a new stage in parenting

Over the 15 years that we’ve had children in school, my husband and I have managed not to have latch-key kids. Until now. For years, one or the other of us could be at home in the afternoon when they got home. Sometimes that meant picking them up from school and bringing them up to campus while I finished the work day, sometimes it meant finishing the work day at home, but one way or another we managed. It helped, of course, that we both had very flexible schedules, and that we (and our department chairs) were able to schedule our classes for prime times, so that one of us could get usually home before the school day ended. I did once teach a night class rather than teach during homework-and-dinner-prep time, and I’m in awe of those who do so all the time — that is really not my time of day. For a while one or the other of my kids was often in after-school soccer because it bought us an extra hour before pickup time on practice days—that ended, though, when it became clear that neither one had any interest in soccer beyond the camaraderie, so when the games got serious they gave it up. (And, for the record, no, I’ve never asked a childless colleague to teach late so I didn’t have to, nor has my chair ever made such a request for me. So far — fingers crossed — it’s all worked out fairly easily.)

More recently, my husband has picked up much of the slack, working from home as my administrative load has increased. So now, though I still rarely teach late in the day, I do occasionally have meetings that go until 4 or 5 pm — or even, as today, beyond. (Sometimes I even schedule them myself.) The first few weeks of classes when it was clear that this would become a more regular occurrence there was still no problem — my middle-school son wasn’t back in school yet anyway and was at home with his dad.

But school started last week and his dad’s out of town right now, and I’m solo parenting it for once. And today and tomorrow I have late afternoon meetings. Since my son is thirteen and reasonably responsible, we decided he could have a key and let himself in, and he’d call to announce his return.

I’m waiting for that call right now.

And after reading Susan O’Doherty’s blog post today I’m already counting the ways this could go wrong. A party in Central Park isn’t at all my concern, nor do I expect the cops to get involved, but there are many different kinds of near misses. He left a lunchbox at school last week; did he somehow lose his key? Or is the bus running late? If he missed the bus I would already have heard, I imagine, but what if he just couldn’t manage the rather sticky key in the very old lock?

Of course the call just came and all is well. There’s homework to worry about, and I do still have that meeting to go to, but for the moment another milestone’s been passed and all is well.

I do know I’ve been fortunate in this one. My milestone is a lot of other people’s day-to-day existence, and more parents than not patch together after-school programs, childcare arrangements, swing shifts, babysitting co-ops, and various other maneuvers to make their days work. I’m grateful that we managed to do all right for this long. And, like a lot of other parents every day, I’m glad that call came in when it did.

(cross-posted from Mama, PhD at Inside Higher Ed)

a food post

When I was a little girl my mother cooked dinner every night. Usually it was a meat, two sides, and dessert--at least in my memory--but there were exceptions to that rule. Spaghetti with meat sauce was one--usually served with a salad on the side. And there were other things that we had every now and then that were usually called "caloosapotti," which was someone's (my brother's? Mine?) mispronunciation of "ratatouille." I have no idea how the word "kallusapoti" should be spelled, but maybe you can get an idea of the pronunciation from my two attempts here.

One of the central features of calloosapotty was that it couldn't be repeated. If we liked it--or if we didn't--Mom would say, "you'll probably never eat it again." These were improvisational dishes, dishes that just incorporated whatever was fresh in the garden, or leftover in the fridge, or both.

I came up with one of those improvisational meals tonight and it was so satisfying, I just have to write it down. I may never really repeat it, but I can probably approximate it again. It involved turnip greens (we got little salad turnips in the CSA share on Saturday), and eggplant, and some leftover tomato sauce.

I started with the turnip greens, sauteing them in olive oil with sliced garlic. As the greens wilted, I added a sprinkle of pistachios and some raisins. My favorite way to eat spinach is sauteed with garlic, raisins or currants, and pine nuts--but I didn't have pine nuts so pistachios were my substitute.

While the greens were sauteing I sliced the eggplant into half inch rounds, brushed both sides of each slice with olive oil, and placed them on a cookie sheet in the oven at about 400F. When I remembered, I turned them over and brushed them with a little more olive oil.

When the eggplant rounds were brown on both sides, I piled the greens onto them (removing the garlic slices as I did), then topped each with about a tablespoonful of tomato sauce and about the same amount of shredded Italian cheese (Trader Joe's "quattro fromaggio" blend). Then back in the oven to heat the sauce and brown the cheese.

Oh, my goodness, those were delicious! No, I couldn't get Nick even to try one, but I don't even care--I wanted them all! The turnip greens were surprisingly mild, the eggplant was creamy, and the sauce and cheese were just right. I may never repeat it exactly, but it was delicious. I'm sure it would be great with spinach or chard or kale, with or without pine nuts and without the raisins, if those seem odd in this context, but I've got to tell you, they were really good. I'm sure this dish isn't authentically anything--it's calloosapoti, pure and simple, and it hit the spot.

[edited to add:] The moral of this story may simply be that I will eat anything, given enough olive oil and garlic. I can live with that.

On Not Always Saying No

Is service the housework of academe? I'm not sure, but it certainly takes up more of my time...read on at the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed

Mothering at Mid-Career: Cinderella’s Legacies? - Inside Higher Ed

This week at Inside Higher Ed I'm connecting my first-year seminar to some recent blog posts on our site:

Mothering at Mid-Career: Cinderella’s Legacies?

Veggies Galore

This year we joined a CSA, the lovely local Frog Bottom Farm. (Well, by local, I mean less than two hours away.) This past weekend they held a fabulous potluck, and it made me think a bit about how getting a weekly share of produce has lessons for both the teacher and the parent. Here's my IHE blog post about that...

sometimes things go well

We had a great--though very brief--trip to the beach this weekend, and on the way home I got to thinking about how nice it was not to have to hold anyone up over the waves the whole time--or to have to drive home (Mariah drove). These musings coalesced into this week's blog post over at IHE...

Mmm, granola...

It's been a while since I posted a recipe here. I decided to remedy that, sort of, by including one in my blog post for Inside Higher Ed...

Probably only of interest to book nerds...

...is the story of how I've been rearranging my office.

Can it really be mid-July already? This summer is going by too fast!

Taking a summer movie seriously...

I'm blogging at IHE today about Toy Story 3D, which we loved. Actually, I'm talking about all three Toy Story movies, just for fun. And it's my 100th blog post over there, too!

planning

I really want to write something about the three Toy Story movies, having just seen the third one this past weekend. But right now I have a lot of other things to write instead, including this weekly blog post at Inside Higher Ed. So for now all I'll say is, yes, it's that rare sequel that lives up to its predecessors.

