Coffee heat rising

Idle essays

End in sight…but apparently not the end of teaching

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Only four more sets of papers to grade! Then, thank God, this semester will be over.

I was amazed to see that Mr. Boxankle’s final paper is something of a tour de force. Holy macquerel! He must have gone to the writing center. It’s totally reorganized, plumped up with new cited and documented sources, and decently edited. Whatever his strategy, let’s hope he can transfer it to his other courses. 🙂

The gent who’s already writing at the publishable level was not content to let good enough be. He also has produced a new, edited version, which I haven’t read yet because at two this morning I was busy plodding through his colleagues’ drafts.

Fell asleep around 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. last night and so naturally awoke in the wee hours. Finished the last set of drafts. Fell back in bed around 6:30. Slept until 8:30.

LOL! Maybe that’s the trick to getting a decent night’s sleep: go to bed at dusk!

Today I need to read the 101 students’ papers. Have to get through that by 2:00 p.m. so I can go to La Maya’s art exhibition in Scottsdale along about 3:00 p.m. That will leave only two sets of 2,500-word monstrosities from the 102 students, plus a set of brites from the magazine writers.

The brites should only take an hour or so. A brite by its nature is very short, and the feature-writing students are in that class because they want to be there. Although a few are a bit tone-deaf, by and large they all can write with some competence. And as for the endless 102 papers: final grades aren’t due until the 16th, so we have some time.

Making them turn their final monster papers in a week before the end of the semester, while it leaves me having to occupy them with busywork for three days, was a stroke of genius. It means we don’t have to do the marathon horror show on an impossibly tight deadline.

Well, having heard nothing from the church, I assume the hiring committee figured out that I was not the job candidate of their dreams. No doubt the line formed at the left, with hordes of unemployed accountants muscling each other aside to get in the door. Our pastor remarked that he’d like to get someone in place by the  middle of this month, which would be…yes. A week and a half from today. So, by now if they haven’t made their choice, they must at least have lined up interviews for everyone on their short list.

My application for the f/t job at Paradise Valley is still in the hopper. That closes on January 15, so it will be mid-semester (at best) before they’re interviewing. Realistically, there’s no way they’re going to hire anyone past retirement age into one of their plummiest jobs. But nothing ventured…

And I have one other scheme, besides the effort to hustle $60/hour business for the Copyeditor’s Desk: get a Realtor’s license, which will make it possible to get a scutwork assistant’s job in a real estate agency. Like the church admin job, pay would be poor and the job would be mostly clerical and bookkeeping, but at least it would be year-round.

Well, speaking of bookkeeping, in addition to a raft of papers to read, I have bills to pay and Quicken to update. And so, to work…

Moments of Light

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Moments of light: that’s what Wordsworth called those instants of transcendent vision that our excellent pastor calls the “thin places” between this flesh-bound world and the view of spiritual reality. It’s surprising how little it can take to elicit an “ah-hah” moment, the “I can see clearly now/The rain is gone” insight.

A day or two of peace and quiet and several seven-hour nights of decent sleep are all it’s taken for me, this time around. As the avalanche builds while our beloved McBoingers concoct their final, most brilliant papers they’ve ever written, only a few excused late stoont paper have remained to be read. M’hijito’s decision to take vacation time coinciding with a holiday sprang me free of a full day of performance and grading also freed me from hectic puppy-sitting, allowing me and Cassie to rest, exercise, and think. (Well. I don’t know if Corgis think, although I suspect they do. But the Human certainly did a fair amount of thinking.) Thanksgiving at our friends’ house, replete with a bottomless well of free booze, provided six hours in which to stop focusing on workworkworkworkwork and to tie a fairly large one on.

Thinking and drinking. Drinking and thinking.

And here’s what I think:

Mark Twain was right when he said some writers are tone-deaf. We see that most clearly when we force writing out of souls for whom text-messaging is a challenge. For me, reading composition papers must to be akin to what our highly educated, musically sophisticated choir director would feel if he had to hear all forty of us, professionals included, screeching some classical piece off-key.

