying off in the classroom -- discussions and activities have gone really well -- but my writing has been sorely neglected. And my first workshop piece is due in a little over a week ...

D and I took Saturday afternoon to take a little road trip to a local German heritage historic site, which was fun. We ate ourselves silly on Wienerschnitzel and looked at local arts and crafts. One of our stops was at the Wine, Cheese and Jelly Haus (yep, that's what was over the door), where you could find everything you needed for a picnic, including baskets. We restrained ourselves and only picked up a summer sausage and some strawberry-rhubarb jam (D's favorite).

We also stopped at a historic church that had been converted into a studio and gallery, and we got to meet the primary artist who works there. Our biggest find, however, was at another gallery. We came across some whimsical prints by an artist named Laura Lee Junge, whose style (per art critics) can be described as "surrealistic expressionism." There's definitely some Dali in there, but it's softer, I think. In any case, D and I both fell in love with the same painting, something that has never happened before since we tend to have different tastes. We took it as a sign -- now the piece is at my place, waiting to be framed. I believe we have the last one ever printed; it's marked 500/500. You like?


Well, I had hoped to post a longer update, but I'm getting pointed looks from Hamlet. More soon, I promise, as long as I don't lose more sleep -- I'm still waking up way before I'm supposed to, and I wouldn't be surprised if nightmares about Kenneth Branagh gone mad were to visit me tonight!

Sleepless

And not in Seattle.

I think that last wedding may have done some damage to my body clock because since getting back, I haven't been able to get my full forty winks at night. More like half that amount, followed by a lot of tossing and turning. For someone who was known to her college roommates as the girl who habitually got into bed and never moved again till morning, this is highly unusual.

We had a good time in New York -- I got in around 1 p.m. that Saturday and met up with my friends in Greenwich Village. We proceeded to talk our jaws off until D arrived in the late afternoon and then headed over to Bryant Park to ride the merry-go-round (why not?) and talk some more. Dinner followed at a random Chinese restaurant in Murray Hill (authentic, believe it or not!) and then more talking until D and I had to make a dash for the subway in order to catch our train from Penn Station to Long Island, where the wedding was going to take place the next day.

The ride was interesting, to say the least. There was construction on one section of the line that forced our particular train to divert to a station not normally on its run so that the tracks could be switched. Since it wasn't an official stop on the schedule, the train doors stayed closed. However, several large, loud guys in our car seemed to believe that it was a stop, and they started demanding that the conductor let them off. Demands led to threats about pulling the emergency brake, and then other patrons started getting involved, telling them to stop making trouble. D and I hastily grabbed our suitcases and moved to another car when one of the passengers said something about using someone's head to bash open one of the windows.

Can't say I'm sorry I don't live there anymore ...

The ceremony and reception on Sunday were lovely. Sadly, we weren't able to stay much longer than the first two hours because we had to head back to the airport for our 5 p.m. flight. But we did get to congratulate the bride and groom and wish them well, which is what mattered most. We also got to witness what was probably the best unscripted promotion for Tide to Go that we will ever see. Dave, one of our friends at the wedding, got attacked by a plate of pasta during cocktail hour, and within seconds, a sonsy middle-aged woman had the stain-removing pen out of her purse. "Here, sweetie, I've got Tide to Go!" she said, handing it to him before he had even registered what was happening.

Her husband patted his ample gut and winked. "You got one of these, you need one of those," he said, gesturing with his loaded hors d'oeuvres plate, which really did seem ready to drip spring roll sauce onto his belly. "This is what you learn after 25 years of marriage!" (all of the above spoken with an especially thick Long Island accent).

Needless to say, Dave was quite grateful -- as was his fiancée of three days. Yes, that's a wedding for next summer that we can already count on! Exciting news. Hopefully the travel will be less hectic and our visit will be longer.


The first week of class finished well, despite Monday's rustiness. My Wednesday class went beautifully -- my students are quite willing to engage in discussion! -- and my own seminars look like they're going to be interesting and helpful for my writing. Tomorrow, I'm meeting with a professor in my minor to figure out how to do independent study in her department so I can finish my requirements there. With luck, I can get that done this year and not have to deal with it while working on my thesis.

