On Loss and Grief and Being a "Good" Daughter-in-law

We are coming up on the second anniversary of the loss of my mother-in-law. We had what I think is probably a typical relationship among mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, which is definitely not the stereotypical relationship. That is, we usually got along, we usually liked each other, and we were almost always willing to bend the rules in the other's favor in order to make sure that Max, Ben, and Milo got what they wanted and needed in the way of a grandmother and mother. In this relationship, Chris was a guy we both loved, but their relationship was complicated, and we never talked about it. I needed Gaye for my own reasons and she needed me for her own reasons--so there was a direct line between us--it did not pass through Chris.

A day or two ago I was remembering the early years with Gaye. She was working for the CHP in San Francisco or Oakland, I'm not sure which. She drove a Honda sedan with the license plate GAZE. She was slender, smoked constantly, and was still trying to figure out how to store presents she bought for Max because I wouldn't give them to him if they smelled like a cigarette butt. We didn't fight openly about this. We diplomatically made our moves until the problem was solved. Although she didn't stop smoking until after the twins were born, maybe 7 years later, she did figure out how to store the items so they wouldn't be ruined in her apartment, and on my part, I didn't tell her what to get or how much to get Max (unless she asked). When we were rear-ended in a horrible hit-and-run, she bought us a replacement car. I liked that our lives were intertwined. I liked that some boundaries were firm and some permeable. I liked when she moved to be near us so she could help with the babysitting and we could help her as her health declined. I liked growing closer to her then.

To me, from the beginning, she was funny, sweet, smart, naïve, and competitive. I never won a game of scrabble against her. Not even close. But she liked my style of play (screw the points, I'm going for words that taste wonderful in your mouth. Look! I have all the letters for moribund!) and we laughed a LOT playing any board game with her, but especially Scrabble.

Back when she worked (and still smoked) she wore a girdle long after everyone else had stopped, probably because she had such a slender physique anyway. She would hold in her farts all day and then come to our house for dinner and a game and release the gas, which would reverberate as they escaped from the girdle. This NEVER stopped being funny to her (or Chris, or Max) and I was very embarrassed by it in those early years. Likewise, she loved potty humor, and I was embarrassed by it around her. I remember, very clearly, considering whether to ask her to not tell Max the off-color jokes when he got old enough (after all, he was maybe 18 months, but already talking a LOT).

When you are a new, young mom, you take these things very seriously. Every interaction with your child seems heavy with formative function. You stop swearing. You change seats if the kids in front of you won't stop swearing. You want the babysitters who look like they came out of the Partridge Family, not the ones with too much eyeliner and a propensity for black clothing. You hesitate when a certain friend offers to babysit because her husband is a little course. It's worse than thinking you know it all. You think you figured it out yourself.  You think you're smarter and more educated than the previous generation. You think you care more about your kid than they did about theirs. It's a temporary affliction. It lasts until the first time something serious comes along that you can't figure out on your own and your aunts or the older women at church help you get through. Then you wise up. Then you start listening.

So I considered whether to talk to her or not about this issue of the loud farts and the off-color jokes because I thought that was something *I* got decide. But I was at least smart enough to consider what would happen if I *didn't.* What was the worst thing that could happen if I asked her to stop? She could get her feeling irreparably hurt. She could stop coming to visit so often. She could withdraw, feeling unwanted, unapproved. What was the worst thing that could happen if I never said a thing? Max could fart in a few situations where he shouldn't because he didn't know that wasn't socially acceptable (I didn't know that little boys take forever to learn to hold it in until they can get to some place appropriate. Like maybe, fourth grade.) He could tell some off-color jokes to a friend and that friend (and their parents) could think he heard them from me.

Gaye loved Max. Like a crazy love. He didn't come too soon, or at the wrong time, or feel like any kind of an inconvenience to her. He was the best idea Chris and I ever had (until we had identical twins, which was also crazy, so she loved them, too, but not more than Max) as far as Gaye was concerned. She loved that he was a boy. She liked the name once she got used to it. He laughed and she laughed louder. I cannot express how much I needed someone to be as madly in love with him as I was, and she was. She was every part and parcel, every bit of heart and soul, as in love with Max as I was. She approved of my parenting (mostly, she did like to complain) and I decided then to approve of her grandmothering (mostly--there was still the issue of smoking). She was a diamond in the rough and in the end, just what I needed. I'm so glad now that I *decided* to accept her as she was then, because by and large she accepted me as I was--through depression, through spring instability, through career changes, through all those pregnancy losses, through everything. I would feel so ashamed now if I had made any other decision.

Of course I still miss her.

A while back, before she died, I read an interesting book excerpt in which a mostly irreligious doctor working in hospice starts noticing that in the two weeks before they died, many of his patients reported seeing a relative of theirs who came to bring them home. They knew then that they would die, and they were eager to go be with that person again. Sometimes he was with them when they saw the person--often across the room, usually smiling, most commonly a parent--most commonly the mother. He took an interest in this phenomenon that he initially wrote off as a hallucination and 20 years into recording the experiences he had, or rather his experiences with patients who had these pre-death visits, he wrote a book summarizing his thoughts about it. He had come to believe in a spiritual life because of the experiences, and to consider his own relationships because of them.

I remembered this when Gaye began calling after her father in the hospital, "No, Daddy, don't go, take me with you!" (that was a Friday, she would die the following Wednesday morning at 7:00 am) and I was so struck by the experience that I called her sister as soon after that as possible. It was, to me, formal notice. Her father had died when she was still quite young, and it was that young self calling out to him.

In my head, I've decided that when it is time for me to go, if I go in a slow way where there is time for this sort of thing, Gaye and Judy (who is still very much alive. Hopefully this doesn't creep her out.) will show up together. "Is that what you're wearing?" Gaye will ask. "You'd better get dressed," Judy will say, "How about that purple dress?" Gaye will suggest. "You can wear my gold earrings if you want," Judy will add. And I will know it is time to start saying my Goodbyes and probably look forward eagerly for the moment when they both come back to get me for good. That would be a good enough ending for me.

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Seasonal Affective Disorder is that thing where you feel sad in the winter and not-sad in the summer. A lot of mentally-healthy people experience this pattern, but for some people it's like you have your regular life---and then you freelance as a director of mental illness on the side. As you go about your life doing all the things everyone else does-loving, making decisions, doing chores, teaching, talking, growing, raising children and/or puppies/kittens/plants, etc., you also constantly monitor the mental health index.

During the dark of winter it's all about sticking to a schedule, sticking to promises made, sticking the landings (if you'll forgive me). If you have to take meds to do that, you do. If you have to sit in front of a light box for a half hour, you do. If you have to exercise every morning to be able to not cry every evening, you do. You hang on to the knowledge that winter always ends.