“When a person has a poor ear for music,” said Twain, “he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it. This is Cooper [substitute “the freshman comp student”]. He was not a word-musician [not by a long shot!]. His ear was satisfied with the approximate words.”

It is painful for me to read the stuff so carelessly dumped on my desk. When I said, after several years of supporting graduate school by teaching English 101 and 102 courses, that I would go on welfare before I ever taught another freshman comp course, that is what I was talking about. This morning it was all I could do to keep what remains of my mind on those gilded words long enough to comment on them and assign them a score. Absolute agony.

Insight #1: I really, really, REALLY don’t want to do this for the rest of my functional life. If I have to, I suppose I will, because I can’t make ends meet right now. But if I can find another way, I’ll take it.

But…but would I take the full-time teaching job for which I’ve applied, were it offered?

Insight #2: Damn right. I’m in terrible straits financially, and I can’t go on like this much longer. Pay for full-time faculty in the district runs on the high side of respectable. Five or ten years at that grindstone, as painful as it sounds, would allow me to recover the losses to my retirement savings that happened when I was laid off my job. And it would be enough to let me buy the last car of my driving lifetime and get myself into a home that will accommodate me until they cart me off to Hospice.

So. Yes, she said. Yes.

howEVER….

Insight #3: Truth be told, I do not need $65,000, $70,000, $81,000 to get by just fine.

If a miracle happened and the church happened to offer me the rather interesting job it has open just now, for which I happen to have applied, would I accept it and its amazingly low salary?

Oh, yes, she said. Yes!

Money-wise, the ridiculously low salary would combine with Social Security to provide a living wage: $45,000 or $48,000 gross.

I would love to work for the church, partly because I love the church and partly because I truly do believe I can do the job.

Would there be a learning curve? Sure.

Can I do the tasks? Yeah: I’ve been doing all those for the past five or ten years.

Would I be willing to pay, out of my own pocket, for specific training to do that job ? Darn right: give me an offer and today I would sign up for an accounting course, or I would bribe my accountant to train me in GAAP and the application thereof.

Moment of light: Any day I would rather enter numbers in spreadsheets, ride herd on financials and employees, and keep an office hanging together with paper clips and Scotch tape than read another student paper.

🙂

Here’s another moment of light: the American Dream, Formerly Affluent Boomer rendition.

O

M

G

!

Just look at that place!!!!

I know that neighborhood. I’ve haunted it in the past, when prices were way, way, WAY beyond my price range. A short sale, however, brings this updated little babe right down to what I think I can net off the house I’m living in.

Lookit that kitchen! Okay, okay…no gas. But hey! I hardly cook anymore…in the depression that accompanies Old Age, I don’t feel like eating, much less like cooking. And do I or do I not have the Propane Barbecue of the Gods? If I want to do some serious cooking, I’ll take it outside.

Lookit those patios!

Lookit that yard! Is that or is that not Cassie Heaven? It’s even Human Heaven. NOOOOO swimming pool!!!! Lookit those patios! Lookit those trees! Lookit that privacy!

Well. There is a swimming pool. Someone else gets to take care of it. 🙂

Lookit those acres of greenswards, all common areas. Cassie would not even have to walk a block and a half to sniff every waft of dog pee ever deposited on this earth. At least, in her limited little doggy universe.

Lookit those freaking DOUBLE-PANED FRENCH DOORS AND WINDOWS. Oh god oh god oh god. I think I have found nirvana.

Let’s hope no one has found it before me.

I have asked the credit union if I can prequalify. I have asked a friend in my business group if he can round up some investors who will lend me enough for a bridge loan, damn the usurious interest rates. I. WANT. THAT. HOUSE.

Moments of light.

Have you spotted any lately? What are they?

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

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My beautiful son
Great friends
The All Saints Choir
Cassie the Corgi
Charley the Puppy
A roof over my head
Enough to eat
A beautiful cool morning

What are you giving thanks for today?

Images:
Jennie A. Brownscombe, The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth. 1914. Public Domain.
Charles William Jefferys, The Order of Good Cheer, 1606. 1925. Public Domain. (The Order of Good Cheer was an early Canadian thanksgiving holiday.)