News on the home front: The owners of the house we love have dropped their price a little more! But again, not enough. Definitely nervous that someone else may put in a bid, but if it happens, so be it. Our time will come. Our realtor has pretty much figured out that we like the place -- she sent us an article about rising mortgage rates a few weeks ago to encourage us not to stall just to see if prices would come down further in the market at large -- but we're sitting tight. Hopefully the house will too until we're ready.

I got way less done this weekend than I wanted to, especially in planning my unit on Hamlet, but it's time for bed. To sleep, perchance to dream ... oh heck, just give me sleep and I'll be thrilled.

Funny that you should ask ...

You know those people you run into while you're waiting for the bus, the kind who are total strangers but like to engage you in conversation anyway? Somehow, I seem to attract them.

Most of the time, I don't mind the chitchat -- I mean, it's only polite to respond when someone says, "How are you today?" and generally, out here where the heat is as extreme as the cold, there's always something to say about the weather. After a few exchanges about rain/snow/ ice/all of the above, the conversation peters out or the bus arrives and you can part ways.

So yesterday, at my bus stop, a man started talking to me. "You going to school?" he asked. Seemed like a fairly innocuous opener. So I said yes, I was going in to campus to hold office hours. "You're a teacher," he said. Not wanting to mislead him, I explained that I was a student too. A few moments of silence, and I assumed we were done.

"I see some lucky man's already made you a promise," he said suddenly.

"What? Oh." I realized he was looking at my left hand. "Yes."

Inevitably, after a few more questions, the conversation reached the admission that D and I have a commuter marriage. To which, without any hesitation, the man said, "I guess in a relationship like that, you must have to be abstinent, huh?"

"Um" -- and here I think my brain sort of lurched to a sudden halt because it couldn't believe what it had heard -- "we do see each other as often as we can."

Now, I'm sure the guy didn't mean any harm, but how do you answer (or get out of answering) something like that? Clearly, he understood the institution of marriage -- at its simplest, a promise to be faithful -- so what further confirmation needed to be made about that? And yet, if I had offered no response, what would that have implied?

I think it's time to start carrying a book to the bus stop. Either to look really engrossed in it so as not to be disturbed or to thunk people on the head with it when they ask inappropriate questions.

Say what?

I now know why I became a writer. Because I like composing words on paper, not assembling them on the fly in front of other people. Like, say, a room full of college sophomores, some of whom are definitely smirking at you as you charge through your own introduction so unceremoniously that it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. Even things that I've scripted for myself turn to gobbledygook when I try to make myself say them out loud. Non sequiturs? Redundancies? Rambling sentences that trail off into awkward attempts at humor? A total absence of humor?

Yep.

I taught my first class today, which I thought I was prepared for. Last week, I printed off all the handouts I would need and set up my university website for posting supplementary materials and had my lesson plan all written out with timing and even segues to use so I wouldn't have to ad-lib any. I went so far as to put everything I would need into my car so that in case I got stranded on the way back from wedding #5 (this past weekend -- more on that in a separate post), I could go directly from the airport to campus. But I might as well have left everything at home because I didn't follow what I had written for myself. Well, okay, it wasn't quite as bad as that sounds -- I stuck to the agenda I'd put together, but for the parts where I had to open my mouth and say meaningful things about the goals of the course, expectations, and all that administrative stuff you use to set the tone for the semester, I kept straying from my crib sheet. Badly. I don't think I contradicted myself, but I definitely felt like I was making a mess of things. Oy.

Of course, where I almost never strayed was my tone -- I stuck close to the tough side of my teacher persona (borderline mean, I'm afraid to say) while enumerating what I expected of my students. Definitely stern and a little scowly. Shudder. I'm sure it will pay off in terms of preventing behavior issues -- I only had to use the teacher look once when a girl started talking to someone next to her while another student was talking, and she stopped chatting right away when I cocked an eyebrow at her rather pointedly. But man, did I dislike the persona I was projecting. I was more than stern about the workload, my being a tough grader, my standards in general. My little sis's reaction after my description of how I thought I sounded: "Dude, I'd drop your class."

Yeah, me too.

At least I used nearly all the time I was allotted (70 out of 75 minutes). Having to manage a room full of 13-year-olds for sometimes twice that amount of time when I last taught made planning my agenda for today way easier. Maybe Wednesday will be better on the speaking front. We'll be doing discussion-based activities that don't require me to lecture, which is the heart of what this course is about. I can't wait for this to feel more routine. Right now, I just feel rusty.

