A shout out to kathy!

So I just returned from a week in the desert...I was expecting some hot, dry, heat -days in the pool, cacti, some tumbleweed. (Video Clip: Rayne dancing to Frank Sinatra at the Olive Garden)

It rained. So hard that the streets flooded from the mountains. It was also cold, go figure!
There was one day of whining...by me...a big thank you to my sister for making sure that my whining did not ruin the visit. Also Jose was very patient and even gave me a back massage when I pulled my neck out.
(Video Clip: Rayne and Kathy feeding the ducks)

But the visit was completely awesome. Because even when there is rain in the desert there is RAYNE in the desert. She is a most special niece. She is a delight to hang out with. We danced, we sang, we watched a horrific video about colors that makes her scream in delight, we bounced a big red ball all over the house, we tried baked squash together and found it super wonderful, we read books (sometimes repeated 4 times each), we gave kisses, we snuggled, we hugged, we played little jokes on each other, and we discovered that we both love shiny jewelry. In short, we got to know each other, as aunt and niece, as friends.

But I also got to know how patient and kind my sister is as a mom and wife. She works so hard with Rayne every day. Rayne could be a coddled little girl who cries and whimpers when life gets hard, she would be excused, it was a difficult first year. But instead, I got to hang out with a niece who is happy, independent, fearless, and delighted to explore the world around her.
(Video Clip: Rayne and Kathy on the swings)

When ya'll meet Rayne you'll know who to thank after she gives you the biggest, sloppiest kiss ever! My sister, her mom.


(Video Clip: Rayne's First Car Wash was a bit traumatic)

It's about TIME!

So, it has taken me a long while to write this dissertation. I mean, there was over 30 credits of classes, an exam, a take-home exam, some classes still to go on writing (go figure) and then there is a qualifying paper. And some could say that I've been dragging my heels a little (ahem..says a little shadow...a lot).

But go read this article: Now, I don't want to play the blame game but it figures that there might be more to this dissertation x infinity than just me, right. I mean, don't I have all the incentives to get out of here, like yesterday! Don't I want a job, don't I want to leave this miserable over-crowded state? So, why would I procrastinate?

It could be that the culture of my program pushes me to move much more slowly because the emphasis is not on finishing, its on perfection, self-discovery, illumination, and miraculous insight!

The problem, I think, centers on the humanities themselves. Humanities students and their professors see themselves as the last bastion against the crowd of capitalism, commercialism, and banality that will one day rise and eat up all of humanity so that nothing is left except empty soulless beings who like french fries.

Of course, this is to give ourselves too much credit. Often I feel the most soulful while picking a peach in an open field. Sometimes, it is simply when I wake up to a cool breeze and I see my husband curled up beside me. Often, I feel full of life and humanity when I look up into a blue sky and see the winds moving the clouds, I feel so small and so happy in those moments.

I will admit that I have some bias and I think that my study in the humanities gives me the disposition to reflect in these moments. It is philosophy, above all else, that has made me more calm and centered in my beliefs about the strangeness and inequality that I see in the world.

But we in the humanities cannot simply think that writing and reading books will offer the only prescription to societies woes.

I think what would be better if there were more students of the humanities working, living, breathing, teaching, and just plain MOVING in this wide world of ours! Of course, this means I still retain the humanistic bias that they are the best studies in the world and that they will make your life better, more good, and happier. But only, only if, you start writing that dissertation, get it done, and start being in the world.

And perhaps maybe I should take my own advice and then become a professor who tells her students the same.....

Millions of Peaches!

Okay, not millions but about 25 pounds, which I figure is around 12 pies...which means one peach thing a month for the winter if we can manage not to eat them all in the next week! I love picking fruit for the winter storage. This is one of those things that if I were a memoir writer I would write about. I would write about the first time I remember going fruit picking...I'm thinking it must have been Valley Vineyard but possibly not. I remember it was strawberries and on a hill. And all I can really picture in my mind is a green leaf and some mud and my hand. It's one of those very fuzzy memories. Then there are the more clear ones: The time Mausie and I got lost in who-knows-where-rural Ohio and we stopped in her old Buick to save a box turtle crossing the road. There was the time we went raspberry picking and it was so hot and horrible and buggy that I just wanted to cry. There was the time we went strawberry picking in some strange little field next to a natural spring and again it was hot, horrible, and buggy only this time mom kept worrying we would step on a snake. There were the cider pops that were amazing because they just turned back to juice in your mouth from thier icy state and the blueberries, blueberries, blueberries...always picking more!

