The Fourth House...

I love my job.  There are aspects that I could do without, of course; and even the best of jobs has the worst of days.  Sometimes it is frustrating, often it is stressful, it is almost never completed, and it is always tiring.  All in all, however, I truly enjoy teaching classes, connecting with students, and generally trying to make the world a better place in my own small corner of it.  I may not like starting my day when it is dark and ending when it is dark, but the exhilaration – or ‘teacher’s high’ – after that last class is undeniable.

This is not a blog about my job, though.

Some time ago, I made the choice to live in the moment as much as I could.  I’ve refined it to live in the day.  By this I mean that if there is something undesirable coming towards me, I will simply enjoy all the desirable moments in between.  By not letting these dreaded moments rule my life, I’ve come to enjoy the intervening moments all that much more and the interruption of undesired necessity is that much easier to endure.  This means that every evening spent at home I am really, truly, at home.  I’m not thinking about the dentist or that visit from the realtor, or the nine thousand errands I have to run.  I may be grading or thinking about the next school day, but only in terms of preparation.

But this is not a blog about changing my daily perspective.

I only want it understood that the following is not about finally getting free of a job that I don’t like or simply the relief that comes from leaving a necessary, but unwelcome, place.  It’s not about letting go of dread or not taking the moments of my life for granted.  I have a very good life and my workplace is filled with some of the funniest, kindest, and supportive people I know.  No, this blog is not about letting go of worry or about getting away from something, but rather it is very much about returning to something.

One of the best parts of my day is the moment I get close enough to my driveway to see that my husband’s car is already there (and not because it is a nice car, though he’d tell you that it is if you asked him).  That car sitting there means that there are lights on inside, there’s a hug waiting for me, and there’s someone to talk to.  Sometimes it even means that dinner will already be cooking.  It’s walking in the door and instantly feeling that I’m home.

Home is where I am a side of me that I only touch on at work.  It’s when I relax and can be silly, I can wear my frumpiest clothes and feel like the most beautiful woman on the planet.  I can make immature jokes and act like an idiot and it will be met in kind and with laughter.  I spend most of my evenings being reminded that I can be silly and that life is too short to be too serious for too long and too full of love to be wallowing in fear or worry about the wider world.  That part of me is always there, but there’s something about him that makes it that much more likely to thrive.  Our lives are not complicated or enriched by children – though we have three cats and a dog that keep us on our toes in various ways.  For a large part of our existence these days, it is just him and I.

Him and I.

We’ve had some upheavals of late and though they don’t really belong here, it is enough to say that we’ve both made colossal mistakes, we’ve both found our worlds suddenly a little smaller, and we both rediscovered what it means to be in love.  My world is both bigger and smaller, both deeper and lighter, both sillier and more emotional.  I have new dreams and plans to get there.  Not worrying about the future has gotten so much easier because my present feels content and reinforced.  This is where I want to be.

Here.  With him.

He is the light to my darkness – laughing when I try so hard to be serious.  He is the dark to my lightness – keeping my idealism closer to earth with a healthy dose of realism.  He is the confidence to my insecurities.  His height gives him a perspective that I don’t have and yet he doesn’t look over me or overlook me.  We work together well and though we have our troubles, like all couples, we are suddenly becoming much more adept at working through them together.

Together.

A thousand clichés talk about marrying one’s best friend and the importance communication, and a thousand clichés can’t be wholly wrong.  I am more content now than I have been in a long time, though I see the world around us and worry that the End Times are upon us.  I am content because my immediate world is beautiful in all its oddity.  

One of the greatest feelings in the world is my hand in his.  Or the warmth of him next to me as I lie awake at night and slowly will my aching back to ease up enough for sleep.  There is something comforting about the warm weight of a loved one nearby – be it cat or dog or human.  My house is one full of love and it’s a love that extends to the houses of my parents and my siblings.  The world spins around us, and yet I have so much love in my life to support me as I try not to let the emotions and the craziness crush me.   I’m not afraid or ashamed to talk about the love I have for my parents, my siblings, my sibling’s spouses and children.  I am proud and humbled that there are three houses I can go to that are filled with love and where I am accepted for who I am – for all my quirks and mistakes, my talents and abilities.  I am loved for who I am.  And, at the end of the day, the fourth house is the one I call home.  It is my home and my heart, my soul and my life because he is there.

Him and I.

Home.

Together.

Us.

Flocks of Wonder....

