I knew this day was coming; it had to be inevitable. But I didn't expect it this soon.
I typed away on my laptop at home this morning on a project I wanted to have posted to a course site by noon, and I got it just the way I wanted it. But the website had timed out, I forgot to copy the text before I saved it, and saving cast it off somewhere into the ether. I had to do it over.
I got to the office a while ago, handled some immediate business, and opened a new file, determined this time to capture the text in Word and copy it over to the website, thereby skirting the possibility of being timed out. (And Word has gotten pretty good about recovering documents if something happens before I save.)
But it's turning into a miserable experience. I'm sitting at my desk, typing on my full-size, high quality keyboard with my dual 19-inch monitors to display my work (and lots of other stuff if I want it, like, right now, this blog...), and I hate it.
I want my laptop back. And my easy chair. And my dog.
When I first got a laptop, Soldier Son had told me I might as well get rid of my PC; I stubbornly held onto it for a couple of years, at least, although I seldom turned it on. Until today, I have often bounced into the office, ready to go to work on the nice office PC with the dual monitors and plenty of space to blow things up to as big as I wanted them to be. (And better speakers if I wanted to watch a video.)
But SS was right: I thought I'd be able to regenerate the missing file in a matter of minutes on the "business" equipment, but today I officially want my laptop back.
And I have miles to go before I sleep.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The price of their toys
In a former life, I had a spouse who used to say the difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.
That came back to me last weekend as I visited with one of my nieces at our family reunion in central Texas. Since I know Arge is the COO for a homebuilder in Chicago and that industry hasn't done well anywhere for a couple of years, I had asked her about her job situation. I'm pretty sure her income is well within the six-figure range, although her personal ethics and the situation in the industry could easily have dropped it somewhat from the figure I once heard. As a teacher, my personal take on income is that all we need is enough money to pay the rent and buy the groceries, and anything above that is pretty much gravy; a lot of mine goes toward helping my kids with the wrinkles that come up in their lives.
Arge's goes to toys. A little while earlier, I had heard her swapping details with my Number One Son about the new power boat she and her husband bought earlier this summer, a fine little craft that I'm sure cost more than my house is worth, even with the boating market farther suppressed than housing.
I'm too slow, of course, to see the irony of the situation I was in: In another life, Arge is quite well-to-do; much of the time outside of office hours (and commuting in Chicago), she spends traveling to the condo where her boat is stored and she and her husband zip up and down a lake at speeds over 100 mph. She wears four diamond studs that are each twice the size of the engagement ring I once wore. Her life is pretty much a celebration.
But in the life I was in, she was sitting next to me in a $10 lawn chair from Wal-Mart in the peanut gallery of a washers tournament in my brother's backyard. Her husband was one of four players tossing a stack of $2 washers from one end of the court to the other, parking his rum and diet cola on a stand my brother had built from scrap lumber and a discarded 12-inch floor tile. We stayed there—some combination of four to eight players and six or eight folks in the peanut gallery—until nearly 4 in the morning.
I love my niece, and I always speak of her with great pride because I feel lucky to share a few genes with her. And I love it that she appreciates her roots enough to be the first to show up at our family reunion every year. And I love it that her husband determinedly joins the washers match even when his foot is so tender from gout that he can barely wear his shoes.
But for all the expense of their toys, it's my brother—whose toys don't have to go far beyond the accouterments of a washer game—who shows me the difference between the men and the boys. I have no idea what my brother's financial situation is, but I'd be willing to bet it's not very different from mine. But he opens his home, he opens his heart, and he reminds us that paying the rent and the groceries is about all it takes to make life good.
I like the price of his toys.
That came back to me last weekend as I visited with one of my nieces at our family reunion in central Texas. Since I know Arge is the COO for a homebuilder in Chicago and that industry hasn't done well anywhere for a couple of years, I had asked her about her job situation. I'm pretty sure her income is well within the six-figure range, although her personal ethics and the situation in the industry could easily have dropped it somewhat from the figure I once heard. As a teacher, my personal take on income is that all we need is enough money to pay the rent and buy the groceries, and anything above that is pretty much gravy; a lot of mine goes toward helping my kids with the wrinkles that come up in their lives.
Arge's goes to toys. A little while earlier, I had heard her swapping details with my Number One Son about the new power boat she and her husband bought earlier this summer, a fine little craft that I'm sure cost more than my house is worth, even with the boating market farther suppressed than housing.
I'm too slow, of course, to see the irony of the situation I was in: In another life, Arge is quite well-to-do; much of the time outside of office hours (and commuting in Chicago), she spends traveling to the condo where her boat is stored and she and her husband zip up and down a lake at speeds over 100 mph. She wears four diamond studs that are each twice the size of the engagement ring I once wore. Her life is pretty much a celebration.
But in the life I was in, she was sitting next to me in a $10 lawn chair from Wal-Mart in the peanut gallery of a washers tournament in my brother's backyard. Her husband was one of four players tossing a stack of $2 washers from one end of the court to the other, parking his rum and diet cola on a stand my brother had built from scrap lumber and a discarded 12-inch floor tile. We stayed there—some combination of four to eight players and six or eight folks in the peanut gallery—until nearly 4 in the morning.
I love my niece, and I always speak of her with great pride because I feel lucky to share a few genes with her. And I love it that she appreciates her roots enough to be the first to show up at our family reunion every year. And I love it that her husband determinedly joins the washers match even when his foot is so tender from gout that he can barely wear his shoes.
But for all the expense of their toys, it's my brother—whose toys don't have to go far beyond the accouterments of a washer game—who shows me the difference between the men and the boys. I have no idea what my brother's financial situation is, but I'd be willing to bet it's not very different from mine. But he opens his home, he opens his heart, and he reminds us that paying the rent and the groceries is about all it takes to make life good.
I like the price of his toys.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Hospice revisited
The kids and I are looking forward with trepidation to the second round of hospice care in our lives. They were really too young at 8, 10, and 12 to be very much aware of the pain of watching my mother fade into a morphine-induced reality as breast cancer that metastasized into bone cancer slowly ate away her life.
This time, they cannot be present to see the pain their grandfather is beginning to suffer, but they understand and feel the reality of death, and I feel certain that his is not very far away. The prostate cancer he developed a decade or more ago has almost certainly metastasized into the bone, and his daughters expect hospice care to be soon on its way.
