Saturday, July 31, 2004

Lovely day

Trying desperately to stay awake and get something accomplished this evening... though if the coffee dosn't kick in within the next hour, I think I'm going to give it up as a lost cause and go watch a movie or something equally thought-less.

I should've known all that sun today would make me feel sleepy. The girls and I went to Hampton Beach in New Hampshire. The place was pretty crowded, and although we started getting our stuff together early, by the time we got there we had to park out along the highway.

But we enjoyed ourselves. I'll have to see if I can get pictures to attach properly and show you - but please don't be too disappointed if my meager technological skills mean I can't manage it.

I got a bit more sun than I wanted to - in part because the girls decided they needed 'one more swim' and that put me in the red zone - hence, the tiredness. But I will persevere with the coffee and try to write up the latest book I read Bringing Down the House at the link to your left. If you don't see it till later, well, you know I gave up and curled up with a good book instead (or a mindless movie - sometimes that's just as good!)

Friday, July 30, 2004

Rhetoric

Watched Kerry's nomination acceptance speech at the DNC last night (on tv, not there obviously). The consensus in the room was that he hit on some of the issues he needed to (though the room was entirely Democratic, so that was to be expected).

I was struck by one thing he said, that internationally, America needs to recover its position as a nation that people look up to, not just fear. I wonder how true that sentiment might actually be of international politics.

Caveat: I only know my sense of things - and I'm no expert in international politics.

Sometimes as a Canadian, looking to the U.S. feels a bit like watching the pit bull in the neighbor's yard - you're pretty sure the fence is secure, but it still makes you a bit nervous. Being here sometimes feels a bit like standing behind the bully of the playground. As long as he isn't looking at you, you're okay. But when he turns around - all hell's gonna break loose.

But maybe that's just me.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Sorry kiddo

Oldest daughter: People always say I look like my mom when she was younger.  What do you think?
Her boyfriend: (looking first at her, then at me, then back to her) Yup.
Daughter: (grimacing) Ugh!
Me: Sorry kiddo!

Monday, July 26, 2004

Chins up and all that jolly good stuff...

I'm trying hard to stay positive about the way my summer has turned out.  But mostly it's not so good - at least, I sure figured some of it would be better.  One of the things I hadn't figured on was the kind of job I've got.

When it gets bad, I console myself with the thought that there are thousands of other people like me who are working well below their capacity in America. 

(But it doesn't really help)

Don't get me wrong - the people I work with are really nice - they're all very dedicated and eager to help and show me stuff.  And it beats digging ditches, or working retail, or waitressing.  But the job is, well, it's not really the kind of thing I imagined I'd be doing, even if only for a few weeks.  Today, I spent most of the day putting stickers in books.  That should give you some idea of what the job is like.  I'm not exactly taxing my brain.

Then again, that means I have plenty of brain power left in the evening for studying. 

But since I'm depressed at my relative lack of job-getting, I hardly feel motivated to do anything more intelligent like what I'm actually here to do.

 

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Coincidence

At a birthday party last night, a friend told me about an interesting coincidence.

She's volunteering for the DNC here next week and during training they had one of those icebreaker/learn to talk to strangers kind of exercizes where she was paired with an Irish man who had been at Northeastern.  So, having taught English classes there herself, she asked if he'd taken any and he'd said he took the Middler class last year.  And because the exercize required them to keep talking, she asked who his teacher was... you guessed it, yours truly!

Weird coincidence!  I really enjoyed that class, most of my students were international students (and most of them were Irish).  I learnt a lot from them, and at least from the report of this student, they learnt some from me too.  But it was an interesting coincidence.  Out of all the volunteers for this convention (and there's lots!), these two sat beside each other and each knew me. 

Kinda cool. 

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Beginning and End

Sunday afternoon, I drove two towns over to a friend’s house to see their brand new baby.  He was not quite three weeks old. 
 
He was sleeping when I arrived, and I looked down at him, marveling and being reminded at how small newborn babies are… they grow so fast, it’s easy to forget how little they are when they’re born.  [When you’re having them though, they feel huge!]
 
He woke up a short time later, and my friend passed him to me.  His mother said something about how neat it is to see someone who knows what they’re doing pick up a baby, but I didn’t respond because I was almost overwhelmed by the memories that I was feeling.  Yes, I did mean feeling.  It wasn’t that I was remembering particular instances of holding a baby, but holding babies in general.  Which is a visceral thing – my body was remembering what it felt like to hold such a small baby, to carry it, to nurse it, to care for it.  It was a bit overwhelming to tell the truth.
 