Summer Jobs

One of the best things about being an academic is that summer is still really different from the rest of the year, just like it was when I was a kid. I remember some long summers spent reading on the couch, or outside--really, reading wherever I could. But what I really remember most are the various summer jobs I had starting when I was about sixteen. They weren't good jobs, of course--when you're sixteen you've got no skills, after all, and no experience--but they were formative in some significant ways. Now it's Mariah's turn.

Read more about summer jobs at the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed...

Sad Stories

I haven't blogged much lately, as everyone who still checks in here knows. The once-a-week gig (more or less) at Inside Higher Ed seems to satisfy whatever need I have to broadcast my opinions to the world. I do miss the recipes I used to post here--but at least the ones I put here are still archived. And I miss writing as much as I used to, but there are other things taking up that time.

If I were still blogging more I have no doubt that I would have had some things to say about the BP spill. And I probably would have had something to say about the heartbreaking loss Katie Allison Granju (mamapundit) has just suffered. In fact I did manage to say a little about both in this week's post for Inside Higher Ed. There's more to say about both--but I'm not sure I'm the person to say it.

Sick Day? - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

One day I'll go back through old blog posts and see how often I get sick during a break. Or, more likely, I won't--it might just depress me. Anyway, I've got a cold and laryngitis, and in a blatant plea for sympathy I'm blogging about it over at Inside Higher Ed.

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Deja Vu all over again

Lately all I do is run workshops. I've done two in the last two weeks and I've got two more before the end of May, then another one in August. It's teaching, of course, but it's also not--I'm facilitating groups of faculty rather than leading groups of students. And it's teaching me a lot about teaching. That's the context for this week's blog post over at IHE.

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Teaching and Tae Kwon Do, again - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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back again

Again I missed one of my posts over at IHE. Last week I blogged about my phone ringing while I was in a workshop (among other things); this week I have a little more to say about that workshop.

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It's over? Really?

Our semester seems to end weeks earlier than anyone else's, which always feels like a gift in April (though not so much in August, when we start weeks earlier than anyone else, too). This year I had an unusually great last day of class...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Semester's End - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

Last week, by the way, I ruminated about rubrics and spreadsheets and what my job will look like in twenty years--and forgot to put it here. So, a two-fer!

Oh! And, I almost forgot, but the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed was named one of the top parenting blogs recently by this neat resource--I love the idea that nurse practitioners are recommending parenting blogs to their patients. Makes perfect sense. Our blog is the top one listed in "specific parenting issues."

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Not yet

So, I don't have an iPad. Yet. Here's a little of my thinking about that.

Easter, and a quick correction

Easter was lovely, even if our usual houseguests went elsewhere this year. (Ah, who can blame them for going to see our parents, even if I couldn't make the same trip?) We had friends over, enjoyed great food that reprised several earlier Easter menus, and talked until well past dark. But then we had to get up in the morning--or I did--to go to work. (Mama, PhD blog post alert!)

And, just to be clear, I did not really stay up until 5-something a.m. Sunday to finish my various Saturday activities. Rather, my time stamp was still set to Kabul time. It isn't any more and the Saturday post now says Saturday again. Whew!

Productive

Today I made:

• A banana breakfast ring (it's in Nigella's Feast)
• A bracelet (I've been experimenting with chain maille [edited to add the picture])
• Turkey burgers
• Granola (I make it sort of like Caroline does)
  
• Yogurt (this is the basic method, but I strain it to make it thick like Greek yogurt)
  
• Flatbread dough
• Pie crust (I did something like a double recipe of this, though I didn't use quite that much shortening; it's for rhubarb pie for tomorrow)

I also did three loads of laundry and made a big grocery run. And did a little cleaning. Now I'm knitting and watching basketball (well, I'm about to be knitting). Whew! That felt good.

advising...

...
For many years I had a clipping up on my door from the University of Richmond's alumni magazine. It was from an interview with a major donor who had made his fortune in a field well outside academe, and in it he was asked what his major was. I no longer have the clipping, but to the best of my recollection he said something like, "I did everything wrong; I majored in English." He went on to explain that his undergraduate major was not career training in any conventional sense, though he was, of course, prepared to learn in whatever field he chose. But the damage, for me, was done: majoring in English is somehow doing things wrong.
...
read the whole post here

in bloom

I came into the office Monday morning wondering if the cherry tree would be in bloom. It wasn't, but a thunderstorm roared through later in the day and by the end of it there were pretty clearly a few blossoms out. Today it's out in full, showing off against its usual backdrop of red brick, black leaded glass panes, and grey skies. We're supposed to get temps down to 30F Saturday morning, but spring is definitely here nonetheless.

Mothering at Mid-Career: Getting Over It

When I saw the piece on "the other 'F' word" in this week's Chronicle, I have to admit it took me a while before I felt like reading it. Really? I thought, are we still talking about families and the academy? Aren't we done yet?

Apparently not...
(read the rest here)

Mothering at Mid-Career: Unknitting

There are some undertakings so overwhelming that, if you knew too much about them before diving in, you might never embark on them. Having children, for example, is way too daunting if you think about the time and money spent, the income and sleep lost — you'd never do it if you drew up a detailed budget beforehand. Writing a dissertation — or a book — is a similarly unmanageable project that might cow anyone who really thought hard about how long it would take for how little reward. Sometimes I think the academy, or the human race, reproduces itself only — to borrow Samuel Johnson's quip about second marriages — through the triumph of hope over experience.

read the rest here...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Talking about Teaching - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

It's an odd thing, writing a blog. Folks I know — or colleagues I don't know, for that matter — can stumble across it in ways they're unlikely to come across my academic work, but they don't often let me know they read it.

today I talk about one time when someone did let me know, and why I'm glad about it...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Talking about Teaching - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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ps: this piece should really have a link to Becca's recent column on social reading...

On Getting (and asking for) Help

When my son was about three we took him out to a restaurant where kids were welcome. He sat in a high chair with a tray, and we put things on it for him to eat. I can't remember exactly what it was that he was so intent on, but I do remember him chasing a piece of food around the tray with his fork, trying — and failing — to spear it. "I got it, I got it, I got it!" he chanted. Then, almost without taking a breath — "I need help!"

I feel like that a lot.

this week's post at the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed...

February Blues

I'm not a big fan of February, despite Mardi Gras, President's Day...even my birthday. It's just not my favorite month, and this year it seems particularly bleak. Nonetheless I have a fabulous cookie recipe and decided February would be a good time to share it...go look!

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: February Blues - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Unbalanced...