Looking back, I see a father-in-law who has always seemed to me to be something of an odd bird. His military career followed his family's history; his training in Baptist seminary may well have been his way of rejecting their tradition of alcoholism. The combination of discipline rooted in military order and alcoholism gave him a very strong reliance on knowing rules and making sure they are followed, a distaste for spontaneity, a strong need to feel loved, but an inability to show affection to those closest to him.
As a result, I heard from his son (my ex) for the first decade or more of our marriage that the father had never been present in the son's life, always too consumed with his job responsibilities as a military chaplain to take time to be a dad. Hence the son's youthful experimentation with alcohol, tobacco, stronger drugs, and sex, and maybe his lack of ability to be present in his own children's lives. Like Cat Stevens' "Cat's in the Cradle," the son did a fine job of following in the father's footsteps.
My personal experience with Granddad was a little confusing: he often welcomed me into his little corner of the house, but we frequently argued about one thing or another. I found the arguments stimulating; I never felt as if either of us won or lost, but we went away understanding and respecting the other's point of view. Ex was appalled at the very notion that I would argue with his dad; I thought it was a perfectly normal thing to do, and Granddad never made any attempt to stop it, so I rather assumed he appreciated the opportunity to state his point of view.
Ex's sister is a few months younger than I, and we graduated from the same university the same semester. One big difference was that I had had to pay for most of my last three years of school almost completely on my own, and Granddad had generously financed Sis's. The other difference was that Sis decided a few weeks before the end of our senior year that she didn't want the degree and walked out of school to go live as a hippie on a beach. One of her professors found her, got her back into school, and gave her a place to live since she had blown the last installment on her dorm room, so she actually graduated on time. I never heard a word out of Granddad about Sis's behavior; I was amazed that he continued to support her as if the incident had never happened. For a father who wasn't a dad, I thought his response was hugely forgiving and generous.
Years later, when Ex and I divorced, Sis made a point of letting me know she considered the issues in my marriage completely my fault and of wedging herself between me and him at every opportunity, even while we were at least nominally attempting to resolve our differences. I didn't want to cause problems with his family because they were, after all, still my children's kin, but I had a hard time believing that I would ever see any of them again.
That changed a couple of years ago when Granddad, then in his middle 80s, wrecked his car in the kind of accident that happens to lots of people when they are temporarily distracted. By this time, Ex had been remarried for several years, but neither Ex nor his wife seemed to be able to communicate to his two sisters what was going on with the accident. The sisters had not been particularly impressed with the new wife, but they were very upset that she was the only "reliable" source of information they had on the parents.
The two sisters invited me out for margaritas and asked me if I could bring myself to check in on the parents from time to time. I had been invited to their apartment for the family Christmas dinner shortly before then, and I knew the parents would be kind if not generous with me if I dropped in on them; after all, I'm about the only connection they really have with their grandchildren.
Sure enough, they greeted me warmly the first day I dropped by their apartment, and they have reprised that kindness every time I have dropped by since then. They have dutifully reported all of their latest medical information as if they thought I had the level of understanding of their younger daughter, who is head nurse in a specialty unit in a Galveston hospital; they have asked about their grandchildren; and we have generally discussed most of the conversational taboos, including politics and religion and even touching occasionally on money.
On that first trip, they asked me why I had suddenly dropped in after years of staying away; I candidly told them the girls had asked me to because, among other things, they were appalled to hear that the parents had been eating at Taco Bell. Without missing a beat, they replied in unison, "It's good!" I also told Granddad that I had always admired him for not killing Sis when she had walked out on a college education he had paid for; he just shrugged and said, "She's my daughter and I love her." Having had my share of problems with NOS (who is now living with me again), I reconnected immediately.
I have been amused to find how liberal Granddad really is, in spite of the conservative leanings of the daughters, and I've seen that some of the things that attracted me to my ex were his similar liberal leanings. I knew that Granddad had led "ecumenical" Protestant services in the military, and over the past couple of years I've begun to see a sense of Christianity that I had not recognized in him before: he stopped attending the large church his wife and younger daughter attended for years because of his distaste for "big box" churches where individuals get lost in the shuffle. He has been impatient with any profession of Christianity that marginalizes others; he clearly takes "be ye kind" to heart. He is struggling now with whether God had a reason for keeping him alive just beyond his 88th birthday and struggling with whether this is the time when he really should let go.
That decision may actually have been made for him. Like Mother in the last few months before her death, Granddad has started complaining of gastrointestinal problems; in fact, he has already reached a stage where he is unable to eat much in the way of solid food, and his weight has dropped precipitously in the last few weeks. He is already on a morphine-like pain patch and was asking for additional Tylenol 3 (with codeine) for pain that made sitting uncomfortable, although he is still able to navigate around the apartment under his own steam. I rather suspect his body is telling him he won't have the strength (and I suspect he doesn't have the ability to withstand pain) that Mother did, and he will likely slip away before the bone cancer has much chance to do its damage.
I think he realizes that, too. Although he was getting lots of interpretations about how much pain relief he can get right now, I stole a minute when nobody else was in the room with us to remind him that he is the only one who can feel his pain, and he can have as much medicine as he thinks he needs to cope with it. I know he could take too much too soon and reduce his life by days or weeks, but I have seen the pain of bone cancer, and I would never wish it on anybody.
Maybe a bright spot is that he is having a chance to make peace with his kids: although they have lived in the same town together for almost 20 years, Ex has only recently begun to make regular visits to the apartment, and the daughters have rented the apartment next door so they can be available to help with his care now and MeMe's after he is gone.
When I asked last week how the parents are getting along with changes the daughters are making in their lives, Granddad smiled and said, "I just say, 'yes, major!'" MeMe, on the other hand, showed me proudly around "the store" in a back bedroom where the daughters have sorted out all the combined canned goods from two households onto metal shelves to see what they have for meals until they whittle it down. I'm not sure how good the intrusion is in some ways, but in others I think it reassures her his death won't leave her alone.
My Number One Son, who shares his father's and grandfather's name, lives in town but rather hesitates to go to see him, but Darling Daughter will be in later this week and will be eager to squeeze in time with him, knowing this trip will likely be her last to see him alive. Soldier Son won't be able to come back from Germany before November, which will likely be too late, but last week I delivered a perfectly beautiful letter he had written out by hand and sent with love; his Granddad almost cried.