I was there a bit longer than I had expected, which was still a rather short visit, but during my short time there, a host of other memories were dug up by our conversation.  I was… well, I’m not sure of the right word for it – jealous is too strong a word since it’s now after-the-fact and there’s no reason to wish things were otherwise for me – nostalgic might be the right word, though nostalgic in the sense of longing for something in the past that you never had in the first place.  You see, they both share so equally in the childcare duties, everything possible short of sharing the breastfeeding duties.  Even that, they work at sharing with dad giving his son a bottle on a regular basis.
 
I never had that.  Though in all fairness, I never expected that.  I grew up expecting there was a rigid gender division in household and childraising duties = the woman did all the work and dad got the fun stuff.  So I can’t really say I’m jealous, because my life has changed and I no longer feel like I’m flying solo in childrearing, but it’s not really nostalgia either, since I never had or expected equality when the kids were younger.
 
But that aside, it was a very satisfying experience to see their son, to see them working together, to see their happiness and pride (behind the slight sheen of exhaustion).
 
Sunday night, I answered the phone to find my husband’s brother on the other end.  I was a bit surprised since we had just gotten an email from him a few days before and calls weren’t too frequent, but it was nice to briefly chat with him before handing the phone over.
 
When my husband came down the stairs asking if he could direct dial to his cousin’s house in Saskatoon (we recently changed long distance providers, so he wasn’t sure what plan I’d gotten), I knew it was bad news.  And probably about his mom.  Though since he didn’t look particularly upset, I guessed that she had just taken a turn for the worse.  My guess was right.
 
He’s now gone to see her.  She’s been ill for a long time now and while I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me because of it, it’s still hard because I know how hard this is on him.
 
Life – we use this word so frequently and casually as in “it’s my life” “what are you doing with your life?” “that’s life!” that it’s easy to forget what it represents until you’re reminded of its beginning and its end.  And sometimes it feels like it will never end… like when you’re stuck in a line, or a boring job, or waiting for something to happen… but it does.  And we tend to forget that.  We don’t want to think about the end because we’re supposedly having such a great time living it that we don’t want the downer of thinking about when it all stops. 
 
Our reluctance as a society to talk about death, even to name it – we have way too many euphemisms for it – does us all a disservice because it is true that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.  But if it’s you’re life, after it’s gone, you have no way of appreciating that sage piece of advice.  And if you don’t see other people die, if we don’t talk about it, if we don’t think about it, then we can’t really appreciate the life that we have, can we? 
 
Even when birth reminds us of the beginning of life, a child’s potential and all of that, it still is easy to think about other things than life when someone has a baby.  When I saw my friend’s baby, it reminded me not of life, it’s beginning, it’s potential, but of me, of how tired I was for the first months, how shocking it was to find oneself a parent, how much my life changed.  Even for my friends, I am thinking about how their lives have changed, how they’re working together, how they’re adjusting.  I am thinking almost nothing about their son’s life. 
 
Maybe the difficulty is that it’s so hard to tell how someone’s life will turn out, to predict what choices they’ll make, what experiences they might have.  And maybe part of the problem in even thinking along those lines, trying to guess what a child’s life will be like, depends so much on class issues that we’re afraid to talk about it.  We’re afraid to recognize that there are class differences.  That the dream that “anyone can grow up to be President” is in fact a falsehood.  Class is very real in North America, even if we don’t name it like the Brits do.  Not everyone has the same advantages.  No matter how hard you try to change that.
 
My children have never grown up with money.  They have had every advantage I have been able to afford them, and I’ve been lucky in some ways in the way my life turned out because I was able to access resources that they and I might otherwise not be able to afford.  Living in the break-even housing at the University meant I paid just a little less for rent than others and had the extra $50 to enroll them in gymnastics class or swimming lessons at the same place.  And they went to an inexpensive summer camp for a few summers because I knew about it because I had been to the same camp when I was young.  But there are still things that my children have not had.  Experiences they have not had that other children have.  I’m not complaining, I think I did well with what I had, and they certainly have had more experiences than other children have.  But to predict their lives as infants would have meant taking my income into consideration.  And that would mean recognizing that I was living below the poverty line.  And recognizing poverty in North America is an unpopular sport.
 