I'm trying to maintain some kind of balance, but ...well, you can see how well that's working.

slow learner

Some things I've learned so far this semester...

(today's blog post over at Inside Higher Ed)

A post about knitting, sort of

After blogging at this site for well over a year, I start to fear that I'll repeat myself. And, sure enough, when I sat down to write a post about knitting, I discovered that I'd done it before. That earlier post was a pep talk of sorts, a reminder to myself that I need to make time for things I love that aren't directly related to my work. Sometimes that can be hard, since one of my greatest pleasures, reading novels, is indeed directly related to my work and therefore hardly "counts" as a leisure activity.

But these days reminding myself to knit seems like less of an issue — what I need, it seems, is a reminder to finish what I start. Or, perhaps even better, to start what I can finish.

read the rest here

Advice to my daughter (and other bright humanities undergrads) - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

Mariah goes back to college today--I couldn't resist giving her a little advice before she goes...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Advice to my daughter (and other bright humanities undergrads) - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Happy New Year in Social Media - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

Yes, Facebook is killing the blog (my blog, at least). So maybe it's just too-too something to blog about it, but I did, anyway.

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Happy New Year in Social Media - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Happy 2010

We rang out the old year in fine style last night, with an easy dinner pizza and salad before heading off to see Sherlock Holmes. One of the biggest changes from last year--and certainly from the beginning of the decade!--is that there are now plenty of movies we both can see together as a family and want to. And we had a blast with Sherlock Holmes, though it is ridiculous and over the top and probably nowhere near as Victorian as it thinks it is. Whatever. (We also loved the preview for Iron Man 2, btw.)

We then went home for a belated celebration of Mariah's 20th birthday. Since I'd been at MLA over the real day she hadn't had a cake with candles, and I was happy to oblige. Or sort of. Instead of cake I got inspired by a recipe I found at 101 Cookbooks for a bittersweet chocolate tart. As usual I'm incapable of actually following a recipe, but I did come close. Mariah and I had been out earlier in the day for, among other things, bittersweet chocolate for the tart. I picked some up at Trader Joe's and came home to find that, in fact, it was bittersweet chocolate with almonds. I was about to just sub in whatever chocolate I had when Mariah suggested that the almonds would be good in the tart anyway, so in it went. (If you try this variation at home, use about half of a pound-plus bar of TJ's chocolate.) My tart pan is bigger than it should be, so the tart came out thinner than the one pictured in the original, but I hope you'll agree that it looks pretty good anyway--and it certainly tasted great!

This has been a quiet holiday, for the most part. It's been nice to hunker down at home and enjoy each other's company, and that of our new cat, Sergeant Pepper. Sarge arrived Christmas Eve from the pound and is now officially Nick's cat; after a few days he seems thoroughly acclimated to us and we to him.

I hope the new year brings you all the chocolate, cats, and/or other treats that you hope for.

Now and Then - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

I was late with my blog post this week, which is ironic, considering the topic...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Now and Then - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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semester's end

I haven't finished my grading yet. I haven't started the Christmas baking yet. And don't even talk to me about the Christmas shopping (this year, with shipping!). Not yet. I have, however, been thinking about my students...


Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Thinking about my students - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: End of Semester Bullets and Questions - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

I have a draft of a post about Thanksgiving lying around, but I haven't gotten to it yet--right now, I only have time for bullet points and quick questions...


Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: End of Semester Bullets and Questions - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Boys and Girls, again - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

revisiting last week's blog post--new evidence that girls don't civilize boys, and yet another claim for children's literature...


Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Boys and Girls, again - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Do girls "civilize" boys? Should they?

Boys, girls, books, and gender balance in this week's blog post...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Gender balance, again—this time in books - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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November?

If it's November it must be job season. Here's what I think about that right now:

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: November - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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In Memoriam

I learned today that one of my high school teachers, Otis Benson Davis, died earlier this week. O.B., as we all called him (only behind his back--to his face he was, of course, Mr. Davis), graduated from Kent School in 1942 and returned to teach there full time in 1949. He retired from active teaching only a few years ago, in 2006.

I graduated from Kent 36 years after O.B. did. He was my AP English teacher, my senior year; he was also the English department chair, and his influence was pervasive in the department. He was the co-author of the textbook we used for AP English, The Idea of Man (now out of print), and he was the teacher who introduced me to Hamlet, King Lear, and Oedipus as well as Out of the Silent Planet and Point of No Return. O.B. didn't think that, as 17 and 18-year-olds, we were too young to "get" dramas of middle and old age such as Point of No Return and King Lear; he didn't think we needed to be pandered to or coddled. I might choose different books than he did to teach seniors in high school--I imagine he chose different books, too, over the years--but I still remember what we read and, especially, his presence in the classroom, pushing, probing, questioning so that we read better, read deeper.

Part of AP English then--and, I imagine, now--involved drafting the college essay. My first draft, as I recall it, was unimpressive. O.B. wrote in the margin that it was a "cursory adumbration" of a much better essay. I had to look up "adumbration." I didn't ask him to define it; I knew it was my job to figure out what he meant and then to act on it. We sat around a seminar table in his class and discussed our essays, and the books we were reading, and started to feel like scholars.

We weren't, of course, but his confidence in us was, at least for me, infectious. When I started teaching I thought of O.B. all the time. I couldn't emulate him as a teacher--I didn't have his gravitas, his beard, his pipe. But I could and did remember the care he took with my essays, the love he had for literature. His was the approval I sought, the criticism I learned from, the example that inspired me. I can't say for sure that I'm an English professor because O.B. was my teacher, but I know he was a part of what made me choose the path I did. I did have the chance to say "thank you," years later, and I'm glad I did, but I'll say it again.

Thank you, O.B. Rest in peace.

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Bullet Points on women in the news - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

Catching up on some recent articles on women, the women's movement, and (yet again!) mothering in the academy...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Bullet Points on women in the news - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Parents' Weekend from the other side - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

As a professor, I'm rarely all that aware of Parents' Weekend on our campus. Occasionally an advisee has brought his or her parents by to say hello; sometimes I've run into a student with parents in tow and have stopped to chat. But most often I simply register the additional folks walking around the campus and then go on with my own business.

This time it was different. I was the one in tow.

read the rest here: Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Parents' Weekend from the other side - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: My take on "Opting Out" - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

do mothers really have choices about "working"? I'm not so sure...

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: My take on "Opting Out" - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Blog U.: On children's literature and academic administration - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

Today's blog post is about how Where the Wild Things Are and Alice in Wonderland help me through academic meetings....

Blog U.: On children's literature and academic administration - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Where I work...

"Once a week or so I leave my house in the morning at the usual time, bag packed, computer stowed—but instead of heading straight to my office I go elsewhere." read more here...