This afternoon when I popped in for a visit, Ex walked in shortly after I got there. To say our encounters over the decade and a half since our divorce have been strained would pretty much be an understatement, but today he was relaxed and friendly. NOS had said recently that Ex's "beer gut" may well be symptomatic of liver trouble, and I have to say it did look off balance against the gaunt appearance of his arms and legs. He blamed the hoarseness of his voice on sinus drainage, but I wonder if years of smoking are taking their toll on his lungs and throat. He had "unofficial" advice that the suspected kidney cancer he thought he had still appears to be a less-dangerous cyst, which is a good deal better than the alternative. But time is clearly taking a toll on him, too.
And so we are looking at another round of hospice in our lives and the looming loss of another loved one. As SS said when things first started looking bad for Granddad a few months ago, "It's okay if we have to let him go now; the old boy has had a pretty good run."
My prayer now is that the end of it will be peaceful, loving, and as painless as possible.
This time, they cannot be present to see the pain their grandfather is beginning to suffer, but they understand and feel the reality of death, and I feel certain that his is not very far away. The prostate cancer he developed a decade or more ago has almost certainly metastasized into the bone, and his daughters expect hospice care to be soon on its way.
Looking back, I see a father-in-law who has always seemed to me to be something of an odd bird. His military career followed his family's history; his training in Baptist seminary may well have been his way of rejecting their tradition of alcoholism. The combination of discipline rooted in military order and alcoholism gave him a very strong reliance on knowing rules and making sure they are followed, a distaste for spontaneity, a strong need to feel loved, but an inability to show affection to those closest to him.
As a result, I heard from his son (my ex) for the first decade or more of our marriage that the father had never been present in the son's life, always too consumed with his job responsibilities as a military chaplain to take time to be a dad. Hence the son's youthful experimentation with alcohol, tobacco, stronger drugs, and sex, and maybe his lack of ability to be present in his own children's lives. Like Cat Stevens' "Cat's in the Cradle," the son did a fine job of following in the father's footsteps.
My personal experience with Granddad was a little confusing: he often welcomed me into his little corner of the house, but we frequently argued about one thing or another. I found the arguments stimulating; I never felt as if either of us won or lost, but we went away understanding and respecting the other's point of view. Ex was appalled at the very notion that I would argue with his dad; I thought it was a perfectly normal thing to do, and Granddad never made any attempt to stop it, so I rather assumed he appreciated the opportunity to state his point of view.
Ex's sister is a few months younger than I, and we graduated from the same university the same semester. One big difference was that I had had to pay for most of my last three years of school almost completely on my own, and Granddad had generously financed Sis's. The other difference was that Sis decided a few weeks before the end of our senior year that she didn't want the degree and walked out of school to go live as a hippie on a beach. One of her professors found her, got her back into school, and gave her a place to live since she had blown the last installment on her dorm room, so she actually graduated on time. I never heard a word out of Granddad about Sis's behavior; I was amazed that he continued to support her as if the incident had never happened. For a father who wasn't a dad, I thought his response was hugely forgiving and generous.
Years later, when Ex and I divorced, Sis made a point of letting me know she considered the issues in my marriage completely my fault and of wedging herself between me and him at every opportunity, even while we were at least nominally attempting to resolve our differences. I didn't want to cause problems with his family because they were, after all, still my children's kin, but I had a hard time believing that I would ever see any of them again.
That changed a couple of years ago when Granddad, then in his middle 80s, wrecked his car in the kind of accident that happens to lots of people when they are temporarily distracted. By this time, Ex had been remarried for several years, but neither Ex nor his wife seemed to be able to communicate to his two sisters what was going on with the accident. The sisters had not been particularly impressed with the new wife, but they were very upset that she was the only "reliable" source of information they had on the parents.
The two sisters invited me out for margaritas and asked me if I could bring myself to check in on the parents from time to time. I had been invited to their apartment for the family Christmas dinner shortly before then, and I knew the parents would be kind if not generous with me if I dropped in on them; after all, I'm about the only connection they really have with their grandchildren.
Sure enough, they greeted me warmly the first day I dropped by their apartment, and they have reprised that kindness every time I have dropped by since then. They have dutifully reported all of their latest medical information as if they thought I had the level of understanding of their younger daughter, who is head nurse in a specialty unit in a Galveston hospital; they have asked about their grandchildren; and we have generally discussed most of the conversational taboos, including politics and religion and even touching occasionally on money.
On that first trip, they asked me why I had suddenly dropped in after years of staying away; I candidly told them the girls had asked me to because, among other things, they were appalled to hear that the parents had been eating at Taco Bell. Without missing a beat, they replied in unison, "It's good!" I also told Granddad that I had always admired him for not killing Sis when she had walked out on a college education he had paid for; he just shrugged and said, "She's my daughter and I love her." Having had my share of problems with NOS (who is now living with me again), I reconnected immediately.
I have been amused to find how liberal Granddad really is, in spite of the conservative leanings of the daughters, and I've seen that some of the things that attracted me to my ex were his similar liberal leanings. I knew that Granddad had led "ecumenical" Protestant services in the military, and over the past couple of years I've begun to see a sense of Christianity that I had not recognized in him before: he stopped attending the large church his wife and younger daughter attended for years because of his distaste for "big box" churches where individuals get lost in the shuffle. He has been impatient with any profession of Christianity that marginalizes others; he clearly takes "be ye kind" to heart. He is struggling now with whether God had a reason for keeping him alive just beyond his 88th birthday and struggling with whether this is the time when he really should let go.
That decision may actually have been made for him. Like Mother in the last few months before her death, Granddad has started complaining of gastrointestinal problems; in fact, he has already reached a stage where he is unable to eat much in the way of solid food, and his weight has dropped precipitously in the last few weeks. He is already on a morphine-like pain patch and was asking for additional Tylenol 3 (with codeine) for pain that made sitting uncomfortable, although he is still able to navigate around the apartment under his own steam. I rather suspect his body is telling him he won't have the strength (and I suspect he doesn't have the ability to withstand pain) that Mother did, and he will likely slip away before the bone cancer has much chance to do its damage.