And then, one day, it is March. About mid-March, specifically, when a line is passed, and the days stay light long enough (because it is ALL about the light) and you find that everything you worked so hard at over the winter is … easier. You surprise yourself one day by laughing your way through a meeting. You smile at strangers. You relax a little. For some people with S.A.D., that's pretty much it. They're off duty until mid-to-late September. For others, this is the first of two breaks. Because for all of May and into early June you're managing a different kind of mental health problem.

Hypomania is a condition that is kind of like the opposite of depression. You have more energy than normal, feel like you can do more than you normally can, take risks you wouldn't if you weren't in that state. When I was younger the impulsiveness was a real problem, but when I came to understand it, I also found that it was something I could control. I could guard against making foolish decisions by being in the habit of taking MORE time to make decisions. These days I'm more likely to sign up for one committee too many in the PTA than I am to do something really harmful. I don't drink or engage in other risky behaviors that would make it hard for me to stay on top of those "higher than normal" feelings. For me the hardest thing during this period is sticking to a budget. I don't buy big ticket items, but I might eat out more and I have a hard time saying no to things the kids want.

By mid-June the hypo state has often stabilized, and July, August, and the first part of September are the real vacation time from managing S.A.D.

S.A.D. is technically under the bipolar II umbrella, but it's most commonly "diagnosed" as "persistent clinical depression with a season affective component" because bipolar II is not popular with health insurance companies. S.A.D. can vary from winter to winter. It's worse in areas with less light and better in areas with more light. I take meds year round because I get the best stability throughout the year that way. I supplement with light therapy when it seems like a particular year is harder.

So happy March. For me, the month of second winds. I've had an unusually mild winter. This usually leads to a relatively balanced and normal spring. I'm feeling very grateful and so I thought I'd write a little note explaining S.A.D. to those of you who might be feeling worn-out from this winter and hoping for spring to come soon. In terms of light, it'll be here in about a week to ten days. (Only G*d knows when the snow will melt. In my backyard we have a ways to go.)

Toot Says the Flute, Maaa Says the Oboe, the Bassoon Says Bwaaahhh

My friend, Patrese, had offered to arrange a hymn for Ben, Milo, and I to play together. There was a talent show coming up at church and she knew my original reason for picking up the bassoon again after lo these many years was to play a little with Ben and Milo. She asked me what notes I knew on the bassoon and I told her the key of F. Pretty much just the 8 notes in the middle of the bass staff and a little below it. She chose Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

Wow, that thumbnail is atrocious. Click anyway. It's totally fun to watch the ASL at the same time you hear the joyous hymn.

She gave me the music she had arranged and sent me home to try to play it. I knew all but two notes, so I took it to my lesson and my teacher taught me the two missing notes. I gave Patrese the thumbs up and she made an oboe and a flute part with both a harmony and a melody. She told us to play it through three times with the boys trading off harmony and melody. So we did. We practiced that. We were feeling pretty decent about things going into this morning. THEN I went to my bassoon lesson.

And it was a disaster. I could hardly play a note. I squawked, I squealed, I couldn't play notes that hadn't been a problem in a long while. To make matters worse, I learned I had been using the wrong fingering for the highest note in the song. By the end of the lesson I still couldn't play that measure correctly. I was so distraught on the way home that I stopped at the church and went in and (literally) cried on Chris's shoulder. He said encouraging things.

I went home and spent another thirty minutes on it before concluding that the correct way, which sounded just a little better, more clear, than the cheater fingering I'd been using, was simply not going to work in time for the talent show. I played it through again using the cheater fingering. I played the cheater note and the good note next to each other. I made a decision.

The boys and I headed over to the church. We practiced our piece on the stage and I started to feel a little less nervous. Still really nervous, but less like making a run for the border. Patrese told me to remember it was not really about the music. It was really about a family making music together. That was a good reminder for me. It helped a lot. Max showed up with his sweetheart, Alexis, and that made things a little better. Then Alexis's parents showed up and that made things better. The show got underway, and soon it was our turn.

And we didn't suck. There were some very small mistakes, but overall, it was a complete success in the "family making music together" department. And not one person said, "Hey, that one high note. Not quite right. Are you sure you got the fingering right?"And I think somewhere in there is a lesson. I mean, I still DO need to learn the proper way to play that note. And also, I need to practice more, and also, when the lesson is going poorly I need to speak up and say, "this is not going well. Let's go look at that other page and come back to this in a few minutes," because I think that would have helped. Nevertheless when it became apparent that doing it perfectly wasn't going to happen, I went for doing it "good enough for this crowd" so that the twins and I could play a hymn together, instead of freaking out and refusing to perform at all. What was important in the end was that we sounded reasonably good together (because Patrese had arranged the music so we could, and because we practiced together a bunch) and that we each showed up for each other. We knew if we stayed together, we'd be okay. We knew if someone got a little ahead or behind the beat, the others would adjust when we got to the next half note. So when I missed the fingering on one note, you couldn't really tell because the twins were playing loudly enough to drown it out anyway. When Ben got lost for a moment and missed a measure, you couldn't really tell, because he joined us at the start of the next one. It was just the three of us making some music together and so, yay.

I recommend it. The next time it looks like your kid is just not feeling the love during practice time, grab a pot and a wooden spoon and offer to be the percussion while s/he practices. 

I really appreciate quieter days after days like today

This day was like freaky bipolar. Yay! Max's hearing is just fine! Boo-the super sweet physical therapist tried to kill me (why do I insist on believing her when she says, "a little discomfort.") and then I lost my car. And then I found it. And then the parking garage guy said, "Merry Christmas, I'll cover your missing 93 cents" but he said it like, "get out of my face, you disgust me, you irresponsible nimrod." And I would have given ANYTHING to have found a dollar somewhere in the car then, but I only had Lion cash and a credit card, so I had to drive away feeling like the ice scum in my wheel wells. Then I drove to my research site and there were exactly the right number of people who have agreed to participate in my research, which was half the number that we had planned, but which in the end, felt perfect. I drove home and then straight to the middle school to pick up the twins to go to swimming, which we did, right after we got someone to help me start the car with jumper cables. I got Chris a Yay! cake and then picked up the twins again and got them home for a bite to eat before the concert back at the middle school. The music was awesome. We have the most amazing music programs in State College and our kids completely benefit from it. But also? The pain from the PT earlier in the day. By the time I got home I was exhausted. Too exhausted to get up from my chair when Chris started Monsters University at 9:30 pm. I'm going to have to just float from one of the pool to the other in the morning. I hope Jill is driving. I hope tomorrow is not so exciting. 