Let's talk

Do you talk to your kids away from home, or do you "talk" on facebook? How about your colleagues--e-mail, or phone? Does it matter? I'm trying to do both...with mixed success. Here's today's blog post over at Inside Higher Ed.

Labor Day

I worked yesterday, and I enjoyed it. Really. Check it out here:

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Labor Day - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Getting ready

The Yarn Harlot (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) has a great post today about letting a child go. My daughter's not going quite so far away as Australia, but tomorrow we take her to college and leave without her. It's all new. I said a little bit about it today over on the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed--more later.

Mothering at Mid-Career: Ready, Set…

I'm back at Inside Higher Ed today, and back to class as well. More later!

Blog U.: Mothering at Mid-Career: Ready, Set… - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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The White Horse

The White Horse of Uffington appears to be about 3000 years old, and is part of a complex of ancient sites in the Vale of the White Horse. The horse itself was probably constructed by digging trenches and then re-filling the trenches with chalk blocks; it needs to be cleaned regularly to remain visible. In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, a remarkably similar location exists:

There were odd carvings in the chalk, too, which the shepherds sometimes weeded when they were out on the downs with the flocks and there was not a lot to do. The chalk was only a few inches under the turf. Hoofprints could last a season, but the carvings had lasted for thousands of years. They were pictures of horses and giants, but the strange thing was that you couldn't see them properly from anywhere on the ground. They looked as if they'd been made for views in the sky. (The Wee Free Men, 119)

The image appears on pre-Roman British coinage, and while there has been some debate as to whether it is really mean to be a horse, it has certainly been referred to as such since at least the 11th century. In A Hat Full of Sky, the sequel to The Wee Free Men, Tiffany reports that Granny Aching said, “Taint what a horse looks like, it's what a horse be." While there don't appear to be other carvings of similar age still extant [edited to add: in England; my brother reminds me of others in Peru] (the Cerne Abbas giant, for example, seems to date back only to the 17th century), this may be because other carvings were not maintained as the Uffington White Horse has been.

Near the White Horse is the site of Uffington Castle, an Iron Age hill-fort. Also nearby is the “Dragon Hill,” reported to be the place where St. George slew the dragon. In The Wee Free Men, Tiffany walks to the top of “Arken Hill”:

There was a flat place at the top where nothing ever grew, and Tiffany knew there was a story that a hero had once fought a dragon up there and its blood had burned the ground where it fell. There was another story that said there was a heap of treasure under the hill, defended by the dragon, and another story that said a king was buried there in armor of solid gold. There were lots of stories about the hill; it was surprising it hadn't sunk under the weight of them. (52)

I took my class to the White Horse during the last week of classes. It was a warm, sunny, day and the wind blew along the ridge as we walked up the hill towards the carving. Then we sat up above and looked down at the flat-topped hill and thought about the people who lived on this land, and carved the horse, and buried their dead. Sheep graze on the hillside now and tourists come and walk among them.

(Cross-posted from the other blog, which I've been neglecting even more than this one...)

weekend jaunt

We left for the Lake District Friday morning under overcast skies, with a promise of intermittent rain Friday and heavy downpours Saturday. Raincoats and umbrellas in the back, we pressed northward, getting to the hotel by about 2 pm (just under four hours). We'd chosen a hotel Mariah and I had stayed in nine years ago, hopeful that it would live up to our memories of it. (It did.) After checking in we took a quick walk to see the sights, then decided we'd best see what we could of the local attractions before dinner since the next day would likely be rainier.



the stream running under the road, across the street from the hotel.


I remember hanging over this gate with Mariah nine years ago.


Once we got our legs stretched we decided to head towards Windermere, Ambleside, and Grasmere. Despite the threatening weather, Windermere was like Fisherman's Wharf in SF: awash with tourists, spilling off the sidewalks into the (very narrow) roads. We drove on through and made our way to Rydal Mount, the last home William Wordsworth lived in (and the loveliest). Mariah remembered it so fondly from our trip in 2000 that we paid the admission to the gardens and had a glorious walk through them. It started to rain in earnest at the end of our walk, but held off until then.


Nick enjoyed experimenting with the "macro" setting on the camera. There are lots more of these flower photos.




From Rydal Mount we made our way northwards towards Ullswater, after driving through some glorious countryside. Ullswater is a spectacular lake, though it looked rather forbidding in the late afternoon with the clouds overhead.



I think it might have been the drive back from Ullswater, over the Kirkstone Pass (not the way we'd come), that was the most spectacular bit of the day, though really, it was all gorgeous. The road through the pass warned of difficult conditions in the winter--even in summer, it was windy and narrow and occasionally sheep took up a little more of the lane than one might wish for--but the views of waterfalls and lakes were spectacular.

After a great dinner at the (complete with candle on Nick's ice cream--we decided it was our celebratory dinner) we retired to our room. Mark and I walked around the inn one more time--the rain was just a drizzle at this point. (It had been showery off and on all afternoon.)


Have I mentioned the stone walls yet? You can see them in this photo--they divide the countryside absolutely everywhere--up on Kirkstone Pass, even, where you'd think no one would bother, they mark the boundaries of the roads as well as marking off one grazing area from another. The something that does not love a wall would have a hard time in the Lake District.


The next morning we had our full breakfast in the dining room and set off northward. "Full breakfast" included eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled tomato, grilled mushroom, potato cake, and blood pudding, which I decided not to try--the veggie full breakfast, which Mariah had, included veggie sausage and veggie bacon, and beans instead of blood pudding. Most people would just go back to bed after a meal like that, but we only had one more day so we forged ahead.

We'd picked up a flyer for the "Lakeland Sheep and Wool Centre" in the hotel and made that--in Cockermouth--our destination, though we weren't too particular about how quickly we got there. We took the ferry over to Sawrey and drove through Beatrix Potter country, then up northward towards Keswick. Seeing a sign for the Castlerigg Stone Circle we decided to follow the (very narrow, twisty, one and a half lane but two-way) track up the hill to the top, where we found these views.



The skies look a little threatening in the pictures, but actually by this time they had cleared and it was warming up and turning into a glorious day. We could have stayed up on that hill for hours, I think. The views are spectacular in every direction, and the circle is, as such things always are, mysteriously beautiful. Why is it there? The ring of stones replicates the ring of hills around it; we felt as if we were in one bowl placed in another bowl.

