June 2010

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June 2010

June 20, 2010

Evening Update

Today is Father's Day. So to all those fathers out there who do the things that fathers are supposed to do, who love their children, protect them, and care for them...Happy Father's Day. For all the fathers who don't have to be fathers but who step into those shoes when they don't have to, who see a child who needs their assistance, their love, their understanding, Happy Father's Day.

My fathers are long gone. Sometimes it's hard to remember them. My step-father passed away when I was 15. Almost 20 years ago now. My real father passed away when I was 20? 21? Almost 15 years gone by. There have been folks who have stepped in periodically to fill those shoes.

Fathers are important for little girls. Fathers are the ones who give their daughters the first inkling of how a man is supposed to treat a woman. Fathers are the ones who shape a woman's experience with men. In looking at my particular history, I'm not quite sure what that says.

I was talking to someone awhile back about running away and when you have those fantasies about abandoning your life and just fleeing, what is it that you fantasize running towards? When I have that little thought, I don't know that Necessarily see a place. Like my friend always wants to run away to a tropical island. I don't ever envision a place. That fantasy for me is about feeling safe and secure. I want to run towards that feeling. Safety. And that's how it's always been. I remember having the thought, "No one will hurt me," when I was with Dax.

I wonder sometimes if that need for security is rooted in the relationships I've had with my fathers.

Sometimes I think I need to write about my father. Capture him before he's really completely gone. I've done a little but I don't know if I'm getting any where near to what he was. It's easy to remember him as just consumed by his sickness, but I don't think that's all there was to him. I think there were times when he wasn't so lost in madness. There were things about him that were redeeming, weren't there? He wasn't all bad, was he? It's hard to remember those parts of him because he was so often crazy...and the craziness was just so over-the-top unbelievable. Maybe that's what I'll write about tomorrow morning as I have my coffee.

In other news...I had some of the best bacon tonight. On almost a whim I picked up a package of cheap bacon when I was at the store this morning. I figured I'd have bacon tomato sandwiches rather than just tomato. The slices were mostly meat and very little fat. They cooked up nicely. Some of y'all may know my penchant for non-crispy bacon. I like it to have a little give in it. This cooked up beautifully. And it was fabulous on my sandwich. It will be good tomorrow morning with pancakes and I'll enjoy it on a sandwich for lunch.

There's a ton of stuff for me to get done tomorrow so I can leave and go home on Tuesday. I need to finish up that stupid newsletter as well as dragging out all of the camping stuff. I was just thinking about what all I needed to bring and I'm rethinking all of the cooking stuff. Some of it yeah but I don't know how extensive it needs to be because I don't know how how much we're going to cook. Probably just breakfasts I think. Maybe dinner Thursday night. I suppose if I pack a skillet and some implements, that will be good, won't it? And the foil. Then we can put whatever we want on the grill grates. My little camp stove is already in MS as are my lanterns. I suppose what I really have to remember is the tent, air mattress, and fan.

I also need to clean. I hate cleaning. Not that the house is a mess, but I need to wipe down the kitchen counters, take out the cat litter, vacuum. Wash the linens on my bed.

June 18, 2010

Evening Update

So many things to still talk about.

I don't really care where I left off yesterday because I'm ready to move on to something completely new. But to wrap it up...

...on the way back to Kentucky from south Mississippi, I managed to lock not only my keys but my dog, my phone, and my wallet in the car. Fortunately when I did it, I was at the Flying J in Birmingham. At the gas pump. The story is that the passenger's window has been getting off the track. Some times when I roll the window up, it doesn't go perfectly into place; rather it goes up and outside the window frame. That means that when you're driving down the road there's an awful noise. It drives me insane.

When we were sitting at the gas pumps in Birmingham, it started to rain. That reminded me that I needed to fix the window. So...with the keys in the ignition, I got out of the car, closing the driver's side door so the sweet black doggie didn't escape, I went around to the other side of the car and opened the passenger's side door. I got the window fixed (and since it is an electric window, the key had to be in the ignition). Apparently when I did that, I may have accidentally hit the door lock button. When I got back to the driver's side of the car...both doors were locked.

