Lyings and tirades and fears, oh my!

Wiggles reads

2009-09-17T06:02:00.000-07:00

I didn't pose this photo, I promise. The book was closed and she was snuggled up sleeping when I left the room. I came back to find that she'd opened the book with her paw and apparently had a hard time getting past the cover page. She's downright exhausted.

Oh. Hi, honey...

2009-08-25T16:13:00.001-07:00

Steve and I are wandering separately around Walgreen's this afternoon. He's looking for a small container to keep vitamins in, and I've found what I need, so I'm looking for him when I happen upon the candy aisle. I have a candy problem. Anybody who knows me knows that. Well, lately the problem's been Raisinets and that could very well slip over into Goobers. And the movie box candy is on sale for 3 for $3! (I was just talking with my class today about this--why can't they just say they're a buck each?)

Though I know damn well I shouldn't, I'm picking up a second box just as Steve comes into the aisle and sees me.

S.: What're you doing?
A.: I was looking for you.
S.: In the box of Goobers?

Oh people, I laughed. I laughed and laughed at the image of myself looking for my husband in a box of Goobers. I wasn't picking up candy to buy, no not at all. I was just looking for you.

There you are!

orange alert

2009-08-14T05:49:00.000-07:00

Last night we were reading on the deck and the girls were sniftering their way around the yard when Belly starts on her orange alert, barking like a freakshow (she never does that). Steve's getting frustrated, telling me she's yelling at nothing (she really never does yell at nothing--she's not stupid), calling her up on the deck. She won't come, just keeps barking. I tell him to go down there and GET her if it's bothering him so much. He's not wearing shoes, so he can't. I go into the yard to get her and I see this very old man a couple yards away doing something to his fence. See, I say to Steve, she's not yelling at nothing. There's a man there fixing his fence.

I get Belly to stop barking and we all go in to start making dinner (yes, the girls help). Steve decides to lock the girls in so that they won't keep barking at the man. About ten minutes later, Belly's staring at the dog door and I say to Steve that we have to let them back out. Well, he's gonna go check on where that man is first. He goes out there and sees the man being walked back up the little mound behind our neighbor's yard by two nurses. "Honey, he ran away," he tells me. He wasn't fixing his fence and he wasn't out for an evening walk. He was lost. He was holding onto the fence to steady himself. There's a retirement home behind those buildings behind the trees behind our yard. We were completely depressed the rest of the night.

And then it occurred to me that maybe Belly actually HELPED. I like this story the best. The nurses didn't know where this poor little old man could be but they heard my booda barking barking barking at him, so they followed that sound. And they found him safe before he got to Hershey Ave.

and they're off

2009-06-09T05:59:00.000-07:00

We leave today for North Carolina and Massachusetts without our girls and that part is killing me. Last night when we were watching TV and talking about how much we're gonna miss those stinkers, they start barking barking barking at people walking by, and I say to S., "ya know, it will be kinda nice to get away from that for a bit." He says, sure, but the minute we're on the highway, you're gonna be crying about how you miss them. My response: I'm allowed to have mixed feelings. So there.

I sure showed him.

My hun bun FINALLY got a new position at State Farm. He'll now be working in Death Claims. He's always said he wants a one-name name like The Reaper, and that's how he told me he'd gotten the job. He texted me: I am The Reaper! (yup, we now text cuz we're hip like that). He was a bit late coming home that day and I was visiting with Sam and Lucky when he came into the house carrying a big plastic scythe. Probably not a good idea to take that into work with him.

It'll be so good to get away from work for a while. I need to stop thinking about all the things that aren't getting done. Leave them here, on this blog.

Instead, look forward to the fun reading in my bag. And a sunflower bagel from Lexington, MA. Yummers.

dining room, revised

2009-06-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

I've been complaining about this wallpapered dining room for a while now. S. didn't think it needed to be changed, so his silent protest was to offer no help. The one thing he did was move the china cabinet away from the wall so I could get back there and paint.

Worked on this all week. Here are the before pictures. Note the wallpaper, the brown chair rail, window trim, and divider between living and dining rooms. Hard to see in this photo, but there was also a pink venetian blind that we never used, so out it went (we have no back neighbors).

Here's the "during" shot. Originally I was planning to paint the whole room in that clay color (technically: "Of the earth"), but I decided it would make the room too dark, so I went with that and a light yellow (technically: "Castle stone").

After. Holy macaroni. What a difference white trim makes.

I love this dark wall separating the kitchen from the dining room. So neat and clean compared to the craziness that was that wallpaper.

One of the things we purchased with out wedding gift cards was an air compressor/nail gun and holy moly, I love that thing. I feel so accomplished with that thing in my hands. No more banging nails in and hitting thumbs and swearing at the top of my lungs so that the entire neighborhood knows I'm using a hammer. Nope. Not with my fancy new nail gun.

And guess what's the best part: S. likes it! He thinks it's a big improvement. Yay!

intermittent haphazardousness

2009-06-03T07:47:00.000-07:00

You've missed me, admit it. I've missed my self. My writing self.

The local party to celebrate our wedding was a huge success. Weather held out for us--it was threatening to rain all week, but we got through it dry. A bit chilly, but dry. The party made me realize again how many fantastic friends I have.

We leave for North Carolina and Massachusetts on the 9th. We'll spend just under a week in both places. We've decided to stay in a hotel in Massachusetts because a) my mom's house has no a/c; b) my mom's house has one bathroom; and c) we want access to a fitness center. Never thought I'd see the day when access to a fitness center determined ANYTHING in my life. But there you have it.

As always, I'm feeling stressed about how many projects I'm working on and my recent rejection and the fear that I'm all washed up. Finished. Nothing left to write about that anyone wants to hear. And then there's that damn tenure thing I gotta deal with this summer.

I've had many bloggable stories since I last blogged and of course I can't think of any of them right now. Most of them involve my Hun Bun and his funny funnies.

Ah well. I'm back.

miscellaneous edition

2009-05-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

1. The party's on Saturday and my trusty weather.com is calling for AM thundershowers. I can handle that. Just clear up by midday, please.

2. Baking many many cookies today for the party favors. Didn't want people to go home with a stupid favor that they end up tossing. Instead, eat it. Wonka, when I told her about how I was designing the cookies: Will they be in a little treat bag with cute little ribbons that you've curled with scissors? Me: Yup. She: Is it okay if I just eat mine right then and there?

3. Mom had triple bypass surgery on Monday and is recovering very well. She seems to remember none of her time in ICU, which is great. She'll be in the hospital for a few more days at least and then may go to rehab for a week. Nothing's sure yet.

4. The semester's over, grading's done, and I eagerly await the next version of my life writing class next spring. Damn, that was a good one.

5. Our travel plans for the summer include a 2-week frenzied, harried trip to North Carolina and then up to Massachusetts. All at once. Two weeks away from our girls; don't really know how we're gonna manage that one.

6. Schmoozin comes tomorrow! To help clean! Heh. I mean, to help celebrate.

publisheth

2009-04-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

1. Our Pluralizing Plagiarism is currently on its second printing. Yee-haw.

2. I was rejected today. Ahem. My manuscript was rejected today.

3. Time to get that tenure packet together. Thus begins the year of judgment.

presents! presents! presents!

2009-04-29T07:48:00.001-07:00

I have a song that goes a little something like this: presents! presents! presents!

I really like presents, but I don’t like to open presents because, well, once I do, there won’t be any more presents. It’s the anticipation of surprise that’s so much fun; that’s really the gift that comes wrapped in pretty foil paper and topped with a bow. Last week was Steve’s birthday and I asked him in the evening if he was ready to open his present. Sure, he said. But honey, then there won’t be any more presents.

As I was walking to my life writing class the other day, I was thinking about how Thursday’s class is going to be like a present I’ve been waiting to unwrap. This class this semester has been the kind of class professors dream about and screenwriters imagine when they conjure scenes in college classrooms. On Thursday, the last day of class, we’ll all read an excerpt from a life writing piece we’ve been working on. And a big part of me doesn’t want that day to come because then it will be over. I don’t know how to bottle those feelings, to save them for later, for a time when I need to remember why I do the work I do.

My plan as I’m walking into the room is to tell them this, that I’m thinking of Thursday’s class as a kind of present waiting to be opened. But when I get there, these smart, thoughtful, self-aware students who have written their lives with grace and mettle begin asking asinine questions like, Where is your office again? When’s the final essay due? What are we doing on Thursday? Are we meeting next week?

I moan and groan in response. You’re kidding, right?

And I was just about to tell you all about how I think of Thursday’s class as a kind of present waiting to be unwrapped.

Harumph.

tulips! and daffies!

2009-04-19T12:17:00.001-07:00

I never claimed to be a gardener. I never claimed to be able to tell the difference between a hyacinth and a snapdragon. Or to know that snowdrops are flowers, not drops of snow.

But last Fall I decided to plant tulip and daffodil bulbs in front of the house. How hard could it be, right? Just decide where to put them, dig a hole, drop the bulb in, and voila! In the spring witness their beauty.

There are a lot of lessons on gardening that I missed. Like all of them. I had to ask Becky, as she was frying green tomatoes in her farmhouse kitchen, where she got the green tomatoes. And last week, A. told me that there's a right way to plant flower bulbs.

Oh, come on, I said. You just plop them in the ground.

No, she said. You have to place them in tear-drop-side up. Pointy side up.

So now I've probably got tulips growing straight down into hell. And daffies too. Dang.

Julie Wonka made me feel better though as she waved her hand in the air dismissively and said, "It's nature. It'll work itself out."

I'm happy to report, though, that many daffies made it and at least eight tulips. So there, nature. I showed you.

if only David Sedaris made movies...

2009-04-09T05:56:00.000-07:00

This will come as no surprise to anybody who knows me, but I've got a knack for choosing really depressing movies. A while back on this blog, I defied anybody to find a more depressing movie than Savages with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney. I mean, good lord, that movie just made me want to slit my wrists right then and there. Well, last week I went to Blockbuster by myself--I was hoping to get Synechdoche, NY, but it wasn't there, so I searched and searched and finally, when I got all the way around to the A section, I found and rented An American Crime. When S. and I would pause it to go pee or to get a drink or a snack, we'd just look at each other and shake our heads. Amy does it again. "You're no longer allowed to choose movies," he tells me. "This makes me want to go hang myself."

And it does. Make you want to hang yourself, that is. But it also made me want to do more research on this "true" account of the case of child abuse that brought child abuse to the nation's attention.

I have a similar tendency when teaching the personal essay course. It's not as severe, of course, but many of the essays I teach in that course are a bit, well, grim. Revise. On the surface, they're grim. But when we read and discuss them, they always make me (and pretty much all of the students, I think I can safely say) see the world differently. But I made a conscious decision to include a few essays on the lighter side. We began the course with David Sedaris' "I Almost Saw This Girl Get Killed," and today, we'll discuss the final two essays before moving into three weeks of workshopping student work. First, Sedaris' "Tricked," in which a young David shovels Halloween candy into his face rather than share it with the strange people next door, and then "Old Faithful," an essay about monogamy that begins with a lump. I don't think I meant to bookmark the course with Sedaris, but I did know that I wanted to make sure students had good models of how to articulate important insights in a funny way.

fool

2009-04-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

Just when I let myself believe that I could have an afternoon of quiet and simplicity, I am shown what a fool I am.

Wednesday afternoon was a gorgeous early spring day, not quite warm enough to go without a sweater, a nip in the air that reminds me of Fall. Steve wouldn’t be home for a couple more hours, so I decided I’d work in the front yard, removing the hay we’d put on the plants to keep them warm through the winter. I brought the dogs out front with me. I tied Wrigley up because she’s the one more likely to run off after a bunny. Annabelle’s almost 8, so she’s all grown up. She’s finally become the kind of dog who will stay by my side. Took me a very long time to get to this point with her, so I love taking opportunities like today to show her how I trust her. At one point as I’m walking to the street with arms full of hay, I tell Wrigley that someday she might be as well behaved as Annabelle and maybe then she can be outside with us not tied up.

Let me set the scene a bit more. Idyllic afternoon in a middle-class suburb. The little boys next door are riding their bikes up and down the street, the neighbors are out talking, friends come over to pet the girls, and it feels good to do physical labor outside for the first time in months.