In which I suddenly become a local

... in two places at once. Yes, it's possible.

I'm back in Iowa, and surprisingly, I haven't really felt much need to "adjust" because my home here is more or less the way I left it in May. And my body remembers its routines in this space. On the first morning, I hopped into the shower after my workout as if I'd never been gone, turning the knobs for the tap just so for that perfect mix of hot and cold, reaching for my face towel hanging just outside the curtain on the towel bar without having to look. It was so familiar it was eerie.

It is nice, too. Last year, when I arrived, everything was new and awkward and I was anxious about learning how the bus system worked and uncertain about where to get my books and ID and parking pass and bombarded with orientation meetings in buildings I couldn't find and welcome-to-campus potlucks among people whose names I couldn't keep straight. This year, all I had to figure out was what I wanted to get from the grocery store for dinner on my first night back.

Interestingly, though, I'm also a West Coaster -- at least, in the eyes of the new first-years from California (I've met two, one from Los Angeles and the other from San Francisco). On our lunch break from TA training today, we ate with a girl from Hawaii. Add to our group another Seattleite who found us earlier this morning, and suddenly the "I'm from a time zone significantly behind this one" club has its charter members. And I'm one of them, even though I've barely spent more than six months in Washington -- ? Well, yes. I feel more at home talking with these girls about life on the Pacific than I do talking with Midwesterners about growing up in Illinois. But maybe that's because Midwesterners don't talk much (comparatively speaking) and those growing up years were very awkward in general ...

D and I also made our localness official on my last day in Seattle by getting library cards. We spent most of Saturday morning and early afternoon downtown, with the goal of enjoying being out and about so we wouldn't mope in the apartment about my having to leave the next day. One of the places we had intended to explore all summer was the Central Library, which is an incredible ten-story contemporary structure in the heart of the city. Parts of its stacks are arranged in a spiral going up the center of the building, and you can wander from floor to floor without having to use a single stairwell. Escalators are available, though, if you want to take an express route through those levels. The top floor space is devoted to a sun-soaked (but comfortably air-conditioned) reading room and a special collection of Pacific Northwest reference materials and rare books. This promises to be a great place to retreat to during those occasional heat waves in the summer (one of which we endured over the weekend).



So that's the latest landmark in Seattle that we've gotten to know. Iowa has a few of its own worth noting as well -- including the "World's Largest Truckstop"(!), which I passed on the way back to school:


I had intended to take a picture of this place last year at some point, but I never got around to it. Now that I have, I can say that if the Central Library is interested in a copy, I know exactly where they can shelve it:


In all seriousness, I do wish Iowa had a home for the printed word as attractive as what we saw last weekend. All the same, I've also heard good things about the public library here. Maybe I'll check it out as well, if only to give myself an escape from the academic aura (read: tension) that dominates the quiet corners of campus where I'd ordinarily hole up to work. Being local is fine, but I'm in no hurry to feel like an overtaxed grad student again.

Stay this moment

... to use one's hands & eyes; to talk to people; to be a straw on the river, now & then -- passive, not striving to say this is this. If one does not lie back & sum up & say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one's gain, dying? No: stay, this moment. No one ever says that enough.

~ Virginia Woolf, December 1932

Tomorrow will be my last day in Seattle for a while.

D's been amazing -- he's already bought tickets for September and October, so we have several visits lined up. Which means no anxiety about when we'll next get to see each other (that is, if you don't count a certain well-justified sense of foreboding over airline punctuality).

I should be finishing up the first draft of my syllabus right now, but I know if I don't write this post today, I won't get to do it without fifteen other distractions once I get back to Iowa. So any thoughts on grading breakdowns and plagiarism policies will just have to wait. There's still time (even if the Type A in me says otherwise).

I went to Toronto early last week to spend some time with my mom and her mother. At one time, my grandmother was an enthusiastic storyteller, full of tales from her youth and her escape from the Japanese during World War II. Now that she is largely isolated from her family, she has no one to tell her stories to. In fact, the only time that they are ever told is when my mom recounts them for me.