This is going to be an Amazing Week

This week is so. many. things. It is a a birthday, a dissertation project milestone, the graduation of my my students and their students from the fall world languages program for elementary students, the twins first priesthood interviews, their 12th birthday, a visit from Mom and her friend to help celebrate those things, Max's fall play, being in charge of the flower committee for that play, being at all the performances to wrap and sell flowers, and etc. There really is more for the etc.

I was feeling more than a little overwhelmed about it all, especially since I would prefer to clear the schedule and just prepare for my committee meeting on Friday, but since I am a mother of three teens and wife to a double-majoring temporary undergrad, that's not happening. Instead I'll make a list of readings I want to revisit before then and have them in my backpack and look for times when I can read them as I have downtime between the other ts.

Then one of my visiting teachers snuck into my house and helped me with my dishes and left me a vase of flowers, which was so uncalled for and so welcome. The flowers are beautiful, really beautiful, and they're on my dining room table bringing me more joy.

And today I talked out my worries with two friends and I decided my sound track for this week is going to be Hymn #223 Have I Done Any Good in the World Today and my motto will be endure to the end, with the understanding that we LDS believe you're not doing it right if you sad sack and despair your way through things. No, enduring to the end means keeping the light of Christ in your heart, acting as he would have us act, finding moment after moment to be grateful, redistributing our blessings to meet the needs of others (okay, I wish this applied to the dentist appointment. I'd like to redistribute my fillings to others who might need them more, and I totally would it not for a life long fear of root canals.)

So we'll take things one day at a time, and at points, one hour at a time. Tomorrow is a day full of meetings and appointments. The dog needs a bath so badly. We've all stopped loving her fully because of her stink. Tomorrow she will be washed in the waters of Petco and arise again a pretty and sweet smelling dog. We're not shallow. This is some serious stink she got into at some point.

I will order the flowers. I'll make a list of readings I want to revisit before then and have them in my backpack and look for times when I can read them as I have downtime between the other things.

I will attend a meeting to plan a class I'm teaching next semester. I had a meeting with the professor running this meeting last week and we talked about al lot of the stuff at this meeting ahead of time and I had a chance to think aloud through whatever there was to separate wisdom from tradition. I'm better prepared to support the changes fully now. We also talked about where I am in the program and she said, "I actually found finishing the dissertation went quickly once the data was collected."

I'm thinking of putting that on a t-shirt and wearing it for my dissertation writing sessions.

I will submit a second job application. I've decided to graduate in August and work on finding us a good home program, a good place for the twins to attend high school, a good place for  Chris to finish his certification program and start teaching. This feels right. Unlike tomorrow's dentist appointment.

I will get three fillings. three.

Then I will pick up Milo from musical rehearsals and take him to flute. Then go back and pick up Ben from musical rehearsals and take them both to swimming. Then we will go home and do homework and eat something and collapse in to bed. Thank heavens Max can drive himself places.

But then there is Tuesday and the graduation and I have the opportunity to look back over another fall field experience and reflect on what this group taught me and what I need to fine tune if I do again next fall. That will be the next post, I think: What I Learn as a Teacher Educator, because I always do and I always find surprises. I love people who think they want to be teachers because it's not a decision lightly made anymore. It requires a certain amount of steel and my job is to help students find it and start using it to be the good they want in the world--since that's still the primary reason I hear students say they want to teach.

School Pictures. Why do they hurt so bad?

Milo (Age 11)

Ben (Age 11)

 

Someday when they are rich and famous disability studies professors they'll look back on these photos and have a good laugh at how accurately school pictures capture our nerdiness, which is too great to be only inner nerdiness. No sirree. We leave nerdiness everywhere we go, like a leaky bag of Fun Dip.

If I ruled the world...

There would be such a thing as a knitting sabbatical.

Admin: Alaska, this is your third knitting sabbatical you've submitted this year.
Alaska: I can't control these things, Ma'am. As Shakespeare's Benedick says with such anticipation, "The world must be peopled!" and in my case, having done my fair share of people-ing, "The itty-bitties must have handknit sweaters!"
Admin: But it's only March. When will you teach your classes?
Alaska: Just as soon as I run out of this baby bamboo/merino superwash blend.

Yeah. Not going to happen. Okay, what if I started each semester teaching my students to knit so by the end of the semester they had both a firm grasp on the difference between segregated and unsegregated ESL programs AND a knit and purl stitch? We could donate each semester's baby sweaters to the nearest refugee relocation NGO.

But today is Wednesday and Wednesdays are my best get things done day. Jill and I swam. There is laundry in the washer. The dog is spoiled and fed. The whole house (except the kitchen and bathrooms) is the cleanest it's been in ages (which pretty much took the whole summer to get to this point, with the carpet cleaner guy putting the finishing touches on yesterday) and my goal is to keep it this way until Thanksgiving. After that, who knows. But in the meantime, I need to tackle the bathrooms and kitchen this week. But not today.

Until it's time to go get Ben for oboe I'm working on final evals for the World Languages student teachers, some paper work for my dissertation project, and finishing touches on an article I hope to submit to a journal in two weeks.

It's really, really nice being in a clean house. I wish I were the sort of mother for whom keeping it that way came easily. I mean, assuming that meant I could keep the other good things about me like finding most teenagers charming and brave and thinking that teaching is an art, not a science, so it must always be assessed qualitatively, not quantitatively and being really, really sure that Institute class at church is the best. thing. ever.

I've been thinking lately how school is like my sons' swim team. But that will be fodder for another post.

Up the Down Staircase, rinse, repeat.

So you know, you come back down to the basement with two pieces of Halloween candy that Ben has given you and sit back down at the computer. You put on your headphones and hit play and that classical piece that you had playing ten minutes ago with the discord and the church bells starts up again and that's when you remember that you originally went upstairs for your Bahktin notes. Shoot.

We Didn't Start the Fire

I hope I can assume that anyone who might visit this blog is familiar with Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire.

If you google around, you can find some fun videos that match visuals to each line of the song. I've used them to demonstrate the difference between listening to the song alone and listening to it with visual aides for my teacher ed students who might otherwise not understand the huge difference multiple modes of instruction make to their emerging bilingual students (aka English language learners).

For me this fall has been unusually light. I've had some important stuff to work on for school, but I have fewer students to supervise this fall and fewer sections to teach and I'm not taking any classes, so I even had some goof-off time.

That's over. It's so over that in looking at my schedule for the next two weeks it reads an awful lot like the frenetic pace of WDSTF.