You don't know what panic is when you realize that your means...of communication of commerce of identification...are locked in your vehicle. You can't call someone to come help you. You can't pay someone to help you. And your sweet little black doggie is locked inside.

What do you do? If you're me, you walk back into the Flying J to ask them if you can use their phone to call AAA. Because you're a dumbass who has locked your keys...and your dog...in your car. I would have been willing to pay a locksmith, even though I'm broke, because I needed to get somewhere (back to MS or to KY) and MY DOG WAS LOCKED IN THE CAR. Because Cob was imperiled, Cindy Lee at the Flying J called 911 to have the police sent out. She said they would come faster than a locksmith.

Officer Kirksey of the Birmingham Police Department arrived within 20 minutes and had Cob free after about 3 minutes.

That was a harbinger of things to come. We had to pull over about halfway between Birmingham and Athens because I couldn't tell which lane in which I was driving. The rain was coming down that hard, and there are a ton of people in Alabama who don't understand that when it rains, you should turn on your lights. I sat on the side of the road for about half an hour. People zipped by like they knew what they were doing. More power to them. I had to pull over again in Tennessee because the rain was that bad again with the addition of hail. It was terrible.

I did a little writing in my writer's notebook this evening. I've decided that there are a couple of things I want to commit to in the next several weeks. One of them is writing 5 pages a day again. Another is running/walking every day. I think I've decided that the nicest way to configure this new reality is to write in the morning and run at night. In order to do that, I figure I'm going to have to get up half an hour to 45 minutes earlier than I currently do. But. I can envision it being a pleasant process. Make myself some coffee. Sit down. Write. Have some more coffee. Start my day centered and peaceful. I need to work on establishing that habit in the next month and a half so that when school starts, I'm used to it and crave it even when it's difficult to make it happen.

And the running. Got to get after the running too.

There was more but I'm tired and tired. More tomorrow.

June 17, 2010

Evening Update

Good lord it's been a long time. While I was in Mississippi I thought about writing but I didn't want to do it online in the the html editor. And since I didn't have access...or didn't want to go somewhere with access...with my laptop, I just didn't write.

So to catch up: the school year ended, I've been in Mississippi, and I'm a year older. Might you like more details? OK then.

I spent Memorial ay weekend with TaTa and Cabna Boy in northern Indiana. I had thought about going camping--even made my reservations--but after I went to the lake the weekend before and found that the place where the doggie and I normally hang was closed due to high water and that at the other place it was virtually impossible to get in the water, I decided that it wasn't a good idea to insist on camping. A weekend with TaTa was an all around much better idea.

Tuesday and Wednesday after Memorial Day wrapped up my school year. I didn't finish everything I needed to because I was ready to leave and get home. Cob was at work with me. Poor baby had a bit of an upset tummy. She threw up in the office several times. Not sure exactly what had her stomach so uneasy, but it had actually started the night before. She threw up (a huge spot of it) under the dining room table the night before. I'd just finished vacuuming and just happened to see it out of the corner of my eye. *sigh* Poor baby.

We left from work around 2:00 and were rocking our way south. Pulled into Gumbo Acres around 11:00. Matt was very sweet and waited up for me. Saw him briefly because he had to go to work the next day. Only got to see him briefly the next night because he was back to work at 3:00 in the morning. After that, though, I had three days with him, one of which included a crawfish boil. Love the crawfishes! So yummy!

I suppose the biggest news is that I had my proposal defense and have been given the go-ahead to move to the next step. What a gawd-awful stressful experience that I so totally did not need to be stressed about. I spent Sunday before working on the answers to the questions that I'd been told to expect. The questions weren't hard at all but typing them out was time-consuming. Made Matt take me to Wal-Mart for paper and file folders.

Did I mention that I was stressed about it? I broke out like a 14 year old, and I couldn't eat all day long. But again...didn't need to stress. Only two of my four committee members showed up. I drove all that way and only 2 of them were there. One of them has sent me an email apologizing for missing it but I haven't heard from the other one. There was apparently a rather acrimonious split between the EDA and ADE/REF departments a couple of years ago, and since the one I haven't heard from is in EDA, I'm worried that's part of the reason why I haven't heard from him. Held-over, residual animosity? I really hope not but I don't know what else to call it or to lay it down to.