Like my mother and her mother before her, I have the storytelling gene (even if I don't do the recounting as well as they do, the desire to do it is there). And while it is premature to say whether I'll actually be able to accomplish this, I want to try to cull all of the history from family memory and write it down. But first, I have to tell the story of this visit in order to explain why.

My grandmother is 92, and she is in a nursing home. Her doctors say she has Alzheimer's. It's hard to say whether this is completely accurate -- as far as I know, no one has actually done a scan of her brain to see what's going on in there -- but she is wheelchair-bound (more from advanced osteoporosis than anything else) and can no longer feed herself. She has trouble remembering the names of her children and difficulty recognizing some of their faces. But she's still there, deep in her mind, where her oldest memories live.

She rarely speaks now -- in fact, one of the nurses walking down the hall while we were visiting came into the room because she heard my grandmother talking to us and couldn't believe her ears. But given time, and more questions than "What's my name?" from every person who drops by, she can hold a good conversation, even with someone who barely speaks Cantonese (me).

On the day I arrived, my mom and I went to the nursing home right away to have lunch with my grandmother. I knew that she had physically deteriorated a lot from what my mom described after a visit nearly a year ago, but it was still a bit of a shock to see my grandmother in a room full of other vacant-eyed elderly men and women draped with large bibs, many of them being fed by the staff. There were also several residents who were fairly self-sufficient and very alert, but most of them had already finished eating and were making their way to the TV room down the hall. When we got to my grandmother's table, she was asleep with her head hanging over her tray.

One of my uncles was with us and had brought some homemade chicken soup, so we wheeled my grandmother to a quiet spot in the TV room to feed her ourselves. She was rather hazy -- the staff gives her some kind of sedative in the morning because she's supposedly developed aggressive tendencies toward them and other residents -- but we did manage to wake her up a little. She glanced at each of our faces repeatedly, staring for a few seconds then closing her eyes again from what seemed like exhaustion. For a while, she wouldn't eat. My mom kept offering her spoonfuls of rice and mashed vegetables, but my grandmother would turn her head or push the spoon away with one hand.

Then one of the aides walked by and said hello, chatting briefly with my mom in Shanghainese. My grandmother's eyes immediately flew open -- she had recognized the dialect she grew up speaking. "Did you see that?" I asked, nudging my mom. "Try asking her to eat in Shanghainese."

"Mine's terrible," my mom said, but she went at it gamely, offering a bite of chicken and laughing at the sounds coming out of her mouth. "God knows what I'm actually saying to her," she whispered.

It worked. My grandmother took the mouthful of chicken and let us feed her more. She still grimaced when we offered her vegetables, so we hid them in the rice. "I wouldn't like them either," I said to her in English (my Shanghainese is nonexistent). She stared at me again, trying to find me in her memory. "Hello, Nga Po," I said, calling her by the name I had used for her from age 1. I gave her my Chinese name too, but she closed her eyes again before it seemed to register.

That evening, we went back to feed her dinner. She was so much more alert that by the time we arrived, she had already finished (with the help of an aide), so we took her to a sitting area at the end of a hall. This time an aunt, in addition to my uncle, was with us.

"Who am I?" my uncle said. She stared and stared but shook her head. "Who am I?" he repeated. Then he began to talk about their life in Hong Kong, decades back, when my grandfather was an upholsterer doing all the furniture and drapes for the Peninsula Hotel. "Do you remember sewing all those curtains with Dad?" my uncle said. "We worked so hard with those needles that I got holes in my fingertips!"

A look of recognition began to filter into Nga Po's eyes. "You're Daniel," she said at last in Cantonese. They were the first words she spoke to us that day.

"Yes, yes," he said. Then Nga Po looked at my mother. "This is Mor Mor," my uncle said, giving the nickname her siblings called and still call her by -- littlest sister. Nga Po nodded, but we were unsure if she had really made the connection as to who my mother was.

My uncle talked on a little more until Nga Po suddenly pushed at his arm to indicate she wanted him to go away. Once he had stood up, she gestured to the wing chair he had vacated. "Let Mor Mor sit," she said very clearly. We all laughed. She remembered.

My mother took her turn until Nga Po asked for my aunt, also calling her by her nickname. Before we could try to explain who I was, though, we had to leave to meet more of my aunts and uncles for dinner. "We'll be back tomorrow," I said to her once we had wheeled her back to her room. She looked at me again, then her eyes glazed over a little and she retreated into fogginess.