We are slowly approaching gift-giving season and so, much too early, Christmas ads are starting and people are beginning to watch the skies for snow.  It doesn’t help that I myself am in the midst of my family’s ‘birthday season’ – where we have at least one birthday per month from August to December (three in November).  This is not a blog about gift giving occasions, per se, but something that is known, I think, only to a few.  It is more about a different spirit of random giving that is perhaps unintended, but appreciated deeply nevertheless.  Whatever reason it happens, it is no doubt that the benefits are tenfold, though I’m not sure the giver has any idea what he has wrought.

Before I explain the above, I have to first build something of a context so it can be better understood by the uninitiated.  There is a student at the college where I work who is a relatively quiet and unassuming sort of fellow for the most part.  I’ve seen him come out of his shell a little bit when I’ve had him in some of my more specialized classes.  These are the classes about Alice and Harry and Frodo; classes that attract the misfits and the geeks.  I use those words with all the affection in the world – for I am a misfit myself.  It is no accident that one of my favorite characters in animated holiday specials is King Moon Racer, the winged lion who rules over the Island of Misfit toys.  These classes – and the kind of learner they attract – are a joy to teach because they have a presentation component wherein all the students invent and develop their own topics and spend the semester working on them so they are prepared to present the results to their classmates at the close of the course.  This is my favorite time because students like this one have the opportunity to show, sometimes rather awkwardly, the deep and creative minds that have often hidden behind silence for the bulk of the semester.  Again, all of this is only to give a picture of the way that I know this student and to drive home the beauty of the story I am going to tell of what he does outside the classroom.  You see, he likes to make paper cranes.

This in itself is a lovely little skill and something I cannot do, but what really amazes me is what he does after he makes them.  I, and others, have found them scattered around the school in the strangest of places, often made possible by the fact that he is rather tall.  He puts them atop vending machines, exit signs, doorframes, ceiling mounted speakers, clocks, and, basically, anything else that is up high and has a small ledge on it.  He has put them on books in the library stacks – though I’m told that it is only the Harry Potter books that have been craned, so to speak.  He has put them, nested on a piece of paper, in the bins outside my door.  Every time I think that he is no longer doing it, I find another one or hear about someone else finding one.  Those of us who are always half-looking feel blessed when our furtive and ever-hopeful glances are rewarded with a tiny crane in pink or blue, yellow or decorated.  I have amassed a small collection of them and it’s like seeing a rainbow or finding a four-leaf clover.  They never fail to make me happy.  My hummingbird friend also has several of them and loves them as much as I do.  When I told my mother about them, she asked if I would give her one.

Just the other day, my hummingbird friend smiled the cutest little giggling smile when I approached her at the copier.  When I tilted my head in question, she pointed to the exit sign above the nearby drinking fountain and said ‘look!’ with a voice full of delight and wonder.  I have much the same reaction and I was not the least bit surprised when she asked a student, but a moment later, to fetch the crane that was sitting on high, waiting.  I know that she added it to the growing collection she already has; I would have done the same had I seen it first.  That is the magic of the cranes – we collect them as if brownies or fairies came in the blink of an eye and left gifts for the worthy.

These cranes must not take him much time to make; in fact, I know they don’t because he used to make them in class when class discussion spun into intellectual excited chaos around him.  He must know I love them or he wouldn’t leave them around my door from time to time.  He must know that others gather them because every time he places one, I’m sure it doesn’t take long for them to be claimed by someone with a watchful eye and a thoughtful glance.  I wonder if he sees it as a game.  I wonder if he notes how long it takes each one to find a new home.  I’ve never asked him.  We have never spoken about the giving of the cranes.  Even though I know who does it, it feels like an almost mystical event to find one and every time I consider asking him about them, I come to the realization that I just don’t want to know.  Let him keep hiding them out in the open until he no longer roams our halls and, for the rest of us - let his magic continue lift our hearts and remind us what wonder is.

Two Days in the Life

Two Days in the Life of Me...

Today I woke up ten minutes before my alarm went off because my cat can’t seem to get into his furry head that I will get up in time for whatever it is he feels I need to be up to do.  So, I shut my alarm off so I wouldn’t be reminded that I wasn’t getting quite the amount of sleep I wanted, and got ready.  Half an hour later, I was heading out to my car and putting all my stuff in it, meanwhile trying to get the dog to realize it was me and stop barking.  He barks in spurts.  Once…then a pause long enough to make you relax and think he won’t bark again.  And then, bark.  Repeat.

On the way to work, I stopped at Tim Horton’s, with the entire rest of the waking population of the town.  I parked in the closed pharmacy parking lot so I didn’t have to wait in the drive thru line of taking your life in your hands, and went inside.  Much shorter line.  I was tired, so I got a large diet coke and got back on the road towards work.  Twenty minutes later, I was there.  It was now 1 hour after I got up in the first place, and three and a half hours before my first and only class.

