I tackled the worst of the problem, basically clearing a path to the washer and dryer, which, thankfully, did not get wet. I tried calling my insurance company and spent an hour on hold twice before I gave up. So, yesterday, I decided I was just going to do it myself and headed to Home Depot this morning to get supplies. But then, after an hour of cleaning out molded drywall, I decided I just couldn’t do it myself, so I called two people to come out and give me an estimate on cleaning it and one arrives in half an hour. I’m waiting to hear back from the other. And, I finally got through to my insurance company. I have no idea if they’ll cover the damage, but at least the claim is in. Now, I have to go make a list of the damaged items. Really hate, hate, hate dealing with this and just wish the fairy would come and make it all better.
My friend, Laura, and I would play this at full volume on our respective birthdays. I was a huge Beatles fan in high school. Mostly everything I really, really liked music wise was from the 60s and early 70s (Led Zeppelin, The Doors, etc.). But I liked the Beatles because no one else my age really did. People would get in my car, hear The White Album in the background and roll their eyes. But who doesn’t love The Birthday Song, really.
And here’s another Beatles song that makes me smile, from the movie, Across the Universe:
It is indeed a sunny day today. Finally. After days of gray and rain, it’s supposed to be just lovely the rest of the week. Mr. Geeky is out of town starting this evening through tomorrow, but we’re having lunch as soon as the basement cleaning people show up. The basement is dry-ish now. My plan is to get it cleaned and then get it waterproofed again. Water is coming in from somewhere. . .
On the dog front, Gracie has developed some cute and not-so-cute behaviors. On the cute front, we’ve taught her to sit, which she now does spontaneously in hopes of treats. She’s also a real Hopper. She’s named after Grace Hopper, but she can leap from sofa to bed and back again like a rabbit. I think doing some agility stuff with her (jumping over hurdles) would be fun. Yesterday, I took a bubble bath and the bubbles freaked her out. She barked at them. And then, she jumped into the bathtub while it was draining, and rather than jump back out, she barked at the bubbles. Crazy. Her worst behavior so far has been nipping/biting at us when she’s playing. Sometimes she gets so worked up that she bites, we correct and then she barks and runs in circles. These are not hard bites usually, but she doesn’t know her own strength and we’re trying to keep her from doing it by making a loud noise and then not playing with her and/or redirecting her to her toys. The latter seems to work better. But we certainly don’t want her biting. And we’re still having some house training issues, but mostly she’s good on that front.
Though I mostly plan a regular day–laundry still needs to get done, after all–I’m mostly hanging out and relaxing and appreciated being at the age of the meaning of life (my favorite number).
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Longtime readers know that I was once a big fan of David Allen’s GTD system. But after a while, the whole thing started to stress me out. I think there are things about the system that are useful, but they’re sort of common sense–doing one thing at a time, break big tasks into smaller chunks. But in his books, Allen makes getting stuff done sound like it’s just a matter of clearing out an inbox and checking off things on a list. The important thing is making the right list. Now that I’m home, both working and doing mom stuff, his system doesn’t really work for me. For example, the other day, I put on my list “finish laundry.” Yeah, stop laughing. Because the laundry, as anyone who’s done it knows, is never finished. By the time I’ve emptied all the baskets, at least one is full again and the cycle starts all over again. On any given day, if I wrote down absolutely everything that needed to get done, I’d be completely overwhelmed. And then, add to that the unexpected crap that comes along very very regularly. Over the weekend, the basement flooded, which will entail a phone call to the plumber and lots of cleaning. One kid is sick–Mr. Geeky is retrieving him from school as I type this. And Mr. Geeky himself was sick starting a week ago, went to a conference last week, and then returned sick and laid in bed all weekend (I think the kid has this illness). We’re currently down to one car because we haven’t had time to repair the other car after the great icicle incident. The part is in; now it just needs to be put in place. And then there’s constant bill-paying, school paperwork stuff, managing insurance and wills and other grownup things.