*

The following morning, we found her not in the cafeteria but in her room. "She was hitting people again," an aide explained. "She wouldn't take her medication either, so we brought her back here."

Nga Po, lying flat in her bed, looked at us sweetly as we greeted her. Her gaze was alert as I leaned down and gave her my name again.

"My daughter," my mom said.

Nga Po's gaze locked on mine for a few seconds. "You've gotten so tall," she said.

I looked at my mother -- we silently seemed to agree that her recognizing me might have been a fluke, some kind of mistaken identity. But even if she wasn't remembering the right granddaughter, Nga Po allowed me to take her hand all the same, and she squeezed it and shook it gently. "She must be so hungry for physical contact," my mom whispered. We raised her bed so she could sit comfortably, and then we rubbed her shoulders and neck and stroked her hair, which she accepted quite peaceably.

"Are you sure this isn't bothering her?" I asked.

"She'll let you know what she wants," my mom said. "I'm sure she was hitting because the aides were trying to force her to do something she didn't want to."

"The medication," I said. "She knows what it does to her, and she knew we were coming back today."

We looked at Nga Po, but she gave no indication that she had heard us. I took my hand out of hers and reached to pull down her sweatshirt, which had ridden up behind her when we had raised the bed. Suddenly, she grabbed my hand firmly and pulled it toward her. She settled her own hand in her lap, her fingers still wrapped around mine. My mother was right. Nga Po knew what she wanted. I squeezed her hand, and she began to shake it again as if to say hello.

"Your hair is still so dark," my mom said after a moment, combing the thin black strands streaked with amazingly few white ones to the side of Nga Po's forehead. "Soon I'm going to have more white on my head than you!" She pointed to her own hair with its light sprinkling of silver.

"Whatever you say," Nga Po said. Her immediate response surprised us both.

"Well, of course!" my mom continued. "If your hair isn't changing anymore and mine still is, I'll catch up to you in no time."

And Nga Po laughed.

"My God, I haven't heard her do that in ages," my mom said, looking at me with wide eyes. "She's still in there."

That night we visited again with two of my aunts and uncles, a cousin, and her fiancé. Even though Nga Po's eyes were practically closing as we stood around her bed, she tried to force them to stay open, clearly recognizing many of her children, if not her grandchildren. We took turns again, sitting in front of her where she could see each of us more easily. "I can't remember," she repeated over and over as she tried to come up with our names.

"But you know our faces," one of my aunts reassured her. "That's all that matters."

Nga Po nodded a little uncertainly and smiled, the muscles in her face stiff from lack of use. And then she fell asleep.

*

On our last day, we took Nga Po to an outdoor pavilion on the nursing home grounds for lunch. After getting Nga Po's wheelchair settled, my mom went back to the car to get the fish sandwich from McDonald's -- one of Nga Po's favorite meals -- that we had brought, along with salads for ourselves. As we waited for her, I took Nga Po's hand and told her my name again. "You've gotten so tall," she said once more.

I nodded and took a breath. I knew this would be my last chance to talk with her for a while, and even if she couldn't connect my present-day identity to the granddaughter she could remember, I wanted to connect with her in the moment.

"I got married," I said.

"Really?" Her face brightened briefly, as if the broken filaments in the lights of her eyes were temporarily recoupled and glowing like flares. I wondered if she was remembering the day of her own wedding as a 16-year-old bride.

I pronounced D's name slowly for her. "That's my husband," I said.

Nga Po nodded and even repeated D's name. I knew she would not remember him after a few minutes, but knowing that she had understood me was enough.

After lunch, I took out my laptop and showed her a photo that had been taken on my wedding day. She turned to study my face and then looked at the image on the screen, as if to match them up. Then I pulled up a picture of her that had been taken at around the same age, one of several old photos that my mom had scanned for me. Nga Po stared at it intently then looked at my mom. "Is that me?" she asked.

"Yes," my mom replied.

"So pretty," I said. "I was never that pretty."

"With such an expression on my face!" Nga Po said, frowning critically at her younger self. "Hardly."

"Beautiful," I insisted and pointed at the lipstick carefully painted on her full lips.

Nga Po got quiet again. Then: "Is that me?"

