Geeky Mom

I’ve been debating this for a while and have probably written about it before, but now I absolutely must make a decision. I want to go to my college reunion in a couple of months. My college happens to be located in the same city as my mother. I am thinking about going and not telling my mother that I’m going. I would stay in a hotel and it’s unlikely that our paths would cross.

But, how horrible is that? Phantom just wrote a wonderful post about why she puts up with her parents on vacation when she has so much trouble dealing with them. I feel similarly about my mother. It is so stressful to spend time with her. My father suggests I be honest with her. Tell her I’m going but not staying with her. That would require a conversation I’m not sure I will ever be ready to have. I might have to explain that I don’t feel comfortable with her, that I feel even less comfortable with her husband.

If I were bringing the kids, this would be a no-brainer. She loves them and I wouldn’t deny her the right to see them. But it’s just me, and I’d like to have a relaxing and fun trip and not be constantly fighting her. What would you do?

I couldn’t think of a good title for this. I thought of Happy Birthday, but that would be too misleading. Today is my sister’s birthday. My sister who has now been dead as long as she was alive. She would have been 34 today. It is impossibly hard to imagine what the 34-year-old version of my sister would look like based on what she looked like at 17. For the first few years after she died, I talked about her quite a bit. Then I went through a period of not talking about her at all. I was meeting new people, who almost always eventually asked, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Rather than complicate things, I would say no. But then sometimes people would start going on about how it must be hard to be an only child or sympathize because they, too, were only children. But I was an only child from age 21 on. Not quite the same. No matter what I said, it was complicated. And it always made people uncomfortable.

More than I wonder what my sister would look like, I wonder what our relationship would look like. Would we live near each other? Would we talk to each other once a week? Would she have children that would visit me for a while in the summers? Would we go on vacation together? Or would we have drifted apart or gotten into a huge fight which ended in our not speaking to each other ever again? I think that last option is not likely. We were close and had gotten closer as our parents were going through a divorce just before she died.

Most of the time, these anniversaries pass by unnoticed. I notice my sister’s absence more often at family events. I will likely think about it when Geeky Boy graduates high school. Sometimes I think about her when I want to talk to someone who knows my history in a way that I don’t have to explain it.

It’s interesting how these events mark your life, but eventually become a faint scar about which you have a good story to tell. And yet, you keep rubbing the scar again and again, so that sometimes you feel the original pain.

Once I saw it I recognized that this is the result I always get.

Completely random, but a really good one:

“the littlest birds” The Be Good Tanyas
“You Are the Sunshine in My World” Andi Hoffmann & B-Goes
“How You’ve Grown” 10,000 Maniacs
“Books Are Burning ” XTC
“Erotik Platonik ” Cubiky
“From Four Till Late” Robert Johnson
“Too Much” Dave Matthews Band
“No Quarter” Led Zeppelin
“Torn & Frayed” The Rolling Stones
“Control” MuteMath

random10, fridayshuffle

The Rufus Wainwright DVD I ordered arrived in the mail today. Yes, I know this is an unhealthy obsession, but I saw a preview of it online and I couldn’t help myself. But, I’ve promised myself that I won’t watch it until I’ve gone for a good walk and written for an hour.

Ear ringing update: the ringing is still there, but the doctor took out a hugh chunk of wax which he said was probably causing both problems. Everything should clear up in a day or two, but if it doesn’t, I should go back. He also checked my hearing, which was cool. So far, no hearing loss. It runs in the family unfortunately.

I have the best family doctor ever. She checked me out, said she couldn’t see anything wrong, but said she could tell it was really bothering me, so she got me in to the ENT doc right away. Everyone should have a doctor like her. And if you don’t, find one!

My ear is still ringing. I’m exhausted even though I went to bed at 10 last night. I have a whole meetingless day ahead of me. Yes, I’m going to the doctor. I literally can’t think with the pain and buzzing. Bleh. The iPod drowns out the ringing and I’ve taken Tylenol. My hope is I can get in to the doctor before lunch. Knowing my luck, she’ll be on vacation. It’s been an extremely productive week, but I think the breakneck pace I was going at has now taken its toll and I’m longing for the freedom of the weekend.

So I missed the candlelight vigil. There were over 300 people signed up to attend, so I didn’t feel too bad. If 100 showed up, it would look like a big deal. I’ve developed a rather horrific earache, so I think I’ll be headed to the doctor tomorrow. I’m planning to go to bed with Geeky Girl in a little while, that’s how bad it is.

But as guilty as I feel for not standing with the folks honoring Cindy Sheehan and protesting the action in Iraq, I feel pretty good for having helped in a tiny way with two smaller efforts. One, I helped send Sarah to New Zealand, and two, I contributed money to help Badger with her medical bills. I don’t know these people, but I feel like I know the people who have asked for help on their behalf and so I felt like contributing. I’d like to do more little things like this. It seems like a lot of people have an extra 5 or 10 bucks lying around that they can give, which combined with a whole bunch of other people’s 5 or 10 bucks makes a big difference.

Increasingly, I feel like it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. I’m planning to continue looking for the little things and contribute to them as much as possible.

They’re back! The children (and Mr. Geeky) returned last night in time for dinner. After dinner they went to visit friends; the friends came down to visit us; and back and forth. For several hours, five or six children went back and forth between our house and others. Back to normal.