And then she saw a bunny. Annabelle was off, running down the street, letting out that animal moan she only gets when she’s on the hunt. My calling her name did nothing except to make me even more frantic. Really, am I really doing this again? Am I really running down the street after this damn dog for what has to be the twentieth time in our lives together?

I should mention, too, that all the neighbors by this time had gone inside. I had no help.

So I ran after her down the street. We live not that far from Hershey Ave., and it was that time of day when all the State Farmers are on their way home from work. In Annabelle time, Hershey was just seconds away. Somehow in my chase, I ended up in a yard with Annabelle running running running in parking lots on the other side of a fence. I’m helpless. I’ve got to climb this fence. But it’s the chain-link kind, the kind with the really sharp spires. I put my foot into one of the slots, put my other foot on a higher slot and try to pull my other leg over the fence. But I’m wearing wide-leg jeans and the bottoms keep getting stuck on the sharp edges of the fence. So I fall back down to the ground. I get up. My jeans are ripped. I’m standing there thinking that the one thing standing between me and my dog is this fence and if I can’t climb it, she’s gonna die. I'm wondering how on earth I'm gonna be able to live with myself.

The woman whose yard I’m in appears and asks if some steps would help. What? I’m so panicky that I don’t really know what she means until I see her small daughter lugging a set of steps over—the kind you might use for a trampoline or a pool. “This is heavy,” she groans as she drags it across the yard ever so slowly. I can’t stay for this. I’ve got to do something to find her. So I run back toward our house, knowing that one of our neighbors has a gate I can use to get through to the other side. I grab a friend who’s just coming home from work. No explanation. Just, “J.W., I need you!” and with no questions, he helps. We get to the other side of the fence out to a grassy swamp. I look left and right, still frantic, when my eyes land on a little black doggie head straight ahead. She’s lying in a mud puddle, content as can be, cooling off after a long bunny chase. And she reeks. I’m so mad at her that J.W. has to drag her home by the collar. When we get back to the house, there’s Wrigley sitting on the front steps, obedient as can be. Such a good girl. Finally, it’s Annabelle who’s in trouble.

April came early this year

2009-03-31T16:36:00.000-07:00

Let me say that one more time.

April came early this year. Waaaaaay too early.

How'm I gonna make it through the real April?

Exhibit A: S.'s oldest and closest friend died last week.

Exhibit B: Insanity in the department. People fall apart in April, yes, I know, but March? Must we be early with this?

There's more, I know there is, but the April fog has me all kinds of confused. Thing is, Exhibit B covers so much, but of course I'm not gonna dooce myself. Heh. Dooce as a verb. I like it.

But the teaching these days is so damn good. In both classes. I can't really even say which one I like better. But the combination of the two of them in the same semester--one on the personal essay and one on life writing--is exhilarating. I have so many ideas for essays I want to write. I just need to find hours at a time to sit down and do it. On that last point, let me recommend to you my colleague's new memoir: Talking Out of School: Memoir of an Educated Woman by Kass Fleisher. I haven't finished it yet, but the first half has made me want to write in order to continue her project of challenging what we think of as traditional knowledge. What do we make of the stuff we know not from facts or record books but from acts of imagining?

Can't wait for her to come to class next week. Even though it will officially be April.

youie

2009-03-28T16:56:00.001-07:00

How do you spell youie, as in a U-turn abbreviated?

On Thursday night, C. and I drove about an hour and a half up to Oak Brook, IL, to see Heather Armstrong, aka, Dooce, give a reading from her new book. We had a blast together. We ate dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, and before and after the reading, which was great, we shopped at stores we don't have down here in Bloomington--The Container Store (love it!) and Crate and Barrel (love it even more). We left Oak Brook for home at about 9ish.

About a half hour into our drive, I have to pee, so we get off on the next exit on the highway. There's a McDonald's/BP station right off the highway, but in order to get to it, you have to drive a bit and then take a U-turn in order to get onto the other side of the road to get into the parking lot. In other words, there's no direct way in. And the U-turn you've got to take is clearly illegal. Two big signs tell drivers not to do it. C. told me not to do it. I justify it to her by saying that they should have an easier way into McDonald's cuz I really gotta pee. So I make the U-turn and drive into the parking lot.

Meanwhile, as we're driving I've been telling her the cute story about how every night all we have to do to get the girls to go out one more time to go potty is say to them, "Who gots to go pot-pot?" and they book it out the dog door. Belly's usually in one of the bedrooms at this time of night, so she comes bookin' it down the hallway and has to slow down a bit before she turns from the hall into the kitchen. It's a sharp turn. We call it roundin' third. Here comes the Booda rounding third and she's being sent home. I'm gesturing wildly as I'm telling this story and I finish it just as I drive into my parking spot at McDonald's.

And the blue lights grab my attention in my rear view mirror.

"Oh Amy. I'm sorry," C. says. Christ. I just got "pulled over" in a parking lot. That damn U-turn. I gather my stuff--registration, insurance card, license--and I have it ready for the cop when he comes to my window.

"Good evening, Ma'am. Do you know why I stopped you tonight?"

"Actually, no I don't." I sounded so convincing I think I convinced myself.

"You made a U-turn back there and there are two signs clearly posted prohibiting a U-turn."

I didn't even stop to think up this response. "Oh. I was just so intent on using the bathroom"--I nod toward McDonald's--"that I must not've noticed it."

"Where're you headed?"

"Bloomington."

"Where're you coming from?"

"Oak Brook. We went to a reading up at the Borders there." Why I felt the need to tell him this, I'm not quite sure. Probably a class thing. See, I'm a good, cultured person, the kind of person who attends book readings. I don't deserve a ticket. Not for having to pee real bad.

He hesitates, looks at my documents, tells me that if my license is valid, he'll cut me a break this time. Goes back to his car. But not before telling me--twice--that I can go ahead and use the bathroom while he looks me up.

So I go inside, confident that I'm not getting a ticket, impressed with my own quick reactions to his questions. When I come back out, he gives me my stuff back and tells me to be more careful next time.

The youie. Rounding third. Belly and me both doing so just to pee one more time before bed. But my prompt came from a 25-year-old cop who got off just a bit too much on his own authority.

embodiment

2009-03-26T05:49:00.001-07:00

Last night S. and I attended a visitation for a very close friend of his who died of cancer at age 46. Scary how that puts things into perspective. S. will be 45 next month. At the visitation, there was a closed casket, which confused me a bit because I knew that S.'s friend was going to be cremated. At dinner afterward, I learned that cremation still requires that the family purchase a casket; the whole thing goes into the furnace with the body inside.

All sentiment aside, this seems to me to be a racket. I've never warmed to the idea of cremation in the first place, but this makes me nuts. The idea of a multi-thousand-dollar casket getting buried in the ground made me kind of nuts, but this makes me double nuts. I've always said I want to be buried in the thinnest possible pine box so that I can become part of the earth sooner rather than later. In fact, I asked S. if he would just bury me in the back yard next to Belly (can't bear the thought of burning that beautiful body), but since that's illegal, I've decided to donate my body to science. Do something useful with me. Let someone learn how to perform plastic surgery on my chin that never really existed in the first place. Let someone learn how to do heart surgery or how to remove a spleen. If I leave this world with a body in tact enough to be of use in some way, go for it. Shit, use me as a crash-test cadaver.

S. and I are having all the important documents that come along with marriage being made up as we speak. I guess I better put this wish somewhere in there. If I die before that happens, use this blog entry in court. Set a precedent.

my big girl

2009-03-23T05:29:00.000-07:00

Since you've seen me last, Annabelle has earned a new nickname. I'm not really sure how it came about, but lately I've been calling her my "little baby big big." This morphs easily into simply "Big big" or, simply, "Big." When I write it out, it looks even sillier.

My big big girl has very bad arthritis in her left elbow. Bad arthritis in her right elbow, but REALLY bad in her left. This diagnosis became the lesser of two evils, the other evil being bone cancer. During that time I kept telling myself that it can't be cancer, it can't be cancer. Arthritis we can deal with. We can manage that pain. We can't manage the pain of bone cancer.

And it's true, we can manage this pain. But because of the way I learned about this diagnosis, I trained myself to think of it as not so bad, really. Not life-threatening, obviously. But it is incredibly painful for my baby. I'm begining to think she's had elbow dysplasia her whole life, that she was born with an elbow out of whack; this would explain the on-and-off limping after running really hard. She's only 7 1/2 and her arthritis isn't going to get any better. It's breaking my heart.

The fear of that cancer diagnosis prevented me from understanding the seriousness of this diagnosis. And I knew that even when I was saying to anyone who would listen that arthritis, we can deal with. Cancer not so much.

Nothing I wouldn't do for that girl. My little baby big big.

lesson plan

2009-03-19T05:52:00.000-07:00

Today I once again teach Cheryl Strayed's essay "The Love of My Life." The last time I taught it in my two sections of the course, things didn't work out so well. But every single time I read this essay, I see new things in it. New patterns. New meaning. Instead of going into class this morning with the assumption that everyone will have loved it, I'm going in with the goal of helping students articulate what this essay does. If they loved it, great. If not, I hope I can help them see some of its power.

This instead of deciding not to teach it anymore.

Someone once told a dissertator during her defense to "never teach your favorite things." But I can't not teach my favorite things. Isn't that why we're in this business? Because we love what we love and we want to share that love with students?

I blog so I can remember moments like these

2009-03-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

In my life writing class this afternoon, in the building that is forever being renovated, the horrible stench of paint thinner or spray paint or SOMETHING forced us to go outside. It's a gorgeous seventy-degree day, so it was an easy choice to make. As we were walking out of the room, I told everyone that I just wanted them to know that I never cave and have class outside because it's so easy for everyone to get distracted. But since the smell is so bad and you guys are so mature, I think we can do it.

Once we round everybody up outside, we actually have a pretty productive meeting. We always have great discussions in that class, and that continued outside. We were running a little short on time, but then again, in that class, we're always running a little short on time. Too much to talk about. A lifetime's worth of material to try to fit into one semester: not easy.

With two minutes left to go, a doggie walked by. I could see him clearly. He was not on a leash, but he was obeying his person so well among the throngs of students walking by. I regressed to my doggie voice. Doggie! Look at the Doggie wog! Who's a good little doggie wog?

And as I was giving students their papers back, I noted that we'd had a pretty productive class outside. And I usually don't have class outside because students so often get distracted. Doggie!

she lives! And it's 2009!

2009-03-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

Hello you people. I've missed my blog. I think that not blogging can account for some of the free-floating anxiety I've been feeling in the last three months or so about not having a defined writing project in the works. And I thought about my blog a LOT in February when I was going through a very difficult time with Annabelle--in short, a cancer scare that turned out to be just that, a scare. I know that writing about it here would've helped me, but it all seemed so damn complicated at the time, so I just stayed away. So what else has happened since December 19, you ask?

I've spent too much time on Facebook, which is such a surface among surfaces. It only gives me a blip of other people's lives, gives others a blip of my life and then we move on to the next day. No room for complexity.

I've been teaching a life writing course this semester and absolutely loving it. This blog is, after all, a kind of life writing.

We had new carpet installed in the three bedrooms upstairs. Holy shitters, is it fourteen thousand times better.

Mom had a very minor heart attack back in December and will be having surgery soon to fix the problem.

My office at school has officially been designated "headquarters" for the wicked cool people. Right now we've got a few satellite offices and we're still looking to expand, though I'm not sure how many more bodies we can fit into headquarters as it is now. Might have to get us a bigger space.

I've missed my blog. Welcome back, LTF. We'll soon be writing more about doggies. I promise.

ice storm 2008

2008-12-19T08:46:00.001-08:00

The frozen birdfeeder with perfectly formed icicles. This is what those lights are going for at Christmastime, the ones that hang from the roofs of houses. Poor birds. Guess their lunch is gonna be a bit soggy.

Yesterday afternoon, about 5, Hillary calls me and says, "The old lady in me wants to know about your weather."

I say, "The old lady in me wants to know where the hell this damn killer ice storm is. It was supposed to be here at 3. We canceled plans for tonight, and it's not here yet. I'm waiting...."

I love love love dramatic weather. I was so hoping S. wouldn't have to go to work today, but he did. I made him call me when he got there, then I promptly went back to sleep. The girls and I just took a walk around the block and it's not so bad. Kinda pretty, actually. Except when we walked under a tree dripping from the weight of its icicles. We all got a wee bit wet.