But life happens, every minute, every day whether we think about it or not.    

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Coming and going

I pick up my daughter from the airport at 6:30 tonight.  She's been gone for a month and it will be nice to have her home.
 
I will be there three hours earlier to drop my husband off.  His mother is dying and he is flying home to see her.
 
It'll be nice to see the daughter who I've been missing, but now I'll be missing my husband.

Saturday, July 17, 2004

To amuse and delight...

Found one of those interminable questions about getting to know you that seemed rather amusing (well, okay, the first line is what caught my eye, but I'll give you the whole thing):
 
1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4 Write down what it says: "paint-and-plaster medieval jumble" it's a book of poetry that I'm trying to write a paper on.
2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first? my Running Room CD holder (courtesy my good friend Allie, who I think about everytime I put it on) and running hat
3. What was the last thing you watched on TV? South Park's "Extreme weekend"
4. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear? Fan.  The bedroom tends to be hot, even with the a/c on.
5. When did you last step outside? To cook chicken and baked potatos for dinner.
6. Before you came to this website, what did you look at? Email - invite to a birthday party... poor sucker, he's only turning 30 and stressing over it... wait till he's facing 40!
7. What are you wearing? Khaki short with spagetti strap stretch T - as I said, it's hot today.
8. Did you dream last night? Don't remember the details, but I woke up feeling disappointed.
9. When did you last laugh? At Angela and her friend's antics playing at the pool this afternoon.
10. What is on the walls of the room you are in? Beige - it's a rental.
11. Seen anything weird lately? Can't say I have.  Oh, well, if you include coincidence.  Yesterday on the way to work, I followed a silver Porsche SUV from Minnesota through the square going out of town... and followed the same vehicle on my way back from work!  Can't be too many silver Porsche "Cayenne" SUVs from Minnesota out here in Massachusetts, can there?

12. What do you think of this quiz? Better than some, worse than some
13. What is the last movie you saw? Theatre: Spiderman; Video: The Thirteenth Floor (if you liked Dark City or Lawnmower Man, you might get a kick out of this one too)
14. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first? Car that works.
15. Tell me something about you, that I don't know? Since most everyone who reads this is a good friend, and I like to talk, this could be hard... I wrote a short story this week... how's that?
16. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics what would you do? Eliminate the idea of 'nation' - it's at the root of way too many problems.
17. Do you like to dance? Yes, but I'm not too good at it.
18. George Bush is he a power-crazy nut case or someone who is finally doing something that needs to be done for years? Just nut-case....
19. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her? Since she was, her name is Sandra.
20. If he's a boy? Since I've had a tubal... fat chance.  But when I was having kids, I wanted to name a boy Anthony.
21. Would you consider living abroad? Since I have, and I am right now, Yep!


Thursday, July 15, 2004

I am Ghandi

According to the Famous Leader test, I am Ghandi



What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com


Ghandi... does that mean I have to go on a fast/hunger strike? *shudder*

Monday, July 12, 2004

Summer sun and spicy beans

Dreamt last night I was walking with friends down 4th street back home and we stopped in a Original Joe's to enjoy the long summer night with one of their fabulous spicy bean Caesars (mmmmm).

*sigh*

Missing people, missing familiar places, missing long summer nights. The sun is down here at around 8:30 these days. 8:30! I really am missing those long Calgary summer evenings!

When the kids were little, they were actually a pain in the ass 'cause the kids didn't want to go to sleep while it was still light. But as an adult (especially one who likes spending evenings with good conversation and good drinks) I really miss those leisurely evenings. Gets too dark too fast here.

Not that I actually have any sort of social life anyway...

Friday, July 09, 2004

Gendered books?

I ran across this story in the Guardian written by Rachel Cooke about how bibliophile couples need to work together to minimize the number of books they take on vacation.

Okay, a little boring, but I'm procrastinating actually writing the paper proposal that I'm supposed to be sending off today...

What got me wondering is the fourth rule: "There are many books that he might like but which you definitely won't, and must therefore be banned: anything by Paul Auster; sci-fi by Philip K Dick; anything involving Nearly Falling Off a Mountain; all 'cyber-punk' (whatever that is); Titus Groan; business books. Then again, if he wants to pack any of the above, ditch him and go away with a Carol Shields-loving girlfriend instead."