Now part of it is just bad luck. I have a lot to get done in the next two weeks to prepare for my proposal defense and that's just all there is to it. The twins' musical rehearsals start. Thankfully, they're only in the ensemble cast, but Monday is the first rehearsal and they can't miss it. So is Milo's flute lesson. I haven't figured out how that one will work out yet.

I have a lot of prep work to get done before Christmas so I can start my dissertation project in January, and I learned on Thursday that it has  to be done as soon as possible since the school board in the district I want to work with doesn't meet in December (this is really common among central PA schools, anyway. They meet twice in November and skip December.)

The World Languages field experience has a week and a half left to it, so I'm in the middle of final formal evaluations, final lesson plan feedback, getting signatures on all the graduation certificates from TPTB, and making sure we have enough space for all the parents to gather for the graduation day.

Ben and Milo turn 12 two weeks from tomorrow. This is a big deal in our church. It's not a lot for me to plan (they're hoping to have two friends over for a sleepover) but there is definitely some planning involved and it's feeling like more than it is with the other stuff crowding in.

And Max is about to go into tech week(s)...heck, because the performances of The Birds at the high school is the same weekend as the twins' birthdays and of course, I'm the flower committee. Thank. heavens. that is a light responsibility.

Thanksgiving is going to be a cake walk in comparison. In fact, I hearby swear I'm not even going to think about it until Nov. 18. Except to buy groceries at Giant so I can get the free turkey. Also it  helps in writing this out that I can see that for half the list the issue is really just for the next two weeks.

And a bunch of writing to do, but that's like saying "also some laundry and dishes."

I'm going to need a new play list. With Eye of the Tiger or something.

It's just two weeks. I can do anything for two weeks (okay, not tennis, but you get me).

Blog Sweet Blog

I'll be writing again over here instead of on Facebook for awhile. I have a lot to get done this year and Facebook, for all its good qualities (frequent pictures of good friends) is such a time suck for me.

Nevertheless, I do love to stay in touch with family and friends, and since I am so consistently pathetic about calling anyone (at least until Dad calls my cell phone and says, "Thought you might be dead. We're leaving next week for a four week tour of Portugal. You might want to call this weekend and argue otherwise.") blogging is my best bet again.

I might have forgotten how to imbed photos in my posts though.

Nope.

So a quick catch up seems in order.

Alaska: Working on her dissertation. And always the dishes. On the look out in case someone might have thrown away a bassoon they aren't using anymore. Still drives too fast. Currently blonde. At least my eye color is legit. Swimming three days a week at the Y with Jill in the hopes that someday I might fit back in my cute clothes.

Chris: Worked previous five years for a software company. When they laid off most of their staff (75%) at the start of the sequester last Spring, he was at a cross roads. He decided to go back to school with the hopes of eventually teaching/directing theatre/English.

Max: Senior in high school. Applying to four colleges and his LDS mission. He'll do the LDS mission first and then college, but applying for college on your mission is tricky and frowned on, so they apply now, then defer enrollment. Happy kid. Dating Alexis. Alexis the Awesome.

Ben: 6th grade. High baritone already and he's not quite 12. Plays oboe and cello. Is hoping for a speaking role in the school musical but will do anything, really. Agreeable, helpful fellow who has lots of ideas about how to get things done and tries not to get in trouble telling others what they should do. In another few years this will work out well for him.

Milo: 6th grade. Voice is slipping down. Not as obvious as Ben. Plays flute. Reads constantly. Is hoping we might let him homeschool himself someday. Also interested in the play, but I could see him being really, really happy on set design. We're taking Brienne Brown's water color class together in two weeks.

Emily: Will be 10 years old in March. Still a friendly, loving senior poodle, but a little more neurotic and a little more likely to pee on the carpet. Hate that last part. Still the best. dog. ever.

Still in State College, PA. Still in love with Pennsylvania.
 

Writing

There are, as near as I can figure, four primary activities of an academic. They read a lot. They read and read and read and never quite get caught up with the reading. There is far more information than we can all process. Which is why we spend a lot of time talking to others about it. We talk out our ideas, we talk over your ideas, we talk about teaching and students. We complain about not having time to write. Which is the third activity. We write a lot. We write research reports and lit reviews and articles for practitioner (teacher-oriented) magazines. We write syllabi and comments on students papers. We write power points. We write an ungodly amount of emails. Finally, we teach. We teach anywhere from two to four courses a semester, depending on the kind of University you go to work at. Bigger research loads = lesser teaching load.

So recently I've been following the advice of Paul Silvia who says, in so many words, stop complaining about writing, make the time, write, then forget about it.

This approach has been remarkably productive for me. I've finished one project that has been hanging over my head since August. I've mostly finished my Candidacy paper. I'm making good progress on the first article I want to submit to a peer-reviewed journal.




Simple but inspirational. Well worth the $8.

This may cut into my knitting time

So last semester I did some research along side of my student-teacher supervising, and as I would collect data, I would stash it in a few places, like a dog burying a bone it knows it will want later. I had emails and written feedback of written lessons and written feedback of observations and a lot of videos of student-teachers teaching. I had their written reflections and videos that they recorded to exemplify one aspect or another of teaching. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Alaska, why weren't you coding it as you went along?" and my answer is that the design of the project required that I didn't really know which students were participating, so I couldn't code anything until I knew.

But now I now, so I ordered an external hard drive of epic proportions and started to move all of the data on to it in neat, organized folders, thinking this might take 8 or 9 hours, but . . . I was so wrong.

It turns out that a) at least one of the folder bones is just plain gone. Thankfully every attachment sent by email is kept my our campus web mail, and therefore, I have everything back in one form or another, but retrieving them meant going back through over 300 emails to find them all. b) There were issues with mac v. pc and I lost precious time translating files into forms everything on my pc could read. I needed everything on the pc so I could use NVivo 9 to organize it all, but holy cow . . . what a chore.

So, I feel hopelessly behind now in my coding and completely overwhelmed by the amount of data, but I am gritting my teeth and plowing forward. The one good thing--it's forcing me to choose between coding EVERYTHING and finding those items that will reveal the most about what I want (i.e., I found myself going to great pains to record a series of emails about the cultural content of a lesson. This is not unrelated to classroom management, because lessons that do not include material accessible to students (e.g., it's above their heads in some way, they have insufficient background knowledge, it's taught in a language they don't understand) are inevitably classroom management problems waiting to happen. But I really don't need to go that broard. I think I can show what I want to show just looking at teacher response to student misbehavior--and that makes me breathe a sigh of relief because that means I do not need to look back at all the written lesson plans until I suspect that lesson design was the cause of the problem and I need to support that assertion. Does that make sense? (Nod your head, sip your drink, look interested.)