I spent those hours making copies, planning activities, designing projects, fleshing out the brainstorm I had about class the previous night, answering email, recording attendance for the last class, checking in on my online courses, poking around Facebook, IM’ing with a friend, scheduling classes for the next three weeks, doing follow up on the two meetings I’ve had this week, assigning groups, answering more email, giving a student feedback on a draft, planning a meeting or two, cross-referencing meeting times to rule out any conflict, thinking about spring semester and potential courses, and generally doing approximately 42,000 different things.  I also had a snack.

When class-time came, I headed downstairs, booted up the technology, promptly confused my students by making my directions too convoluted, got them into groups and clarified, worked with them as they worked together, checked email so I wouldn’t over-satellite, and then listened as they held a fascinating discussion on various concepts relating to social networking:  accountability, responsibility, privacy, security, personal awareness.

I then answered a few straggler questions, headed out to my car and went to a friend’s house to grab some lunch.  After lunch, we went for a brisk 31 minute walk around his neighborhood where I saw no less than four squirrels and one yapper-type dog.  After the impromptu walking exercise, I got back in the car and headed to main campus for my 2:00 office hour that no students would go to.  Instead of talking to students who were not there, I checked my schedule and made sure the meetings I have this week don’t conflict, I found the books I’m supposed to be reading for the Steering Committee I’m on, answered more email, graded some student journals, peeked at the news, made babysitting arrangements with my sister, chatted a bit online, checked some Facebook, made sure I knew what I was doing in class tomorrow so I could later forget to bring home the materials, and added to/updated my to do list for the week.

Then, I left to put gas in my car, pick up the pizza, and head to my sister’s to babysit.  I spend a fun couple of hours playing with the youngest and trying to get him to say hi - which he finally did into a cell phone he was holding upside down and backwards.  My brother and his wife were there, too, so it was more like a family gathering than babysitting.  We watched Unnatural History with the Hero Who Randomly Does Flips.  We also play with around 65,000 toys that all make noise at the same time.  I arrive home at 8:30 or so and spend the next few hours relaxing, dabbling in my online class and in the online components of my face to face classes and finally retire about 11:00.  I try, for the 8th night, to get through the 'J' portion of a word game I play wherein I think of 10 words of 5 letters that start with each letter of the alphabet.  I have to do this or I won't stop thinking.  I think of 8 and fall asleep.

The next day I get up at 6:15 and go to work, stopping at Tim Horton’s to get some oatmeal and am not accompanied by the entire town, so I’m in my office and working on my 8:00 class work by 7:05.  I teach a class, grab a quick drink, teach another class, leave in the middle of both to make copies and have a random meeting in the hallway.  Then I go back to my office and work for awhile, being somewhat surprised that a student arrives at my office hours.  I help her and then am somewhat shocked when another student comes in.  I spend a few moments in a strange sort of haze as I talk one on one with this second student who wants to do better in my class,.  After this moment of Unnatural Office Hours, I head down to get lunch at noon.  I have a working lunch with a friend and head back to my office, grab a few things, then go to a meeting.  And realize as I get there that I was mistaken on when it started.  I attempt grace.  After the meeting, I run to class across the street, and arrive with moments to spare.  Class is interesting but mostly taught by the co-instructor so I feel a tad inadequate.  I attempt grace.

After class, I chat for a few moments and then head out to the mall to pick up my contacts and few other things.  Me time.  I get home about 7:15, spend time chatting with my husband and a friend of his who is visiting, and by 8:00 I’m in my home office playing a game and finishing this blog before grading an assignment submitted by a student who was granted an extension in a graduate course I taught last month, check in on the graduate class I’m teaching, and also my online courses.  I suspect I’ll be in bed around 11:00, but we shall see.  Tomorrow I’ll get up at the same time though I don’t teach and I’ll work in my office until the 2:00 meeting. 

Then, the weekend....which I will find time to rest in between working so that my head stays nicely above water where it should be.

Things I Don't Do Well...

I am not perfect.

No, really, it's true.  I'm flawed and full of shortcomings.  I don't think I necessarily have any more than anyone else, but I do have my share.  Sometimes they are annoying, and sometimes they serve me weirdly well.  I tend to consider the word 'flaws' to be a largely one-sided, black and white way of looking at it.  I'm not sure there are any traits that I possess that are always negative, all the time.  I'm over sensitive, for instance -- but that feeds my empathy.  I'm insecure about a lot of things -- but that keeps me humble.  It's a system of checks and balances.  Which doesn't mean there aren't things I would like to change.  Sometimes the balance is a little tippy in the wrong direction....and while I don't mean my weight, I wouldn't mind losing a few pounds, either.