Moment of Actual Fun

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Wow! This last week or so has been difficult. But last night I got to go to a nice party hosted by the financial management firm that handles my life savings. It was great fun!

In the first place: ego-stroking! I gussied myself up in the St. John suit I picked up at My Sister’s Closet the other day (did I mention the jacket alone was around $1200 when new? mwa ha hah!). I felt like Cinderella! Several women actually came up to compliment me on how good I looked! So that was nice.

More entertaining, I met two very interesting people who are perfect candidates for Funny’s “Entrepreneurs” series. I’ve been meaning to revive that for quite a while but with the ridiculous work overload, have not managed to work up that much energy. Both of these folks are doing some wonderfully creative things, as is the woman I’ve intended, for the past several months, to write about. So: for sure, next week I’ll try to get in touch with these folks and interview them. Pour vous.

Today: two more student papers to drag through, one of them truly gawdawful and one just awful. Of the five papers I read yesterday afternoon, I did not pass a single one. Well…unless you consider a D-minus passing. Not, I might add, because of any ditzy little schoolmarm-type trash, but because they did not bother to do the assignment. No joke. Five papers of five in which the bouncing young freshman did not read the instructions (which are the same for all the other assignments that they’ve succeeded on, more or less) and did not do what they were asked to do.

Now this, IMHO, you can’t blame on the public schools. Well. Except insofar as kids who can’t or won’t follow basic instructions are passed through the grades and given a diploma after killing 13 years in the K-12 system.

You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Maybe we ought not to be certifying the dry horses as having been watered. 😉

As soon as that task is done, it’s onward to finishing the content for the CE Desk website and  then off to an Alphagraphics to get our new business cards printed up. Yay!

That may leave enough time this weekend, around singing tomorrow morning and performing the Fauré requiem in the evening, to actually clean this filthy house and try to undo some of the puppy damage in the backyard and tend to the limping pool.

But first, there’s a farmer’s market at a park up on the other side of the North Mountains. Think I’ll take Cassie and stroll around there.

 

 

D from H, Redux

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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

6:00 a.m.: Student turns in late paper, with a viable excuse.  A new raft of papers scheduled to come in today, this paper must be read now to prevent total melt-down later. Naturally, it’s the most difficult paper of the entire set. Takes forever.

7:15 a.m.: Knock off reading paper so as to get breakfast and feed Cassie before M’hijito shows up with Charley the Pup.

7:16 a.m.: Out of food. Make Costco list. Scrounge breakfast from leftovers; cook pasta to throw over leftovers and add to Cassie’s pittance.

7:40 a.m.: Go back to reading impossibly tangled student paper.

7:45 a.m.: M’hijito shows up a little early. Pup is berserk.

7:50 a.m. forward: Sit down, go back to reading student paper, get up, deal with dogs; sit down, go back to reading paper, get up, deal with dogs; sit down, go back to reading paper, get up, deal with dogs…repeat, ad infinitum. Realize I can’t answer all the e-mail pending; triage. Squeeze in a bath and hairwash.

10:45 a.m.: Out the door.

11:30 a.m.: Meet 101s. Lecture.

12:30 p.m.: Meet 102s. Lecture.

1:30 p.m.: Counsel student on life/career/education strategies.

2:00 p.m.: Meet another set of 102s. Lecture.

3:30 p.m.: Let 102s out early; head for Costco to replenish larder.

4:45 p.m.: Return home. Let pup out of crate. Pup is berserk. Let him out into the yard to destroy things while I unload car. Return La Maya’s phone call; tell her I can’t go with her to a Scottsdale estate sale and then dinner because I have choir.

5:00 p.m.: While explaining this over the phone, pull a leg off the Costco roast chicken; parboil and butter some asparagus. Notice a smell. Clean up Cassie’s shit from under the family room desk, while still talking on the phone. Continue to chat while walking outside to see what the pup is up to and see…Charley standing over the shrubbery vomiting. And vomiting. And vomiting. And vomiting. Dog is clearly distressed.

