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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

stuff

I've been under a lot of stress since the whole we-have-to-move thing got dropped in our laps. I realized the other day that this is a new experience for me, this waiting for someone else to make decisions that will impact my life in a very big way. The last time this happened was when I was applying for colleges. In 1993. In my adult life, I've never had to move house; I've not applied for jobs and waited for calls for interviews; I've not even applied for credit when there was any doubt that it would be approved. So this whole issue of waiting (and waiting and waiting) for other people, who don't know me from Adam and couldn't care less if I lived or died, to get themselves together and make a decision that will alter my life in a very serious way, is taking its toll on me. I have had some up-and-down days lately, and I've been lying low about it around here because if I'm tired of my own whining that I know nobody else wants to hear it, but actually some of the days, the 'down' bits of up-and-down have been almost kind of scary.

So it was nice to go to school tonight for the first time since May and have a really good time. Small blessings, and all. Even though I got to my car after class and saw that I'd left my headlights on (car started fine). Even though I got pulled over on the way home because the officer said I was weaving and thought I might be under the influence. (Yep, that's me, under the influence of a diet Coke and a Beatles song combined with the fact that a 35-year-old car has a steering box that is a wee bit more relaxed than the ones they come out with today.) Even though the instructor for the class I'm taking has a reputation as a really hard grader. Even though I get to spend the semester reading books about the working poor with a decidedly liberal slant, and even though I'm a tiny bit afraid of getting graded down for my opinions rather than my writing skills. Honestly, with the kind of day I had, I could have been going to a dental appointment followed by a trip to the gynecologist, a swimsuit-shopping expedition, and a tour of a dairy farm, and it would have been a pleasant change from the breakdown-inducing difficulties I had with my kids today, just over whether or not their chores would get done. Well, with one of them.

Oops, there's that whining I wasn't going to do.

So. It's good to be back at school. Tomorrow I have another class -- something else to look forward to, that will help pass the time while we wait for house news. I wonder if it's too late to sign up for about thirty more units?

Friday, May 18, 2007

at this rate, this thing costs me about $4 a post.

I've had a lot of things going on; I just haven't felt like writing. And I'm so tired that I just used a comma splice in that sentence and had to go back and fix it. (Apparently in my own personal grammar-nazi code of ethics, a comma splice is a cardinal sin, but starting a sentence with "and" is just fine, and the use of parentheses is completely unrestricted. Hey, it's my grammar-nazi code and I can be completely inconsistent if I want to.)

So, without further ado, a brief sampling of the Things Going On mentioned above:

We took LT to the orthopedist today for that thing about his legs that I think I mentioned before. It turns out that his left lower leg is about one centimeter shorter than his right; I knew there was a difference but I didn't think it was that much. As long as the difference doesn't increase too much, all the doctor prescribed was a lift in his left shoe and a follow-up every year. If, in the course of the massive puberty growth spurts that are to come, he should wind up with, say, a difference of an inch or more, they'll operate on him. But that's not likely.

I left my wallet at the grocery store today. Believe it or not, that doesn't happen often. I think the only time in adulthood that I've left my purse or wallet anywhere (that I haven't blocked from my memory, anyway) was the time about seven years ago when I left my purse in a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Hollister, about two and a half hours away, so that we had to drive all the way back there in the pouring rain the next day. One cross-state drive with the family is a lark. Two in 24 hours, not so much. At least today it was more like two and a half minutes away.

I'll bet you think you know why I'm up so late, but you're wrong*. I haven't Librivoxed in a month, because of this stupid nasty cold and cough thing that has been plaguing me. It will be aaaaaaalmost gone, and then just as I'm looking forward to a nice late-night recording session, wham start the sniffling and coughing again. (At least it's not as bad as poor T, who is now getting over walking pneumonia and hasn't gone to work since Tuesday. He gets all the fun stuff, I swear. It's much more interesting to tell people you have walking pneumonia or bronchitis or a broken ankle or back surgery [him] than viral pinkeye or an ear infection [me.])

*actually, it's a transcribing job this time.

Oh! oh! and I've learned to knit cables! All my life I've thought they were this super-mysterious complicated thing, when actually they're not. At all. You should try some. They make you feel really smart.