Yesterday after I used my new Kitchen Aid mixer for the first time, I called my friend M. and said, "I see the world differently now." Damn, that thing is awesome. Makes me want to make stuff all day long. Except then I'll weigh 400 pounds and we all know that ain't good. So give it away! Pound cake, anyone?

walking 2 doggies in below-zero weather

2008-12-15T16:53:00.000-08:00

Materials you'll need:

2 big black doggies
2 leashes with pinch collars attached
2 pup lights
4 safety orange booties
just a pinch of the patience of a saint

To prepare:

Lock one very young ADHD dog in the bedroom so that you can get the other one ready in her booties. Do what you can not to laugh at her. She's too cute.

Bundle yourself up so that you can barely move. And you're on your way.

start those little girls young

2008-12-08T06:06:00.000-08:00

WTF? So S. and I reading through all the Sunday paper ads and as I'm reading the Sears ad, I see that they're now marketing a washer-dryer TOY for kids under the name "My first Kenmore." For boys, there's a "My first Craftsman" workbench with all kind of tools and stuff, and it actually looks fun. But the picture of the girl shows her folding a goddamn towel. Look at this product. While I can see the possiblities for fun that a kitchen holds for a little girl and her friends--there's actual creativity and play involved in pretending to cook and bake things--I fail to see how a washer and dryer inspires any kind of creativity or play. Or how it does anything but persuade young girls that they should enjoy folding towels while their brothers are over there building cool birdhouses or something. FOLDING TOWELS. Did I mention that the little girl in the picture in the Sunday ad is smiling while she's FOLDING TOWELS? MOFO.

S. tried to think up a scenario in which this could be a good thing. Maybe there are some little girls out there whose parents are in the laundry and dry-cleaning business who want to be just like their parents. Um, honey, they probably get to go to work with mom and dad all the time. It was a stretch, but that's S. Always looking for the good.

Me, not so much. FOLDING TOWELS, for god's sake.

MOFO roofers

2008-12-04T06:03:00.000-08:00

We finally have a new roof on our house, after weeks of trying to get the contractors to do what they said they were gonna do, to SHOW UP when they said they were gonna show up. I have VERY LITTLE TO ZERO patience for people who don't follow through on what they say they'll do. It's probably my biggest pet peeve. Anyway, the roof is finally finished, and today is the first day that our lives will be somewhat back to normal. The dumpster is still in our driveway, which means we don't have access to our garage when it's been snowing and sleeting lately. Not good. But the dogs can stay home today and sleep to their little hearts' content.

If you're looking to have a roof replaced in the Central Illinois area, don't use Messing. They'll sell you with their great customer service up front, but once they get their down payment and the loan papers signed, you're pretty much on your own to figure out when they'll show up.

Grrrr. Amy pissed.

Friends tell me that this is typical of contractors. I once wrote about my mother's inability to understand that whenever she showed up 20 minutes early for a doctor's appointment, that meant she'd be waiting AT LEAST 40 minutes to actually get into the exam room. Now I feel like I've become that person, except the context is home contractors. My limited experience, though, has taught me pretty quickly not to believe much of what they say.

Gotta go warm up my car now. Grrrr.

reflections on a married life

2008-11-29T07:53:00.001-08:00

The title of this post seems to promise more than reflections on, um, three whole weeks of marriage, but hey, it's been a while since I've posted, in part because I've been just too damn lazy. I've had funny stories to share, but I've not felt like writing them up. Maybe married life has given me permission to be lazier? Or, you could say that married life has somehow helped me learn how to relax in ways I hadn't been able to before. I don't really know if either of these is true. I just know that I feel like I have to say something about not having posted for three weeks.

The wedding day itself was really a lot of fun. We did it just the way we wanted to, with the exception of the creepy minister. See, we got married at a little chapel up in Bloomingdale, IL. The chapel is owned by a retired judge, and we had a choice between him and the minister. S. wanted the minister. I didn't really care, as long as he didn't mention too much about god. Then it turns out that the minister is something of a creepy character, according to the woman at the county clerk's office. So we decided that we wanted the judge to marry us. When we met the judge to see the chapel a week before the wedding, he told us of course he'd marry us--he'd have to since the minister was in the hospital. (Me: Is he gonna be okay? Judge: He's never been okay.) But when we showed up on November 8, there was the minister all dressed in black and the judge in street clothes and a two-inch hair hanging from his nose. The minister married us. He tried to make jokes a couple times, which flopped, but thankfully it was a very brief ceremony.

We had 7 guests, each of whom had agreed beforehand not to dress up as though they were going to a wedding. Heh. After the ceremony we went to a steakhouse for dinner and much wine and champagne. Then back to the hotel most of us were staying at, where we spent time in the two bars, one shaped like a big ol' volcanic rock and called, appropriately enough, The Cave, and the other more of a nightclub. We really had a lot of fun that night, and I have to say I'm glad that part's over so we can move on to planning the two celebratory parties--one here in May and the other in North Carolina in June.

People keep asking if it feels any different to be married. Um, not really. Except when I want something from S., I say, "Hus-band! Can you get me another diet coke?" And the other night when I was spending way too much time and energy getting our dinner ready and he was supposed to be helping but he was stuck in here on the computer, I called to him, "Honey! I'm starting to feel like a wife." He comes out of the office to help and says, "I'm sorry." Now that's a good catch.

for my friends who couldn't be there

2008-11-10T05:55:00.001-08:00

The not-yet-married couple with S.'s cousins Jerry and Mina.

definition of a true friend

2008-10-29T07:40:00.001-07:00

I'm talking the other day with the Wonka about how much I hate the thought of being the center of attention at the wedding next Saturday (next Saturday!). I hate all of the expectations that come with it, even if my friends really don't expect me to play the role of "bride," I've internalized--we all have--those expectations and they make me sick.

Julie Wonka is the friend who, when I told her that I wouldn't mind going to look at dresses if it weren't for the goddamn people who work in these places with all that emotional labor they're paid to do, told me she'd be my buffer, and she wouldn't let them near me unless it was to bring me a dress in another size or something. Save the bullshit for other customers.

So when I was talking with her about my issues with being the center of attention and such, she said, and I quote, "Do you want us to look away?"

anger on Normal Avenue

2008-10-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

Julie Wonka was quite pissed when she woke up one morning a few weeks ago to discover that all of the Obama yard signs on her block were stolen. So she decided to respond to this rhetorical violence with some rhetoric of her own. She went to Menards (a Home Depot-type store)--a feat in itself, as the last time I went to a home improvement store with the Wonka, I had to respond "yes" when she asked me if this experience made me wonder how she ever made it through the day. Once at Menards, she purchased a massive piece of plywood, some red spray paint, and an entire roll of "private property" yellow tape--you know, like the crime scene tape you see on tv. Getting this piece of plywood into and out of the Rav-4 was no easy task and involved quite a bit of swearing, but she did it, and she made this sign:

She took it down a few days later, when her partner told her that he was having a hard time sleeping for fears of crazies firebombing the house. The smaller sign is still in the yard. But on Wednesday, November 5, we're hoping to pull the plywood sign out again. And then we'll sit around in a circle and drink champagne.

Don't fuck with her freedom of speech. Try to silence Julie Wonka, and she'll only respond even more loudly.

because we spend a lot of time on the couch

2008-10-24T05:49:00.000-07:00

Old couch. Could not accommodate two adults laying down at the same time. Also could not accommodate the entire family on the couch at the same time:

New sectional can. The chaise end of the couch, the part covered here with a brown blanket, might also come to be known in this house as the built-in doggie bed. When we got up this morning, Belly was all sprawled out on that end. I thought they'd like the corner best, all snuggly and surrounded:

Yes, we're in an economic crisis. This means we'll be spending more time at home. This means we need to all be able to fit comfortably as we watch the 8 best Cubs games ever, a birthday present from my hun bun.

on the day of my birth

2008-10-21T06:06:00.001-07:00

I had a wonderful birthday, complete with a terrific celebration with friends on Saturday night. Damn, I got some good ones. Friends, that is.

And, well, some good presents too.

I sent off the little book. Fly away, little book. If the world decides you should live, you shall. If not, well, we'll talk about that later.

AND I learned that I won a teaching award I didn't even know I'd been nominated for.

M. made me a beautiful besprinkled cake--yummers! And A. made me an apple pie that rivals even my own. Now we've just got to get S.M.B. to participate in an apple pie bakeoff and all will be right with the world.

Thank you, friends, for being so good.

fetch

2008-10-17T05:31:00.000-07:00

For the midterm in my doctoral seminar in rhet/comp, I emailed each student an individualized question and they had 4 hours to compose a response, which they then emailed back to me. The following week, one student asked what the average page length was, and without really thinking through the effects of what I was about to say, I told them it was about 7-8 pages. So of course the people who wrote less than that felt like they didn't do enough work (the theme of the seminar is rhetorics of work in comp).

It then occurred to me that we never really get over this internalized message that more pages equals better work. I told them about the damn book manuscript I'm working on, that it's just over 100 pages right now, that I feel like it's wimpy, and in that very moment the best metaphor occurred to me. My book will be a frisbee, I said. I can ask the publisher to print it round, and its title, which previously had no colon, could be The Affective Economics of Citation: A Frisbee.

K. revises for me on the spot. No, she says, The Affective Economics of Citation: Fetch!

goings-on

2008-10-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

First, we're getting married November 8, people. I know, I know, we said we were doing it June 13. But S.'s stepmom is having a hard time finding someone to come to the house to actually marry us, and lord, the stress that comes with the IDEA of being the center of attention for such an event is making me break out in hives. Really and truly. I've got bumps all over my freakin' body. So we're gonna get married in a very small ceremony on the 8th with only a handful of close friends and family. Parties to follow, one here in IL, probably in the spring, and one in June, on the 13th still, in North Carolina. And I promise not to wear a dress. Jeebus.

We need a new roof. The one that is currently covering our heads is likely to collapse, and soon. Lordie pie. Anybody got $7,000 they don't mind parting with? All that money and it's not even anything fun. We got to pick the color, though. Hunter green, to match the shutters.

Wrigley had been limping on and off for a few weeks, and on Monday morning she couldn't move, so we brought her in, they did x-rays, which revealed that a) she doesn't have arthritis, which is a good thing because she's so young and arthritis at this age would be a sign of something much worse; and b) it may just be the way she's formed that causes this little ridge on her elbow, but in order to find out we've got to keep her inactive for two weeks. Um, let me say that again. WE HAVE TO KEEP THIS DOG INACTIVE FOR TWO WEEKS. My immediate response to the vet: can we leave her here? And if not, can I stay here for those two weeks? They gave us some doggie downers for her (poor thing), but so far they seem to not be affecting her. Not taking her on walks is breaking my heart. She's such a happy happy girl, up for anything, and she loves her walks like Belly does. Please please please let her be okay.

I told S. last night that fall is gonna be a busy gift-giving time for him now that we're getting married two weeks after my birthday. heh. He says he can deal with it.

I think I may be ready soon to send out a full draft of the effin' book. I'm really not sure how I feel about it anymore. I need someone else to read it. But it's a little scary.

So, the hives. Yes. My arms are covered in bumps. My neck, my legs, even my ass. It ain't pretty.

ugh

2008-10-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

Today I'm wearing the Wrigley Field sweatshirt I bought for myself when we went to see the Cubbies play in August. It's chilly out.

Today I guess I'm begining to understand better what it feels like to be a Cubs fan. God, I love those boys, but what on earth were they DOING these last three games? Where was my Rammy the clutch hitter? Where was Soto's Rookie-of-the-year performance? Where was the PITCHING?

Being the optimist that I am (as if), I tell myself that now I can schedule my days around other things and I can bond with other Cubs fans who feel the same pain I do. Okay, really, they feel it so much worse.

And then we take the girls for a walk.

torn

2008-10-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

Start time of Game one of postseason Cubbies: 5:30

Start time of my doctoral seminar in rhetoric and composition: 5:30

Guest speaker of said seminar: Julie Wonka Jung

Start time of Game two of postseason Cubbies: 8:30

Start time of Biden/Palin debate: 8:00

Boodas for Obama

2008-09-30T06:07:00.001-07:00

The original Booda, complete with her new "flower power" collar:

And the Junior Booda, who's still learning how to read:

doggie day care

2008-09-25T07:48:00.000-07:00

Faithful readers will recall that when I first arrived at ISU, I had a wacky schedule, so I decided to put Annabelle in day care one or two days a week so that she wasn't home alone for 12 long hours and so that she could socialize and make friends and do up her hair pretty on those mornings. This routine ended when my schedule became more manageable, and since then I've noticed that any time Belly's in a large group of dogs that she doesn't know, she gets anxious. She shows this most often by walking away from the other dogs and staying off by herself. Or trying to leave wherever she is.

