Preludes And Nocturnes

Okay, so today is Saturday the 30th.  Tomorrow is the first. I’ve been asking the mover for our exact move date as we had agreed to a general “first week of July”.

Why is this so hard to confirm?  We have called him three times.  Finally today we were told that it would be between the 3rd and the 5th.  I’m okay with that (as at least I really really know they will be moving us before I start teaching on the 10th).  But it is kind of funny.  Leone was like, will they call you that morning and tell you the truck will be there in ten minutes?  I mean, don’t people need to know more than a day in advance when they are moving??  At least in order to manage their groceries and whatnot…

So yeah, we’re trying to finish up most of the final stuff today so we can move at a day’s notice.  To all this I say “meh.”

My friend just blogged about a woman on the bus giving her grief about supposedly poking her in the eye with her i-pod (eye pod?) carrying case. Which, you know, is total crap. But after I typed my reply to her (in an attempt to be calming) I suddenly thought that I might just be a bit off myself.

I’ll let you all judge (not too harshly) as here’s my reply to my friend…

Meh - no worries sweets. Is not like you were carrying a bag of broken glass shards or something. Pu-leez, if her eyes are that accident prone she should stay at home.

Next time someone does anything like that, once they are done saying their bit you need to screech out in agony and yell “ohmygod you just totally crushed my toes with your big mammoth feet and I think you broke my toe!!! What is YOUR name I’m going to the DOCTOR RIGHT NOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!”

Then look them straight in their poked eye and say “for real, you wing nut - don’t try to out-wack-job-me as I can SO beat you at this game.”

Would you like me to ride the bus with you. Really, once you see me in public you will never worry about your own actions again.

Leone, Spike, and I headed out Wednesday morning and were in Vancouver by… 7pm.  We unloaded Leone’s stuff (holy jeebus my truck can fit a whole lotta stuff!) to her friend’s apartment just a block from her new place.  She takes possession on Sunday and her friend is away for the weekend so that works well.  I headed over to Melly’s for sushi, chats, and a fold-out sofa which was exactly what I needed.  The next morning I had breakfast with my friend Chrissy, met Leone and Jess for coffee, and then decided I was up for the return trip a day early.

Weird.

I usually want to stay as long as I can in Vancouver, but I didn’t want to shop (between money and space with moving right now, just not in the mood) and I had already eaten out three times in less than 18hrs.  I knew Jim and Chuck were feeling a little lonely, so I just hopped back in the car (I waffle between calling it my car and calling it my truck..) and headed out again.  I’m glad to not have that drive again any time soon.  Two sets of Stuart McLean kept me going the last four hours and I pushed through rather than just staying over part way back. I had kept that as an option, but felt just fine for the going.

And I’m very glad to be home now.  I think my boys were missing me.  And I know they were missing Leone and Spike - but they were glad to hear of all SPikes adventoos in Vancouver.  He has many plans for taking the city by storm.  Oh yes.

In the past two days we have gotten TOO MUCH DONE!  We have taken stuff to various Salvation army places, sold stuff, bagged and put outside stuff (clothing drive), garbaged stuff (old computers where we used hammers to be sure nobody would look at our old ugly pictures), had lunches and dinners, cleaned and cleaned, packed up the rest of Leone’s stuff and other boring things that were bad enough to do, I don’t need to list them for you all.

Tomorrow I take Leone to Vancouver (and Spike) so they can start their new exciting big-city lives down there.  Is ten hours drive each way.  Going down will be one thing, making the drive back up on my own - something else.  I have gotten a bunch of books on disc from the library to keep my company.  Jim was going to come along but we figured a) chuck was going to be weirded out being on his own and b) Jim would have to sit on the roof as we won’t have enough room for Leone’s stuff as it is.

Ah yes, will the excitement ever end here in Jenn’s blog??

Rocky V in on in the background and I thought it was a Saturday Night Live skit mocking Rocky.  Then I turned around and realised it was the real show.  Well, the fifth one.  Sly sounds like he is unable to even form a sentence - he sounds like he’s pretending to be Rocky.  Mwohaw wwoo wa wa awdrwwaaan.

Too freaken funny.  And, um, sad or something.

I’m sick.

Again.

I have a cold this time (no antibiotics needed this time, thank goodness) (no barfing my guts out this time, thank goodness). Just a garden variety snuffly red-nosed cold. I’m rather tired of being sick. Really, this is just silly. In the past month and a bit this is sickness number three. My body is telling me something - and I think it is that I’m to stay in bed and read the rest of my Sarah Waters book tomorrow (Fingersmith). My husband agrees with my body about me taking it easy and keeps bringing me tea and biscuits. Tonight he made me tabouli and falafel. I’m a lucky girl. Aside from the red nose, that is.