Anyway, this is actually HUGELY helpful to me. It helps me see the wisdom in my advisor's comment that going into the (new) research project for this spring, I might want to focus on only three class periods with these students--versus trying to code every minute of the 16 to 20 sessions that we will meet.

But in the meantime, between teaching two classes, taking three classes, and working with the data monster of my MA Thesis, it's going to be a very, very busy semester. Maybe not so much time for knitting.

Helen Mary Harrington Black Humbarger

February 11, 1912 - January 16, 2011

We all miss her already, but you couldn't wish for a better exit from the stage of life. This one-time director and college-level teacher of theatre kept us company all day long during our most recent family get-together on the farm. Dozing off as needed, and watching thoughtfully while awake, she seemed to kind of like it when a great-grandchild or grandchild or daughter would take up the spot left at the end of the couch next to her feet. I'm not clear on the events or the time line, but I know that not long after we all left, she stopped wanting any food, sleeping more and more often, and finally refusing water, too. This sort of a goodbye to life is a gentle exit, free from discomfort. It is not a rapid exit, allowing time for her children to return once more to keep her (and each other) company. Her "children" (all grown with children and grandchidren of their own) by her second marriage were also able to come and say goodbye.

Helen was married to my grandfather for over 50 years. She raised a son and three daughters. She did the sort of hosting and traveling expected of the wife of a professor in those days. When I went to Ohio Wesleyan, they were mostly at home in Ohio or at the farm in Indiana, and I have written before about how much they meant to me while I was there.

I will link to an obituary when it is posted. Here it is: Obituary of Grandma Helen

I cannot post about Granma's passing without saying that the peace of mind and care she received in this past decade would not have been possible without the incredible sacrifice of time and energy on the part of her daughter, my youngest Aunt, Charlotte. Charlotte's care meant that Granma had both a trusted confidante and a highly trained personal nurse daily. It meant she could stay in a very nice assisted-living home even when dementia took a toll in the last few years. We didn't have to worry about Grandma with Charlotte at the wheel. I know we are all grateful for that.

I'm Awake

Tonight our quadrafire pellet stove malfunctioned and the ash box ignited. From the pattern of pellets in the ash box, my best guess is that the cleaning rod at the bottom of the crucible jammed partly open, causing the stove to attempt to light pellets, and feed pellets, continuously into the crucible. Smoldering pellets fell into the ashbox, and eventually there was way more fire in the stove than the stove could handle.

Eventually the whole house would have filled with smoke. I suppose the consequences of that could have been pretty devastating.

But it was okay because both of our smoke alarms have working batteries. I woke up and ran downstairs, took about a minute to assess the problem, followed my instincts or inspiration and got the stove to stop fanning the flames, got Chris up to help me, he opened the basement doors, and using my two best oven mitts, I got the ashbox out the garage doors and tossed the whole thing in the snow. Even with the oven mitts, that thing was hot.

Then I went back inside closed all the doors against the billowing smoke, and going back around out the front door, grabbed a shovel and piled snow on the smoking ash box. We're probably going to need a new ash box.

At this point the whole house still stinks of smoke and that acrid burning plastic smell. I think that's the exterior trim on the stove.

The front door is wide open, the back door wide open, some of the windows wide open.

Here's what I learned: the kids can sleep right through the blaring smoke alarms. I won't stay out past their bedtime without an adult babysitter who is going to stay up.

For years I've worried that in the event of a fire I wouldn't be able to wake my deep sleeping husband. Turns out he wakes right up the moment I say softly to him, in a certain tone of voice, "I need your help." Maybe that's the Spirit. Maybe that's 15 years of marriage. Probably a combination of both. All I know is I've hollared at him when a sick little boy was puking all over the place and he woke not knowing his own name.

Ugh. The smell is awful. I wonder if I should get out fans. It's been an hour now and I definitely want to go to sleep. Think I will go check the perimeter, the ash box, and if everything looks okay, start closing windows and doors and head back to bed.

Heesh

I just have a hard time making time to blog during the semester. There's so much going on and the day starts so early, goes full speed ahead, and ends with a quiet house and me trying to get a few minutes of quiet time.

Today was exciting. It started out great and it got better.

First, it was Ben and Milo's birthday. So we started the day with hugs and congratulations. They got to take cupcakes to school to celebrate and I managed to dodge the rain and get on the bus before the downpour.

Then I got the better part of an article about teaching math conceptually read before the first World Languages class. This was the first class since their student-teaching experience ended last Thursday, which meant for Michelle and I, a rediscovery of how much of our own classwork we could get done with all the extra time freed up by *not* typing up observation notes and lesson plan feedback. Still, it was good to see them all this morning. Working with undergrads has some things in common with working with fourth-graders. You get attached in no time.

After class we (Michelle and I) headed back to the office to eat lunch (she brought a yummy soup for us both) and to chat and to try to get more reading done. She headed off to her afternoon class and I fetched my car and went to get my mail, hoping for Max's report card. No luck, but we did get a lovely advent calendar from Grandma Donna and Grandpa Richard and the twins got a stack of birthday cards. I put those all aside for the future, triaged the bills, and headed over to the high school to finance Max and a friend who were carbo-loading (that's a joke. They're 14-yr-old boys. They just food load. Any food.) before theater rehearsal started. From there it was back to campus, having passed the magic hour (4 pm) when I no longer have to park in the next county with my student parking pass--I can park for free in the parking garage right next to the building where my evening class is.

Right before class I got an email from one of my advisors saying that an idea I have for a research project is not half bad and we should get together soon to go over it. I need a 1-credit independent study with this fellow to round out my ESL-certification requirements, so I had come up with an idea this weekend. I thought he might say no, because I have to work on my thesis this spring, too, but no, we'll meet and maybe my next research project will be with elementary ELLs. That would rock :)

We had class, it went well, and then I gave Michelle a ride out to her car (it started to rain buckets) and then I headed over to the church where Chris was waiting in the hallway with his reading material. He is the best ward mission leader ever. We hung out and talked and soaked up the happiness of the church building while the twins did cub scouts and ate birthday cupcakes. Then Chris ran over to the high school and got Max and I took Ben and Milo and friend's daughter home. When Chris and Max got home, Max gave Ben and Milo their birthday cards (+ Wii points) and performed for them an original rap he wrote to commemorate the occasion of their 9th birthday. We will try to record it later this week. Right now he needed to get some homework done and then collapse into bed.