So when S. and I talked about taking Wrigley to Doggie Day Care because she so desperately loves other dogs and she equally desperately needs more stimuli, I was concerned about my big girl. On the one hand, I wanted to take her because I wanted her to go with her little sister and have fun and I couldn't bear the idea of putting just Wrigley in the car and leaving Belly home. But on the other, I kinda knew she wouldn't like it. So when we toured Paradise Pets--a different place from Belly's original day care, as this one is much closer--I told them about my concerns about Belly and asked them if they'd please let me know if it seems like Belly's miserable. Because lord knows I can't deal with that idea. S. and I decided we could afford to take them one day a week, and we chose Thursday because it's one of the days the staff grills hot dogs for the dogs. I shit you not.

Week 1: When I drop the girls off, I remind the staff that this is their first day and that I'm concerned about Belly, so please keep an eye on her. When I pick them up later that day, they tell me that I was right about Belly, that she did what I said she'd do, which is hang away from the other dogs. So they put my horse in with the little dogs and she seemed to do okay. Wrigley, of course, had a blast.

Week 2: When I drop them off, I again remind them about my concerns about Belly, and they remember that she did well with the little dogs, so they'll do that with her if it seems like that's what she wants. But when I pick them up later that day, they tell me that Belly was in with the big dogs. This leads me to believe that she was doing better.

Week 3, this morning: When I drop them off, Wrigley is so excited I think she's gonna pee herself. All Annabelle wants to do is get to the door. As in, the door to go back to the car. She so very clearly doesn't want to be there, and one way to know this for sure is that she refused a cookie. She does this at the vet when she's scared to death. So I wavered at first because the woman told me that lots of dogs do this when they first get there, especially when there're lots of dogs coming in at once. So I said okay, she can stay. But then when the guy tried to take her back and she resisted with all her might, I had to say no. I wasn't going to force her to stay. Wiggles went, never looked back, and Annabelle RAN to the car. I brought her home, took her for a walk in the neighborhood, and left her home.

My big girl, it seems, is not up for any more changes to her routine. I'm glad I didn't make her stay, but at the same time, I feel horrible leaving her home alone.

I guess I knew from the start that this plan was really for Wrigley, that Belly probably wouldn't like it, but it breaks my heart nonetheless. Nothing worse than seeing my girl scared.

This afternoon, while Wiggles is still play-play-playin' at daycare, I'll make my big girl a hot dog of her very own.

randomness cuz it's been a while

2008-09-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

First, please read this piece on white privilege. Thanks to Angela for posting it to Facebook.

Amy been stressed.
Amy trying to do too much.
Amy no like.

S. and I went apple-picking on Friday afternoon and I've sworn we'll never go back on a Saturday again. Last year when we went there were 8 million--seriously--people with their 4 million children and you could barely move inside the store with all the cute little autumnal doo-dads. This year, no problem. Apples, cider, blueberry pie. Yummers.

The girls got new collars yesterday because their old ones were all faded and stinky. Wrigley got a new version of her old one because it suits her, and Belly got one with flowers on it. Because she's so femme.

Last night when the bases were loaded and Jason Marquis stepped up to bat, I said to S., he could totally hit a grand slam right now. And he did. And I am officially psychic.

I planned a bowling outing for my group of friends this past weekend and then had to call in sick because of a sore throat and a horrible headache. No fair.

I feel disconnected.

I'm overwhelmed very easily these days.

neighbors

2008-09-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

Last night as I walked up my driveway after walking the dogs, our neighbor, Doug, saw me and invited S. and me over to help celebrate their son's fourth birthday party. So I came in the house, asked S. to go find a suitable Star Wars gift for little David, and we went to join the fun. S.: Will there be cake?

Helping our friends celebrate was a couple who'd lived in Illinois all their lives. S. was asking them about their lives, where they lived, what they did, etc. They all three--S. and this new couple--work at State Farm. And he asked me, "Are you at the Farm, too?" No, I said, I'm at Illinois State. Someone else hears me and asks what I teach. English, I say.

And instead of making a remark about being careful about their grammar, Kevin asked me if I was there when David Foster Wallace was there. No, I said, but I've heard wonderful things about him. I haven't had a chance to read much of his work, but I know he's terrific. My friend Julie sat in on a creative nonfiction course with him when he was here.

And we talked about him for a while. And we had cake and went back home to feed the girls. Watched a movie (Smart People) and then when I went to turn off the computer for the night, I read the news. David Foster Wallace had hanged himself. I can't really process this; I'm stuck instead on the fact that his wife found him. Incredibly sad.

"lost in a blizzard of words"

2008-09-12T14:57:00.001-07:00

I can't help myself. I know you've probably all seen this by now, but I can't get over the absurdity of this interview. There's a youtube video, too, where Matt Damon compares this whole scenario to a really bad Disney movie: Hockey mom using her folksy ways to charm Vladimir Putin. Is this really America? Am I really not dreaming this? If he wanted to pick a woman, aren't there actually qualified Republican women out there? I have to believe deep in my heart that there are enough people in this country who can see this. At least see the looks on her face when she's clearly in over her head.

CCCC 2009

2008-09-08T05:59:00.001-07:00

I'm not in because I didn't apply. One can only present on Saturday afternoon for so many years in a row before deciding one needs to take a year off.

I'm writing primarily to link to Becky's blog entry about a panel on students' citation practices being rejected from C's this year. Like many others, I'm beginning to wonder about the priorities of a conference dedicated to college composition and communication if a panel analyzing the results of a study of students' citation practices doesn't make the grade. Perhaps we're swinging the other way on the whole pedagogical imperative? Perhaps if it has direct classroom application or it comes out of classroom work, that means it's not theoretical enough?

Nothing seems more central to what we do than an analysis of the ways students draw on the work of others in their own writing. If we teach writing as conversation, aren't we also responsible for understanding better how students conceptualize those other voices in the conversation?

I comfort myself by telling myself that at least I won't miss Becky's panel.

on teen pregnancy

2008-09-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

Remember this story about the alleged "pact" among teens at Gloucester High? Remember how it was national news and it was fair game to talk about the role of the parents and the role of abstinence-only education? It was only a couple months ago, after all, that news of this pact ignited discussion once again about whether Juno and Jamie Lynn Spears were making it seem cool to be young and pregnant. Crisis in this small fishing town.

But when Sarah Palin's unmarried 17-year-old daughter reveals that she is 5 months pregnant, suddenly the Palins are a normal American family dealing with children making their own decisions. Blasted children.

Is it still a question of whether it's cool to be 17 and pregnant? No, the discussion this time is private. People with supportive families are allowed their privacy, while people in Gloucester are blamed for not being there for their kids.

Imagine for a moment if this had been the daughter of Joe Biden. Imagine the outcries about those damn liberals' lack of morals. Premarital sex. Harumph. That's why this country is falling apart--because people simply aren't involved enough in their children's lives.

This is why I love rhetoric.

while listening to Obama

2008-08-29T05:46:00.000-07:00

Me: You know, Obama makes me feel much less cynical about this country. I've been so cynical about this country for so long.

S.: You? No.

Me: I know, I know. But Obama gives me hope. He makes me feel like I could actually be proud of my country again.

Damn, that man can speak. Finally, someone who understands public address, understanding his audience, inspiring us by reminding us--not persuading us or convincing us, but reminding us--that this country really is better than the last 8 years.

One of my favorite lines: Change doesn't come from Washington; change comes to Washington.

Christ, yes.

And I loved the button on a person from Alabama that read "AlObama."

network effects

2008-08-27T06:05:00.000-07:00

A simply amazing story. (via Working Blue)

Read the blog entry first. Then read the news stories. I promise you'll be telling your friends about this. I was telling people about little Rowan before I knew how her cancer had been discovered.

Please consider sending a donation of ANY amount to help defray these considerable expenses. Checks can be made payable to Rowan or Marc Santos and mailed to:

SunTrust Bank, Tampa Bay
Attention Customer Service
2208 East Fowler Ave
Tampa, Fl 33612

In the memo line of the check, *please include the account number: 1000074628628* (four zeros after that first 1).

not sure if I'm proud of this behavior, but hey

2008-08-21T05:38:00.000-07:00

Across the way from the building that houses my department and my office is Watterson dining hall, where one can find such things as slices of pizza, overprocessed fried chicken, burgers, fries, and sometimes a "healthy" option such as a baked potato or some such thing. Many times during my career here at ISU I've run over to Watterson to get myself a slice of pizza to hold me over for, say, a night class that goes from 5:30-8:30.

So this is what I did last night at about a quarter to 5. But, lo! I walk in and instead of being able to walk right in to choose my poison, I'm faced with a cashier and a bunch of turnstiles that I'm apparently not allowed to go through until I pay some kind of fee. Meanwhile students are filing past me, handing their cards to the cashier, who swipes them and allows them through.

So, I say to the cashier: What's all this?

C: It's the new meal plan. It's all you can eat.

Me: What if I just want a slice of pizza?

C: It's nine dollars for the meal.

Me: For a slice of pizza?

C: It's all you can eat.

Me: You've got to be kidding me.

C shakes his head. Students are filing past me and I'm standing there dumbfounded. My mouth is probably hanging open, cartoon-like.

Me: So I guess I'll just stand here until I see a student I know and he'll get me a slice of pizza.

A couple students chuckle at me.

A couple minutes pass.

Me: Are people upset about this?

C: Yeah, faculty are pretty upset about it.

Me: I can see why. Nine dollars for a slice of pizza.

Pause.

Me: You're not really gonna make me stand here until I see a student I know, are you?

He sighs. Not sure what to do with the likes of me. Difficult faculty. He's heard about us.

Me: I have to teach from 5:30 til 9:20 and I just want a slice of pizza.

The emotional appeal.

Finally he hands me a to-go container. A small to-go container. Apparently if one pays for the nine-dollar meal and wants to take it to go, one must fit everything into this small container. There goes my plan to bring five of my friends and pay for one meal.

I go through the turnstile and over to the pizza counter. Where they used to serve it up for you, it's now serve yourself. The student behind the counter shrugs when I ask him what he does back there. "Slice the pizzas," he says.

Me: Which one is the freshest?

I leave with my really-not-all-that-fresh slice of pizza in a container not made for it and I wave thank you to the cashier.

and so it begins again

2008-08-18T05:13:00.001-07:00

Classes begin today. For me, tomorrow. I worry that I'm not worried enough to begin the new semester.

Hillary visited last week for 5 days. Far too short a time, but we got a lot done, including a lot of good visiting. We put in a new kitchen sink, which took 5 times as long as it should have because we had to keep running out to Lowe's for stupid plumbing supplies. We painted the kitchen a creamy coffee-milkshake color. No more blue flowered wallpaper, thank god. And she put a bee in my bonnet, as they say, about painting the kitchen cabinets. This is something that would NEVER have occurred to me, but once we started looking at pictures online, I warmed to the idea. S. and I can't afford new kitchen cabinets, but we can afford a gallon of paint and some primer. So that'll be the next project on the list.

In other news, S. and I have officially set a date for the wedding: June 13, 2009. We'll be getting married in North Carolina and then having a reception here in Illinois, too. To celebrate our 2 years together, we bought wedding bands this weekend. We would've gone to dinner at the place we met, but we were too full from lunch. So instead we settled in for a night of Cubbies.

We're going up to see the Cubbies play on Friday, and we're a bit disappointed that Jason Marquis is pitching. Not very exciting. And he's matched up with a pitcher who's 0-12. Lordie pie. Get me a beer or two.

Going into the office this morning to get things in order and to get myself back into my writing routine. I've got an article to revise and resubmit and a damn book to finish drafting (one should help the other).

And that's the news from Bloomington this morning.

Deputy Dawg

2008-08-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

Leaving for our hamburger night out last night, I tell Belly she's in charge. And then I tell Wrigley she's not in charge. But be a good girl.

S.: She's second-in-command.