Now the reprogramming begins. The kids have not been told “no” for two weeks. They’ve stayed up late, gotten to eat whatever they want. They’ve listened to Republispeak. That last one was pretty easy to remedy. We watched an episode of “The Daily Show” together. Geeky Boy was in stitches over Stewart’s imitation of W. I’m also taking them to the candlelight vigil tonight in honor of Cindy Sheehan.

Geeky Girl looked especially unhappy last night when she went to sleep in her own bed. The dream has ended. Geeky Boy, on the other hand, seemed quite thrilled to be back in his own bed, back to having his own space and a little more freedom. He says he’s going to start blogging again–yay! I’ve suggested he blog summaries of the books he had to read this summer. I hope he keeps it up.

It’s good to have them back. Though I really enjoyed the time with Mr. Geeky and then, completely by myself, I feel like I have my real life back.

Last night on the way home, I stopped at the fancy schmancy grocery store for take out. The take out at this place is like fine dining. I have done this maybe twice in my now 5 years here. There are many things I don’t like about this place. First, everything is inordinately expensive. Where most stores mark down the local chip brand, this one sells it at exactly the suggested retail price. The take out I got–a tasty thai chicken salad–was 8.99/pound. I was going to get some tortilla chips for the 4.99 spinach dip I was getting, but the only bag I could find was also 4.99 and it was tiny. I settled for 4.99 crostini instead. I could not shop like this forever.

Worse than the prices is the clientele. New Kid and people in her comments were lamenting the overly coiffed look of people in the South. The people in this store are seriously coiffed, but in a way that doesn’t look like they’re coiffed. They shop here all the time and think 4.99 for a small bag of chips is a bargain. They all look like they just returned from the Hamptons. The women have perfectly trimmed bobs. They’re wearing shorts or mini skirts that probably cost more than my entire outfit. They have sweaters draped around their shoulders (a la the eighties preppy look). They smell good. The men are either a) in suits because they’re on their way home from their really important job or b) in workout clothes that look nicer than the stuff I wear to work. They also smell good. Their attitudes come in two varieties: a) completely relaxed because they have a nanny, maid and cook at home who will make all this stuff or b) frazzled and angry because the nanny, maid and cook are waiting for them.

These are the people who live in the mansions I drive by. No one is ever home. You never see children playing in the yard or people sitting out on the patio. They are completely lifeless. I disdain these people. I was thinking about this disgust bordering on hate as I was driving home and trying to figure out why I react this way. Partly, I know, it’s that I want to be them. I would like to have enough money that shopping in the expensive store is like shopping at Wal-Mart for most people. I envy their houses and clothes and cars. Partly, I’m mad that I didn’t achieve this kind of wealth with the life that I chose. (Of course, transplant me to another part of the country and I’d be living almost as well as these people.) But it’s easy for me to dismiss that envy pretty quickly and be thankful for what I do have. The other reason I don’t like these people is their utter obliviousness to the plight of those around them. I’ve seen them abuse the people that serve them. I’ve seen them angry that people are in their way or won’t give up their place in line for them. I’m certain they are not all that way, but I read that entitlement attitude into the looks I see on their faces.

I suppose I am prejudiced against them, the rich people. It’s not a nice feeling really. I’d be happy to change my views. I’d like to find out that most rich people got their money honestly and donate heavily to worthy causes. I’d like to find out that most of them don’t look down on people dressed in discount store clothing or driving late model cars. For now, though, that’s not the image I get and so I don’t frequent the stores of the rich.

And by office, I mean both my office and Microsoft Office. Before I begin my rant, I’d just like to say that things are looking quite promising for the upcoming year. I’m getting lots of interesting requests for workshops and information on screencasting, podcasting and blogging. Yay! So take this rant as a very minor part of my overall rosy outlook on my work life.

Every once in a while, someone, usually an administrator or someone not entirely familiar with what it is I actually spend most of my time doing, asks me to do a workshop on Office applications–you know, Word, Excel, etc. I almost always decline. First, I remind people that I am no expert in these applications. I use them as much as anyone else in a college environment does and probably less than many people. The kinds of things people ask for include mail merge and using templates, something useful for those running an office, but not necessarily for teachers. Second, I just don’t think we should spend too much energy on teaching the basics of these applications when there’s so much more to learn. There’s a plethora of material on the web to help and the help documentation itself isn’t too shabby. It will at least get one started. If the staff want to learn more complex tasks pertinent to their job, there’s a separate budget for that to hire outside instructors.

Now, there are Word tasks I can think of that might be appropriate for students and faculty–especially for Word. For all of these, it would take some preparation on my part.

* Using the “Track Changes” and commenting features
* Using Word with Endnote
* How to add citations and footnotes
* Creating longer documents with chapters/sections; using the outlining features

About Excel, I have less to say. Those who need to do serious number crunching are using better tools. I can’t really think of other uses that I could teach people.

Frankly, my life is increasingly on the web, including the life that might relate to applications like Word.

I’m not sure why this always gets under my skin, but it does. I think it’s because I often perceive the request as a blatant misinterpretation of my job and almost insulting.

Note: I accidentally posted this for 30 seconds on my professional blog. Yikes, yikes! I know many people I work with read this blog, but I wouldn’t want a post like this to be presented as “official” opinion. That said, I do often articulate this view almost word for word when this issue comes up, so it’s not like I’m hiding something. The treacherous world of blogging!