I think he realizes that, too. Although he was getting lots of interpretations about how much pain relief he can get right now, I stole a minute when nobody else was in the room with us to remind him that he is the only one who can feel his pain, and he can have as much medicine as he thinks he needs to cope with it. I know he could take too much too soon and reduce his life by days or weeks, but I have seen the pain of bone cancer, and I would never wish it on anybody.
Maybe a bright spot is that he is having a chance to make peace with his kids: although they have lived in the same town together for almost 20 years, Ex has only recently begun to make regular visits to the apartment, and the daughters have rented the apartment next door so they can be available to help with his care now and MeMe's after he is gone.
When I asked last week how the parents are getting along with changes the daughters are making in their lives, Granddad smiled and said, "I just say, 'yes, major!'" MeMe, on the other hand, showed me proudly around "the store" in a back bedroom where the daughters have sorted out all the combined canned goods from two households onto metal shelves to see what they have for meals until they whittle it down. I'm not sure how good the intrusion is in some ways, but in others I think it reassures her his death won't leave her alone.
My Number One Son, who shares his father's and grandfather's name, lives in town but rather hesitates to go to see him, but Darling Daughter will be in later this week and will be eager to squeeze in time with him, knowing this trip will likely be her last to see him alive. Soldier Son won't be able to come back from Germany before November, which will likely be too late, but last week I delivered a perfectly beautiful letter he had written out by hand and sent with love; his Granddad almost cried.
This afternoon when I popped in for a visit, Ex walked in shortly after I got there. To say our encounters over the decade and a half since our divorce have been strained would pretty much be an understatement, but today he was relaxed and friendly. NOS had said recently that Ex's "beer gut" may well be symptomatic of liver trouble, and I have to say it did look off balance against the gaunt appearance of his arms and legs. He blamed the hoarseness of his voice on sinus drainage, but I wonder if years of smoking are taking their toll on his lungs and throat. He had "unofficial" advice that the suspected kidney cancer he thought he had still appears to be a less-dangerous cyst, which is a good deal better than the alternative. But time is clearly taking a toll on him, too.
And so we are looking at another round of hospice in our lives and the looming loss of another loved one. As SS said when things first started looking bad for Granddad a few months ago, "It's okay if we have to let him go now; the old boy has had a pretty good run."
My prayer now is that the end of it will be peaceful, loving, and as painless as possible.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Movin' on—slowly
Having a night to sleep on my frustrations from yesterday didn't exactly alleviate them; in fact, I woke up at around 4:30 this morning and couldn't clear my brain enough to go back to sleep. I was sort of glad that I had to get up anyway around 7 to get ready for Day Camp training, where I got to go see lots of happy faces and people who really seem to appreciate me. By the time I left the camp around 1, I was at least beginning to feel better.
After I got home and cleaned up, I ran back up to the office to tie up a couple of loose ends from yesterday. Oddly, the very short note in my inbox from the department head helped me feel better: he's out of the office next week, too, so I can click "finish up newsletter" off my list until he gets back.
When I got home, I went to work on some housekeeping to get ready for an assortment of expected guests next week: Darling Daughter and Prince Charming are coming in, and for at least one overnight, they'll have along a friend of theirs from LA. Number One Son also promised space to a friend whose family went to Africa last summer on a mission trip, and I have visions of all four of them landing here at the same time. I'll never get the house clean enough for all of this, but at least I kept my mind of the office.
Once I had the upstairs game room cleaned enough for NOS to vacuum, dust, and clean the carpet, I drifted downstairs with visions of catching up on the news and maybe just vegging for a while, but before I had hit the bottom step, both dogs perked up, all ready to go outside.
It occurred to me that they hadn't had their usual playtime with NOS, and if I was going to veg anyway, I might as well play with them. I set the oven buzzer for about 10 minutes, refilled my tea glass, and headed outside.
For the first few minutes, my little barker provided most of the action, racing after the ball and doing a better-than-average job of getting it back right at my feet instead of just flinging it across the patio. Bubba mostly just watched, surprising me from time to time with one of his twisting jumps to catch a fly ball. For some reason, Bubba has always been much more genteel than Baby about given the ball back; when he first started to play with me, I typically sat on the brick steps, and he'd set the ball precisely into a little niche where he could be sure it wouldn't roll away. The few times I'd sat in a lawn chair before my trip to Lubbock, he was great about setting the ball neatly next to my chair so I could reach it before it rolled away.
Tonight I was sitting in a lounge chair, so he decided the logical place to put the ball was in the chair with me. I was already pretty dirty from my cleaning efforts, so having a slightly muddy ball in the chair with me was silly but not terrible.
Then he decided it needed to be in my lap, only to get it there, he set it on my legs near my knees and let it roll. In fact, the whole fetch game seemed to be more fun if he could snag the ball and get it back on my lap, preferably making a whole new mud trail down my legs on the way.
By the time we quit playing about an hour later, I had mud streaks from my ankles to my rib cage, and I had a large, goofy-looking dog grinning at me and wanting to wash my face as if he were really proud of his kindergarten art.
I have to go back out to the camp in the morning, so taking a second bath seemed kind of silly. I wiped down all my exposed body parts with a wet washcloth then stripped off my dirty clothes and tossed them in the hamper.
Except for a little reading, I accomplished nearly nothing else for the rest of the evening, but I was glad I had had time for my little mudbath. Bubba is a lot bigger dog than I ever wanted, but that affectionate grin isn't going to let go of me. And Baby can be a little stinker, but she's pretty much all right with me, too.
It'll get better. I just have to keep on keeping on.
After I got home and cleaned up, I ran back up to the office to tie up a couple of loose ends from yesterday. Oddly, the very short note in my inbox from the department head helped me feel better: he's out of the office next week, too, so I can click "finish up newsletter" off my list until he gets back.
When I got home, I went to work on some housekeeping to get ready for an assortment of expected guests next week: Darling Daughter and Prince Charming are coming in, and for at least one overnight, they'll have along a friend of theirs from LA. Number One Son also promised space to a friend whose family went to Africa last summer on a mission trip, and I have visions of all four of them landing here at the same time. I'll never get the house clean enough for all of this, but at least I kept my mind of the office.
Once I had the upstairs game room cleaned enough for NOS to vacuum, dust, and clean the carpet, I drifted downstairs with visions of catching up on the news and maybe just vegging for a while, but before I had hit the bottom step, both dogs perked up, all ready to go outside.