Eventually we drove on from Castlerigg through Keswick to Cockermouth--where we decided that the Sheep and Wool Center was really not worth much, after all--it was basically a big shop, with the promise of a "show" in a theatre--and barely any yarn for sale, even! (The show may be fabulous, and others may have a great time there, but it wasn't for us.) We headed back to Keswick for lunch and found ourselves in a somewhat overtaxed tea room, where there was something wrong with every single order: chutney on the plain cheese toastie, forgotten scone and strawberries with the strawberry cream tea, beer not cold enough to serve and then brought with a warm glass, you name it! Situations like this sometimes make me feel very American: bad service really annoys me at home, and I can be unusually assertive when things are going wrong in a restaurant. Somehow, though, this was fine--we had a great table right by a window, where we could see all kinds of people (and their dogs!) go by; the food was good, once it came, and we weren't in any particular hurry. So we lingered and eventually ate and then headed "home" to Oxford, ready for another adventure.

another day

Lately the rainy days have been more common here than the sunny ones. That's mostly all right with me--the rain hasn't been too hard, and usually there's a break here and there so I can walk home. It's cool but not too chilly and I'd always rather be a little too cool than a little too warm. So I try not to complain too much.

The other morning we walked to the college (1.7 miles, but who's counting?) in the rain, and it was an umbrella-and-raincoat kind of a rain. Since the streets of Oxford are crowded in the mornings, this made walking difficult--too many umbrellas, too little space. After a while I began to wonder if I should just fold mine up and trust to my hood, but the wind kept blowing it off my head. (Oh, and threatening to turn the umbrellas inside out, for that matter.) Complaining seemed like an option, though it obviously wasn't going to do any good.

Still, that was a rare kind of a rain. And by the end of the day it was sunny and warm and folks were going to dinner in sundresses and summer suits.

It's rainy again today but I'm trusting to the capriciousness of English weather that we'll have a few breaks in it and I'll get out for some grocery shopping.

A sunny day in Oxford

One of the great pleasures of being in Oxford this summer is that we've been here before. There are things we know not to do (let's just say certain pubs are no longer on our list) and others we know to do again and again. We're living a lot further away from the Port Meadow this year than we were four years ago, so I hadn't had a chance to visit until yesterday. But the day dawned brght and sunny, there was nothing on the calendar, and there were three bikes* downstairs that could take us there in no time. (Well, not no time. But only about twenty minutes.)

The Port Meadow, for those not in the know, is one of the great wonders of Oxford. It's a large expanse of common land where horses and cattle range freely. It's bordered by a canal with a towpath perfect for biking, and on a sunny day it's really lovely (though I imagine it's quite desolate in the winter, when it floods).

This was that sunny day. And so was the day four years ago when I took a camera out there. So here's just a little side-by-side comparison, for fun.







*Mariah had to stay home to nurse her cold and work on two papers. This is a working vacation for both of us.

feed...

I changed the feed settings on this blog so that if you're reading with a feedreader you should now get the whole post instead of just the teaser. Let me know if you see any problems.

Not quite the day we planned

Four years ago when we were in England for the summer we went to Tintern Abbey. It was not the only national monument we visited, nor the oldest, but we loved it. I don't think we actually said out loud, "we have to come back," but we knew we did.



This is our first "free" weekend on this year's England trip. We had a quick jaunt into London yesterday afternoon, where we saw The Importance of Being Earnest at Regent's Park--a lovely setting and a fun production. Despite the threat of rain all day, we were almost too hot in our sunny seats.

Not so today. Today was our planned return trip to Tintern Abbey. We decided to take in Avebury along the way, since we'd never been before and we'd heard good things. The day dawned grey and rainy, but we were undeterred. And when the agent from the rental car company actually showed up early we took it as a good omen.

Maybe it was, but not for the weather. We (OK, Mark) drove through some of the heaviest downpours we've ever been through on our way to Avebury. And, remember, he's driving an unfamiliar car on an unfamiliar highway--on the wrong (left) side of the road! I played navigator, a role I'm spectacularly unsuited for. I can read a map, and directions, but reading road signs at the same time is, um, not my best skill. Roundabouts are a particular problem--I go into them confident of which sign to follow, then panic.

Mark is amazingly patient. And we really only went about 12 miles out of our way on the way to Avebury, I think. Maybe a little more. But we go there, and when we did the rain clouds cleared away briefly and we walked among the stones and the sheep and marveled at the things that humans do.



The rain started coming down again just as we were finishing our circuit, so we took that as a sign to get back in the car. Again my directional sense was problematic, but we did eventually make it to Tintern Abbey--ten minutes before they closed. (Side note: when the sun doesn't go down before 9 p.m., do you really need to close off access to an outdoor site at 5?) That gave us just time to hit the gift shop and then walk around the outside of the abbey--not quite the wonderful views we'd had last year from within, but in the cold and rain (by this time it was pretty unpleasant) we were happy just to see the site.


Back in the car again, we decided to take an alternate route home, up the Wye River Valley and then through Monmouth, Gloucester, and Cheltenham and so home to Oxford.

What a great decision! Cheltenham was particularly lovely, and we made it there just around the time we all needed dinner. We stopped at an inn for a terrific dinner, then drove the rest of the way home through glorious countryside. The rain stopped for us and the sun came out and yes, there was even a rainbow. No pictures, but we'll remember it.

Happy Birthday!

My calendar popped up today with a reminder that it is Beatrix Potter's birthday--only, according to Wikipedia at least, it isn't.* Curiouser and curiouser. My calendar is already confused by the time difference between Oxford and home--things pop up 5 hours later than they should, although they appear correctly in the grid when I look at it. Ah, well.

So if it's not Beatrix Potter's birthday, what am I celebrating? My blog birthday! Yes, six years ago today I wrote my first blog entry. I'm not sure anyone read it--I'm not sure I wanted anyone to read it--but there it was, anyway, my little toe dipped into the waters. For quite a while I struggled with an identity for the blog, and then after a while I just decided not to worry and to post what I felt like. Which, lately, hasn't been much (I know the few readers I have already know this!); as lots of others have said, twitter and facebook and, for that matter, real life seem to be taking precedence lately. But six years is worth remarking--Nick was not quite six when I started writing, Mariah was 13, we had a French student living with us for a few weeks, and we still had yet to come to Oxford for the first time. Now Nick's in middle school, Mariah's headed to college in the fall, and Oxford feels almost like home.

*My calendar also said that the 6th was my blog birthday, when a glance at that first entry makes it clear that it is the 7th. I marked the third anniversary on the wrong day, and the fourth on the right one, and the fifth on the wrong one again. Somehow this all seems a metaphor for something.

All in the golden afternoon...