And of course then there was the first time I took Daniel blueberry picking. He had never gone before and didn't really know anything about it. Lo and behold he's a champion picker and outpicks me every time. If my Mausie had known about his ability she would have probably told me to marry him a few years sooner (or at least to have loaned his skills out to her:)



But of course, there is much more to fruit picking than all the fun. For me it's about this thing I talked about in my last post about living towards the future. Sure, it definitely satisfies this urge I have to constantly store things. I am well known for my ability to horde special food and candy for months just so that 'it's there'. I don't wear new clothes until they have been in my closet for a few weeks just so that they 'stay new'. So I'm sure that it has something to do with that minor obsessive habit. But really, it's about being able to hope. And not hope in a way that's all dreamy and sun-shiny. But actually doing stuff in the present that captures the future right than and there. It's about biting into that peach on a hot August day and being able to forecast to that first day in January where all you can do is make a hot peach cobbler to ward off the chill.


Yesterday standing in that field eating peaches Daniel and I just smiled and time really stood still. Because, for me, picking fruit is about the way that it is so very possible to be in the present, the past, and the future all at once.

Mmmmmmmmmm.

Marriage and a Doctorate

In June D and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary...which means we are nearing 10 years together. For most of that time (minus 2 years of outside work in the middle) one or both of us has been a student. Many of our best nights have been spent writing near each other late into the night with a forever hot pot of Starbucks brewing (and sometimes finishing with a neat drop of whiskey as we crashed for the night). Now, D has less time to spend writing and reading and spends more time texting and managing and I spend more time writing but often in frustration. Our schedules are rarely similar. Often I walk through the door to a just waking husband and often he walks through the door to a sound asleep wife. It hasn't been easy.

There are times when I feel as if I'm taking too much of our time and finances and contributing little (adjuncting just doesn't pay that much!) On these days I often clean the entire house from top to bottom and make a cherry pie just to fufill some sort of notion of the 'perfect wife'.

Of course, this is also a problem because whatever time I'm spending doing something else I'm not writing. And, if I'm not writing it means that my dissertation is NOT getting done. Which means that we will have to stay here longer. And it means that D and I often put plans for the future aside and keep living day to day. Which is nice, as we can simply often savor a moment but often it seems as if it is a matter of living instead of living well, which I've always believed must contain living towards the future...not for the future but towards the future.

Which isn't easy, for either of us. And there have been many nights where it felt like it might not be worth it. And yet, we are still here, still celebrating, still moving towards the future, together.

One of the reasons is that we have decided to dream big, together. Like when we started off this crazy adventure and spent all our savings a month hiking through Europe. Totally Awesome. Awe-inspring. The best thing I've ever done. And, so we often think about that rather big moment and push ourselves to keep doing that kind of thing And we have decided, slowly to allow the future into our lives...even if it doesn't quite fit. Like purchasing a house. It makes it a bit more difficult....an apartment complex isn't cheap but it also doesn't take money every month because the bathtub leaks or the upstairs bedroom heater isn't working right. Still, although I was worried when we bought the house it was a step in making sure that this dream of our ours wasn't just about me but was about our dreams, our life, our growing together. Which meant, growing up and out of that student bubble it's so easy to live in. Where really if you have cheese, wine, some bread, and some coffee you are all set.

Sure, I'm still selfish sometimes, I put my work ahead of D and I often meet my adviser despite the hassle it brings to leave the house for the city yet another time. And D admits that he spends way too much time at work and we both get lazy and uncommunicative and grouchy.

But at the end of the day, we make our plans together. And maybe that's the key to this marriage and graduate student thing. We are learning to live in a marriage where student life is not the main focus but simply one of our focuses. Its not that we still don't have discussions like whether or not emotions are a kind of rationality (one of our unsolvables) but we have that discussion and then another discussion about whether or not its time to paint the kitchen or pick the pumpkins. And then I go upstairs to pound away at these clicking keys and D romps around with the dog. And that seems to work just fine (except for those nights when grouchiness trumps all and then well, we just hope for the next day!)