(Is he just the sweetest darn thing you've ever heard of?)

me: She's Lieutenant Wiggle. Belly's the Chief.

Add that to the list of names. Lieutenant Wiggles, or if you want to get formal about it, Lieutenant Wigginton (courtesty of Ty Wigginton, player for the Houston Astros, whose name I kept hearing this week and it stuck).

the much-awaited toilet story

2008-08-04T06:04:00.000-07:00

Look, Ma! I can type with two hands now. The cast is off, but I'm now supposed to be wearing a splint for 4 weeks (UGH) and I begin physical therapy this afternoon. Or what I call pinky push-ups. Poor widdle pinky. She hurts.

Okay, the toilet story.

Because S. and I have been planning to redo the floors in both upstairs bathrooms, we decided now was as good a time as any to replace the toilets in each. In his case, the tank cover was broken and there was a small crack on the base, and in my case, well, I just like new and clean. So we went to Home Depot one lovely Thursday evening (the night before I had my cast put on) and purchased two new toilet sets. It was an all-in-one thing--the whole toilet in one box, including everything you need to install the dang thing. It took a bit for S. to get both toilets into the back seat of my little Civic, but he did it, and we were on our way home after stopping to say hi to Jim in the parking lot. I had to tell him all about my pinky woes. He told S. he was very sorry. heh.

When we got home, I parked in the driveway so that S. could get the toilets out more easily. After we opened the garage door, I went in and opened the door to the house so the girls could come outside and say hi. For you out-of-towners who haven't seen Annabelle in a while, she's turned into one of those dogs who will stand right by my side without a leash. It makes my heart hurt to see this because it was so long coming. Wrigley, though, it seems, was from the start this kind of dog. So so attached to S. and me that she would be thrilled to come out and greet us and just check out the new toilets. Except this time she saw a bunny. And she was off running across the street. Meanwhile, S. has got one toilet box precariously out of the car and he's asking me to open the front door to the house, but I'm freaking out because Wrigley just got away, and the next thing I know I hear a very loud crash. The toilet box. It has fallen. In the middle of the driveway. But we can't really pay much attention to that because Wrigley's running loose. So S. goes on foot, I get in the car, Annabelle hops into the backseat with the second toilet, and we go get that little shit. She was fine, we were fine, but the toilet, it was not.

When we get back to the house, I say to S., "I have no compunction about returning this to Home Depot. Hillary used to work there and they take anything back--even shit-stained toilet seats. They'll take this back." I actually used the word compunction. Nice.

We open the box. Maybe it's not broken. S. pulls out the tank. It's in one piece. Great. But the base, well, we can't count that high. Many, many pieces.

S. and I have a conversation about what we're going to tell the people at Home Depot. I have no morals, so I say, we'll just tell them it's broken. S. doesn't want to lie. Me: We'll say we dropped it because the handles on the box are wimpy. This conversation continues on and off until the next day when we actually put the damn thing back in the car and go back to Home Depot. As we're pushing the thing to the return desk, S. tells me I'm doing this. He doesn't want to lie. We want our money back, but honestly. I keep mentioning the shit-stained toilet seat that Hillary has made me associate with Home Depot returns.

I hand the person the receipt, say we'd like to return this toilet. She looks at me, looks at the box, and does her scanning. The money will be credited to our card. Nobody ever looked inside the box.

We walk through the store to pick up a couple other things we need. Me: Honey, we could've put a garden gnome in that box and they would'nt've known the difference.

S.: Why would anyone return a garden gnome?

3 more nights with this dang thing

2008-07-29T05:59:00.000-07:00

On Friday at 8:45 I'll go to the doctor to get this thing taken off my hand and then I'll be able to do things that require the use of a pinky:

--write, which requires typing with more than one hand if one is to keep up with the thoughts as they're coming
--cut my hair
--blog the toilet story--it'll be worth the wait
--mow the lawn
--clasp my own bra
--unclasp my own bra (S. last night: didn't I just do this for you yesterday?)
--wash dishes (my mother, when I told her about my hand: how're you gonna do the dishes? Me: That's what S. is for.)
--wash my hair w/2 hands
--open jars
--tie my shoes
--wear my engagement ring again
--pet the girls as they're walking past my left side

no trip to Massachusetts

2008-07-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

too many expensive and time-consuming things happening at once

1. Belly needs to have part of that damn dew claw removed, which means sedation or anesthesia, which means recovery time and probably antibiotics
2. my car needs front brake pads, which will be a couple hundred $$$
3. number 1 will also cost a few $$$
4. my damn finger makes things harder all around

I'm carrying a lot of guilt about this decision--letting people down, etc--but when I boil it all down, it's really not about the $$$ but about making sure my baby girl is safe and happy. I just can't leave her.

That Becky, she rocks

2008-07-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

Here is the high-larious account of the breaking of my finger. One thing she didn't note is that the REASON I didn't go to the dr. for two weeks was that everyone kept telling me it was JUST A JAMMED FIBGER and I'd be fine. Um, yeah, remind me of that as I'm trying unsuccessfully to clasp my own bra strap. Sigh.

hard to type; story to follow

2008-07-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

Meanwhile, look at me and the Booda with our front left appendages all bandaged up. We're Stumpy Jo and Gimpy too. Typing with one hand...that damn book's gonna take a bit....

George W. Bush is toast

2008-07-16T12:19:00.000-07:00

Or maybe kibble.

Here's a real conversation that S. and I had this morning.

Me: Honey, did you see George Bush in Wrigley's bowl this morning?

He: No.

Me: Where was George Bush when you got up?

He: In bed with us.

Good thing I captured Wrigley with George Bush in her food bowl. Otherwise Daddy never would've believed she'd been trying to eat him.

See, here's the thing. Wrigley's not allowed to have stuffed toys because she immediately decapitates them. But last night she brought me Annabelle's new stuffed lion and she looked so pathetic that I started looking around for something I could give her instead. Belly never plays with George Bush, so I gave Wrigley that. She was thrilled. She immediately started gnawing on him, running around the house flinging him around, bringing him outside and then back in again.

When I told Wonka about this this morning, she asked if Wiggles had decapitated him.

Me: Nope, but one of his legs is hanging on by a thread.

And those legs are wearing red cowboy boots. Deee-licious.

happy happy birthday to my girl

2008-07-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

Happy happy birthday to Annabelle Blue Butler.

My baby girl is seven years old today. Last year at this time she was the youngest of three dogs, and this year she's the older of two. She's adjusting to this role. I didn't say she's adjusting nicely, just that she's adjusting.

This next photo was taken right before a walk. When I put my socks and sneakers on, Belly runs down to the door and sits like a good girl, waiting for me and/or S. to come on already and take her for a walk.

She makes me so happy every single day. For her birthday celebration, there will be pupcorn, ice cream, and swimming (not in that order).

I have to admit that this year's birthday number hurts a bit. She's no longer my spring chicken. She's seven. Isn't that officially a senior? My heart hurts just thinking about my life without this beautiful beast. So I won't. Instead, I'll love on her and take her swim-swim-swimmin'.

Nessie lives

2008-07-10T14:47:00.000-07:00

This is from last week's swim and I just love how Belly looks like the Loch Ness monster rising from the depths. Last night we took them swim-swim-swimmin' again, and Belly actually wanted to chase the ball in the water. We'd brought the ball for Wrigley because on land, Belly couldn't care less about the damn ball. That's child's play, she says. But in the water, suddenly it's something to chase.

Their swimming last night made my heart hurt, they were so damn cute. Two little black heads, swimmin' side by side, workin', workin' so hard to get to the ball. When Wrigley'd bring the ball back to us on land, Nessie stayed in the water pretty much looking like she does in the picture here, and when we'd tell Wrigley to sit before we threw the ball, Belly sat in the water.

They kill me, these girls.

independent of linoleum

2008-07-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

How we spent our July 4th weekend: freeing ourselves of the world's ugliest linoleum floor:

And trading it in for a vinyl tile floor, though if I hadn't told you this was vinyl, you might very well have believed it was ceramic. It looks that good.

We installed it ourselves. Some of the lines are a bit off, but that just makes it more human. We briefly considered giving up our day jobs and going into the floor installation business.

This last photo is mostly for Hillary, who was so proud of her handiwork on the vents last summer when we (mostly she) installed the laminate flooring in the living and dining rooms. Also be sure to note my brown toenail polish. Two separate people told me this weekend that I look so very Goth. heh.

my loldog

2008-07-02T15:51:00.001-07:00

moar funny pictures

swim-swim-swimmin'

2008-07-02T06:00:00.001-07:00

Here's a video of the girls swimmin' at White Oak Park yesterday evening. This was Wrigley's second big-girl swim. Her first was last week, and I didn't have my camera with me. Is this the best kind of new media, or what?

Note that the video ends quite abrubtly as Annabelle realizes she can make a dash for it and runs off after a bunny. She's almost 7, but she's still a stinker.

the gecko finally got me

2008-06-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

Fifteen minutes, people. It can save you 15% or more on car insurance.

Here's the thing. I've been watching a lot of baseball lately, as devoted readers know. The sheer number of car insurance commercials during baseball games has finally gotten to me. Why am I paying so much for car insurance, I finally found myself asking. Never mind the question of why so many car insurance commercials air during ball games. The Viagra commercials make sense in a way that the insurance ones don't necessarily.

Anyway, I saved more than $400 by switching to Geico. Perhaps I should be getting paid to say this. But shit, I think I'll buy myself an ice cream cone.

late start

2008-06-26T05:49:00.001-07:00

While watching the Cubs lose to the Orioles on Tuesday night:

Me: Honey, I want to be a big league baseball player.

He: You don't hear much about 35-year-old women breaking into the big leagues.

Me: Why not? It's not faaaaaaaaaair.

Pause.

Me: Well, what about 36-year-old women?

He agreed that, yes, I'll have a much better chance in October.

your Wednesday dose of cuteness

2008-06-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

Here's Wrigley and Kramer, Julie's dog, when Julie was in Italy. Julie's dogsitter, our friend Marie, brought Kramey and Buddy (who's camera shy) over for a visit while Julie & Rob were gone. I sent Julie this photo while she was in Italy because I know how much she was missing her boy.

And please note the look on Wrigley's face. I'm pretty cute, aren't I, Kramey?

note to self on teaching summer classes

2008-06-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

Amy tired.

Amy vewwwy vewwwy tired.

Don't get me wrong. I love the students in my class. We're having a lot of fun together, and they're helping me think in different ways about some things. And it's keeping my mind active, keeping me getting up in the mornings. And when the Cubbies are winning, I can celebrate with them. heh.

But here's the thing about this summer class: it's every. single. day. There's not enough time in between meetings to digest and synthesize information. I feel like I'm pelting them with new terms and concepts every day.

Plus I haven't had time to read David Sedaris's new book. Whine whine whine.

Garage sale this Saturday. Be there. Stuff galore.

I look at Sweet Lou so differently now

2008-06-23T06:01:00.000-07:00

Oh. My. God. Those Chicago-area Chevy commercials featuring Lou Piniella and Ozzie Guillen jumping rope and playing chess and jumping on a trampoline together kill me. I wish I had taped one because I can't find it online. The one where they're rapping together is online, but it's not as good as seeing these two jumping rope together, Lou with his hands in his back pockets. Lou kicking the dirt after a move in their chess game--it's too much.

Makes me like Lou so so much because I love to think about the taping of these commercials. Hell, I love to think about his agreeing to do the commercials in the first place. And over this incredibly beautiful winning weekend, we actually saw Lou smile a few times. I think it's because of the jumping rope. It'll make anyone smile.

Kills me, I tell you. Kills me.

Damn, them Cubbies are good.

what to do when you're sick of yourself

2008-06-12T08:05:00.000-07:00

Be happy that you're teaching a summer course because it will get you out of your own head for a little while.

Tell everyone who will listen how sick you are of chapter 3. It's all so obvious and, at this point, pretty much old news. Really, how much more gift economy explanation can you take? Duh.

Duh. Duh. Duh.

I've officially hit that point in my writing process. Where everything is well, duh. Even crackheads know this.

This point always happens. Which makes me wonder, why don't we have that as part of the "official" writing process in comp? Prewrite. Write. Realize how damn obvious it all is. Despair a little while. Drive your friends nuts. Revise.