It occurred to me that they hadn't had their usual playtime with NOS, and if I was going to veg anyway, I might as well play with them. I set the oven buzzer for about 10 minutes, refilled my tea glass, and headed outside.
For the first few minutes, my little barker provided most of the action, racing after the ball and doing a better-than-average job of getting it back right at my feet instead of just flinging it across the patio. Bubba mostly just watched, surprising me from time to time with one of his twisting jumps to catch a fly ball. For some reason, Bubba has always been much more genteel than Baby about given the ball back; when he first started to play with me, I typically sat on the brick steps, and he'd set the ball precisely into a little niche where he could be sure it wouldn't roll away. The few times I'd sat in a lawn chair before my trip to Lubbock, he was great about setting the ball neatly next to my chair so I could reach it before it rolled away.
Tonight I was sitting in a lounge chair, so he decided the logical place to put the ball was in the chair with me. I was already pretty dirty from my cleaning efforts, so having a slightly muddy ball in the chair with me was silly but not terrible.
Then he decided it needed to be in my lap, only to get it there, he set it on my legs near my knees and let it roll. In fact, the whole fetch game seemed to be more fun if he could snag the ball and get it back on my lap, preferably making a whole new mud trail down my legs on the way.
By the time we quit playing about an hour later, I had mud streaks from my ankles to my rib cage, and I had a large, goofy-looking dog grinning at me and wanting to wash my face as if he were really proud of his kindergarten art.
I have to go back out to the camp in the morning, so taking a second bath seemed kind of silly. I wiped down all my exposed body parts with a wet washcloth then stripped off my dirty clothes and tossed them in the hamper.
Except for a little reading, I accomplished nearly nothing else for the rest of the evening, but I was glad I had had time for my little mudbath. Bubba is a lot bigger dog than I ever wanted, but that affectionate grin isn't going to let go of me. And Baby can be a little stinker, but she's pretty much all right with me, too.
It'll get better. I just have to keep on keeping on.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Sucky Friday
I know all the "good" blogs seem to be upbeat and cheerful all the time, and I'd just love to be that way, but today I'm having a sucky Friday and I'm not too darned cheerful about it. Rats.
It started off pretty good: I got caught up on reading a couple of papers for students who need feedback before handing them off to their research advisers, then I got to the office early enough to check off my to-do list and still get home by quitting time. Or so I thought.
The first item on the list was finishing up the summer edition of the department's newsletter so I can get it off to press. I had sent the department head a draft of the issue so he could see what I had in it, check a story that I wasn't sure about because the notes his secretary had sent me had been cryptic, and send me his "column." That hadn't arrived yet, but I still needed to convert the color pictures to black and white and run the spell-checker, so I was still clicking along pretty well.
Shortly after I got the pictures cleaned up, a student worker dropped off my daily mail. No column from the department head (he's out of town this week, but he'll get it to me by email), but a copy of the publication that had pretty clearly been printed by the secretary, who had spotted a handful of typos, straightened up the part of the story where her notes had not been clear, and circled a large block of type and scrawled "WRONG" across it in red all-caps. Just to be sure I got the message, she attached copies of her previous notes for the part marked "wrong."
I was fine with most of her corrections; I hadn't yet run the spell-checker, which caught everything she caught and several additional typos, and I needed to have the correction on the part that hadn't originally been clear to me. (She also hadn't attached the notes on that part, presumably because she realized they weren't clear.)
But I was at first perplexed and then torqued about the part she had marked "wrong": I checked against her notes three times through to be sure, but what I had written was not wrong at all. The story listed students who had graduated summa, magna, and cum laude; her notes had them as cum, magna, and summa. The only thing "wrong" was that I had reversed the order from her awards-ceremony script to a more journalistic style.
If this were the first time she had jumped on a chance to point out my errors or if she had a record of excellent writing, I might have felt differently. But she is a poor writer (her spelling is always perfect; her grammar often isn't, her style is lousy, and her sense of taste and decorum is dead) with maybe a BBA who no doubt earns more than I do, despite my faculty position and my master's degree.
When I first saw her message, I thought I must have mistyped the names; the list was long and complicated, and although I had asked specifically for the PowerPoint file from the ceremony, she had instead sent me a pdf that didn't allow me to cut and paste. My knee-jerk reaction had been to write back, "Thanks for your comments. You could have saved me from retyping all the names if you had sent me the PowerPoint I asked for instead of the pdf." I have had enough problems with her that I copied the department head; she has a tendency to lie, and I want my butt covered if she does it again.
A few minutes later, I got an email from the boss that said, "You need to be nicer."
I replied, "I was not too happy about getting the newsletter back with a big portion of text circled and marked 'WRONG,' especially since it wasn't. Sorry 'bout that."
His response was, "You make enemies for life."
I told him quite honestly, "In this case, I think that ship has already sailed. And I'm on the short end of life."
I may have just dropped the last straw around there, but I'm really ticked off, anyway. In search of some other numbers recently, I found out that at least one of our secretaries earns substantially more than I do; I haven't heard anything for three weeks from the place where I have done a lot of consulting lately; another of my consulting jobs (which I had hoped to parlay into more work, but maybe not now) has given me four different sets of instruction about how to bill it; and I generally haven't felt very good since I got back from Lubbock, where I think the dry air was good for me.
Among the other jobs I had to do was printing out notes for the handful of students in my summer course, and halfway into that, the printer jammed royally and took me 20 minutes to get it going again. My friend in the office next door came out to lend a hand, and as usual, she also lent her wise and patient ear. She at least reminded me that somebody around there appreciates me, and she inadvertently reminded me that my mentor, who had said something early in the week that sounded as if he had lost faith in me, had also recanted yesterday and let me know he's still sort of on my side, too.
But it's still been a pretty darn sucky Friday.
It started off pretty good: I got caught up on reading a couple of papers for students who need feedback before handing them off to their research advisers, then I got to the office early enough to check off my to-do list and still get home by quitting time. Or so I thought.
The first item on the list was finishing up the summer edition of the department's newsletter so I can get it off to press. I had sent the department head a draft of the issue so he could see what I had in it, check a story that I wasn't sure about because the notes his secretary had sent me had been cryptic, and send me his "column." That hadn't arrived yet, but I still needed to convert the color pictures to black and white and run the spell-checker, so I was still clicking along pretty well.
