A Patient People

It isn't spring unless someone in the D-ef imagined community is moving to a new apartment! Yes, just as we packed up all of E's stuff and moved it to Towson last year, this year we're packing it all up again.  But this move, friends, is the second best one of all: we're putting a bunch of her stuff into storage so she can move to the 'Twa for AY 2012-13! I can't even put into words how amazing this is and how much Montoya and I are thankful for it.  Because her college is the height of civilization, they offer sabbaticals before a person goes up for tenure - thus ensuring that a tenure file can be built up! GENIUS.  Bubble-wrapping that strange, giant, upright glass vase that her father brought us from Mexico for the third or fourth or umpteenth time is a small, small price to pay for one full year of non-commuting!!!  I am *so* excited about it!!!  I actually cannot put into words how much this means to me.

I know, I've been a terrible blogger lately.  I'm sorry.  The End of Semester was like a pile-driver.  I hit the wall/mat at midnight, the last Tuesday of classes, and haven't been the same since.  I flirted with putting, "Keep calm and carry on.  Best wishes, D," as my work email autoreply the second the semester ended but didn't.  It would have been plagiarism.  But I prefer to think of it as an homage.

Things I've done since my last update:

Went to E's college's grad ceremony! Very fun.  Why?

To begin the ceremony, full regalia-ed professors line the main thoroughfare to cheer on the graduates as they make their way into the giant graduation tent - kind of like the beginning of a basketball game!  10 points awarded for spotting E in her UofI finery:

The speaker was Baltimore-native Ira Glass!

He's the blurry one at center.  His speech was pretty good as far as these things go.  His advice was a good-humored and well-delivered version of this:
1) You've been in school your whole lives - in a place where you are constantly given praise and feedback, told you are doing well, given a syllabus, given a path, given grades, given answers, told you are special.  This is not the real world.  Welcome, now, to the real world! No one has the answers, no one will be able to tell you if you're doing a good job, if you're doing the job you're supposed to be doing, and what you should do next.  You have to generate that all on your own and it's hard work, it's a full time job.  Enjoy.
2) Your parents don't think of you as adults.  They have not caught up to you, yet.  They will continue to give you advice as if you are a child, as if they don't quite understand and appreciate what you are capable of or the choices you are making for your life.  Be patient.  It will take them about a decade or more to catch up to you being an adult and until they do, don't be a dick (that was a quote).

This second point is one that hit home with blunt force.  You see, friends, from May 1st to May 13th, I went on a road trip with my mother from Ottawa to Binghamton NY (mfree time always delivers!), Ithaca NY (gorges), New Columbia PA (caves), Lancaster PA (outlet malls), Intercourse PA (Amish), Paradise PA (more Amish), Strasburg PA (oh those charming Amish, also a train museum!), Towson MD (had to see E and Montoya), and four days in Washington DC.  It was a marathon and came at a time in the year when I was least equipped to deal with it (ie/ end of semester, hadn't seen E for about a month, was eh-stressed).

The pamphlet for the above Dreibelbis Bridge says:
Picture yourself in a driving snowstorm, your ice-cold hands gripping the reins of a one-horse sleigh.  Imagine turning your rig onto the Bridge, the runners grinding onto the dry wood, ripping the reins from your fingers as the sleigh suddenly lurches forward.  So goes the story of a Virginville-area man who collided with an unfortunate fate on this very bridge late in the 19th century.  As he tumbled from the sleigh, the loose reins found his neck and snapped tight -- snapping his head clean from his shoulders.  Later, the sleigh, the horse, and the man's body were found, but his head was never recovered.  Some believe you can still see his spirit wandering the bridge seeking his lost head...


We saw nothing but a covered bridge.  But it was pretty.

 Turns out that I love railroad museums! Anytime, anywhere, people.  I *heart* them.

 Hex barn! We did a driving tour and saw about 20+ of these bad boys.

I told a few colleagues about the trip before it began.  Most of them are about a decade or so older than me and their parents have either passed away or are in their late 70s and 80s and so much more firmly in the "twilight years."  So they almost uniformly expressed enthusiasm for the trip and waxed poetic about what a glorious opportunity this was to bond with my mother.  One colleague told me about a trip she took through central Europe with her mother about a decade ago and how special it was to her and how she knew her mother, "really enjoyed catching a glimpse of the world through her historian daughter's eyes."  And I tried to remember all of these things, I really did, and I tried to remember all of my friends whose mothers have passed away already and who would dearly love this opportunity and I tried to be appreciative and grateful and in the moment and all of that.  I really did.

But what. the. hell.  It goes without saying, perhaps, but my mother doesn't care about "catching a glimpse of the world through her historian daughter's eyes" and I'm pretty sure that bonding and having heart-to-hearts about anything wasn't on her agenda.  Indeed, her agenda was this: 1) go to outlet mall to buy golfing outfits, 2) buy Amish quilt for bedroom downstairs, 3) get your father that hat he wants, 4) take picture of Amish person (regardless of their feelings about it), 5) take a picture of the White House, 6) update Facebook as much as possible with pictures of Mother-Daughter Fun so FB friends can eat their hearts out because their children would never take them on this kind of trip, especially Gwen's.  We literally spent 2 full days trying to take a picture of the White House from a tour bus and I still for the life of me don't know WHY.  It's going to take me a lot more time to process exactly what went on during the trip (am I blocking stuff out?) but basically I drove my mother around rural Pennsylvania, took pictures of the things she pointed at, and uploaded them to FB.