It seems the key, for us at least, has been to transform our passion for learning about philosophy and education to learning about life...which is probably what truly living philosophically is all about.

And for more on the subject here is some articles which articulate some of the frustrations and opportunities of graduate life and marriage.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/10/20/marriage

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/03/us/health-for-graduate-students-marriage-presents-a-special-problem.html

To Paint or Not to Paint

Below find pictures of the garden and our new back door. I'm sure that if we sell the house we'll have to repaint but it makes me smile when I sit out there!


Okay, I have to share this, the neighborhood boy next door is playing with his fan and his voice (you know how it modulates your tone when you talk), only I don't know if he knows that we can hear him. He's about 11 or 12 and I'm having trouble keeping in my laughter! But, hey, its hot out and I can't blame him for wanting to have a little fun in the heat while sitting next to the fan!

Shopping and Creativity

So some things have happened over the past month that have made blogging something I've neglected. Also I tend to want to be a perfectionist and felt as if I had nothing to truly blog about so why begin? IF I simply wanted to keep a diary, than I should keep a diary. And, I've found that through the Picasa site its better to simply email family if you want to keep them posted on your daily life.

But, then I realized that I did have something to say and I wanted to work on it publicly, so it will come, it will be part of this blog that will also hopefully help D and I keep our families up to date (mostly with things like porch building and tomato picking, interspersed with cute pics of the dog!) But more on that later, like in a few weeks, after I've compiled some info.

In the meantime, D and I went back to school shopping. Okay, I went back to school shopping, D played super interested in women's clothing fashions husband. The part was played well and I think he could have picked up most of the women in Ann Taylor Loft if he wanted! Plus, he really picks out very nice clothes. One day I will post about a special pair of yellow shoes that are amazing, vintage, and make almost anyone of my outfits turn into high fashion, which he picked out on his lonesome for me while I was 600 miles a way!

Anyway, this is not about shopping or fashion, really, although I don't mind giving a shout out to the loft for always providing pants in petite sizes that DO NOT make me look like a child or an teacher from the 80's. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for always providing a dress on sale that would look awesome at a NYC cocktail party but can be dressed down with a cardigan and scarf for teaching sleepy freshmen.

But this posting is about what happend when D and I returned home. No, there was not a fashion show. It was much too hot for that. Instead, we were both struck with a huge burst of creativity and energy. And this seemed strange, so strange that we both commented on it at about the same time! I had played around with my camera for a short while and D began reading the science times but then we both jumped up and started furiously writing/scribbling/making notes..and I even jumped back onto this blog.

I know, my father would rather I jump back onto the dissertation, but that is entirely too much to ask for at 8:00 at night!

Anyway, we wondered: Is there something to consumerism and the vaccous American Mall that makes one return to creativity? Is there something creative in the mall? Gasp! Could it be that our very need as a society to meet and exchange (even banal things as store clerk pleasantry and cheap articles of clothing) is also that which we need for creativity...despite the fact that we tend to say we think better alone?

Perhaps it is simply a reminder to us creative folk to leave the malls quickly and return home to better and more beautiful things but it may be a reminder for those of us who are quick to leave the folds of humanity and its dreariness (and I'm one of them!) that for all its banality and cheapness, humanity needs us and we need it!

update

Update on the gingko tree.
Turned out it was a FLY TRAP. That's right folks! Apparently flies are attracted to dead meat, no kidding, really she says.
And the neighbors bought this thing so that their GIANT PIT BULL would not get bit by flies during the afternoons because instead of sometimes going inside the house (where hopefully the amount of flies would decrease, said dog, named Raphael and/or Leonardo there are two of them and I can't tell them apart (for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
for all you fans). Anyway, apparently these fly traps work amazingly well but when I looked them up on the good ole net, they say, do not put next to neighbors because, well, they smell like DEAD OLD ROTTING MEAT!!! And when D happened to peer over the fence and look into the pit bulls's yard he gagged, then told me to NEVER LOOK OVER THE FENCE. Neighbor has since been made aware that there is a strange dead smell coming from their side of the yard and smell is mostly gone. Though sometimes it appears to eminate from their trash, which does not come with trash can lids, because, well you know that would just be too much kindness for neighbors that live 2 feet from one another.