How is it that I can teach the same concepts every semester and yet when it comes to explaining in writing something that is just so damn obvious to me, I want to just go, duh? Maybe because with new students each semester it's never really the same teaching, but with writing, it's the same damn concepts waiting for me. There's no immediate audience feedback.

Will I ever finish chapter 3? Duh.

why I love the Cubs so much

2008-06-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

One, it's fun to watch them win. I feel like I somehow had a part in their winning, what with all my cheering (and sometimes swearing) at the TV.

S. is a bit worried that my love for the Cubbies is getting out of hand. For instance, on Friday night they weren't on until 9:40, and I was moping around the house whining about not wanting to wait any longer. I wanted my Cubbies NOW!

See, many of you might not know this about me, but I'm an all-or-nothing kinda girl. And what the Cubbies allow me to do, number two, is focus completely on them and--drum roll, please--not think about work or what I should be doing.

Three, I have a crush on, in no particular order, Ryan Dempster, Aramis Ramirez, and Mark DeRosa. And now that Geovany Soto has shaved his face, I realize that he's quite a cutie, too. S. finally admitted last night that he has a man-crush on Ryan Theriot. Next time we go up to Wrigley, he's gonna get himself a Theriot shirt. I wear my DeRosa shirt with pride.

One thing I would like to do for the Cubs is send them a team razor. The FACIAL HAIR on some of these guys is enough to make me fall out of my couch. Kerry Wood, PLEASE do something about that wild buffalo growing on your chin, and Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick, is Scott Eyre planning to NAME the cat on his chin? And Reed Johnson, you highlight-reel-center-fielder, you, just go all the way and do one more swipe with the razor. Your team will thank you for it.

I've never experienced this kind of team love before. I kinda like it, peeps.

I'm still here

2008-06-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

Remember the days when my going more than two days without blogging made me nervous? Like I had so much to report that I'd never get through it?

Them's were the days.

Now I go almost two weeks and I still wonder if I have anything to say.

Perhaps I've become more of an internal processer. I process things before I get a chance to sit and blog them, so by the time I have a chance to blog, there's nothing left to say.

My blog for the year 2008 will probably be summarized as: I'm still here. Not dead yet.

I completely missed the anniversary of my adopting Annabelle on May 30. Six years. But that was because S. and I were on our way to North Carolina for his dad's memorial service. S. gave a beautiful eulogy, lots of people got up and talked about what a terrific person Gerry was, and the service ended with Gerry & Janet's 14-year-old grandson singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Not a dry eye in the house. I was tempted to get up there and say something because I really did love S.'s dad and I actually feel sad to have only known him for a year and a half. But I knew I wouldn't be able to be even mildly coherent.

I've been watching the Cubs faithfully and boy, that takes up a lot of time. So I haven't been reading much, but on the drive back to Illinois, S. and I listened to the audio version of David Sheff's Beautiful Boy about his son's meth addiction. Fascinating stuff. It just blows my mind the stuff that meth'll do to a person, and I want to know more. I can see that easily becoming a mild obsession...I've already ordered a copy of Nic Sheff's Tweak.

S. and I installed a vinyl tile floor this weekend, with grout and everything. It looks fantastic. We're gonna do it in the kitchen, too, but we wanted to try a small space first: basement hallway, where if it turned out badly, nobody'd really notice.

And I'm writing. Some days it's torture, but I'm somehow getting through it.

stops and starts

2008-05-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow afternoon, once S. gets home from work, we take off once again for North Carolina. This time we're driving. Flying has just become too much of a nightmare. Though driving all the way to NC comes with its own brand of stress, at least we control the stress. And we get to stop to pee whenever we like.

S. and I have never taken a road trip of this length together. We've driven to Chicago and back many times, but this summer we're doing this trip and then we're driving to Massachusetts at the end of July. In my cute little Honda Civic. It's cute, but it's not exactly roomy.

In other unrelated news, we watched Rendition the other night. A few weeks ago, I updated my Facebook status with something like "Amy and S. watched The Savages last night and she dares anyone to name a more depressing movie." Well, folks, I found one. It's called Rendition. Slit-your-wrists depressing.

I'm not so good at watching movies without pausing 100 times. The pause button and the DVR were made for me. I guess I'm a little bit ADD. After I'd paused it four times during the first twenty minutes of Rendition, S. was getting really frustrated with me. At one point, I was saying something over the movie and he couldn't hear, so I paused it. He looks at me: what? Me: I paused it because you couldn't hear what I was saying. He: No, I couldn't hear the movie.

Then last night we took the girls out for their evening walk. Fifty feet from the house, I had to hand Annabelle over to S. because I'd tied my shoe too tight. I tied it, took her back, and realized once again that it was still too tight. So I stopped to tie it again and he went ahead with the girls. He: We haven't made it a block and you've stopped twice. It's like watching a movie with you.

we were REALLY hungry

2008-05-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

HOW hungry were we?

SO HUNGRY we each had a monstrous hamburger and then we fell over dead.

Ya gotta love how my eyebrows make me look like a mad scientist who's just discovered that this hamburger thing has to be eaten before WE ALL BLOW UP.

It was deee-licious.

entertainment

2008-05-23T05:34:00.000-07:00

What's better than watching a dog chase her own tail?

The look she gives you when she pauses, as if to say, "you have no idea what you're missing."

one more thing

2008-05-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

About my need to work: this makes me feel better.

"The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom."
Lewis Hyde, The Gift (25)

wee epiphany

2008-05-14T06:15:00.000-07:00

I like working. It makes me happy to feel like I've gotten stuff done. It's part of who I am. Talking with S. last night, I realized that I feel better when I feel like I've accomplished something for the day. Then I can relax and not have that nagging little voice tapping me on the shoulder while I try to read.

Plus, I like what I'm working on. This isn't justification for working too much (how that sentence itself sounds like justification). It's coming to terms with what makes me feel good.

And, from the department of "what does this have to do with anything," I give you this conversation between S. and me a few weeks ago.

We were watching a History Channel one-hour segment on the Unabomber. S. loves true crime stuff, and I had seen the Unabomber's brother speak at ISU my first year here, and it got me thinking about the role of writing in his being outed. Anyway, there was this:

Me: Why's he called the Unabomber, anyway?

S. Because he's a bomber and there's only one of him.

LOVE IT.

Actually, he's called the Unabomber because his first targets were at UNiversities and Airlines, so they took those first few letters and called him the UNAbomber. Not very original. Or creative, but there it is.

on that little nagging voice in my head

2008-05-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

Finished all the loose ends associated with grading yesterday. I am officially done for the summer and, with the exception of a diss proposal defense on Thursday, have a few weeks before I begin teaching my summer course. And those few weeks I should be using to a) rejuvenate; b) write; c) sleep in.

But here's the thing. Last night I was on the couch reading a memoir, S. was at the table studying for another insurance exam, the puppies had been walked and fed, and the Cubbies were coming on in an hour. All was well. Except every few pages or so, I'd stop reading because of this nagging voice in my head telling me that there was something I should be doing, some kind of work that needs to get done. It's a real bummer.

Because here's the other thing. I'm doing very well with my writing and my publications and my teaching, so we can't really say that it's tenure I'm worried about. I've got three articles in CE, one in JAC, a co-edited book, a chapter in another co-edited book, and much more in the works. My book--the real one this time, after many false starts--is coming along nicely.

I'm 35 years old. I've got a terrific job, a terrific partner, two terrific dogs, and I should be able to sit back and enjoy some of it without this nagging voice in my head telling me I'm not doing enough.

Like today, for instance. I took the day off and there's some guilt there. I want to just hang around the house and read, take the girls for a walk, drink my coffee, and chill. And wait for the Cubbies to come on at 7. Perhaps this is all a result of defining myself for so long by the work I do. When I'm finally able to relax about the work, I don't know who I am. So there's the nagging.

On Friday we're going up to Chicago for a Cubs game and we're staying overnight with S.'s cousins. Then on Sunday Jen & Michael & little miss Nola are stopping by on their way through to Houston. That'll be great and I'll be able to have fun because it's stuff I've been planning. But just having an entire day in front of me with no work to do. It's hard.

It's called living my life. I wish I had the confidence to just shut that little voice off and tell myself instead that what I'm doing is more than enough. I won't be on my deathbed wishing I'd written just one more article. Ugh.

dressed up for a good cause

2008-05-12T06:04:00.001-07:00

On Saturday we got up butt-ugly early to drive to Peoria to participate in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. We decided that if we were gonna walk 5K, so were these girls. On Friday night we bought pink fabric and hot pink ribbon to signify that they, too, would race for a cure.

There was a teeny-weeny part of me that was a little bit worried about how Annabelle would do with the huge crowd. But my god, these girls were both SO GOOD. Whenever someone wanted to pet Wrigley, she'd sit like a good girl. And Annabelle let people pet her and even leaned in on a few choice people.

Lots of people took pics of these girls, and the crowd got a good laugh when Belly found the only possible puddle on the entire walk and plopped her belly down in it.

S. had been wondering if perhaps this year's t-shirt would be a bit more gender-neutral than last year's, and, well, nope. But he wore his shirt with pride all the same. His mom died of breast cancer, so we walked for her and for our dear friend Nan, a breast cancer survivor.

What better way to spend a Saturday morning in May?

cupcakes, part II

2008-05-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

My colleagues/friends Cheryl, Katherine, and I have a routine on Tuesdays after we eat lunch together: we eat cookies. Yummers. This week we were really full from the pizza, and we skipped going to the Garlic Press because it was in the opposite direction. But when we passed the new Medici bakery, Cheryl let out a little whine and pointed to the door, so we went in.

The first thing that caught our eyes was a row of BEAUTIFUL cupcakes decorated to look like sunflowers. The yellow frosting was expertly applied to look like leaves, and there were tiny chocolate chips in the middle made to look like the brown center of a sunflower. Have I mentioned that they were beautiful? I wish I'd taken a picture of them.

Me, to the person behind the counter: Are they muffins or cupcakes?

She: They're chocolate cupcakes.

We three, collectively: Yummmmm.

We decided to share one because they were HUGE and, well, they were three bucks a piece. Cheryl treated.

We walked back to school gawking at it in its to-go container. I kept saying how I wanted to just stick my finger in that frosting and do a big swish across the top. I restrained myself until we got back to our offices. Katherine opened the container and I stuck my finger in. The frosting was hard. I couldn't do a big swish. I pushed at it and some frosting stuck to my finger. I put it to my lips. "It tastes like...nothing."

Cheryl: WHAT?

She takes a swish and agrees that it tastes like nothing.

I run down the hall for a potty break (as I am wont to do at the most interesting times) and when I come back, Katherine has taken a bite out of it. "It practically broke my fork," she said.

It was not a chocolate cupcake. It was a burnt, hard yellow cupcake and did I mention that it was hard. I lifted the entire thing with my fork and no crumbs fell on my desk.

We were pissed. Katherine takes a bite of the chocolate chips in the middle and declares that they are not semi-sweet; they're BAKING chocolate.

We begin imagining possible reasons why it could be so bad. The bakers had to practice making sunflowers for some competition they'd be entering. Or they had LOTS of yellow "frosting" left and they had to do something with it, so why not put it on the burnt yellow cupcakes?

In the midst of all this, I say, "If my honey had bought something that he thought was a chocolate cupcake and he got this, he would've had a little breakdown."

Cheryl decides she's gonna call them and tell them how horrible it was. We would've returned it, but we all had things we had to do soon and it was a little bit of a walk. So Cheryl calls and says, "I was just in there and I bought one of those sunflower cupcakes and I wanted to tell you that it's....terrible." I'm in the background, reminding her to tell them it's hard as a rock and don't forget about the chocolate chips and the frosting had no taste. I'm helpful that way.

She's listening to the person on the other end and says, "Oh, I seeeeee." She hangs up and tells us she's the SECOND PERSON who's called today to complain about the cupcakes. They're taking them out of the case.

And I'm left wondering why they left them in the case after the first person complained. And even more, what kind of person calls to complain about a cupcake? Not just us, evidently.

It was, after all, a $3 cupcake. That's almost a gallon of gas!

that new little baby girl of ours

2008-05-07T05:45:00.000-07:00

Let's talk, shall we, about the number of nicknames this stinker girl has acquired in the almost-four months she's been home.