We arrived in Oxford Tuesday afternoon, following a relatively easy journey. Door to door took less than 24 hours and involved multiple modes of transportation (car, plane, people movers of various sorts, bus, taxi). Once here we faced the strange news that the weather here is almost the same as it is at home--which somehow feels hotter here, since there's little air conditioning, we walk almost everywhere, and no one ices the drinks.

We cooled off yesterday afternoon by taking a more leisurely form of transport than the ones we'd experienced over the previous day and a half: the pedal boat on the Isis. Not quite the rowboat or punt Charles Dodgson would have taken the Liddell sisters out in, but the same scenery: Christ Church meadow, with its large grazing cattle and the spires of Oxford just beyond. We did this four years ago and it was an experience we were eager to repeat.

getting organized

We're getting down to the wire for our big summer trip, and the tasks keep piling up. I blogged over at the Mama PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed about trying to stay on top of them.

cross-posting

My post over at the other blog today is mostly links, but there's also a picture of Nick over there that my readers here might not see otherwise. So click the link below and you can see him in all his last-day-of-school glory.


Lessons from the Tortoise

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Finished Objects

I was away over the weekend for a fabulous conference in Charlotte, NC. Like many of my fellow conference-goers, I'd never actually left the airport in Charlotte before--many flights from here seem to be routed through there, though, so the airport itself is pretty familiar. (I'd visited Charlotte some years before by car, but that was different.)

It was nice to get out of the airport. The conference was great--full of smart people saying interesting things about wonderful books. As always, I came back energized and excited to keep up with the work that I presented--though, as always, I'm also swamped with all kinds of other things and so will probably not get back to it right away. So that's not the finished thing.

But traveling gave me the opportunity to get a good bit of knitting done (knitting! remember that?), and I finished a good-sized project, a lace shawl. Here it is, knit out of gorgeous silk-cashmere that Mariah gave me for Christmas. I ran out of yarn before I ran out of pattern, so if you see other shawls that claim to be the same pattern (Swallowtail shawl) they will look different, but I'm still delighted with it.


Another thing came to an end this weekend and that was my column for Literary Mama. I'm in a little bit of denial about this one. I've been writing for LM since 2003, when it launched. At first I wrote a column called Midlife Mama (hmm, sound familiar?) but after a year I began writing Children's Lit Book Group, and I continued to write that column either bimonthly or (briefly) monthly for five years. I'm sorry to see it go. I'm still working on children's literature, and I still have a lot to say about it, but right now my time and therefore my energies are directed elsewhere. Still, I will miss it.

chocolate cake

I tried out a new recipe for chocolate cake yesterday. Now, there are plenty of great chocolate cakes out there. There even a good vegan chocolate cake--good enough that folks don't really know it's vegan. But there's always room for a new cake, right? And my favorite vegan chocolate cake doesn't actually turn out of a pan and make a nice presentation--which, face it, is part of cake baking.

So last night I tried a new (to me) vegan chocolate cake, and it was a big hit. It requires no weird ingredients, it turns out of a pan for a nice presentation (though you'll have to trust me on that, as I didn't take pictures), and my dinner guests didn't guess it was vegan. So there. (Oh, it's low fat, too, in case you care...) I got it from Veganomicon, though I borrowed the chocolate drizzle from a different Veganomicon recipe (for a peanut butter chocolate caramel pie that I'm going to have to try next). Here it is:

Vegan Chocolate Bundt Cake

for the cake:
1-3/4 cups fresh-brewed coffee (I used decaf)
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (the darker the better)
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
2 cups flour (they use whole wheat pastry flour; I only had unbleached all-purpose, which was fine)
1 tsp. baking soda
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

for the drizzle:
1/4 to 1/3 cups each vegan (or not) chocolate chips and soy milk

Preheat oven to 325F; spray or otherwise grease an 8-10 inch bundt pan

Heat the coffee in a saucepan. Once it is simmering, whisk in the cocoa and continue to whisk over the heat until the cocoa is dissolved. Put aside to cool.

Whisk together in a mixing bowl the sugar, applesauce, oil, and cornstarch until the cornstarch is dissolved. Whisk in the extracts. Once the coffee mixture has cooled whisk that in.

Sift the flour, baking soda and powder, and salt into the wet ingredients, and mix together thoroughly (I whisked it for another couple of minutes). Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45 - 55 minutes (longer for the smaller pan). The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool in the pan for twenty minutes, then turn out onto a plate. While the cake cools, make the drizzle:

Heat the soymilk to boiling in a small pan, then stir in the chocolate chips until they are thoroughly melted and mixed into the milk. Allow to cool to room temperature, then drizzle over the cooling cake. (It's a little thick for actual drizzling, but it will taste good anyway.)

You can also skip the drizzle and sift a little confectioner's sugar over the top instead, but I have a couple of anti-confectioner's-sugar activists to feed, so I made the drizzle instead.

yes, I'm still here

I know, it's been a while. The last two weeks are a bit of a blur, frankly. The end of the school year and beginning of summer always are. There are things to finish up, new things to start, and--always--an overwhelming desire to sleep. Oh, and basketball playoffs, which seem to be keeping me up past my bedtime every night. Sometimes I think the best thing about living on the west coast was that there were never late games. Then I remember all the other good things--the jacaranda trees, the excellent Mexican food, the weather--and I realize that a) I probably didn't care that much about the games then and b) they often started so early I missed them (out enjoying the weather and the jacarandas, you know). Ah, well.

But I digress. Which is really what summer's all about: digression. I am digressing right now from a conference paper I'm writing (having hit page 7 with ten days to go before I deliver it, I'm feeling ok about that); from some end-of-year report writing; and from some planning. Book orders for fall were due some time ago, for example.

So this is all just a placeholder to say, as I do every year: what happened to May?

Strawberry Panzanella

I first read about strawberry panzanella on the blog 101 Cookbooks. It was one of her spring recipes, and it turned up just in time for us to test it out as an Easter dessert. It was a particularly good choice, as it's easily veganized, and easy to make ahead. Actually, it's just easy all around.

Of course I couldn't just make the recipe as given. First of all, the amounts seemed slightly off--surely you'd want more berries for that much bread? And, really, do you need to cut them into matchsticks? I've made it twice since that Easter dinner (actually, I've made it twice in one week) and I think I've got the definitive recipe now. Though actually one of the nice things about panzanella is that you don't need a definitive recipe--it's more like a method, a way of using things up and making them taste good, that is successful precisely because it's not precise.

Still, I know some people like precision. I like it myself. So here is, almost precisely, how I've been making strawberry panzanella. (I was going to wait to post this until I had a picture, but really, the one over on the original site is quite lovely. So go look at that, then make this. Or something like it.)