Shortly after I got the pictures cleaned up, a student worker dropped off my daily mail. No column from the department head (he's out of town this week, but he'll get it to me by email), but a copy of the publication that had pretty clearly been printed by the secretary, who had spotted a handful of typos, straightened up the part of the story where her notes had not been clear, and circled a large block of type and scrawled "WRONG" across it in red all-caps. Just to be sure I got the message, she attached copies of her previous notes for the part marked "wrong."
I was fine with most of her corrections; I hadn't yet run the spell-checker, which caught everything she caught and several additional typos, and I needed to have the correction on the part that hadn't originally been clear to me. (She also hadn't attached the notes on that part, presumably because she realized they weren't clear.)
But I was at first perplexed and then torqued about the part she had marked "wrong": I checked against her notes three times through to be sure, but what I had written was not wrong at all. The story listed students who had graduated summa, magna, and cum laude; her notes had them as cum, magna, and summa. The only thing "wrong" was that I had reversed the order from her awards-ceremony script to a more journalistic style.
If this were the first time she had jumped on a chance to point out my errors or if she had a record of excellent writing, I might have felt differently. But she is a poor writer (her spelling is always perfect; her grammar often isn't, her style is lousy, and her sense of taste and decorum is dead) with maybe a BBA who no doubt earns more than I do, despite my faculty position and my master's degree.
When I first saw her message, I thought I must have mistyped the names; the list was long and complicated, and although I had asked specifically for the PowerPoint file from the ceremony, she had instead sent me a pdf that didn't allow me to cut and paste. My knee-jerk reaction had been to write back, "Thanks for your comments. You could have saved me from retyping all the names if you had sent me the PowerPoint I asked for instead of the pdf." I have had enough problems with her that I copied the department head; she has a tendency to lie, and I want my butt covered if she does it again.
A few minutes later, I got an email from the boss that said, "You need to be nicer."
I replied, "I was not too happy about getting the newsletter back with a big portion of text circled and marked 'WRONG,' especially since it wasn't. Sorry 'bout that."
His response was, "You make enemies for life."
I told him quite honestly, "In this case, I think that ship has already sailed. And I'm on the short end of life."
I may have just dropped the last straw around there, but I'm really ticked off, anyway. In search of some other numbers recently, I found out that at least one of our secretaries earns substantially more than I do; I haven't heard anything for three weeks from the place where I have done a lot of consulting lately; another of my consulting jobs (which I had hoped to parlay into more work, but maybe not now) has given me four different sets of instruction about how to bill it; and I generally haven't felt very good since I got back from Lubbock, where I think the dry air was good for me.
Among the other jobs I had to do was printing out notes for the handful of students in my summer course, and halfway into that, the printer jammed royally and took me 20 minutes to get it going again. My friend in the office next door came out to lend a hand, and as usual, she also lent her wise and patient ear. She at least reminded me that somebody around there appreciates me, and she inadvertently reminded me that my mentor, who had said something early in the week that sounded as if he had lost faith in me, had also recanted yesterday and let me know he's still sort of on my side, too.
But it's still been a pretty darn sucky Friday.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Memorial Day 2010
National holidays—especially Memorial Day and Veterans Day—have always been special to me, probably at least partly because I grew up on the back porch of Texas A&M University when it was still the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, essentially all male, with compulsory corps training that led to military commissions, and partly because I was born on Veterans Day, which has always forced me to remember our vets on my birthday, if for no other reason than that my birthday cards never arrived exactly on the right day. For a brief spate in the 70s, Veterans Day was made a Monday holiday and Susan Rene probably hurt herself making sure my cards arrived exactly on time; but within a couple of years, we were back to business as usual.
Yesterday I got a sort of startling reminder that this Memorial Day remembers soldiers who have fallen but also honors those who are alive, including my own Soldier Son. SS is in Germany right now at an Army base called Baumholder, which has long been a training center for soldiers deploying to war zones; SS will go to Afghanistan in November.
The real reminder came crashing in on me as I was traveling back from Lubbock, where I had attended a 2-week continuing education seminar at Texas Tech University to help me be a better tech writing teacher. I was bounding down the highway toward home and Number One Son, who is in the throes of wanting to change jobs again, when I pulled over for a pit stop in a little town called Rising Star. I popped in to a convenience store, used the restroom, and refilled my soft drink (total cost: 86 cents) when I noticed cards to support the USO for a dollar. I handed the clerk a 5 and told her to drop a dollar into her USO fund, and she asked me to fill out a card to add to the collection on her wall. I told her I had a son in Germany training for Afghanistan, and she said, "You can put your name or his on the card." So I spelled out his name and followed it with "Germany."
That's really the first time I've written down where he is since I learned his deployment date, and I felt odd writing my son's name on a USO card. I took that odd feeling with me out to the car, backed out of the lot, and looked down the highway that ran through the heart of the little old town, where I saw alternating US and Texas flags flying at even intervals a few hundred feet apart. I was so touched I almost took a picture looking back from the other side, but my rear-view mirror suggested the flags wouldn't have shown up very well. In retrospect, I wish I had shot it anyway. As I pulled out of town, my Barry Manilow CD started up "American Bandstand," and I felt for a moment as if I were driving through a Norman Rockwell painting with sound.
SS has already completed 6 years in the Army Reserves that included a tour of duty in Iraq shortly after that war began. I was proud of him for signing up then, proud of him for serving, and confident that he would come back home at the end of his tour. I knew the consequences of war zones, though, and I had faith that if he came home in a box, his spirit and soul would be in the safe hands of my mom and dad, whose spirits have long since flown. Whenever I heard of horrors of that war, I held my breath until he contacted me, every time to tell me he was not only alive but also far away from the worst of the action. He told stories of everyday dangers that soldiers take as part of the job and relate lightly, but the fact was that he was alive, and I was grateful to see him home again and not to have him called for a second tour.
He came home from that war less changed than I really expected. His job as a truck driver meant he saw less than the infantry of the fighting, but it put him in a place to determine that he was coming home to go to college, he was going to go to A&M, and he was going to wear the Aggie ring and senior boots with pride. He did all that, and then decided that today's economy, the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his previous experience were pointing him back toward a career in the military.