My mom and I exchanged glances. "Let's keep moving," she said. I pulled up the next picture, one of Nga Po and me around age 7 wearing a red cable-knit cardigan. "Do you know who knit that sweater?" my mom asked.

Nga Po squinted and blinked. "I did," she said after a few seconds. "I did."

"I still have that sweater," I told her. "Someday, when I have children who can wear it, I'll tell them that you knit it for me."

For nearly half an hour, we looked at photos, some of whose events Nga Po was able to recall -- birthdays, engagements, trips. Even when she could not, though, she repeated over and over, "These are so good -- so good for remembering."

"We can take a picture now," my mom said, showing her the camera I had brought.

"And next time we come, I'll have it on the computer to show you," I said. Nga Po nodded. Very quickly, my mother composed the shot. But by the time she pressed the button, Nga Po was looking elsewhere in the room.

We had to leave in order to beat traffic to our hotel, and Nga Po was getting tired. No aides were available to get her out of the wheelchair into bed, so we took Nga Po back to the TV room where some of the staff were hosting a karaoke party for the residents. A few of the residents seemed to be following along as one aide sang along to a track in Cantonese, but the rest dozed or gazed at the TV screen expressionlessly.

"I don't want to tell her we're leaving," my mom whispered to me, her eyes beginning to well up with tears.

"I know," I said. "But we have to -- or else she might think we've abandoned her when we don't come back tomorrow."

My mom nodded. "She's understood every time before when I've told her we have to get on a plane. She knows it means goodbye." She bent forward and spoke quietly into her mother's ear beneath the warbling amplified through the sound system.

Nga Po nodded and raised her head to look up at us. And then, very clearly: "Thank you."

Both of us hustled toward the door of the TV room, tears streaming. When we turned to look one last time from the threshold, Nga Po was already staring straight ahead as if we had already vanished, figments of memory faded to black.

Food for thought, or how to get through customs in under 30 seconds

So after trying to remember everything D and I did with my parents during their visit, I have determined that they've turned into food tourists. Well, really, it's Dad who's the fanatic; Mom just gets dragged along. In any case, I expected that we would show them around our neighborhood, go to a museum or two, and maybe walk around Discovery Park.

Nope, we went grocery store hopping.

This was actually pretty entertaining and enjoyable because taking my dad to the local food markets was like turning a kid loose in a candy store. Both of my parents love fresh fruit, so we looked primarily for produce for breakfast and snacks on their first afternoon in town.

We had bought my dad a bottle of wine from a chateau in Sonoma Valley during our road trip to Seattle last summer, so we planned to grill some nice steaks for dinner on the same night (our apartment complex has an incredible gas grill for common use near the main office). Coincidentally, the apartment management team was hosting a wine tasting for residents, so we took turns tending the meat and sampling hors d'oeuvres.

The next day, we spent the morning looking at houses (see this post for how that went). Then Dad wanted to go downtown just to see the sights, so we did a drive-by tour of the Space Needle, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the piers. Which conveniently brought us to Pike Place Market, where Dad proceeded to check out all the fresh seafood. We ended up buying mussels and some Alaskan halibut fillets. We also stopped at Uwajimaya, the enormous Asian market in the International District, where my parents swooned over the fresh vegetables (being Chinese, they know good choy when they see it). They also bought more fruit.

That evening, we had reservations at Ray's Boathouse, a restaurant in Ballard with waterfront seating (wonderful at sunset). We had some time before we had to be there, so we took my parents to the Chittenden locks in the same neighborhood, where we managed to catch a glimpse of the salmon jumping in the fish ladder.

The following day, we went wine tasting in Woodinville, which was a pretty relaxed affair. Dad did most of the tasting while Mom and I wandered the gardens at one of our stops. Then we swung briefly through Bellevue to do a little shopping and headed back to the apartment to cook the seafood we had bought the day before.

Saturday morning, we drove to Vancouver. First stop: Yaohan Centre, a mall whose food court is made up entirely of Asian food vendors. Most people would probably find it strange that we traveled 140 miles just to dine on food court fare, but this stuff is nothing like what you would get at Panda Express or Manchu Wok. It's the real thing -- wonton mein, rice congee, nin gou (the last is my favorite). An adjacent supermarket offers fresh Chinese pastries -- and, of course, fruit, which my parents could not resist.