Most important and really not even a nickname anymore because I call her it ALL. THE. TIME: Wiggles

Mac was one of her early nicknames because she walks around the house with her bone--or any other toy--hanging out of her mouth like McArthur with his pipe. And then she says, "I shall return."

Wiggy.

Wigglesworth. Which leads to the corresponding Bugglesworth for her big sister. Wigglesworth and Bugglesworth. Freakin' cute.

Wiglet.

Piggie Nose.

S. came up with this one: from Rigs to Rigatoni. Our little Rigatoni girl.

forge on

2008-04-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

Last night Ron Fortune, my esteemed colleague and collaborator, delivered the College of Arts and Sciences lecture. His talk was called "Scattered Impostures: Writing and the Work of Literary Forgery," and it was clear from the discussion afterward that he and I aren't the only ones fascinated by this form of writerly deception.

Ron's retiring at the end of the semester and that makes me sad. Happy for him, but sad for me and for the department. Ron is hands down the most generous, compassionate, and fairminded colleague I've had the pleasure of working with. Luckily, he's promised to continue working with me on forgery--and one way of looking at his retirement is to say he'll have more time for that.

mutant cupcake

2008-04-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

For his birthday last week, I made my honey only one cupcake.

But it was a HUGE cupcake. Love that new pan I bought. How delicious does that look? It tasted even better....

On Friday night we had some friends over to share the mutant cupcake with us. It was a great night: burgers on the grill (despite the thunderstorms), cupcake and ice cream, and the Cubbies on TV. Okay, so they lost to one of the worst teams in baseball, but I still love 'em.

It's hard to watch the Washington Nationals play and not think about S.'s dad. They were his team, way back before they were the Nationals. We're driving down to NC at the end of May for his service, and the family is saving a bit of his remains to sprinkle at RFK stadium in DC. I'm looking forward to the road trip, and part of the reason for that is that I associate NC with S.'s dad. It's hard to convince myself that he won't be there.

professionalism

2008-04-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

On Mondays I'm at school ALL. DAY. because my classes are at 9 and then again at 3. I spend much of the time in between classes grading or prepping, but lots of times I just goof off. Well, today I spent some time talking to Hillary about the cyst in her shoulder.

A: How big is it?
H: I don't know.
A: What kind is it?
H: I don't know.
A: What was the point of the doctor's appointment?
H: I don't know, to tell me I have a cyst?
A: Can we name it?
H: Yes. Something feminine. Like Emily.
A: I have too many Emilys in my classes.
H: Ophelia.
A: That's great because she went nuts. Get thee to a nunnery, Ophelia.

Hillary then goes on to tell me that she's not too too worried about the cyst because it's a cyst and not a tumor, though when her doctor's office called and asked her to come in at 12:30 instead of her 3:00 appointment, she instantly assumed that it was because she only had days left to live.

A: And they wanted to give you exta time with your kids.

She's also got a couple of teeeeeeeny weeeeeeny cysts on her legs, so her reasoning is that the one in her shoulder can't be a big deal because if the ones on her legs aren't, then this one can't be either.

A: Nice reasoning.
H: Shush. I like my reasoning.

Pause.

A: I kinda wish it was a little more dramatic. With a happy ending, but more dramatic for a little while.
H: I know. So boring.

I hang up the phone and not two seconds later a student pops her head into my open office door. She has a question about class today and she waited until I was off the phone with my oh-so-important phone call. I told her she could've interrupted me, that I was just talking to a friend about her cyst. No, she says, it's fine, I was just going over my paper one last time.

Woulda been a lot funnier, a lot more dramatic, ahem, if she'd said she knows all about Ophelia and that perhaps that name's a little too cliched.

an earthquake in Illinois?

2008-04-18T06:07:00.000-07:00

Indeed.

I felt it this morning, but was so half-asleep that I didn't really stop to wonder what it was.

I just went back to my very important work of drooling and sleeping.

really, she's not at all spoiled

2008-04-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

I was planning to take a picture just of the three Nylabones lined up in such a pretty row. Cute in itself. As I was about to click for the shot, Wrigley stuck herself into the pic with her little piggy nose as if to say, "Yeah, I line up my bones. You got sumthin' to say about it?"

Olivia is my little helper

2008-04-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a pic of the fantastic gift Seth gave me for no good reason at Cs. Well, that's not true. He did give a reason: he saw this little doorknob hanger and she was screaming my name, so he had to buy her. In case you can't read her jumper, it says "Go away I'm very busy!"

And I am. I'm very busy! Too bad the doggies can't read. They barge into my office and seek out love and affection anyway.

what it means to be a Cubs fan

2008-04-10T11:12:00.000-07:00

I'm learning very quickly that it involves a lot of pain.

FIFTEEN. INNINGS. last night. I stayed up until after 10:00 (S. had already gone to bed at around 9:15ish) to watch as inning after inning passed with no change in the score. Then Ramirez hits a two-run homer, and I'm so happy I yelp, which wakes S. up. Sorry. Then of course the Pirates match that two-run homer with one of their own and I'm feeling dejected again. Then happy again with Pie's two RBIs.

Happy. Dejected. Ecstatic. Morose. Happy.

I stayed up through the whole game because I knew I could sleep in this morning. And I did. Until 9:00.

And tonight we shall do it all over again. That's what so great about this sport. It's on EVERY. DAY.

Me, to S. last night: Do you think that when Ryan Dempster was growing up all the kids called him Ryan Dumpster?

S.: Probably, but he's Canadian so he could take it.

mean people really do suck

2008-04-09T05:40:00.001-07:00

Got a rejection letter from Composition Studies yesterday for an essay I wrote about teaching the personal essay. The first review letter was at least kind in its rejection--gave me some things to think about in an encouraging way, a way that made me think that maybe, just maybe, I might have something to say on the subject.

The second review letter, though, was just plain mean and seemed to glory in it. "I have read your paper with mounting annoyance." Great way to start a review. Thanks.

"What's your point? Or points? Yes, I know that a personal essay doesn't necessarily have to have a thesis, but what's it about?" And then the reviewer goes on to make more mean commentary in a way that suggests he (it can only be a he, says S.) knows exactly what the essay is about.

There's a point in the essay where I talk about the ways that I've told so many of my students stories about Annabelle--but that last semester, I found that I had stopped doing this. This was curious to me. The reviewer wants to know how "knowing about Annabelle, the cutsiefied canine, will help your students to write better, rather than to encourage them to exchange sentimental anecdotes or write them and thus to use them as a substitute for the hard-edged critical thinking you appear to advocate via the discussion of Ways of Reading." Um, hi, I think the point I was trying to make, oh friendly person, was that something happened last semester that made me stop telling so many Annabelle stories. I'm sure everything you do in the classroom, every word you say and every story you tell helps students to write better.

Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick.

The first reviewer understood my essay as a whole. The second reviewer nitpicked this and that, enough to fill up two single-spaced pages, but never acknowledged that the essay has a point but maybe I wasn't as successful as I thought I was in making that point. No. What matters is that every word I say in the classroom is not directed toward helping students write. Because sometimes I want them to see me as a human being. Which is what I'd like to believe about this reviewer, but it's hard.

I know how bitter I sound. And it's not just because I was rejected. It's because I was rejected in a mean-spirited way, and the person who wrote that review cannot be held accountable. If this were my first piece sent out for publication, you can be pretty damn sure I wouldn't be sending anything else out anytime soon.

I'm not giving up on my essay. I'm taking the first person's advice and reworking it.

I was pretty down yesterday because of this. Not only did I feel like a bad writer, I felt like a horrible teacher, what with spending so much time talking about my dog instead of teaching students how to write with "ease, elegance, and grace." But then S. pointed out just how poorly this review itself was written--all over the place, unable to see the whole for the nitpicking parts--and I felt a little better. If there's one thing this reviewer could learn from the personal essay, it's that in order to be taken seriously as a writer, you've got to at least show some inkling of a willingness to implicate yourself in the faults that seem to lie elsewhere. Ending your review with "Best wishes" ain't gonna cut it.

back from C's

2008-04-07T10:40:00.001-07:00

And I think I'll be taking a hiatus next year. I've been going back and forth about this for days. On the one hand, it's always so refreshing to see my friends and to catch up after the year since we've last seen each other. On the other, though, it's exhausting. And going to San Francisco is essentially an entire travel day there, and an entire travel day back. Plus, if I'm not there they can't schedule me for Saturday. There is that.

I think our panel went pretty well and I think it wasn't all that obvious that this was my very first time speaking into a microphone. They put us in the Napoleon Ballroom, which makes me think they expected a far greater attendance than we actually got. But what can we expect on Saturday at 2:00?

I'm really not bitter about the Saturday time slots. Really. Not at all.

Grrrrrrrr.

It was absolutely wonderful to see and catch up with Becky, Jen, Jim, Paul, Tobi, Joddy, Seth, and Laurie. Good for the soul. Later I'll post a picture of the fantabulous gift Seth got me for no good reason except that it was apparently screaming my name.

Oh, and there's interest in my book manuscript. There is that.

Missed those girls and that boy very very much. Belly yelped and jumped off the bed when she heard the garage door open, and we've been doing lots of snuggling since. I promise her again and again that I'll always come back for her. My little Bugglesworth. Wigglesworth was happy to see me though I think that was the point at which she realized I'd been gone in the first place. Happy girl always. And the boy? Well, it was darn good to see him too. Though he did happen to mention that it was awfully quiet without me there. Not sure if that's a good thing...

Go Cubbies!

2008-03-31T06:45:00.001-07:00

Entering season two of fandom, I'm sorry to say I won't be home planted in front of the TV at 1:20 this afternoon. Alas, I'll be at school getting last-minute stuff ready for C's. S. wants a souvenir from the Marie Laveau store. Until Friday I had no idea who she was.

Ah, the things S. is teaching me. The things the Cubbies are teaching me: how to relax, that it's a lot of fun to root for the underdog, that a TV on the deck is not such a bad idea, that there's nothing like being there in the stands. Except you can't pause it like you can at home.

One of my dog park friends, in response to something I said about the season opener, said that's the biggest change she's seen in me since I met S. And S. doesn't even mind that I have crushes on a whole bunch of the players.

Century Schmentury.

how our doggies got their Deutsch names

2008-03-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Last weekend it was time to cut Wrigley's toenails and since she's not Annabelle, well, we do that here at home. S. holds her down while I cut them. It was kinda nice out, so we went out on the deck to do it. Belly watched from afar.

Wrigley has both black and white toenails and the one I cut too short was white, for crying out loud. The blood, it was red and it was gushing. We bandaged her foot up a few times that day. When it was time for our evening walk, I suggested we put a boot over the bandage to make sure it stayed on. She thus became the one-booted wonder.

S.: She could be a kicker. And with her little white beard, she needs a German name. Like Horst.

A.: How about Helmut? I've always loved that German name.

S.: Helmut works.

Then we realized, probably at the same time, that the name is indeed perfect because we could make it into Hellmutt. Two l's, two t's and we got a whole new meaning. She is the mutt from hell. Julia used to call Annabelle Hell's Bells. Now we've got Hell's Bells and Hellmutt.

On the way to the park, both girls stick their heads out the windows of the car, Belly barking the whole way. Lately we've noticed that her voice is getting pretty hoarse. With the trips to the park and the daily scolding of her little sister, it takes a lot out of her. Thus was she christened Horst.

Hellmutt and Horst. Two beautiful girls.

peace

2008-03-23T06:57:00.000-07:00

Here's my favorite pic of S. and his dad, taken last May at a Durham Bulls game.

S. was supposed to fly home to Bloomington on Friday afternoon. His flight from Raleigh to Detroit was cancelled. He was not happy, not one bit. His stepmom picked him up, and on their way back to the house, they got a call from the hospital telling them they needed to come right away.

His dad died Friday evening, ending a month of struggle spent in the hospital, first in the critical care unit and then in a regular room. He knew he was going to die, and he was at peace with it. S. and I got to spend a lot of quality time with him, and for that we are forever grateful. I told him what his son said about him: that he was the best person he's ever known. How many people can say that about a parent? And mean it?

I'm proud to have known him, to have had such an incredible person call me family.

fail fail fail

2008-03-20T09:43:00.000-07:00

Words fail. Blogs fail. Inaction. There's not a goddamn thing we can do.

So S.'s dad lies in a hospital bed in North Carolina, struggling to breathe, ready to leave this world, and there's nothing we can do but wait.