I'm still proud of him—hugely so—but I feel so much differently this time. I found myself horribly torn in college between my ingrained belief in our soldiers, learned from knowing a number of young men who studied at A&M before going off to fight in Vietnam, and my belief that war is not the answer; instead, it's mostly a distraction that forces one side in the argument to capitulate to the other's demands, usually at the cost of too many lives. SS recognizes how I feel; in fact, he told me from the beginning that his desire to go to Iraq was to help clean up the mess America's misdirected attacks had already made, and as a driver, that was really the job he did.
In Afghanistan, he knows he will be in the thick of action, but he's going in at a time when the battle is being fought more appropriately in terms of peacemaking than of warmongering, and he believes that, unlike Iraq, this was a war we were invited to join, not one we started ourselves out of hubris. In short, he's going there because he believes our country needs men like him to serve, and he believes a military lifestyle suits his personality and needs. He knows—and I know—that this time, or next time, or the next, he could come home in a box, but he goes on believing that he will not, and that his contribution will be part of something that, for now, has to be done.
I am proud of him, and I fly my flag in his personal honor on this Memorial Day.
Yesterday I got a sort of startling reminder that this Memorial Day remembers soldiers who have fallen but also honors those who are alive, including my own Soldier Son. SS is in Germany right now at an Army base called Baumholder, which has long been a training center for soldiers deploying to war zones; SS will go to Afghanistan in November.
The real reminder came crashing in on me as I was traveling back from Lubbock, where I had attended a 2-week continuing education seminar at Texas Tech University to help me be a better tech writing teacher. I was bounding down the highway toward home and Number One Son, who is in the throes of wanting to change jobs again, when I pulled over for a pit stop in a little town called Rising Star. I popped in to a convenience store, used the restroom, and refilled my soft drink (total cost: 86 cents) when I noticed cards to support the USO for a dollar. I handed the clerk a 5 and told her to drop a dollar into her USO fund, and she asked me to fill out a card to add to the collection on her wall. I told her I had a son in Germany training for Afghanistan, and she said, "You can put your name or his on the card." So I spelled out his name and followed it with "Germany."
That's really the first time I've written down where he is since I learned his deployment date, and I felt odd writing my son's name on a USO card. I took that odd feeling with me out to the car, backed out of the lot, and looked down the highway that ran through the heart of the little old town, where I saw alternating US and Texas flags flying at even intervals a few hundred feet apart. I was so touched I almost took a picture looking back from the other side, but my rear-view mirror suggested the flags wouldn't have shown up very well. In retrospect, I wish I had shot it anyway. As I pulled out of town, my Barry Manilow CD started up "American Bandstand," and I felt for a moment as if I were driving through a Norman Rockwell painting with sound.
SS has already completed 6 years in the Army Reserves that included a tour of duty in Iraq shortly after that war began. I was proud of him for signing up then, proud of him for serving, and confident that he would come back home at the end of his tour. I knew the consequences of war zones, though, and I had faith that if he came home in a box, his spirit and soul would be in the safe hands of my mom and dad, whose spirits have long since flown. Whenever I heard of horrors of that war, I held my breath until he contacted me, every time to tell me he was not only alive but also far away from the worst of the action. He told stories of everyday dangers that soldiers take as part of the job and relate lightly, but the fact was that he was alive, and I was grateful to see him home again and not to have him called for a second tour.
He came home from that war less changed than I really expected. His job as a truck driver meant he saw less than the infantry of the fighting, but it put him in a place to determine that he was coming home to go to college, he was going to go to A&M, and he was going to wear the Aggie ring and senior boots with pride. He did all that, and then decided that today's economy, the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his previous experience were pointing him back toward a career in the military.
I'm still proud of him—hugely so—but I feel so much differently this time. I found myself horribly torn in college between my ingrained belief in our soldiers, learned from knowing a number of young men who studied at A&M before going off to fight in Vietnam, and my belief that war is not the answer; instead, it's mostly a distraction that forces one side in the argument to capitulate to the other's demands, usually at the cost of too many lives. SS recognizes how I feel; in fact, he told me from the beginning that his desire to go to Iraq was to help clean up the mess America's misdirected attacks had already made, and as a driver, that was really the job he did.
In Afghanistan, he knows he will be in the thick of action, but he's going in at a time when the battle is being fought more appropriately in terms of peacemaking than of warmongering, and he believes that, unlike Iraq, this was a war we were invited to join, not one we started ourselves out of hubris. In short, he's going there because he believes our country needs men like him to serve, and he believes a military lifestyle suits his personality and needs. He knows—and I know—that this time, or next time, or the next, he could come home in a box, but he goes on believing that he will not, and that his contribution will be part of something that, for now, has to be done.
I am proud of him, and I fly my flag in his personal honor on this Memorial Day.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Most of all, thanks for being you
When I went to my newspaper reunion a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to hear my former managing editor—more recently editor of the El Paso Times—say that he still had a letter I had written him when he stepped into the position of editor of the University Star, and that he keeps it close at hand and reads often. For my money, if he's read it once a year for the 40 years since we graduated from college, that still qualifies as "often."
In our exchange of emails after the festivities, he asked for my fax number so he could fax the letter to me. Fax machines may not always be optimal for sending old documents; when the letter came through on my end, the type from the old Remington I'd written it on had faded enough to make the copy I got almost unreadable. A couple of passes through a modern photocopier helped it some, so I was able to make out most of it with a bit of squinting and ferreting out what almost seemed to be code.
As soon as I was able to read some of it, I showed it to one of my friends at work who clearly didn't understand the significance to me, not of what the letter said but of the fact that Don still has it—and isn't horrified to say he still reads it. I have to give it to my friend: she was right to hoot at first about the opening few sappy lines; in fact, after I figured out what it said, I wondered how crazy Don must have been to have suffered through them to read the rest of the text!
In fact, my first response on hearing that he had the letter had been to blurt out, "How presumptuous did I have to have been to have sent him anything like that in the first place?" The current students who were listening to the story assured me that writing it was "cool," especially since it clearly had meant enough to Don for him to tell them about it. I guess he must have still liked me when he got it; he survived the opening lines of syrup!
Farther into the letter, I thought I did all right. Essentially, the message was that the Star was a lot like a thoroughbred that needs both a strong hand to tame it and a soft touch to reassure it; I suspect that image came largely from the horses statue that was the focal point of our campus, because my personal knowledge of horse care—or, for that matter, of pet care back then—was small.
