Text Message

From: Angel

Hey have you ever read Sylvia Plath. Morning song reminded me of Your poem.

Aug 13, 9:37 pm

How cool is that?

News Flash

I cleaned my house. Well not all of it but the really smelly parts. And I'm not talking the type of straightening up that used to go on here before I took up the NIH Challenge--no I'm talking about the moving-furniture-and-using-products-with-chemicals-that-make-you-a-little-woozy-if-you-lean-in-too-close-and-forget-to-open-the-windows kind of cleaning.

It all started last night when both b and I made it home at a reasonable hour. I believe he was thinking cocktails in the backyard before dinner but I started cleaning the bathroom instead. In only an hour and a half I managed to de-funkify the bathroom and straighten the office (aka Angel's room) and he got halfway through the kitchen (its a big room). We broke for dinner and our Thursday night TV line-up.

Today, after a morning of heavy grant work, I decided to finish the kitchen. Sure the rest of the house is a sty but the two most important rooms are currently grime-free. To quote my friend Eliza, aka MFA Mama: WHOO TITS!

An unrelated news item: I just found out my BIL has a blog. Check him out. His writing is not for the faint-of-heart but its excellent. I'll have to add him to my blogroll, which makes me realize I need to once again update my blogroll as I am (a) finding great new blogs to follow (yay!) and (b) still losing bloggy friends (sigh--I still blame facebook).

Related to the unrelated news: the twitter experiment is still ongoing. Its getting better but I'm not exactly twitter-saavy yet. However I found out I can follow Dr. Drew, and that right there my friends is worth the price of admission. Yes Celebrity Rehab--really all things Dr. Drew-- is a guilty pleasure.

April is...

...National Poetry Month. And what better way to celebrate than to tell you all a little poetry story? As you might have guessed, it involves Angel.

Angel is a natural poet. What I mean by that is that his learning disability makes word retrieval difficult for him. So he has grown up learning to describe the words that are temporarily out of his reach. Sometimes he'll insert a word with a completely different meaning but similar sound. The effect is rather poetic.

In high school Angel discovered creative writing. It was the first academic activity he ever enjoyed. While he was still wary of reading (the dsylexia doesn't help) he found that he enjoyed poetry--especially the classics. He wrote a few poems but mostly wrote short stories. He wanted to major in English at college. In fact it was a short story that he submitted with his application that got him accepted at his college.

Somewhere during his gap year he lost his interest in creative writing and he is now majoring in communication. He seems to like public speaking. As a freshman he has spent the majority of the year learning how to write essays. Then about a week ago he sent me a poem he wrote and asked for feedback because he wanted to make it perfect. It was good but rough and somehow there was a girl involved.

The girl, as it turns out, wasn't particularly impressed but Angel has rediscovered poetry. He sent me an email the other night asking for recommendations on who he should read and did I want to send him some of my poetry? I did--of course--and today got an unsolicited compliment.

Twitter Attempts

I want to be able to twitter. No, really I do. I started trying a few weeks ago and then quickly gave up as this grant has consumed everything in its path. But I've been thinking it should actually be easier to twitter than to blog when I'm busy. So I'm trying again. I think I'll post my twitter account on the sidebar if you want to try following along.

Let me explain why I want to like to twitter (or tweet....I'm still not sure about the grammar ramifications of all of this). I'm all about the details. My love of the mundane details of life is why I started this blog and it is why I named it dirt and rocks. I have always gotten lost in the details. I find I take them far more seriously than most people around me. I can't remember names and dates (historical, that is) but I can remember every grimy detail of my last committee meeting. I often become the "walking memory" of whatever group I'm in.

When I write fiction there is little-to-no big action--just the day-to-day stuff that slowly builds into characters and something that resembles a plot. Where other people's private journals are filled with emotional highs and lows mine are filled with straightforward accounts of how I spent my day. Worse yet, I actually enjoy going back and reading them. Reading the small details brings back the emotions and connects me to the sensory experience in a way that describing them doesn't. The memory feels more genuine than one that is evoked by interpretation.

Part of my research is focused on the moment-to-moment of individual lives (especially how individuals live their lives in relation to others). I'm a huge fan of ecological momentary assessments, which is a technique for collecting survey data in the moment. Similar to daily diaries, I have my participants walk around with PDAs that go off randomly. They then fille out a survey and tell me what they are doing at that moment. Sounds kind of like Twitter, don't you think?

First Step

The first step in creating the tenure packet is done. The section that describes my entire research life is being sent out for external review this week. My chair has roped 6 professors from across the nation to provide a written review. At the moment I'm just happy it is off my desk.

And although I'm still crazy busy with the Challenge grant I've had to go on to Step 2. Pumpkin nominated me for our school's Outstanding Teacher Award. If I want my nomination to be considered I need to put together an award application. Basically it is everything I will need to have in the teaching section of my tenure packet. So its really a win-win situation. Best-case scenario is my teaching section is completed early AND I get the award--worst case scenario is my teaching section is completed early.

Did I mention I despise writing my teaching philosophy? I can talk about my teaching until the cows come home but if you ask me to describe my philosophy I look like a deer caught in the headlights. Truth be told I'm not too keen on describing my research philosophy either.

If I Had Time To Blog....

If I had time to blog I would tell you about my awesome students.