They only really asked me two questions, neither of which I had prepared for but they were "softball" questions so it wasn't a big deal. Then they talked. They were very effusive in their praise for my writing style but there were of course problems. I need to add a section with some up-to-date references and I need to take out most of my direct quotes and make them paraphrases. There are also a ton of editing things and one of the members who wasn't there has some questions about some references that either appear in the text but not the bib or the other way around. I printed his marked-up copy today and this weekend I'll go through and try to get most of the things they want taken care of.

I also need to do my IRB paperwork this weekend. Have saved a few articles that I need to print to help me with some of that. Today I received the formal approval to do the study from the agency offering the program I want to examine. I'm hoping to have IRB approval shortly after the first so I can get going on this thing. I kinda want to have all of my interviews (potentially a total of 12) done before the end of July. That would give me the month of August to get it all written up and in the format that it needs to be.

I'm actually feeling a little hopeful about the whole thing. Can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Somewhere in all of that mess, I've had a birthday. Another year older. If things go according to plan, it could very well be a monumentous year. About time for one of those, don't you think? Finish a PhD...move home...find the job that is going to make me happiest...other things in the personal realm. There are a few things that I want to accomplish this year but I think for the time being I'm going to keep them to myself.

It was a good birthday. Brandy, Anna, and I went to the Blueberry Jubilee. It was hot as hell. Anna and I were going to run the 5K, but I wound up walking. I suppose that's what you get when you don't run for a month and a half and try to do it again in the sweltering Mississippi heat. Bad situation made worse by not eating before and by having a shot of alcohol to start the day off right. Bless Anna, though. She could have easily left me behind but she stayed with me. There were a couple of moments when I thought I was literally going to pass out. Saw black spots a few times. Kept walking, though. We finished last. At one point there were 2 cops, one fire truck, and a golf cart following us. The only thing redeeming about the whole incident was that even as slow as I was going and as awful as I felt, we were only a minute or so behind the last finisher. Good deal.

This, of course, means that there is no way in hell I'll be ready to run a half-marathon on August 1st. I'm sad that I've lost that money, but realistically I never had time to prepare for it. I also don't have the money for a weekend in Chicago. I suppose that's OK. It just means that I'll have to see about something in January or February. In the meantime, I need to get back to the C2K program. I think I could probably start around week four or so.

For my actual birthday, Brandy, Beth, and I headed down to the coast. I wanted to see it before the oil got to it. We had lunch at LuLu's (always good) and then made our way to Perdido. From now on, I know exactly where I'm going when I want to go to the beach. The water and the sand were beautiful...except for the occasional tarball. The clean-up workers were walking up and down the beach picking up what they thought were tarballs. They were finding it. You could see it on the bottoms of their white booties and in the bags. Beth said that she could feel it in the dried seaweed but every piece that I rubbed didn't leave anything on my fingers.

It would have been perfect if we'd have been able to get in the water. There were people swimming and we sort of waded a little bit. Probably calf deep. The problem for me is that three miles down the road, the beach and water were closed because they were affected. The beach we were on was under a yellow flag with warnings that it was affected by the oil spill.

It really is a heartbreaking thing. While I have faith in mother nature's ability to heal herself, I'm worried about how long that will take. This oil spill is much more...at one time...than mother nature has had to handle before. It's incredible to me that they still can't get the thing stopped. Really? Really? I try to be patient and understanding because I get that they're working under difficult conditions but the truth of the matter is that if you can't figure out how to handle the worst-case scenario, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

I'm not angry with the government. Yeah, they shouldn't have been so trusting of what BP was saying in the beginning but who else is going to fix this? Who has the experience to take care of the problem? No one. No one would have been prepared for this.

Got things I wanted for my birthday...the canopy that will be useful in camping; I hope that I can put it up by myself and I can figure out how to fit in the car with everything else I take camping...the cooler I needed (remind me to get rid of my old one. I need to start pairing things down). I think that it was enough for me to have people remember and recognize it. It's not about the stuff, although the stuff is nice; it's about the people and spending time with them.

Not that I don't appreciate the stuff because I certainly do.

It's late and I have to work tomorrow. I promise some more tomorrow night.