I'm back in IL, S. comes home tomorrow, and we will both be waiting for a phone call in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning.

That trip to NC was the hardest experience of my life. Words fail and cliches get in the way and I'm too tired to tell stories, so let's just say that I will have a whole boatload more sympathy for students whose grandparents are dying.

Aside from my own father, who died when I was just 4, I've never had to deal with the death of a loved one. Remember all those times I wondered what it meant to be a grown-up? I think I know now.

2008

2008-03-12T06:03:00.001-07:00

We're only three months in, and already I'm done with it.

S. and I are traveling to North Carolina tomorrow to see his dad. Things aren't looking good. If you pray, pray. If not, think positive thoughts. If all else fails, please see to it that we get ourselves out of this year in one piece.

And today's Wrigley's birthday. Happy birthday, baby girl.

on pots

2008-03-10T05:51:00.000-07:00

There comes a time in a coffee drinker's life when she must finally say goodbye to the glass coffee pot, what with all its warnings about hurting others and its utter fragility. In the last year, I've broken at least three coffee pots. I didn't even realize this last one was cracked. I was in the shower when the coffee was brewing. When I got out, S. said there'd been an incident with the coffee. I immediately ask him what he did (and was scolded for doing so). He was innocently making his breakfast when he noticed that coffee was spilling all over the counter. There was a massive crack on the bottom of the pot. So, after walking the dogs for an hour at a new park, it was off to Target we went. I could've gotten a stainless steel pot, but my experience with those tells me they're impossible to clean. So we got this:

Plus, it's so cool to push the button to pour the coffee. And there's no spillage, as there sometimes is with a regular pot. And nobody can hold this one over my head. It cost a little more, but in the long run, probably worth it.

Yesterday afternoon I had some fun taking short videos of the dogs chomping away on their Nylabones. At one point when I was filming Belly, S. called out to me to ask if I was ready for Wrigley to come back in the room. He was cleaning my bathroom and didn't realize I was taping Belly. I said no, and you hear him in the background saying to Wrigley, "Cleaning a toilet one-handed--it ain't easy." And I can't help but laugh out loud.

Both videos came out too dark to post, but I did ask S. to take a pic of me and the baby girl before she turns one. Her birthday is Wednesday, exactly 2 months after we brought her home.

night and day

2008-03-04T11:32:00.001-08:00

Belly: smart

Wrigley: not so much

Belly: anxious at times

Wrigley: not so much

Belly: thinker

Wrigley: not so much

Belly has always been my sweet, sometimes anxious, pooper stinkbutt with a big ol' smart bump on her head. She's very sensitive, and every time she's ever been hurt or sick, she's been very expressive about it. She communicates. And she does the pathetic look like no other. She's been working very hard to perfect it.

Wrigley, on the other hand--if she were fat, I'd be able to say she's fat, dumb, and happy. She has what could be a smart bump on her head but I'm thinking we might soon be able to confirm that it's really a shrunken dunce hat. She's just a happy, happy girl with not a care in the world. The day we brought her home she jumped up on the couch and wanted to wrestle. There was no adjustment period. There's also no pathetic look. It's just kind of a dumb, huh?

We have a trainer coming over tonight to help us train the Wiggles. I wish it were Cesar. I'm starting to get a bit of a crush on him. He's so no-nonsense. He'd have a field day with my relationship with Belly, but I know he'd straighten out the WiggleButt pretty quickly.

I mean, I knew our new doggie would be different from Belly (how could she not?), but I guess I wasn't prepared for such a happy-go-lucky doggie. A dog who really does get up each morning excited about all the possibilities for a new day. New sniffs! Toys! Walks! Food! Opportunities to steal food! Oh BOY!

I used to be funny

2008-02-29T07:43:00.000-08:00

This morning at school, a conversation with a colleague who reads my blog regularly.

He: Amy's engaged.

Lots of people congratulate me.

He: You gotta read Amy's blog.

Me: I'm not funny anymore.

He: You haven't been in a long time, no.

He then gave me an out, what with all the doggie troubles that we went through in January.

But really, what's my problem? Probably seasonal depression. And, paradoxically, probably contentment. I have nothing to complain about, really, and it was usually those complaints that I could turn into funnies.

In other news, I had another version of a recurring dream last night. I had accepted a job at my undergraduate institution, Clark University. I was sitting through the new faculty orientation trying to remember if I'd be able to find my way back to my dorm room, when I realized that I didn't really want this job. I didn't want to be one of the only rhet/comp people on campus. I wanted my old job back. Badly. And so I asked one of my colleagues, who just happened to work at both schools, what she could do to get me my job back. She gave me a wink and assured me she'd take care of it.

Phew.

I was a pretty smart undergraduate, but I remember next to nothing about what I learned. I was so clueless about the world, about living. I look at my students now and I really don't think they're as clueless as I was. I wish I'd had a personal essay class then. I wish I'd saved more of my writing. Maybe that's why I keep having these dreams about teaching there.

See? None of this is funny.

Good lord, February

2008-02-27T05:35:00.001-08:00

Come on.

Aren't you over yet?

I'm done with you. D-U-N dun.

it's much prettier in real life

2008-02-22T14:06:00.001-08:00

ring
Originally uploaded by aerobil

Now don't go making a big deal about this, people, because I've got lots of issues with a lot of what surrounds this. Not with S., of course. But with weddings and marriage and expectations, oh my. I mean, really. Imagine Amy in a dress.

But the presents part--that's just fine.

And also, we bought a new fridge last night.

Exciting stuff over here.

recant

2008-02-19T15:06:00.000-08:00

I was wrong about the NyQuil. It does still have alcohol, happily. S. had bought me the generic version, which I'm usually all about, and it was alcohol-free. We just got back from a few errands, one of which was returning--yes returning--the alcohol-free generic store-brand NyQuil.

Me: It didn't work.

Man behind the counter: It didn't work?

Me: It offered no relief.

Later. Me, to honey: See, you really can return anything. This is America. Customer is always right.

I blame it on the meth-heads

2008-02-18T10:17:00.000-08:00

I was so sick this weekend I couldn't vacuum.

That's how you know it's really bad.

I couldn't play Scramble, I couldn't eat anything, I couldn't get out of bed. But I also couldn't fall asleep because I was going back and forth between having the chills and sweating to death. So I asked my honey on Saturday morning to pick me up some liquid NyQuil. Clearly the gelcaps weren't hitting my system hard enough to knock me out.

Like a good honey, he got me cherry liquid NyQuil. It made me drowsy, but it didn't knock me out. Later in the day when I took another dose, it did nothing.

On Sunday, I felt better in the morning, but then it hit me again like a truck early afternoon. I threw up, had the shakes, and a headache to end all headaches. I ended up in the emergency room where they pumped me with fluids, took a chest x-ray, and confirmed that yes, I was probably there because of the meth-heads. Here's the reasoning:

Meth-heads use pseudoephedrine to make their meth.

Must make pseudoephedrine illegal, or at least hard to get.

Medicine makers give up on making it hard to get because their competition is making versions of the meds without pseudoephedrine, and nobody wants to wait in line to get the old stuff (though I would, thank you very much).

The new medicines for cold and flu symptoms SUCK. They're simply not as strong. They don't relieve the symptoms like pseudoephedrine did.

So it feels like you're dying when you've taken medicine that USED to help you but no longer does, so what else do you do but end up in the ER?

And when, by the way, did NyQuil become alcohol free? THAT'S. THE. WHOLE. POINT. OF. NYQUIL. Hello. I know. I just said it was the pseudoephedrine. IT'S BOTH.

Okay, do you really wanna know how to tell when it's bad? I canceled both classes today.

aftermath

2008-02-14T05:43:00.000-08:00

When I had had Annabelle for just a few months and we were living in an apartment on Green Street in Syracuse, I came home one day to find her water bowl completely empty save for a couple feathers stuck to the bottom of it. There were feathers stuck in her coat. When I went to the bedroom I saw a scene not unlike the one that follows here:

When I got home from school yesterday, no more than two minutes before S. did, I walked into the living room to this. It was a little bit funny. When I heard the garage door open, I went downstairs to greet S. and told him I wanted him to experience what I had just experienced. "I don't wanna experience anything," he whined. "Tell me."

"Nope. I want you to have the same surprise I had."

"I'm not going upstairs. I'm gonna stay down here all night."

All of these feathers, folks, were from HALF a couch pillow. Dang, they stuff those things real good. Poor Petula the Penguin. She was covered and she had no way to escape.

We'll be finding feathers for at least the next week or so. I've blamed it all completely on Wrigley, though when I was telling Nan about it last night, she suggested that maybe the girls were playing tug-o-war with the pillow. Belly tells me no, it was all Wiggles. And while Wrigley was making this mess, Belly coached her, telling her what it was like when she had done the same thing. Back when she was a baby.

pop tarts

2008-02-13T12:44:00.000-08:00

This is the latest junk food I've been eating as a way of making it through this winter. Strawberry pop tarts. And now, frosted raspberry pop tarts. When spring comes, I won't fit into any of my clothes, but, hey, I'll be alive.

Ugh.

my obsessions of late

2008-02-11T12:11:00.000-08:00

what cannot be measured

what therefore cannot be compared

what therefore cannot be commodified

what therefore cannot be bought and sold

and so, unfortunately, what often cannot be named

This is to say that I'm thoroughly entrenched in the ideas at the heart of my book, and the deeper I go, the more I realize I've been circling around these ideas for a long time. Hovering over them. Picking at them. Many times having a hard time articulating them. Then I realize that that's part of the very thing I'm dealing with: the ineffable. The ineffable as opposed to the marketable.

How can we find a language for value that doesn't a) resort to market value; b) come off as moralizing or holier-than-thou; or c) sound completely hokey and old-fashioned and therefore easily dismissed?

That, dear readers, is the question. The one preoccupying me at the moment.

I'm not dead

2008-02-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

I just really haven't had much to say lately. I have blog posts in my head throughout the week, but I never get around to writing them. Maybe I'm becoming lazy. Maybe the book and grad admissions are taking it all out of me. Maybe life just gets boring after a while.

We've decided Wrigley needs a little bit of schooling if she's gonna continue to live with us. We asked her if she wants to continue living with us and she said, YES! YES! YES! YES! WATCH HOW I WIGGLE MY BUTT WHENEVER I SEE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I WANT TO GO TO SCHOOL! Or something along those lines.

Went back up to Chicago to the headache clinic, and of the three visits we've made thus far, this was the least stressful. Did quite a bit of shopping on the way home. Unintended, but hey, neither of us can pass up a good bargain.

Anyway, that's what's up. Basically, NOTHING.

snow day

2008-02-01T06:30:00.000-08:00

Wake up this morning to about 7 or 8 inches of snow on the ground. Schools are closed, including ISU. S. calls his weather hotline only to find out that he's only got a delay until 11:00.

My reaction: I'm kinda bummed because I wanted to go in and write today. Yesterday I was on a bit of a roll. I know, you're thinking, why can't I write at home? All my stuff's at school. All I have here is my brain.

S.'s reaction: a bit of a tantrum.

Though the hotline tells him to call back at 9:00 for an update, he calls again at about 8:15, and when he learns he has the entire day off, he does the cabbage patch. And he's so pumped that he goes outside to finish snowblowing the driveway.

And the snowblower, folks, has a name. I had nothing to do with it. When he bought it a couple years ago, he decided she looked like a Beulah. And she kinda does.

ouchers

2008-01-31T07:23:00.000-08:00

Is there such a thing as a mild case of Munchausens? I am the biggest baby when I'm sick or when I get hurt and it's probably because I want others to feel sorry for me. I don't go MAKING myself sick or anything, I don't eat old eggs to make myself puke, but when I fell on my way to the bathroom at 1:00 this morning (god that makes me sound so. damn. old.) and Wrigley came running right to me and then frantically woke up S., I wanted S.'s immediate attention and, well, sympathy.

This is hard to get at 1 am.

I slipped on the laminate floor and landed on my left knee and elbow. There's usually a rug there, but it had moved quite a bit as a result of crazy puppies running up and down the hallway.

The knee, it hurts. Stairs are a problem. Very big scrapes, which will turn into three very big scabs, which I'll likely pick--at which point any sympathy S. may have had for me will evaporate.

P.S. Found Belly's boot last night. But I'm still thinking about safety orange for next winter.