For dessert for 3-4, you will need:

about half a baguette, preferably a day or two past its prime (my baguette was 13 oz originally, if that matters to you), cut or torn into bite-sized chunks
1/4 cup brown sugar (I scanted this a bit, and the butter as well)
1/4 cup butter or olive oil
maybe a pinch of salt if your butter's not salted (optional)
1 quart strawberries
some Greek yogurt, sour cream, or nothing at all

Preheat oven to 400F

Melt the butter (if using) and stir together with brown sugar, or stir together brown sugar and olive oil. Add a pinch of salt if you like. (I did twice, and not the third time, and couldn't tell the difference.)

Toss bread chunks in butter/sugar mixture--use a large bowl for this, or just do it by hand on a jelly roll pan (you'll need it anyway in a minute)

Spread the buttery, sugary bread out on the jelly roll pan and toast for 10-15 minutes, turning/stirring after every five minutes, until the bread is crispy and slightly caramelized in places. Don't worry that some of the bread didn't get buttered/sugared; it will all be good, I promise.

Meanwhile, wash and slice up the berries however you like: halves, quarters, chunks, whatever works for you. Using a potato masher, mash about half of them in a large bowl. Maybe a little more than half. If the berries are slightly underripe, you could throw a tablespoon or two of extra brown sugar in here--I won't tell.

Toss the bread in with the mashed berries, trying to get the bread thoroughly soaked in berry juice. Toss in the not-mashed berries. Let the whole thing stand while you get the rest of dinner together, stirring occasionally to mix things up again. Steal a bread chunk or two while you're at it and marvel at its simple deliciousness.

Serve with Greek yogurt or sour cream dolloped on top, or don't, as you choose.

This is obviously best the day it's made, as the bread does tend to get a bit soggy the next day. Still, we happened to have some leftovers the last time and I was amazed at how tasty it still was, soggy bread and all.

A Narrative Compass

In graduate school my friends and I occasionally amused ourselves by imagining what our dissertation topics said about us. Female violence? Prostitution and “fallenness”? Sibling incest? They may have been safely “literary” topics, but what did it say about us that we had spent so much time on these topics rather than, say, gardens?

read the rest here...

(A review of A Narrative Compass: The Stories That Guide Women's Lives, ed. Betsy Hearne and Roberta Seelinger Trites, and my favorite new book...)

Goal Setting, Research Productivity, and the Associate Professor Survey

(Cross-posted from the other blog)

A friend asked me yesterday if I had goals. Not just "things I'd like to do some day," but articulated, specified goals. With a timeline.

In short, no.

All the career advice I've ever read suggests that goal-setting is an essential part of an integrated, successful career. And I do have "things I'd like to do some day," don't get me wrong. But writing down goals...well, for whatever reason, I haven't done it. One reason, I suspect, is that I'm a little uncomfortable with taking myself quite that seriously, with putting myself forward, in the way that goal-setting suggests. When I write it down here it sounds ludicrous, but there it is.

But here's the thing. I spent some time yesterday with the MLA's Associate Professor Survey, and I wonder if I'm not alone. The key finding for me, that women in private independent institutions (like my own) spend on average 9.6 years at associate professor before advancing to full, was sobering. (Especially since I'm already right at that mark, if not a little beyond it.) But even more telling was the paired statistic that in the same institutions, men are advancing on average three years more rapidly. (That's the largest gap between men's and women's advancement that the survey found.)

I wonder if women are less willing to label themselves career-focused than men are. I wonder if those women aren't articulating their goals, aren't naming them, and are therefore falling behind on them. I think in institutions like mine this could be a particularly insidious trap, as we are sought after and rewarded (up to a point) for our service and our teaching, and can make a pretty good career on them alone. So I wonder if when women like me say, "I'm too busy for my research," they really mean, "I haven't made it a priority." I wonder if they haven't made it a priority because they see that it's not really that highly valued, or because they truly prefer their teaching or service work, or because they have trouble carving out time for it at home. I am not at all ready to discount institutional and/or systemic discrimination against women, either--I know that the research work I do is, on occasion, measured and found wanting, at least in part because my field (children's literature--a female-dominated field) is not taken as seriously as, say, Renaissance literature. But such discrimination may fall into a larger pattern of discounting women's work that women themselves participate in. What would it take for us to claim our own work, our own value?

Or, on the other hand, are we choosing the saner course by pursuing more integrated lives? Sometimes that's what I think, and it does make sense. I have great autonomy in the classroom already; I do the research that interests me in the time frame that I can make work for my family, and that means an emphasis on conference papers and articles rather than on a monograph. (Psst--I prefer to read articles anyway, and suspect that they're more influential in most cases. But that's another story...maybe.) In my essay for Mama, PhD I call for us all to insist on the value of our work, to hold our senior colleagues and administrators to account when they pay lip service to teaching and service and then reward only original scholarship. I do think the work I do is valuable, but a small voice inside me also says, "you're not doing enough research." Maybe if I put some goals in writing I could measure my work against them and silence that voice. Maybe.

We think of these things when the semester ends and the research program hasn't quite ramped up again--or I do. Here's what I wrote yesterday about that survey, taking things in a slightly different direction:

Mothering at Mid-Career: The Associate Professor Survey - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

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Note: when I went to post this, I wanted to tag it for future reference and discovered that I have never used a tag for either "research" or "scholarship" before. Hmm.

May It Please the Court - And the Pursuit of Happiness Blog - NYTimes.com

May It Please the Court - And the Pursuit of Happiness Blog - NYTimes.com


Maira Kalman goes to the Supreme Court and talks to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She also eats lunch. Well worth clicking through.


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Seeking to End World Hunger, One Search at a Time - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Seeking to End World Hunger, One Search at a Time - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

University of Richmond students develop a search engine that contributes free rice for every search--and get it written up in the New York Times. Check it out! This is my new default search engine...



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Edited 4/25/09 to add: alas, Hoongle is no more. Somehow they inadvertently violated Google's terms of service, and shut down. But the students are still full of good ideas, and they still raised a good bit of money to alleviate world hunger.

Reading aloud

I'm blogging about reading aloud at the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed today; I also blogged about the president reading aloud over at my other blog just last night. (Click over to it to see the video...) Synchronicity!

Easter reprise

Today is Easter Monday, which is also, liturgically, my parents' wedding anniversary. (They were married on April 7, which in 1958 was the Monday after Easter.) Last year we had a blow-out celebration for them in the summer, but this year we are back to normal.