Last Updated July 7, 2010

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June 20, 2010

Evening Update

Today is Father's Day. So to all those fathers out there who do the things that fathers are supposed to do, who love their children, protect them, and care for them...Happy Father's Day. For all the fathers who don't have to be fathers but who step into those shoes when they don't have to, who see a child who needs their assistance, their love, their understanding, Happy Father's Day.

My fathers are long gone. Sometimes it's hard to remember them. My step-father passed away when I was 15. Almost 20 years ago now. My real father passed away when I was 20? 21? Almost 15 years gone by. There have been folks who have stepped in periodically to fill those shoes.

Fathers are important for little girls. Fathers are the ones who give their daughters the first inkling of how a man is supposed to treat a woman. Fathers are the ones who shape a woman's experience with men. In looking at my particular history, I'm not quite sure what that says.

I was talking to someone awhile back about running away and when you have those fantasies about abandoning your life and just fleeing, what is it that you fantasize running towards? When I have that little thought, I don't know that Necessarily see a place. Like my friend always wants to run away to a tropical island. I don't ever envision a place. That fantasy for me is about feeling safe and secure. I want to run towards that feeling. Safety. And that's how it's always been. I remember having the thought, "No one will hurt me," when I was with Dax.

I wonder sometimes if that need for security is rooted in the relationships I've had with my fathers.

Sometimes I think I need to write about my father. Capture him before he's really completely gone. I've done a little but I don't know if I'm getting any where near to what he was. It's easy to remember him as just consumed by his sickness, but I don't think that's all there was to him. I think there were times when he wasn't so lost in madness. There were things about him that were redeeming, weren't there? He wasn't all bad, was he? It's hard to remember those parts of him because he was so often crazy...and the craziness was just so over-the-top unbelievable. Maybe that's what I'll write about tomorrow morning as I have my coffee.

In other news...I had some of the best bacon tonight. On almost a whim I picked up a package of cheap bacon when I was at the store this morning. I figured I'd have bacon tomato sandwiches rather than just tomato. The slices were mostly meat and very little fat. They cooked up nicely. Some of y'all may know my penchant for non-crispy bacon. I like it to have a little give in it. This cooked up beautifully. And it was fabulous on my sandwich. It will be good tomorrow morning with pancakes and I'll enjoy it on a sandwich for lunch.

There's a ton of stuff for me to get done tomorrow so I can leave and go home on Tuesday. I need to finish up that stupid newsletter as well as dragging out all of the camping stuff. I was just thinking about what all I needed to bring and I'm rethinking all of the cooking stuff. Some of it yeah but I don't know how extensive it needs to be because I don't know how how much we're going to cook. Probably just breakfasts I think. Maybe dinner Thursday night. I suppose if I pack a skillet and some implements, that will be good, won't it? And the foil. Then we can put whatever we want on the grill grates. My little camp stove is already in MS as are my lanterns. I suppose what I really have to remember is the tent, air mattress, and fan.

I also need to clean. I hate cleaning. Not that the house is a mess, but I need to wipe down the kitchen counters, take out the cat litter, vacuum. Wash the linens on my bed.

June 18, 2010

Evening Update

So many things to still talk about.

I don't really care where I left off yesterday because I'm ready to move on to something completely new. But to wrap it up...

...on the way back to Kentucky from south Mississippi, I managed to lock not only my keys but my dog, my phone, and my wallet in the car. Fortunately when I did it, I was at the Flying J in Birmingham. At the gas pump. The story is that the passenger's window has been getting off the track. Some times when I roll the window up, it doesn't go perfectly into place; rather it goes up and outside the window frame. That means that when you're driving down the road there's an awful noise. It drives me insane.

When we were sitting at the gas pumps in Birmingham, it started to rain. That reminded me that I needed to fix the window. So...with the keys in the ignition, I got out of the car, closing the driver's side door so the sweet black doggie didn't escape, I went around to the other side of the car and opened the passenger's side door. I got the window fixed (and since it is an electric window, the key had to be in the ignition). Apparently when I did that, I may have accidentally hit the door lock button. When I got back to the driver's side of the car...both doors were locked.