I have two gem classes this semester and they keep me sane and grounded. For the last two weeks I've cancelled 1 full group session in each course so I could meet with each student individually and give them feedback on their papers. Both classes had to hand in complete first drafts before Spring Break. For each student I wrote a letter (about a page or two) giving detailed feedback and encouragement as necessary. When they came to my office I gave them time to read the letter and then we discussed it. I love this process. I especially love it because these students are awesome and have come up with such interesting ideas. They have also really struggled with figuring out how to write these complex ideas into a strong argument. I enjoy reading drafts and trying to figure out exactly what the author is trying to do and then finding ways to help hir do it. But even more fun is sitting down one-on-one with a student and trying to unscramble their thought processes into a coherent argument. Over the past two weeks I've had more than a few "a-ha" moments with my students, and that, my friends, is really why I teach.

If I had time to blog I would bring you up to speed on my "healthy lifestyle" plan.

I went completely vegetarian in January. By February I had added fish back into the diet but I try to keep it to a few times a month. Mostly it comes in handy when eating out. Since January b and I have been on a diet and have been trying to eat out as little as possible. In January I stopped all alcoholic beverages. By February I had added my Guinness back in to my diet. At first I tried to keep it to once or twice a month but that has definitely fallen by the wayside. I've lost around 10-12 pounds. I fit into my clothes and, more importantly, my workouts are more comfortable and I can run without killing my knees. I look fine. I'm healthy. My goal was 5-7 additional pounds. Part of me wants to keep going but honestly I know it is just vanity. I think I'm getting too old for that kind of vanity. Now I am working hard to maintain this weight. Part of my healthy lifestyle plan was also to read literature more often. I bought 2 books at the beginning of the month and I'm only halfway through the first one.

If I had time to blog I would tell you that I went 2 straight weeks without talking to Angel and it actually felt good.

Angel went camping with his fraternity brothers over Spring Break. While he was gone I turned off my iChat, because really I only chat with him and b and b is usually right next to me. By the time he was back I forgot to turn it on and was crazy busy with this grant that I'm writing. It took me until the end of the 2nd week to figure it out. On Saturday he asked b to ask me to turn my iChat on so he could talk to me. He wanted help with a paper. I helped him and then turned it off. Through most of this empty nest process I've been keeping the phrase "a mother has to be there to be left" in my mind and I've been trying to do my part. Lately I've been thinking this is more of the motherhood=sacrifice myth. I'm finding this myth less and less appealing.

If I had time to blog I would tell you about b's boat.

b ordered a new kayak. It is something he has wanted for a very long time. He's been saving for it for months now and he ordered it 2 weeks ago. They built it for him in Canada and it has been en route for almost a week. He's been tracking it daily (really he checks several times a day but it doesn't usually move more than once a day). He likes to update his FaceBook page with its current location. Today it is in the same city as Angel's college and it should be to SouthLite tomorrow. My husband can be very silly but he is also very excited and that makes me happy.

If I had time to blog I would tell you about this big-league grant that I'm writing.

I believe I've mentioned that I use to write grants all the time. It was a major part of my job. I'm talking about big league grants that you worked on for months and then the entire office stays up all night before a deadline (for one really really big league grant the entire staff stayed awake, in the office and working nonstop for a full weekend). They were a major pain but also really exciting in a nerdy masochistic kind of way. I haven't written one of these since I came to SouthLite. I've written some small internal grants and helped with some small external grants but mostly I felt burnt from the big league. Then this grant announcement was released with an impossible deadline and everyone in the country seems to be writing for it. For reasons completely unbeknownst to me I got it in my head to write one. I've been working on it for about 2 weeks now and have been feeling the old glory and the old pain. It is definitely a love-hate relationship but it is oddly comforting to actually want to be doing this again. Of course if I weren't writing this grant I'd have time to blog.

RBOC: Rainy Day Edition

• Its a rainy chilly Saturday here at SouthLite and b has to work. I'm wearing old sweatpants, a fleece and some flipflops (soon to be replaced with socks). I'm planning a full day of writing and grading papers with a big pot of coffee by my side.
• I'm such a nerd that the above bullet sounds exciting to me. I don't know why I love my work so much but I often plan whole days with it the way others might plan to slip away with a lover.
• NIH has issued "challenge grants" as part of the economic stimulus package. Last week I decided I'd write one. They are due on April 27th. I may be insane.
• I've pulled a great team together for the grant. This was actually pretty easy since everyone knew they should be writing one but no one wanted to take the lead.
• Writing NIH grants was a huge part of my life for many years but I've yet to do one in SouthLite. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with them.
• Camping was great. We went right after I decided to write the grant and that gave me some quiet time to collect my thoughts on it.
• This was my first kayak camping expedition. We only went for one night but are planning a longer trip after the semester. We paddled to an island in the middle of a lake. No one was there but a mess of deer.
• I really prefer the ocean.
• Angel spent the week on his first backpacking trip. He's not back yet so I don't know how it went but I remember my backpacking days in my late teens. It was my first experience of truly getting away to nature and I loved it. I loved hefting a weight on my back. I loved making it to the top of a climb; taking it off and enjoying the view. I loved having to be efficient with all that you do. I hope he loved it too.
• b has slowly been getting bad news about his brother. We found out he has colon cancer a few weeks ago. Surgery was successful but now tumors have been found in his brain. Information is still coming out piecemeal and he appears to be refusing any aggressive treatment. b is being a wonderful brother and son (I do feel the worst for his mother) but would like to be able to do something. It is hard to come to grips with the fact that all you can really do is be there when someone needs you.