Maybe I was the one who was supposed to be more interrogative and try "catching a glimpse of the world through my mother's eyes" but there were no questions needed because she's a talker and she kept saying things like, "The Amish are such a patient people" or , "They must be such a disciplined people," or, "Why isn't it okay to take pictures of them, again?"  I won't go into her new thoughts on Islam, how men think versus how women think, or who really is the good singer on Idol.

I know - learning to appreciate your parents for who they are and not resenting them for how they don't measure up to how you wish they were is what it's all about.  I'm trying but I'm not there yet.  I really, really tried NOT to be a dick on the trip and I think I succeeded 75% of the time but I seriously don't know how to engage with the things she says without professoring out - the biggest faux pas evah in my family.  We got that picture of the White House, btw.

My favorite souvenir of the trip is this:  

It's an Amish quilted iPod case!!!  Awesome, right?

18; 30

18 more days until I get to see E and Montoya again; 30 more days left in the semester. It feels like a hundred years. If I were to try to type out just how much I miss them, I would have to lie down on my unvacuumed floor and slip into a permanent drooling, catatonic state. I try to keep the number of, "This is not worth it" thoughts down to only about several dozen a day but it isn't easy. The cardinal rule of profdom is: never evaluate your feelings about your job with a month left to go in the semester. I remind myself of this rule several dozen times a day. I took the Smiths off of my iPod thinking that it was the wrong kind of musical therapy for the month-left-to-go-in-the-semester phase; then I found an even more haunting-compelling-depressing soundtrack and I have to say, I totally *love* it: Austra's latest album Feel it Break. YouTube:


Yeah, they're Toronto hipster douchebags. This may not shock you: they're very popular in Germany and Iceland.

Visit with my mother was good! Every year she gets me a gift (or series of gifts) designed to Really Improve My Life. She always pretends that the gifts are something that everyone needs to be whole and she's doing me a huge favour. They are civilizing missions or at least unsubtle messages that my appearance is not measuring up. The gifts always backfire (not because I sabotage them! They just do) and that's what makes them and the whole ritual endearing. One year it was *a lot* of anti-wrinkle cream (I think that was more about my mother's insecurities about self and less about me), another it was "accent colour" (read: orange) sweater vests, every 4 years (like the Olympics) it's some kind of makeup, there was the earrings year, and ubiquitous yoga and "skin clarifying solution" years. This year: The Flat Iron. WTF do I need a flat-iron for? I have no idea. When I didn't express enough happiness with my new gift, she was quite miffed and said something like, "I just wanted to get you something that could really help you!" Help me do what? I asked her if she really thought that I was going to use the flat iron everyday even if it did make my hair AMAZING. She thought about it for a few seconds and said, "No." Did we just have a breakthrough? She told me to keep the flat-iron for E. But that was the only bad moment. The rest of the time we ate and ate and had a good time. And she did help me in the end, she took my car to get the winter tires put on while I was in class and that was a HUGE help.

We're planning an elaborate roadtrip in the Spring from here to Baltimore (stopping at umpteen Amish quilt-y places along the way).

7 Hours to Shirley Touchdown

My mother is coming today! I haven't started cleaning yet and I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me that I'm updating my blog instead of cleaning my room and planning all our meals and excursions because she's seriously going to be here soon and a containment plan must be in place or else.

I've had a bit of coffee.

The shizz at the job is comme ci, comme ca. In the awesome column, it appears we're not going to go on strike! Yes! I can pay my rent and credit card bills for winter tires! In the meh column this week are a couple things. 1) I've picked up another Melboy-ish stalker-ish fan (grad student in econ or something, mega nerd, wants to convince me of the moral superiority of British imperialism [a la Ferguson], might think that endless "debates" about this is flirting, won't leave my office, has asked me to ask TPTB to make him my TA for next semester, I've somehow lost the number for TPTB, is formally Russian). What am I going to do about him? But also, the creepy vibe he gives off might just be Russianness and he might just be really interested in 19c Europe. 2) Rumours are flying that everyone will be on sabbatical next year leaving only me and, um, someone else, right?, to you know, teach and stuff. Emergency meetings have been scheduled. Again, this would be an excellent moment to Work Up a Plan so that when the eyeballs zing in my direction, I'm not just brushing the Cheezie crumbs off my shirt.

It's so hard to come up with a Plan!

Luckily, Shirley is enroute and whether I want her to or not, she will generate all kinds of plans.

For now: Step 1. Stop slouching (yoga could improve your posture, you know). Step 2. Vacuum dog hair out of car for airport pickup. Step 3. Find slippers. . .