5:16 p.m.:  Get off the phone to attend to dog. He staggers off. Look of fear dissipates from animal’s face. He seems more or less O.K. Goes in and drinks water. Get hose and spray back at least a gallon of vomit, with little luck.

5:20 p.m.: Put food on table. Tie fractious dog to doorknob so as to break loose enough peace to bolt down piece of chicken and asparagus.

5:20:30 p.m.: Dog is pawing at eye. Dog paws at eye and ear. Dog frantically digs and scratches at throat. Not good.

5:21 p.m.: Leave food and beer on table. Throw dog and wallet into the car and race for the vet’s office.

5:30 p.m.: Reach vet. Drag dog into lobby. Vet’s office is full of people with dogs and cats. Pup goes berserk. Wrestle animal under control and explain what’s going on.

5:32 p.m.: Get parked in a waiting room. Pup hates vet and is frantic to get out. Throws himself against the door repeatedly trying to escape. Nothing calms dog. Tell my story to the vet’s technician. Get left to wait for the vet. Dog continues to throw self against doors.

6:00 p.m.: Vet appears. Have to repeat the whole damn story again, for the third time.

6:05 p.m.: Vet observes dog. Vet believes dog has been bitten by a spider or bee and is suffering an allergic reaction. I remember the plant growing between the damn palm trees that is a member of the deadly nightshade family…damn! Should’ve pulled that thing out of there before Pup ever showed up at my house! She thinks he would have thrown it up before it did much harm. She sticks to her theory that it’s an allergic reaction to insect or spider venom. She proposes to shoot him up with an antihistamine and another shot.

6:15 p.m.: M’hijito shows up at the vet’s, just as the vet is about to haul Charley off to be medicated. Repeat the whole story again: fourth retelling. Vet describes her theory and how she proposes to treat it. M’hijito looks at dog, notes swelling on jaw, notes  bouncing behavior.

“Nothing is wrong with this dog,” says he. “I don’t want him dosed with medications if it can be avoided. Also, we can’t take the financial hit. Is this really necessary? I doubt it.”

Vet wavers. Vet lobbies for shots of antihistamine and whatever.

M’hijito stands firm.

Vet looks at me. “It’s his dog,” I say. “It’s his decision.”

Vet now fesses up that probably if the dog were going to go into anaphylactic shock, it would have done so by now, although there’s still some risk for the next two hours. Vet’s office is open until 10:00 p.m. She suggests giving him Benadryl and watching him closely. If he gets worse, come back.

6:30 p.m.: Exit the vet’s office, $45 lighter. Drive Charley to M’hijito’s house. Drag him inside and wait for M’hijito to return from the Walgreen’s with a bottle of Benadryl. Chat for a few minutes.

6:45 p.m.: Drive to choir rehearsal. Practice singing for two hours.

9:15 p.m.: Arrive home. Feed Cassie. Make sandwich out of congealed chicken. Throw out stale beer. Wash sandwich down with a stiff bourbon and water.

9:30 p.m.: Pick up kitchen, wash dishes, try to restore a little order to the chaos. Let Cassie out. Put heating pad in bed and turn it to “high.”

10:00 p.m.: Answer a few e-mails. Read Google News. Celebrate exit of evil Russell Pearce, recalled from legislative office by hordes of angry voters; celebrate election of several Good Guys to city council. Has the electoral worm turned?

10:30 p.m.: Dope self with Benadryl. Crash in the bed.

Tuesday Thursday a.m. [jeez…how distracted AM i? I can no longer tell the difference between Tuesday and Thursday!]: Benadryl worked—slept a nearly unheard-of seven hours. Am now late for Tuesday Thursday a.m. meeting. Tuesday Thursday agenda:

7:00 a.m. meeting, Scottsdale
9:30 a.m. meeting, Scottsdale
11:30 a.m. meeting, Tempe
1:00 p.m. hair stylist appointment, Tempe
2:30 p.m.: arrive back here. Spend rest of afternoon struggling with dog and trying to grade papers.

Ain’t retirement grand?