There were lots of messages from loving family on the answering machine for the twins and they loved that. There voice mail on my phone for them and they loved that. And there was a call from California from Grandma Donna and Grandpa Richard and they loved that. Tomorrow night we'll have our "official" family party with Grandma Gaye and the rest of their cards and presents, but tonight was good, too.

Then we all went to bed, but when my head got to thinking instead of sleeping and Chris fell asleep listening to me talk about stuff (he gets up an hour earlier than I do to take Max to seminary every morning-trust me, I didn't take it personally) I got up again to go write some thoughts down. Then, just for the heck of it, I checked the high school's website and after signing it I found Max's report card. And lo and behold--it was all manner of As. Regular As, A-'s, and a genuine A+.

Any sleepy feelings I might have had went skidding out the window and I texted Grandpa and Grandma in California (because it was still a decent hour there) to tell them the good news. I'm so proud of all the hard work Max has put into this quarter. He really has made a tremendous effort to do his best, to improve his writing and his homework consistency, and I am ever so proud of him. We don't pay for As or use other "rewards" because we think those suck the intrinsic motivation out of school. We want him to set high standards because he knows he can meet them and it feels good to succeed, not because he'll get a wad of cash for it (and anyway, I can't afford those grades. He's got 8 periods of classes--no lunch. For that I could buy him a new cell phone and have change. I'm not doing that either.)

But we might take him out to lunch. A bottomless pit of french fries and a bacon burger and unlimited peanuts at Five Guys and an embarrassing stream of "We love you"s and "We're so proud of you"s. That's a good lunch, I think.

And now I should really attempt to go to sleep. Probably if I stop playing on the computer (and stop trying to cram for the graduate-school version of a vocabulary quiz) I'll blink and wake up at 7am to the alarm :)

Tomorrow is Wednesday and Wednesdays are my qual methods class, getting ready for the twins' birthday party, an hour of speech therapy for them, dinner, cake, and presents :) Another good day, don't you think?

Only two more days till curtain goes up. They do a school preview of The Winter's Tale at 10 am and then the actual performances Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday matinee. Grandma Gaye and Grandma Judy will each go this weekend with their respective offspring. Then it's full speed ahead into Thanksgiving break. This year we're going to Philly to be with family there :) We're getting a hotel room Wednesday night at some variation of the hotel Marriot chain, and coming back Thursday evening. By this time two weeks from now, we'll have a Christmas tree in the corner. Good times :)

Gratitude

I don't often think about it anymore, but tonight I did--remembered sitting in our driveway in Minnesota in one of a series of cars that Honda gave Chris to drive around his five-state district--we had just gotten back from a date night, or maybe we were just leaving to go on it, but the topic of conversation was the most recent traumatic conversation I'd had with Max's teacher. We decided then and there, it was just before Christmas, that we would finish out the school year--because the twins were barely one and because we believed that Max should finish what he started--but then we would homeschool him. Max couldn't seem to get a grip on his behavior at school, and the teachers--well it was just one crazy conversation after another. Max hadn't had a truly great teacher since preschool. We were tired of it. We felt "they" were creating a self-fullfilling prophecy with Max. They expected him to misbehave--and he did.

So we homeschooled, and while there was much that was wonderful about it--it was truly the most satisfying teaching I have ever done, and he learned a lot--our family is not ideally designed for homeschooling. There came a time when I felt that the damage had been undone, that Max was ready to give school another shot, and so we tried the Charter school. Since then, each year has been a little better than the one that came before it. And each parent-teacher conference season got a little easier than the one that came before it. At some point he stopped being the gifted chatty kid who couldn't stay in his seat and he started being the gifted outgoing leader who teachers missed when his seat was empty. (Ben and Milo are more like those wolf cubs on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Even when they're biting the teacher wolf's tail, she's still kind of bemused by them. I've never had a rough p/t conference for them. If you don't know the show I'm talking about, you're too young to be reading this blog anyway.)

Tonight was a choir concert at the high school. I've been to a lot of school choir concerts. I sang in them when I was in high school (in Mass, not in CA), and Max has been in choir in school since 5th grade. None of them prepared me for what I saw tonight. The choir director at State High is unbelievably professional. He is warm, he is brilliant, and he evokes from ordinary kids extraordinary sounds. Only 7 weeks into the school year, I heard the best choir concert of my life tonight. And my kid, my tall, funny, smart guy with the fabulous hair, was there loving it all.

I am so--words are inadequate to express the depth of my gratitude that Max HAS this. He wakes up and goes to morning seminary and rushes to school because when you are a bright kid and someone truly challenges you to learn more, do more, think in new ways, solve a problem worth solving, it's like the best cold spring water on a hot day down a parched throat. It's exciting.

I feel silly gushing like this. Adolescence has proved to me that it's a wild ride with big ups and big downs and there have been periods when I have thought maybe I'm not cut out for it (but, Chris is pretty good at the big-kid part, and he wouldn't let me give notice), and so I get that we've got a long way yet to go with this whole project.

But when you're building something as important as the mind, body, and soul of a young man, it's an incredible advantage to have good tools to do it with. I'm so grateful that he's at a place where when he chooses to stretch, to learn, to grow, that he has so many good options. Great options. I am so grateful.

Wednesday Night

I am soooo tired and I want nothing more than to go to sleep, but I've a wicked case of heartburn tonight and laying down only makes it worse, so while I wait for the zantac to do its thing, I thought I would try to post a quick blog entry.

We're having a good fall here in the Hults household. Max has taken to State High like Emily takes to a bucket of brand new tennis balls, and State High seems to like him back. After emphasizing to all the freshpeople that they SHOULD try out for the fall play, but they would NOT get cast--they ended up casting three freshpeople--including Max, who got a great part. Although morning seminary at church starts at still dark o'clock, he (and his trusted driver, Chris) haven't missed a morning yet. They have a dedicated teacher who is far more chipper at that hour than I am. (I get to drive if Chris is out of town on business.) He's doing well in his classes, especially Geometry, and we are just so proud of him we can hardly stand it.

School for me is crazy busy. There's a lot to do as both a Graduate Assistant and for my classes. I honestly don't know how I'd do my research for the Master's Thesis I need to write if I weren't also taking the Qualitative Methods course this fall. Everything I'm learning in there I have to immediately turn around and apply to my research project.

Ben and Milo are rolling along in third grade. They're still doing speech with Penn State, and that's been the hardest part to fit in the schedule. I can get them to their therapy appointments, but I keep forgetting to have them do homework for it when we are doing the rest of their homework.

Emily hates being alone during the day while we're all gone. I totally get that. I hate that she can't come with me to school, too.