Once sated, Dad wanted to go down to the docks in Steveston for a walk. While we were there, we passed the historic Gulf of Georgia Cannery, which offers tours. We were too late to sign up for one, but we did get to see what the fishing boats were bringing in (largely shrimp and sablefish). We also caught a glimpse of a wedding party having photos done along the shore.


Once dinnertime rolled around, Dad led us to a place called Kirin for traditional Chinese seafood prepared from live catch. There, we taught D how to strip and eat whole steamed shrimp. Dad was so pleased with the restaurant that we went back for dim sum (lunch) and dinner on Sunday.

Between those meals, we took my parents to the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden, where we walked off some calories and checked out some of the specialty gardens on the grounds. Dad, of course, was especially interested in the Food Garden, which grows produce for donation to local soup kitchens. I had never seen celery and cauliflower growing out of the ground before, so that was actually quite neat. And who knew that spring mix lettuce is actually one plant with variegated leaves! I had always thought that the mix you buy at the grocery store is a true mix of different lettuces. We also toured the Physic Garden, which held plants used by the modern pharmaceutical industry as well as those used by ancient healers.

Our second stop before dinner was downtown Vancouver's Chinatown, primarily for its herb merchants, who sell not only ginseng and patent medicine but also dried shark's fin, fish maw, and scallops. Once rehydrated for several hours in cold water, they can be used in traditional dishes that feature these delicacies prominently. D and I explored a few places on our own while my parents haggled with vendors. It was kind of funny -- my dad asked us to look around separately because D (being of Scandinavian, German, and Belgian descent) sticks out a bit and would give the merchants more reason to treat us like rookies. So I took him around and pointed out what my parents were shopping for. Every store is set up more or less the same way with huge glass jars of unusual ingredients lining the walls (I think dried whole gecko was the most bizarre item we came across). D's impression: "It's like being in a voodoo shop."

On our way through customs, we were a bit concerned about taking seafood across the border (you have to declare these items, but it's not entirely clear whether these are permitted, even though the vendors all insist that it's fine). As we approached the booth, we discussed what to call the goods ("dried fish" rather than anything more specific). As it turns out, though, we had nothing to worry about.

"What did you do while you were visiting?" the customs officer asked.

Since we'd been focusing so much on what to say when we were asked if we had anything to declare, D was caught a little off guard and blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Uh -- ate restaurant food," he said.

The officer looked at us quizzically, returned our passports, and waved us off. I don't think we stopped laughing for ten miles -- largely because it was true.

"What does 'annulé' mean?"

It is so good to be home again.

The last week has been largely dominated by airport mayhem. Last Monday, I checked my flights to Toronto first thing in the morning and discovered that the first leg connecting through Chicago had been canceled on account of a serious storm system sitting over Lake Michigan. Managed to get rebooked on another flight leaving seven hours later, got to O'Hare, and was promptly trapped there by a second storm system. One that spawned a tornado. Second leg of the journey promptly canceled. No hotels with rooms within a half-hour drive. Prepared to spend the night with everyone else in the same boat.

Luckily, D's aunt, who lives in Chicago, rescued me and put me up on her couch for a few hours. Watched an incredible lightning storm over Lake Michigan from her 38th floor condo (the photo was shot at midnight but it looked bright enough to be close to dawn). Went back to O'Hare. Got on standby and flew out at 7 a.m. Tuesday. Baggage did not.

Arrived in Toronto, filled out paperwork for missing bag. Missing bag located after several phone calls to check automated reports. Scheduled delivery for after 6 p.m. Still no bag at 1 a.m.

Bag delivery rescheduled Wednesday morning after more phone calls. Bag finally arrived at 2:30 p.m. Contents of bag sopping wet and visibly molding (we won't mention the smell), including nearly all the items for the wedding on Saturday (most of which were dry clean only). Long phone call to local AA baggage people for explanation and questions on how to make a claim for damages. Clothing dropped off for emergency laundering at dry cleaner.

Clothing retrieved Thursday afternoon. Smell had not come out. Several items too small (from their initial soaking) and still stained. Emergency trip to mall to find something to wear to rehearsal dinner. Called D, asked him to bring another dress for the wedding (fortunately, there was one more hanging in the closet at home that was appropriate).