You don't know what panic is when you realize that your means...of communication of commerce of identification...are locked in your vehicle. You can't call someone to come help you. You can't pay someone to help you. And your sweet little black doggie is locked inside.

What do you do? If you're me, you walk back into the Flying J to ask them if you can use their phone to call AAA. Because you're a dumbass who has locked your keys...and your dog...in your car. I would have been willing to pay a locksmith, even though I'm broke, because I needed to get somewhere (back to MS or to KY) and MY DOG WAS LOCKED IN THE CAR. Because Cob was imperiled, Cindy Lee at the Flying J called 911 to have the police sent out. She said they would come faster than a locksmith.

Officer Kirksey of the Birmingham Police Department arrived within 20 minutes and had Cob free after about 3 minutes.

That was a harbinger of things to come. We had to pull over about halfway between Birmingham and Athens because I couldn't tell which lane in which I was driving. The rain was coming down that hard, and there are a ton of people in Alabama who don't understand that when it rains, you should turn on your lights. I sat on the side of the road for about half an hour. People zipped by like they knew what they were doing. More power to them. I had to pull over again in Tennessee because the rain was that bad again with the addition of hail. It was terrible.

I did a little writing in my writer's notebook this evening. I've decided that there are a couple of things I want to commit to in the next several weeks. One of them is writing 5 pages a day again. Another is running/walking every day. I think I've decided that the nicest way to configure this new reality is to write in the morning and run at night. In order to do that, I figure I'm going to have to get up half an hour to 45 minutes earlier than I currently do. But. I can envision it being a pleasant process. Make myself some coffee. Sit down. Write. Have some more coffee. Start my day centered and peaceful. I need to work on establishing that habit in the next month and a half so that when school starts, I'm used to it and crave it even when it's difficult to make it happen.

And the running. Got to get after the running too.

There was more but I'm tired and tired. More tomorrow.

June 17, 2010

Evening Update

Good lord it's been a long time. While I was in Mississippi I thought about writing but I didn't want to do it online in the the html editor. And since I didn't have access...or didn't want to go somewhere with access...with my laptop, I just didn't write.

So to catch up: the school year ended, I've been in Mississippi, and I'm a year older. Might you like more details? OK then.

I spent Memorial ay weekend with TaTa and Cabna Boy in northern Indiana. I had thought about going camping--even made my reservations--but after I went to the lake the weekend before and found that the place where the doggie and I normally hang was closed due to high water and that at the other place it was virtually impossible to get in the water, I decided that it wasn't a good idea to insist on camping. A weekend with TaTa was an all around much better idea.

Tuesday and Wednesday after Memorial Day wrapped up my school year. I didn't finish everything I needed to because I was ready to leave and get home. Cob was at work with me. Poor baby had a bit of an upset tummy. She threw up in the office several times. Not sure exactly what had her stomach so uneasy, but it had actually started the night before. She threw up (a huge spot of it) under the dining room table the night before. I'd just finished vacuuming and just happened to see it out of the corner of my eye. *sigh* Poor baby.

We left from work around 2:00 and were rocking our way south. Pulled into Gumbo Acres around 11:00. Matt was very sweet and waited up for me. Saw him briefly because he had to go to work the next day. Only got to see him briefly the next night because he was back to work at 3:00 in the morning. After that, though, I had three days with him, one of which included a crawfish boil. Love the crawfishes! So yummy!

I suppose the biggest news is that I had my proposal defense and have been given the go-ahead to move to the next step. What a gawd-awful stressful experience that I so totally did not need to be stressed about. I spent Sunday before working on the answers to the questions that I'd been told to expect. The questions weren't hard at all but typing them out was time-consuming. Made Matt take me to Wal-Mart for paper and file folders.

Did I mention that I was stressed about it? I broke out like a 14 year old, and I couldn't eat all day long. But again...didn't need to stress. Only two of my four committee members showed up. I drove all that way and only 2 of them were there. One of them has sent me an email apologizing for missing it but I haven't heard from the other one. There was apparently a rather acrimonious split between the EDA and ADE/REF departments a couple of years ago, and since the one I haven't heard from is in EDA, I'm worried that's part of the reason why I haven't heard from him. Held-over, residual animosity? I really hope not but I don't know what else to call it or to lay it down to.