So, what am I not good at?

Saying no.  This has shown up here and there in my life lately as a character trait possessed by a friend, and in her laughing at herself about it, I realized that I have the same problem.  I like to be helpful.  I like being busy.  I like to be useful.  I like accomplishing things and feeling like I'm making a difference.  But that ends up translating to having a LOT of things going on at once and occasionally panicking that I can't do it all.  The list at work alone is exhaustiv-e(-ng).  I teach an overload every semester.  I'm on a few planning boards and advisory committees.  I teach for another college and am in talks to teach for another.  I'm piloting programs, traveling between campuses, planning conferences, presenting at conferences, submitting proposals to conferences, writing mission and vision statements, co-chairing committees for things about which I only have a vague sense.  The list goes on.  This isn't always a bad thing.  If I get bored with something, there's always something else that needs my attention.  It got me promoted right out of the tenure starting gate and fresh off probation.  It teaches me about things that I wouldn't otherwise encounter.  It puts me in a good place to find the means and ways to do the things I want to do (I still want that computer science degree).  It gathers around me a supportive crew of people who know of what I am capable and are grateful I helped when I was needed.

But, my goodness, do I get tired.

The other thing I don't do very well is somewhat more troubling and that is friendship.  I have a very small circle of people I count as true friends and while I count them as blessings in every way possible, I sometimes wonder that there are not more.  Somewhat greedy, I suspect.  The only reason I'm thinking about this now is that I've found friends within the last 8 months and I was not even looking for them.  I'm not even sure why or how it happened -- just, I got invited to join a cadre of three for dinner and the three became four.  I am the fourth (a designation I adore for whatever reason).  But it is strange.  It is hard for me to break out of what I'm comfortable doing -- but the friends I have seem generally content to let me be who I am.  They know I'm busy and I spread myself too thin now and then.  They know I rarely sit still except in the evenings, and then I don't want to move at all.  They know I never stop thinking.  Ever.  They know my quirks and generally accept them.  Oh, there are attempts now and then to shake me out of whatever it is I need shaking out of -- but I do the same to them.  I told one of my dearest friends once, when our friendship was just learning that the soil was perfect for laying down roots, that I was high maintenance.  I remind him of that now and again and he just laughs.  He knows.  He's been putting up with me, as I like to say, for awhile now.

I could, incidentally, throw my family into this list as well -- since I count them as friends.  But, no matter how closely the roles of 'family' and 'friend' may mingle, there will always be a little something different about my siblings, for instance.  A lifetime of memories and shared experiences can't help but impact the definition of friend.  Perhaps one of these days I'll embarrass them by dedicating a blog to each.  Hmm...birthdays are coming.  But, that is a blog for another day...as is one about my wonderful husband.  This is the blog for friends....as inadequate as that word may be.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than to acknowledge that I have wonderful friends, and sometimes I feel like I'm not living up to what I should be living up to because I don't always want to go somewhere at night, I cannot always be easily found, and sometimes, despite that they are my dear friends, I don't want to come out of my shell, my internal world where I'm thinking and dreaming and living.  I can't be found even when I'm right there because wherever it is I go is a place wholly separate from the world around me, regardless of where I might be at the time.  I have good people and part of me sometimes worries they will wander off (as many have).  Or that we will just wander off and not realize the other one isn't there until it is too late.  And sometimes I have this weird fear that I see more than is there.  Or that I will, somehow, mess it up.  I do that sometimes.  See blog title.

But, then there's that part of me that knows better despite that it should know better.  It reminds me gently of who I'm dealing with here.

There's a few out there whom I never or rarely met.  We talk a lot and then we rarely talk, and yet whenever we pick up the threads, there we are.  The longevity with which my life has been graced by a certain former Marine never ceases to amaze me, especially when taking into account that we occasionally drive each other quite bonkers (detail oriented person with bad memory meets sometimes off the cuff person who doesn't like being pinned down).  Then the uncanny speed with which The Three have found their way into my life and made me need them is both terrifying and exhilarating.   I feel very blessed to have them in my life and to be able to see and hear them laugh.

So..um....thanks?  Stick around if you would.  It is crucial to do some things well, even if history suggests you won't.

"Do you want to lose these friends" is one thing that I can say 'No' to.  Without hesitation.

No.

-T