Lugged all damaged items -- including suitcase, which could not be cleaned and stank like a bog -- back to airport to meet with baggage supervisor on Friday. Supervisor authorized reimbursement for bag and dry cleaning, said he would get back to us about the rest of the goods. Supervisor also suggested that the courier service may have left the bag outside by accident during the storm that soaked the city Tuesday evening but said he would look into that too (I'm inclined to think the damage happened during the Chicago deluge). Went back to mall to buy suitcase. Waited for D to arrive.

Enjoyed wedding hoopla all day Saturday. Transferred belongings to new suitcase. Called AA just to make sure our next day's flights were going to go (with the 0 for 2 track record on the way to Toronto, I wasn't feeling optimistic). Confirmed all flights still scheduled and on time.

Headed for airport Sunday morning with D and little sis. While in line to check in, little sis asked for my flight info while looking at the departure screens.

"What does 'annulé' mean?" little sis asked.

"Canceled," I said. And then: "WHAT?!"

Yep, 0 for 3. This time for some kind of mechanical problem, not weather, but still -- !

Said goodbye to little sis, whose flight was still on. Dropped damaged suitcase off with baggage supervisor and picked up reimbursement check. Got flights rebooked on Air Canada going through Vancouver, arriving about four hours later than original flight. Killed time, watched some of the Olympics.

Went through customs in Vancouver. Final flight delayed. BUT (and I say this with a great deal of glass half full perspective) we got to fly in a prop plane, which I haven't done in over a decade. Lower flying altitude, amazing views all the way back to Seattle. A small consolation at the end of the most trying week of air travel I have ever experienced.

I know I said I would blog more about my parents' visit -- and I will! -- but let me recover a little first, okay? Then I'll also talk more about what I did while I wasn't dealing with airport-related chaos in Toronto (yes, I did get to spend some time on other things too). Just cross your fingers for me that next Sunday's flight back to school goes as planned ...

I have house lust

So we may have found the house that we want to buy!

But it's too soon, and now we have to stall!

!!!

My parents were interested in seeing some homes with us during their visit, so on their first morning in town, we went out with our realtor to take a second look at a few places. One of these was a house that D and I immediately loved on our first viewing, but we kept our sentiments under wraps. No sense giving our realtor more reasons to prod us about getting pre-approved for a loan.

Mom and Dad had already previewed the pictures of the house and looked it up on Zillow.com (a very useful website for previous sale information among other details the realtors are loath to disclose), so we had a pretty good idea about how reasonable the listing price was. The current owners are definitely asking way more than any smart buyer in this market should pay, so we've been watching the listing closely for any changes. Yesterday, our realtor forwarded us a notice that the owners have dropped the price. Not by much, but it might be enough for overeager buyers to jump on it.

The house isn't perfect -- there are little things that we made sure to mention in front of the realtor to sort of throw her off how much we like the place -- but I have a feeling she may have seen through some of it. There's no tub in the master bathroom (not an issue for us since we're not tub people, but future buyers may find that to be one), and the furnace is in the attic with a questionably sized crawlspace for access. If that furnace breaks, it'll be a major operation to get it out of there (not to mention putting a new one in its place). Then there's the lot across from the house that looks like it's being reclaimed as a protected wetland, but the clearing that's going on also suggests new construction(?). And let's not forget the problem of the greenbelt overgrowth behind the house. Right now, the plants back there are young, but we're not sure what the law says about trimming all that stuff back when it gets higher than the fence. Are we allowed to touch it? Some sources say no. And that would mean a raggedy mess to try to market when it's our turn to sell ...

But how can we not love this house when D and my parents and I can envision our children sleeping in the bedrooms?!? Dad was so funny -- because of the depth of the greenbelt, he was concerned that mountain lions might be able to make off with his future grandchildren while they were playing in the backyard. The fact that he was even thinking about grandchildren was just too cute, but the fact that he was serious about the mountain lions was even cuter.

(It is highly unlikely that mountain lions would prowl the neighborhood we're looking at. There's more of a chance that they'd appear around our current apartment complex, which is not far from the foothills of the Cascades.)

This post has to stop here for now -- I am on my way to wedding #4 for the summer. The next installment on my parents' visit when I get to my next internet connection! And if anyone has ideas on how to prevent someone else from buying this house, we're all ears ...