They only really asked me two questions, neither of which I had prepared for but they were "softball" questions so it wasn't a big deal. Then they talked. They were very effusive in their praise for my writing style but there were of course problems. I need to add a section with some up-to-date references and I need to take out most of my direct quotes and make them paraphrases. There are also a ton of editing things and one of the members who wasn't there has some questions about some references that either appear in the text but not the bib or the other way around. I printed his marked-up copy today and this weekend I'll go through and try to get most of the things they want taken care of.

I also need to do my IRB paperwork this weekend. Have saved a few articles that I need to print to help me with some of that. Today I received the formal approval to do the study from the agency offering the program I want to examine. I'm hoping to have IRB approval shortly after the first so I can get going on this thing. I kinda want to have all of my interviews (potentially a total of 12) done before the end of July. That would give me the month of August to get it all written up and in the format that it needs to be.

I'm actually feeling a little hopeful about the whole thing. Can see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Somewhere in all of that mess, I've had a birthday. Another year older. If things go according to plan, it could very well be a monumentous year. About time for one of those, don't you think? Finish a PhD...move home...find the job that is going to make me happiest...other things in the personal realm. There are a few things that I want to accomplish this year but I think for the time being I'm going to keep them to myself.

It was a good birthday. Brandy, Anna, and I went to the Blueberry Jubilee. It was hot as hell. Anna and I were going to run the 5K, but I wound up walking. I suppose that's what you get when you don't run for a month and a half and try to do it again in the sweltering Mississippi heat. Bad situation made worse by not eating before and by having a shot of alcohol to start the day off right. Bless Anna, though. She could have easily left me behind but she stayed with me. There were a couple of moments when I thought I was literally going to pass out. Saw black spots a few times. Kept walking, though. We finished last. At one point there were 2 cops, one fire truck, and a golf cart following us. The only thing redeeming about the whole incident was that even as slow as I was going and as awful as I felt, we were only a minute or so behind the last finisher. Good deal.

This, of course, means that there is no way in hell I'll be ready to run a half-marathon on August 1st. I'm sad that I've lost that money, but realistically I never had time to prepare for it. I also don't have the money for a weekend in Chicago. I suppose that's OK. It just means that I'll have to see about something in January or February. In the meantime, I need to get back to the C2K program. I think I could probably start around week four or so.

For my actual birthday, Brandy, Beth, and I headed down to the coast. I wanted to see it before the oil got to it. We had lunch at LuLu's (always good) and then made our way to Perdido. From now on, I know exactly where I'm going when I want to go to the beach. The water and the sand were beautiful...except for the occasional tarball. The clean-up workers were walking up and down the beach picking up what they thought were tarballs. They were finding it. You could see it on the bottoms of their white booties and in the bags. Beth said that she could feel it in the dried seaweed but every piece that I rubbed didn't leave anything on my fingers.

It would have been perfect if we'd have been able to get in the water. There were people swimming and we sort of waded a little bit. Probably calf deep. The problem for me is that three miles down the road, the beach and water were closed because they were affected. The beach we were on was under a yellow flag with warnings that it was affected by the oil spill.

It really is a heartbreaking thing. While I have faith in mother nature's ability to heal herself, I'm worried about how long that will take. This oil spill is much more...at one time...than mother nature has had to handle before. It's incredible to me that they still can't get the thing stopped. Really? Really? I try to be patient and understanding because I get that they're working under difficult conditions but the truth of the matter is that if you can't figure out how to handle the worst-case scenario, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

I'm not angry with the government. Yeah, they shouldn't have been so trusting of what BP was saying in the beginning but who else is going to fix this? Who has the experience to take care of the problem? No one. No one would have been prepared for this.

Got things I wanted for my birthday...the canopy that will be useful in camping; I hope that I can put it up by myself and I can figure out how to fit in the car with everything else I take camping...the cooler I needed (remind me to get rid of my old one. I need to start pairing things down). I think that it was enough for me to have people remember and recognize it. It's not about the stuff, although the stuff is nice; it's about the people and spending time with them.

Not that I don't appreciate the stuff because I certainly do.

It's late and I have to work tomorrow. I promise some more tomorrow night.