It seems that if you just put a stack of boxes in my living room, I will fill them.  Even if I suddenly look about and think “oh, yes, we do still have two weeks here before we leave.”  *unpacks forks*

Jim and I are doing very well on a couple random goals.  One of which is to use up this crazy amount of freezer and pantry food we have.  It has made for some interesting combo meals as there are frozen shrip and fish, frozen veggie ground round and pork loin chops.  Tins of soup, lentils, packets of chocolate, huge bags of tea, and fifteen different kinds of pasta.  We have half a cup each of all these random cereals that, sometimes, do not necessarily make a great single bowl of breakfast.  This has been noted.

The one thing we won’t have to pack ourselves? Kitties.  They keep packing themselves over and over.  Spike learned that a box on a shelf with half the bum hanging off the shelf?  Yes, it will fall when a kitty jumps up into it.  But then he just hides under the overturned box as it is now a cave.

I was just reading Min’s entries about trying to get her outline revised before starting class (she is working on her second book) and I felt very familiar pangs for what she is going through.  Initially I linked the pangs back to working on the outline for my thesis, but then I realised I was also panging in solidarity over how I feel right now about putting together my syllabus for the new summer class I’m teaching next month.

I feel I have a fair bit of teaching experience in terms of standing in front of the class.  But when it comes to designing a course from scratch, I have - to date - designed three different courses.  I have revamped my one class many many times as I taught it for 4+ years.  And then in the past year and a bit I’ve taught the two WMST classes.  On the one hand, this is actually pretty good experience and a nice range of classes - but it isn’t like this is just a no brainer.  I don’t know if it ever becomes a no brainer if you really care about the class, their experience, and a little bit of CYA.  One prof I was just talking to said she took a good ten years to really get certain syllabi to the stage she wanted them.  She said she went from a two pager at the beginning to a nice heafty 12 page syllabus now.

I understand why.  Having gone through a huge plagiarism fiasco, I can see how lock-solid you want your section on plagiarism.  I see how a student who is trying very hard to get around the ‘contract’ aspect can pick things apart and point out any inconsistencies.

Anyhoo - this is all leading up to the realisation I just had that writing a syllabus is writing.  It is an outline of a narrative.  It is a creative process where I need to conceptualise an entire semester of talking, writing, assessing, discussing, and reading.  I need to hold in my head both the love of books and the written word, and a lawyer’s eye for contract creation.  I want to create a space for maybe one or two students to have that ever-so-important moment of clarity, but also have the mechanisms in place for someone else to just show up, get stuff done, and do what they have to in order to pass the class.  It is very technical with dates and weeks and readings due and assignments spaced out so I have a hope in hell of marking in time without killing myself - but I remembered today that this is also creative; this is also an exercise in theory and reading and pedagogy.

Anyhoo, what I’m thinking is that it is okay that I haven’t just pounded this thing out.  That I’m rumbling it around on pieces of paper and parts of my brain as I would for any creative project.  And this makes sense to me now.

*nods*

I have been busy and whatnot (yeah yeah) but not *that* busy.  So why is it that my craft (the thing I really want to do) is always put last on my list?  I love making cards.  It calms me, it makes me happy, it produces something when most other things I do don’t produce nuttin.

But I just keep doing all this other stuff instead.  I think I’m procrastinating on writing my syllabus for my class.  I think that as I’m doing that (procrastinating) I am not allowed to do anything fun.  Procrastinating only works when I make myself do work instead of other work.  So this makes me strangely productive of late.  Sorting papers, cleaning EVERYTHING, packing boxes, weeding, laundry.  But not my one thing I really want to do.

I’m insane.

Please go take a look at Mika and Amy, respectively.

Thank you.

And now my public service annoucement for the day.  If you think, oh a walk would be lovely. And then you think, yes the forest would be very fun.  And then you put on bug dope to keep off the moskeeters.  And then you and hubby drive the fifteen minutes up into the woods.  And then you walk for, hmm, ten minutes until you just break down and say you can’t handle it.  And you end up running back to the car.

I am so yummy to mosquitos.  Too yummy.  Even with bug dope on, I had a cloud of them following me.  Jim said it was horrific and amazing at the same time.  I breathed them in.  I have about five bites on my scalp.  I have bites where they got behind my bra strap.  I have bites on a patch between my sock and where I applied bug dope.  Everywhere. Bitten.  When I jumped into the car (truck, whatever it is) and got the door shut - there were probably about twenty bugs that got in with me.  We had to DRIVE LIKE THE WIND with the windows down to get them out.  And we have big suckers (hee) up here - one was about the size of a dime.

So, um, we went and got lattes.