Except for the business books, the rest of it sounds very appealing. Are my reading tastes wrongly gendered? Or am I just not Rachel Cooke's 'type'?

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Just more work

Talked to my supervisor... who is making it pretty clear she doesn't want to be the dissertation supervisor... about what direction I should take in compiling these goddamn reading lists for next year. It was a good conversation, but it didn't really get me any farther ahead than I already am. In fact, in some ways, it feels like I now have more work to do.

The two contradictory aims of these exams are to: develop broad competancy in an area, and to prepare for the dissertation. I had a pretty good idea of how I might actually achieve the broad competancy in an area by arranging the century into eras. But she's suggested the dissertation preparation is more important, and that means I need to rearrange the list. Which also means I need to read a huge pile of novels in order to know which ones should go onto the list (and the new categories that I need to arrange the list into).

And I've had to fight with the library just to get access this summer.

Apparently, in this capitalist fun-for-all that is private post-secondary education, if you're not registered for classes, you're persona non grata in the library.

Even if other parts of the university think you're important enough to invite down from another country AND give money to! Grrrrr.

I also do not have gym access. Okay, I can buy that - it's not necessary like the library. But if I want to optionally purchase it for the summer, it'll cost ~$400! At U of C it was what... $20? ...to add on gym access for the summer.

Coming from a country with a strong socialist background (and I use the term in the nicest, humanitarian sort of sense, where you take care of your citizens instead of throwing them to the dogs), I never gave it much thought. But my experience here is bringing out the latent socialist in me. The 'everyone pays all of the time' mentality here really pervades absolutely everything.

I've acclimatized pretty good - I can actually navigate without a map much of the time! - but I still experience culture shock at having to pay for everything all of the time.

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Bear Calling

Got a letter today from the oldest daughter.

In it she describes the nice dog at Basecamp and the time she called the dog to come to her from out of the woods only to realize it wasn't the dog but a black bear she was trying to call.

I sure hope she comes back in one piece!

Fixed!

I can blog again! Yeah!

I have managed to fix the problem that was keeping me off blogger and in limbo. (It was also keeping me away from my Favorites list, so now I've got some serious catching up to do as well.) What was very odd was that it was also preventing me from loading my bank webpage - bank and blogger - I would never have put them together on a list of similar sites.

My only problem is that I ended up getting rid of my pop up stopper in the process and I desperately need a new one. So off I go to hunt - if you have recently discovered an excellent - and free - popup stopper, let me know!

Monday, July 05, 2004

Long weekends are great!

Yes, not very imaginative post title I agree.

But I thought I should post something since I have access. That love/hate relationship with Blogger? It's turned into an all-hate relationship. I'm hoping blogger, or the guys at BU tech tomorrow can help me figure out what the problem is.

Went to a fun Independence Day BBQ yesterday - you can see the pics here - no they're not mine... but there are several amusing/humiliating ones of me. Way out of town - took an hour to get there. Nice little town though - wouldn't mind living in a space like that... just wouldn't like the commute. Played kickball and soccer. Man! Have we ever got to get back to the basketball, 'cause the long distance running does not get me in the right shape for the kind of short sprinting that those sports require.

I was talking to another guest there about marathoning. He ran his first marathon this spring. He made the training sound so easy, I'm actually considering prepping for one next year. No, not the Boston Marathon - way too many people - tough to get into also. No, the one he ran was in Maine - mostly level course, only a couple hundred participants.

I'll have to think about it - I think I came into the running game too old to be able to take up something like that now. We'll see.

Other than the two BBQs, it's been a nice relaxing weekend. Not too much work - lots of down time. What a fabulous change from the usual!

Friday, July 02, 2004

Happy Canada Day!

Yes, I know I'm a day late posting, but my computer seems to have a love/hate relationship with Blogger and refused to load the page yesterday.

We did have a great Canada Day BBQ though... yes, Canada Day in Boston. My American friends were amused. And most of them are like me - any excuse for a party! You can see pics of the night here.

The only thing missing was fireworks.

But I imagine I'll get those on Sunday with the celebrations for the Fourth. I saw the barge had been set up in the middle of the Charles River for launching the fireworks here. But we're going to be in southern Mass at another BBQ - I don't think you can ever have too many BBQs in summer, do you? - so I don't know if they'll be any fireworks there.

Maybe I'll just wish everyone a blanket Happy-independence-from-England/Europe-day!