I think I saw a lot of influence of The Prophet in the letter, which isn't surprising since The Prophet continues to be among my favorite philosophical works, probably as much for its simplicity as for its wisdom. Maybe that influence was what touched Don; maybe some of Kahlil Gibron's thoughts were really what touched him most.
Last weekend, when I was dumping pictures off the camera I had taken with me to the reunion, I picked the best pictures of the five of us—Don, Ann, Peggy, Jane, and me—and forwarded them to everybody in that group. Don surprised me again by telling me he had also put his hands on my "thirty letter, " the traditional final message from an outgoing editor to the staff. I suppose that at one time I was in possession of Jane's thirty letter, but as much as I loved Jane as editor, I don't have a clue what might have happened to her letter.
And knowing that Don had mine was not only touching but also a little scary: what in the heck had I done with that? I know I wasn't very happy about leaving my post; I had hoped to have another semester at it, but I learned that campaigning to hold a spot that I thought I had managed pretty well just doesn't hold up well against a contender who has identified weaknesses and has bright new ideas to put forth. "Bitter" isn't quite the right word for the way I felt, although I did feel as if I could continue to do a better job than the contender would do, but "hurt" is not too far off the mark. So what did I put in the letter that had touched Don enough that he kept it?
Don's message telling me he had found the letter asked for my address so he could mail this one, and I watched the box carefully until it arrived today. Inside the envelope I found a hand-written note from Don, saying that he had sent me my original and kept a copy for himself. How amazed I am that he still wants to have a copy!
This letter is also typed out on the old Remington, this time on Star letterhead; after all, I was still the editor then. And I was pretty proud of myself when I read this one. I don't think it has nearly the heart of the other, but I was pleased to see that I had managed to point out some special contribution from each of the staff who had been special to me and to thank them for what they had done.
The second page was mostly the words to a song that was popular at the summer camp where my brother and I had worked for a couple of summers. It was purportedly written by another of the camp counselors, and since I can't find a shred of evidence of its existence anywhere else, I pretty much assume that's true. The essence of it is in the chorus:
I can't carry a tune in a bucket and I don't think I know anybody any more except my brother who might even remember hearing it, but that song has stayed with me through friendships coming and going for many years. I think I love it as much today as I did then.
And thinking about it now, seeing how those letters have come back to me from Don, I see even more how much Don and Jane and Peggy and Ann contributed to what came of me.
And all this time, I really didn't know that I had ever mattered very much to anybody. Maybe somewhere I really did do something good.
In our exchange of emails after the festivities, he asked for my fax number so he could fax the letter to me. Fax machines may not always be optimal for sending old documents; when the letter came through on my end, the type from the old Remington I'd written it on had faded enough to make the copy I got almost unreadable. A couple of passes through a modern photocopier helped it some, so I was able to make out most of it with a bit of squinting and ferreting out what almost seemed to be code.
As soon as I was able to read some of it, I showed it to one of my friends at work who clearly didn't understand the significance to me, not of what the letter said but of the fact that Don still has it—and isn't horrified to say he still reads it. I have to give it to my friend: she was right to hoot at first about the opening few sappy lines; in fact, after I figured out what it said, I wondered how crazy Don must have been to have suffered through them to read the rest of the text!
In fact, my first response on hearing that he had the letter had been to blurt out, "How presumptuous did I have to have been to have sent him anything like that in the first place?" The current students who were listening to the story assured me that writing it was "cool," especially since it clearly had meant enough to Don for him to tell them about it. I guess he must have still liked me when he got it; he survived the opening lines of syrup!
Farther into the letter, I thought I did all right. Essentially, the message was that the Star was a lot like a thoroughbred that needs both a strong hand to tame it and a soft touch to reassure it; I suspect that image came largely from the horses statue that was the focal point of our campus, because my personal knowledge of horse care—or, for that matter, of pet care back then—was small.
I think I saw a lot of influence of The Prophet in the letter, which isn't surprising since The Prophet continues to be among my favorite philosophical works, probably as much for its simplicity as for its wisdom. Maybe that influence was what touched Don; maybe some of Kahlil Gibron's thoughts were really what touched him most.
Last weekend, when I was dumping pictures off the camera I had taken with me to the reunion, I picked the best pictures of the five of us—Don, Ann, Peggy, Jane, and me—and forwarded them to everybody in that group. Don surprised me again by telling me he had also put his hands on my "thirty letter, " the traditional final message from an outgoing editor to the staff. I suppose that at one time I was in possession of Jane's thirty letter, but as much as I loved Jane as editor, I don't have a clue what might have happened to her letter.
And knowing that Don had mine was not only touching but also a little scary: what in the heck had I done with that? I know I wasn't very happy about leaving my post; I had hoped to have another semester at it, but I learned that campaigning to hold a spot that I thought I had managed pretty well just doesn't hold up well against a contender who has identified weaknesses and has bright new ideas to put forth. "Bitter" isn't quite the right word for the way I felt, although I did feel as if I could continue to do a better job than the contender would do, but "hurt" is not too far off the mark. So what did I put in the letter that had touched Don enough that he kept it?
Don's message telling me he had found the letter asked for my address so he could mail this one, and I watched the box carefully until it arrived today. Inside the envelope I found a hand-written note from Don, saying that he had sent me my original and kept a copy for himself. How amazed I am that he still wants to have a copy!
This letter is also typed out on the old Remington, this time on Star letterhead; after all, I was still the editor then. And I was pretty proud of myself when I read this one. I don't think it has nearly the heart of the other, but I was pleased to see that I had managed to point out some special contribution from each of the staff who had been special to me and to thank them for what they had done.
The second page was mostly the words to a song that was popular at the summer camp where my brother and I had worked for a couple of summers. It was purportedly written by another of the camp counselors, and since I can't find a shred of evidence of its existence anywhere else, I pretty much assume that's true. The essence of it is in the chorus:
Thank you for what you've made of me
and thank you for all the good things I see.
Thank you for what you say and do,
but most of all, thank you for being you!
I can't carry a tune in a bucket and I don't think I know anybody any more except my brother who might even remember hearing it, but that song has stayed with me through friendships coming and going for many years. I think I love it as much today as I did then.
And thinking about it now, seeing how those letters have come back to me from Don, I see even more how much Don and Jane and Peggy and Ann contributed to what came of me.
And all this time, I really didn't know that I had ever mattered very much to anybody. Maybe somewhere I really did do something good.
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