Chris has two trips coming up and I'm so grateful to have Gaye's help while he is gone. I did one week when both Chris and Gaye were out of town and it was really all just too much--and that was before Max's play rehearsals started.

I'll try to post more soon. It's late and time to try again to go to sleep :)

Beginnings

There is something about the start of a school year that flips all of my cookies. I love the new school supplies, those few weeks when you can find a pen in the first place you look, and the chatter from the kids about new friends, new teachers, new challenges. Max likes all of his new teachers but is sufficiently awed by their apparent zero tolerance policy for missing homework.

If you haven't seen the back-to-school pictures Chris took this year, log onto facebook and go look in his photos. Charming. We'll order prints of those and skip the school pictures (well, the kids will still go dressed to look good so they show up nice in the yearbook or whatever, but that's it. They just cost too much to put up with the poor results. Ben and Milo are at that age where sitting in front of a backdrop cloth makes them bare their teeth like preteen wolves and Max is at that age where he knows Chris just takes a better picture.)



Oh my heck. I see that smile and it's all I can do not to just pull down the moon for that boy.

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Here's the shot of the shawl as artfully displayed by the fair staff. (Okay, yeah, that's a wire hanger, but I think it's a BLUE wire hanger. So there's that.)

At least the color is more true.

So I'm midway through the second week of the semester and I realize it could all go to heck, but sometimes good things happen to decent people, and so I am just going to go ahead and say it: this may be the best semester ever.

I have this silly little course I have to take as part of a graduation requirement. It only meets two Monday evenings a month, and instead of being just a check off box, I have learned something new and quite useful in the two classes I've attended so far. It's just a one-credit course, so there's next-to-nothing in the way of homework and yet--it's taught by a truly talented instructor. I know, right?

Tuesday evenings is my Vygotsky in Education class. Taught by a professor really incredibly adept at guiding discussion, it's a great group. LOTS of class participation. In it's sister course last fall I found a truly compelling theory through which to explore more ideas in education and I'm looking forward to that kind of growth again. It's a ton of reading, but it's so worth it.

Wednesday mid-day is a Qualitative Methods course that the professor tried to get me to drop because it's not supposed to be for Master's students. It's for second year doctoral students. I resisted and she let me stay. I'm so glad! I wanted it for guiding me in how to do the research I want to do for my master's thesis and that seems to be exactly what I'm going to learn to do. Plus out of thirty of us (HUGE class for this level. We'll break out into two groups for 2 out of 3 hours of the class.) there are two other Masters students.

The students I'll be observing this semester are a smart and talented bunch. They're young, but most aspiring teachers are. I'm really enjoying observing their classes.

_______________

When I came back to my knitting this summer, I rediscovered all the projects I'd abandoned and the general feeling I have about them is "Wow, THIS is great yarn! And what a great pattern!" It's very satisfying to finish unfinished business. Here are fingerless mittens for me:



Milo


Ben


Am I not blessed beyond all that I deserve? I am.

When the phone rings after 10pm, I answer it.

Emily called me from the tractor pull (that could be the first sentence of a novel, don't you think? And it's Emily R. Not Emily-the-model/poodle.)

and told me the shawl has a first place AND Best of Show ribbon (for the Needlecraft sections). Judging was this morning. I didn't even know there was a Best of Show ribbon. I admit to kind of hoping for the Best Hand Knitted, which carries with it a $10 gift certificate to Knitters Underground, but Best in Show seems a little over the top for someone who couldn't even figure out the right entrance to the fair on Thursday (I did a lot of walking. Let's leave it at that.) I admit to a certain amount of disbelief, which might be a first for me. Emily is no stranger to a fair and I don't think she would have mixed up the ribbons, but I admit to a feeling like, "Now I gotta get over to the fair and see it for myself." I'm not going till Monday though.

So my purpose in entering the shawl in the fair was this--it's pretty. Everywhere I went knitting on this thing this summer, people would come up and want to talk about the shawl. What are you doing? Is that knitting? How are you putting the beads on it? Prettttyyyyy . . . .

And I started to want a souvenier of the shawl. I took some pictures, of course.

But they don't really represent the shawl. You can't see that the shawl is soft, even with the beads in it. You can't see that it is has a sheen to it. And the color--the color is completely wrong. It's a deep juniper green--like pine needles, really. Not nearly-teal blue.

So I thought, well, I'll enter it in the fair, and maybe I'll get a ribbon. And I'll have the ribbon and Grandma will get the shawl (because it was always supposed to be for her, and because, I already have a feathery-soft silk/wool blend shawl with tiny beads, and because I don't usually win anything beyond "most improved" and I thought that maybe this time I might).

It's only $1 to enter an exhibit in the Grange Fair. That sounds like a deal. First prize wins $4, so you make a $3 profit--only I didn't realize that they charge you full entrance fee and parking fee the day you go turn in the entry, and again when you go pick it up. Add in the day Gaye and I actually take the kids to the fair, and it's soon $27 just for ME and the car. The ladies at the exhibit explained to me my options and I went back and got the weekly pass, saving me $2. So now my total output to enter the shawl is $26.

If Emily is right (and again, she is likely to be, I just have this disbelief thing going on), then I get two ribbons and $4 for first class and $20 for Best in Show. How cool is that? Charlotte says I should donate the $4 back to the fair, but she didn't say anything about the Best in Show. If I won that, then I am keeping it to cover a fraction of what I will probably spend on funnel cakes and lemonade.

But you know what? If I really did get a First Place and a Best in Show ribbon? I'm going to totally smile for the rest of the day. I will walk the two miles back to the Handicapped Parking spots with Grandma Gaye ('cause, you know, why put the HP near the food and exhibits? At least the scooter rental is right there next to the HP.) and I will smile.

And I would be totally hooked. It would be September 2 and I would already be planning what to knit for next year's fair.

Hindsight is 20-20

So the very next morning (after the last post) I proceeded to miss the twins flight. I have flown about as often as a flight attendant at various points in my life, and I have never missed a flight. But I did. I couldn't get the in-room alarm clock to work (I figured it out Saturday night. Let's just say the cheap piece of plastic isn't user friendly. I'm 42. I know how to work an alarm clock.), and I have never tried to use my cell phone alarm, so I scheduled a wake-up call with the front desk. And they didn't write down (and they don't use automated wake-up calls at the airport Marriot in Baltimore. Go figure.). So Ben actually woke up first--slightly less than an hour before take off. The amazing thing is that we were at check-in 20 minutes before departure. The bummer is that Saturday morning, 20 minutes before departure with unaccompanied minors, is not sufficient time.