 

Quickie Weddings…Revanche ♥ PiC

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Soo many pent-up blog posts to share with you! Well, let’s start with this: Check out the story of Revanche and PiC’s Faux-lopement, a tale told in three installments…

Here…

and here…

and here…

What an adventure!

But isn’t getting married always an adventure? (To say nothing of staying married…)

Best wishes to Revanche and PiC, excellent young people

♥ ♥ ♥

Reminds me of my own wedding…

My mother wanted to throw an elaborate shindig. So impressed was she that I had snared a corporate lawyer on track for partner at one of the most prestigious firms in the Southwest, she determined to create a Big Society Event. She planned to hire out space at Mountain Shadows, then a very tony resort that basked in the shadow in Camelback Mountain, deep in the heart of Paradise Valley. There at a sit-down dinner we would receive the cream of Old Phoenix; videlicet, every member of the large firm, every secretary, every clerk, every receptionist, and all their spouses. Plus her friends, my friends, the groom’s family and friends, and anyone else she could think of.

This, as you can imagine, quickly grew into something that looked very, very expensive.

My father’s financial habits made Scrooge McDuck look profligate. He viewed my mother’s plans with increasing alarm.

Shortly after he saw the printing bill for the invitations, he made his move: He called the fiancé and offered to give him $3,000 if he would please elope with me.

No joke.

My father paid my soon-to-be-husband to undercut my mother’s plan for an elaborate wedding. Naturally, the groom took him up on the offer.

Three grand was a lot of money in those days. It was still the time when a young college graduate figured he would have it made in the shade if he ever, during his lifetime, earned $12,000 a year. A $12,000 salary was about the equivalent of a six-figure income today.

It came back to bite my father, in a funny way. Funny odd, I mean.

We set the wedding day in early December of 1967. We would be wed in the groom’s church, a bland Methodist institution in the heart of North Central. I invited my best friend from high-school to fly over from Southern California to be the maid of honor. My mother invited her oldest and best friend to come over, also from Southern California.

My father was still going to sea, piloting tankers up and down the West Coast. He’d planned to get off the boat in San Francisco and fly over for the marrying; then turn around and meet the ship in Long Beach.

Well, along about the end of November, a gigantic storm bore down from the Arctic and barreled into Alaska, where the tanker was bound to put in at Anchorage. The ship headed out to sea and laid off the coast of Alaska, waiting for the storm to pass.

Pass, it did not.

He called ship-to-shore to say he couldn’t make it back to Arizona by the appointed wedding day.

Since it was now a very informal affair, we simply postponed the wedding day. New airline tickets were purchased for out-of-staters, and the groom called the resort where we planned to honeymoon and changed our reservations.

The new appointed wedding day drew nigh. The storm stayed parked over Alaska, and the boat stayed parked on the high seas off Alaska.

Another postponement. More changes in travel plans, another call to the honeymoon resort. My mother’s friend, drawing the wrong conclusion, remarked in what she must have thought was a between-confidantes intimacy, that “these things happen in the best of families.” My mother flew into a high rage and never spoke to her friend again.

Another week passed. The storm did not pass. My father’s boat stood out to sea. Still. The designated maid of honor had Christmas plans and had to demur from attending our wedding, should it ever occur.

After the third postponement, the groom announced that he could not ask the resort in Carmel to change our reservations again, and we would have to move forward with the wedding whether or not my father could get  here.

And that’s exactly what happened. We were wed while my father was stuck at sea. I had no maid of honor. The groom’s parents couldn’t make it in from Colorado, either. My parents’ next-door neighbor, whom I hardly knew, “gave me away” in the ceremony. As if I were an object that could be given away, for the price of $3,000.

We used the three grand to buy furniture for the apartment that looked out over the back lot of Sanderson Ford. Probably the young husband used part of it to defray the cost of the honeymoon.

Sometimes I wonder… If we had actually gone through with the elaborate wedding and the big formal ceremony in a church that had some meaning for me (not one I had never gone into before and never went into again), would we still be married?

Probably not.

But who knows?

A wedding ceremony at Christ Church Cathedral, New Orleans. Kris Arnold. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.