Um, let's see. College. Last week I went down to the valley by myself and had my head examined took an hour and a half's worth of assessments in English and math. I had so much fun that if I could do the same thing every week for credit, I would. (I took the SAT an extra time too. I told everyone it was because I wanted to see if I could get a better score, but really it was because I had $30 to spare and I wanted to spend a Saturday in word-comparison and algebra heaven. There. I said it.) Today I went down and talked to one of the counselors for the nursing department about the results and Where To Go From Here. I did well enough on the tests that I can be pretty confident about challenging the reading corequisite for the English class I'll be taking (and really need. If the assessments had included anything about how to write a proper research paper, they'd have sent me packing to the seventh grade). So next semester I'll be taking music appreciation and (most likely) English. I'm so tempted to take some lovely (absolutely research-paper-free) algebra and trigonometry classes, with their lovely methodical equations that feel like listening to Scarlatti piano sonatas, but those will have to wait until I'm able to spend more time (and money) driving back and forth to the valley in the evenings. I'm taking my history final on Tuesday, and we have three more weeks of Awana and three more weeks of Bible study and then begins THE SUMMER O' BLISS, with nary an evening commitment (for me -- the Ts have Boy Scouts) until classes start up in mid-August.

Also re: college and then I will SHUT UP ALREADY RACHEL: I should have done the dratted orientation, instead of waiving it because I'm not actually taking classes on the campus down there. Maybe then I would have known a) where to find an ATM, b) where to make copies, and c) how to print the cover letter for the prerequisite-challenge application I typed up in the computer lab today, without looking like an absolute dolt asking random people for help. Debi: Do the orientation if you can swing it. I'll watch the boys. Or maybe we'll foist all our children on our unsuspecting husbands while we do the orientation together. Par-tay!

Monday, April 09, 2007

and IT is also finished!

Today I really truly finished the not-very-rough rough draft of my history paper. yay! It's no Ireland report though. Nary a shamrock, more's the pity. It's SO GOOD not to have that hanging over my head. Except now I have no excuse not to fold all that laundry that's waiting for me. Sigh.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

well, THAT was fun

I just took my first test since 1993. Woot! Most of it went fine -- there was a dicey matching portion where I am SURE the instructor put in stuff that wasn't in his lectures or the book -- at least, not in my edition, which is the one the college was selling for the class, although he teaches from the previous edition. Still, I think I did OK.

Also, I have the outline for my research paper done. I'm going to write the rough draft this week. It's not due till the middle of March (the rough draft, not the paper -- that's due in May) but I swear, having that thing hanging over my head is impacting my quality of life in a serious way and I just -- want it -- done. Gee, can't WAIT for English 1A, since I love papers so much.

In other news:

Not much.

Um, LT fell through our glass-topped coffee/end table yesterday, which took a few weeks off my life, I think, but he's fine.

I'm up to day 45 on my 365-photo project. That sounds good except that this is day 51 of 2007 and I'm totally cheating, taking no pictures for weeks at a time and then taking a bunch and shoehorning them into categories.

I've been gaining some weight, so my pants tell me, but I'm afraid to find out how much, and please don't ask how many delectable cheese-covered breadsticks I ate at the Pizza Factory after class tonight (Debi and another friend or two and I do this every few weeks -- it's my one fiscal frivolity in what will likely go down in our family history as the Belt-Tightened First Quarter 2007).

I managed to pour Diet Coke down my jacket sleeve when I was filling my fountain drink this evening. Don't ask, because I myself am not sure exactly how it happened.

We picked oranges last weekend. Do you SEE how exciting my life is? Maybe I should have told you to sit down.

And I think that's about it.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

this is not what I am supposed to be typing.

In history class on Tuesday (history class! me! for a grade!) we were assigned an essay. Actually, we were told that we'd be assigned an essay pretty much every week for the whole semester: 'reaction papers' to current events stories provided by the instructor or dug up on our own. He said they should be five-paragraph essays, and in my dorky haven't-been-in-a-classroom-since-the-early-days-of-the-Clinton-administration naivete, I thought that meant, oh, hey, whatever. Around five paragraphs, you know, a page. Whatever. I do vividly remember being taught to write five-paragraph essays in I think the fifth grade, with the rigid academic format, but I honestly don't remember (although I'm sure I did) writing any essays like that in high school. I thought the whole "do it this way or else" thing was kind of like how they taught you in second grade that THERE IS ONE WAY TO MAKE A CURSIVE T OR ELSE YOU DIE. I found my current event, sat down at the table, wrote out a rough draft, and went to bed smiling because for maybe the second time in my life I had done my homework on the day it was assigned instead of the far more familiar day that it's due.

I was so wrong. I went a-googling and found out that indeed I do need to travel back in time to fifth grade and react to current events in five tidy, well-planned paragraphs. My brother, a high-school teacher, seemed amused and somehow bewildered that I would find this surprising. Of COURSE that's how you do academic writing, you silly sister whose mind is all muddled after a dozen or so years of a steady diet of that very informal Internet you love so much.

People, I just wrote an OUTLINE. What have I got myself in for?

And did I mention that there's a research paper? I wonder if the one I wrote in the sixth grade on Ireland would fit the bill. Probably not.

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