The only blessing was that they gave me credit for trying and rescheduled the twins without additional cost. (And at the other end, they refunded Mom and Dad their money for an expensive tour in Sacramento that they would now miss.) Okay, okay, there was one other blessing--Emily's dogsitter was wonderful and cheerfully charged me more than State College's GNP to keep her another day. (Her prices were totally reasonable for Baltimore. They're just way out of my budget and triple what I pay for dogsitting in State College.) Again, I whine about the cost, but she was magnificent and I did get to have Emily with me for the rest of the week.

Everything else about it sucked. I felt like poo on the bottom of a debutante's shoe, that's how low I felt. The kids needed a nonstop or a "direct" (direct means you can stop 200 times if you want as long as the kids don't get off the plane). Direct sucks, but direct is really all you can get on Southwest, and even then--only once a day from Baltimore to Oakland. So that meant another day and night in a town I really can't afford. Suckville. I took a page from my step-mom's playbook and bought bread and peanutbutter at Target. With the money I saved on breakfast and lunch, I felt I could splurge and take the twins to Five Guys for dinner. (I was wrong, even with me only ordering a little baconburger--no fries, etc., it was still too much, but I didn't figure that out till the order was in, so I just took it in the wallet and we did it anyway.)

I discovered my cell phone charger was at home and all the calls had drained the battery down to zero. My cell phone is Verizon-made and since I'm already in the upgrade-eligible zone, you can guess that they don't even make it anymore. So the Verizon store near the airport had one charger left. In spite of the fact that the saleswoman was standing in front of me holding the charger, us literally three feet apart, she said she couldn't sell it to me because it wasn't in their inventory. And no, she couldn't put it in inventory, only Big Daddy Verizon could do that, and that happens like once a month or something. Whatever. I went to two other stores, they didn't have one, I drove back to the store and started talking in tongues to the store manager (something I don't ordinarily do, but this was soooooo not an ordinary day). He wouldn't take cash for it, but offered to charge the stupid phone for me in the store.

So the twins and I hung out for 20 minutes to get the phone charged. Now, technically, the battery read full when 20 minutes was up, but either I made so many telephone calls when it was charged again that I drained it in a matter of hours, or it wasn't fully charged, so that also factored into going to Five Guys. It was two doors down from the Verizon store. I gave them the phone to charge again while we went to eat. This time the charge lasted 24 hours. My phone battery is usually better than that, so maybe it's good they didn't sell it to me. Maybe it was a sucky charger. Makes sense. Don't buy a charger when you're spending the day in Suckville, where-ever that may be.

Anyway, like any sensible woman, at this point I called my mother. I was scheduled to see her the following night in Columbus. I turned the charger problem over to her. I knew she'd drive to West Virginia to get it if she had to. Indeed, she had one by noon the next day. It was a car charger, not a wall charger, but it also has a USB port in the bulky thing that sticks in the car charging port. So you can charge your ipod while you charge your phone. It worked really well. Taking only slightly longer than the original charger (which was still at home this whole time), it charged my phone fully enough to last the next three days without recharging. The phone was dead by Thursday, but I was back on the road today, anyway, so only one day was lost.

By 11:30 I was back at the hotel. Chris was handling the issue of how to pay for the extra night at the hotel. They wouldn't comp us the night's stay, but they did cover the cost of all the phone calls I had to make at $1,000/min while the phone was dead after I missed the flight. Ben and Milo, turning water into wine, jumped into their swim trunks, found cute little Estonian girls at the swimming pool and cannon balled their way into the life guard's heart (yeah, totally, in Maryland every pool must have a lifeguard).

That night we all went to bed early. I asked for a wake-up call again and set three different additional alarms. So of course, I woke up 15 minutes before the first one went off. I cancelled three and let the fourth go off just for the principle of the thing. We got to the airport two and a half hours early--it was Sunday morning, so it was only us and everyone else who really HAD to fly. We got through security in 5 minutes. Everyone was polite and on time. Ben and Milo had the crew AND the pilots eating out of their hands before they even walked down the ramp towards the plane (the crew and pilots were boarding at the same time as the three unaccompanied minors. The third kid was a year or two older than Ben and Milo, but their new best friend by the time he got off in Los Angeles.)

After I watched the plane take off, I ran to the car, raced to the dog sitters, and drove at my usual leisurely pace (I don't know why I always beat the Google map estimate by at least an hour. Then again, I don't know why everyone else on the road is driving so slowly.) to Columbus, Ohio.

After I got us all unpacked, Judy (mother), Bill (her tenant), and I went to hear the OSU alumni band, which, at the risk of offending all my fellow Penn Staters, was wonderful. They were funny and talented and had alumni baton twirlers (male and female) as well as band alumni going back 60+ years. One of their pieces is a medley that goes through 11 out of 12 of the "Big Ten" fight songs. Helpfully, two members of the band hold up signs to tell us which school's song they're playing at that time. Alumni from that school stand up at that point and everyone applauds for them. Of course I stood up for Penn State. I was the only one, but I still got the applause. (There were other schools for which only one current or former student was present, too, so I didn't feel badly in the least.) Anyway, I expected to be bored by the concert after all the drama of the past few days, but in part due to the relief of having heard that the boys had landed safely in Oakland, and in part due to the unmistakable zeal and talent of the band, I had a great time.

We went home, Bill cooked steaks, Judy made carrot-slaw (I don't know, but it wasn't bad at all)
and then Emily and I crashed.

The next morning my stomach was bothering me, so after visiting a little longer with Judy, I headed off to Indiana to meet up with Charlotte and Granny. I got there around 1:00 pm, made a simple lunch, and then passed out on the couch to nap some more. Charlotte and Granny arrived around 4pm, and the rest of the week is a happy, happy blur of knitting, visiting, canning, napping, and if the phone's battery gradually died over the course of the week, mine was being fully recharged.

As much as Saturday sucked? (And it did.) That's how awesome the rest of my off-the-grid week was. I never thought to take photos of my awesome Aunt Charlotte and Gracious Grandmother Helen while I was there. In fact, the only photo I took all week was off a bird-shaped tomato, but I finished the Gothic Leaf Shawl (which I will block, enter at the county fair, and then ship back to Grandma after the fair is over), and Charlotte and I canned a bushel and a half of tomatoes into delicious salsa and tomato soup. Whoo-hoo!

The drive home was long today. I left around 8:30 am and got home around 6:15 pm, which means that even though I hit construction in two places and had to crawl along, I still beat the Google time by an hour. Go, me.

And now, it is time for me to go do what I came home to do--pick up my son from Shakespeare rehearsal. Tomorrow evening Chris will bring the twins home, happy and joyous from a week with their grandparents. We will all five be back home, safe and sound. Life is grand.