Well, almost. As usual, we've had the world's best houseguests here for Easter, but this was their briefest visit--and thus, I have far less baking to report than usual. They arrived, with Mariah, Tuesday evening. Wednesday we did an event on campus in support of Mama, PhD--a reading and discussion that was really wonderful--and they took off Thursday morning to do two more events at Duke. (They left Mariah with us, which was nice.)

Since, as usual, I wasn't on break, the week mostly went on as usual with the addition of various Holy Week services at church: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, Easter morning. Our guests returned Friday evening in time for dinner, and Saturday involved some egg dyeing and a little baking (vegan cupcakes). Sunday morning was vegan muffins, church, and an egg hunt.

I have no pictures from our Easter feast, but it really turned out well. Roasted asparagus, mushroom galette, spinach salad, and edamame orzo (the recipe says fava beans, but edamame are quicker and easier), with strawberry panzanella for dessert. The panzanella was a new departure for us, and it was absolutely fabulous--highly recommended!

Our guests leave today, but we get to keep Mariah for another week. Nick went back to school this morning a little reluctantly, but we'll get back in the swing of things soon.

Neglecting the blog

I've been neglecting the blog of late not only because I'm finding facebook and/or twitter filling some similar needs, but because I've been crazy busy with travel, committee work, teaching, life--same old, same old, really, but somehow it's catching up with me more this time. My last two blog posts on the Mama, PhD blog at Inside Higher Ed will explain more:

Where I was and why I'm glad I went.

And this is the show I got to see at the Grand Ole Opry. A bunch of us went, and if we went thinking it was about the camp and the sequins, we stayed for the music and the heart. What a fabulous show!

The conference, by the way, was this one: an intimate gathering of children's lit scholars at the top of their game. I have pages and pages of notes, lists of books to read, people to follow up with--and the beginnings, I think, of my next academic article (on Twilight and intertextuality, if you must know). A weekend well-spent, despite the six-hour delay in the Atlanta airport on Thursday which made me miss three sets of papers. (You know it's a good conference when you lament the papers you didn't get to hear...)

And now if you'll excuse me I think I need to go get a new powercord for my laptop. This one travels so much it's starting to fray a bit and that makes me nervous.

Almost

This is the earliest I've posted a picture of the cherry tree outside my window. It's not quite in full bloom, but it's pretty close. Unfortunately maintenance to my office over the fall seems to have included sealing my windows; I can't open them anymore! So I shot this through the glass--best I could do.

Spring Break by the numbers, sort of

30-80: range, in Farenheit, of temperatures experienced during the week.
48: cookies baked.
47: papers I should have read and marked during the week.
24: papers I did read and mark during the week.
22: muffins baked
10: pages of my own paper drafted.
9: checked out from the library to work on my paper.
2: books I went to the library to get for my paper.
2: maintenance-type appointments accomplished during the week.
2: essays copy-edited.
2: movies seen (Slum-Dog Millionaire, Pan's Labyrinth).
2: novels read (Inkdeath, House of Many Ways)
2: hours I was in the office this morning, break over, before I noticed that the cherry tree outside my window is starting to bloom again.

Finished Object

One nice thing about the snow day was the increased knitting time it provided. Well, for a while. At a certain point my hands just got too cold. But before that happened, I managed to finish the knitting on a new bag, and then when we got power back I had the time and inclination to sew it up and line it. I am still not very good at hand-sewing, and I couldn't find the power cord for Mariah's sewing machine, so there are seams here that could be neater. Still and all, it was a very fun knit--with yarn I got from a friend who brought home a huge haul from the Goodwill, and was happy to share!--and will be a useful addition to my spring wardrobe.

Which I can apparently break out today. Nick, whose last snow day was just the day before yesterday, went to school today without a coat; it was over 40F before 7 am, and is predicted to go up to 63F today, and 79F by Sunday. Welcome to spring in Virginia!

Snow Day

Late Sunday afternoon the rain was pelting down. I looked at it and back at the weather report, which was promising 4-7 (or 7-12, depending on which weather station you checked) inches of snow. It just didn't seem possible.

Less than an hour later, we were inside a snow globe, a thin coating of snow already blanketing the lawn, the trees, the cars. Before Nick went to bed he knew he wouldn't have school.

Then the power started flickering. Mark and I were watching a movie; Nick was getting ready for bed. The power went out, came back on. Long enough to restart the movie--then out again. Repeat. Finally it went out and stayed out. We found flashlights, a booklight for Nick in bed, candles. Lightning flashed through the snow--an eerie effect.

I tried to call the doctor's office where I had an early morning appointment, but reached no one. Went to bed with the NYTimes Sunday magazine and a booklight. It was clear that the heat was dissipating, though the radiators were still lukewarm. I set my cellphone alarm.

I was up early to try to call the doctor again. Again no answer. And, clearly, no heat. The University had cancelled classes, though since I don't teach Mondays, this wasn't really relevant.

Nick was up at 6:30. He'd meant to set his alarm for 7:30 but somehow was an hour off. He had a bowl of cereal--the milk in the fridge was still mostly cold--while I had a peanut butter sandwich.

(front porch/lawn, early a.m. Statue by Mark)

I put the milk out on the back porch and wondered whether anything else in the fridge was really all that perishable. I reached someone at the doctor's office, who said she'd pass along the message that I wouldn't be there. I went back to bed, where it was warm. Nick did, too.

(backyard, also early a.m. Yes, I took it from inside the house; it was too cold to go out there in pjs, even for the blog!)

When Mark woke up we all bundled up and headed out to a relatively new neighborhood cafe for coffee/hot chocolate and treats. Lots of others had the same idea--it was nice to be somewhere warm and buzzing with activity. It looked as if everyone had walked. When we got home I borrowed a snow shovel and cleared the walks while Nick and his friends restarted the snowball war they'd begun the evening before. I took everything out of the freezer and put it into coolers, on the back porch. The milk was already slightly frozen.

By noon it was frigid in the house. I was wrapped up in layers while the kids continued to play outdoors, coming into one house or another periodically to "warm up" (hardly possible) and eat something. I called several friends; one had power, and invited us to dinner; one didn't, and we talked about lighting a fire and drinking some wine later on. Mark went out, and came back reporting that the roads were relatively clear. I decided to go to the office and recharge my computer and cellphone batteries--and get warm.

By the time I returned home the power was back on. Nick was not, however, watching TV--the snowball war had started anew, after only a brief period of computer play. We reloaded the freezer and headed out to dinner with the friend whose power had remained on all day--her house was warm, her fire was lit, and the wine had been opened. It was a lovely end to the day.

(the view from my office window this morning)

(I have a blog post up at IHE today, sort of about snow days, sort of not. I wrote it in my warm office during that little hiatus...)