And that’s just the house stuff. I’m not even talking about work stuff. It’s a good thing I’m being very low-key about my work because if I didn’t, nothing around the house would get done. It’s kind of a catch-22. I should put more time and effort into working so that it will pay off financially, but if I do, no one’s picking up the slack. This became clear during the five weeks I taught a while back. In part, of course, it’s because I didn’t insist on others picking up the slack. I didn’t ask Mr. Geeky to do a couple of loads of laundry or have the kids straighten the living room. And I didn’t do that because the class was so short and temporary. I have a dilemma in my head right now because on the one hand, I’d like to eventually be working more (either full or part time) and on the other, I worry about what will not get done around the house.
I can’t believe we managed all this when we both had full-time jobs. It meant, usually, that we either a) crammed it all in over the weekend and/or in snippets in the evenings and/or b) did less of it. We did have a housekeeper back then, which helped, but did not resolved some of the deeper disorganization issues. She kept the floors and toilets and carpets clean. But the papers piled up, and laundry didn’t always get put away, and we ordered out a lot more. And I was pretty stressed about all that. And I feel like I can’t return to working more until the house is in a position for it to run more smoothly and I’m increasingly feeling like I can’t get it in that position by myself. No amount of list-making is going to help me to the hard work of getting it done.
Frankly, and I know I’m not the only one, I get discouraged about the fact that I can’t seem to keep things neat. And when I got home on Saturday to find the basement filled with 4-5 inches of water, I felt even more discouraged. I stood halfway down the stairs and just said “Oh my God, oh my God” over and over. And the cat was meowing from her perch in the window across the room, and I went and put on boots and trekked across the water and rescued her. But then the dog showed up and she ran across the water and all my efforts were wasted. And then I got a broom and poked at a hole in the floor to check if it was clogged (it wasn’t) and then I took off my boots, which weren’t tall enough to keep the water out, so I took off my socks too, and Mr. Geeky was lying in bed, sick. And I just thought, well fuck. Yes, I really thought that. The whole damn thing–the cleaning, the semi-maintenance of financial order, keeping kids and cats and dogs fed and cared for–seemed completely sysyphean. And if I hadn’t been keeping it all together for the sake of everyone around me and myself, really, I probably would have cried. Cried. Over housework. Over the damn basement flooding. But really, it was kind of the proverbial straw.
And now here I am writing about it instead of tackling the basement or anything on my list. Because what’s going on in my head right now is a sort of defeatist mentality. If I clean up the basement, which will take me all day, all the things on the list that’s been sitting around since Thursday won’t get done. So it will be Tuesday at the earliest before I can tackle anything. If I weren’t being defeatist, I might just think, well, maybe you’ll get the basement done and get to the list too! Realistically (not even defeatistically), I know I can’t get the whole thing done today, and really, I’m planning to start within 10 minutes. Because it’s a big job. And somebody’s got to do it, and I am currently hating that that somebody has to be me. Mr. Geeky? Working until 8 because he has a meeting at 4 at another university. And this schedule? Typical.
All that is a long way of saying that yes, I still make lists. I still try to keep some of the aspects of GTD in mind. For example, making a plan for what needs to get done first in the basement. But in reality, such an ordered system doesn’t work for me and makes me feel bad about what’s not getting done, especially when it comes to the “mom” part of my title. I think that’s true of many moms. I need something better. And, then, I need a vacation.
Update: The water has receded, but it’s still gonna need to be cleaned up. Cat still perched in a window.
My basement now has 5 or so inches of water in it. It’s not supposed to stop raining until Monday. The cat is in the basement because she’s afraid of the dog. I rescued her and she went running back through water ten minutes later so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the dog. It’s likely everything down there is ruined. Which sucks. The furnace and water heater about about 2 inches under water. Can’t even begin to tell you how much this sucks.
Oh, and P.S. No flood insurance.
Increasingly, I find myself disconnected from educational technology in higher ed and from higher ed more broadly. I used to be interested in structural issues surrounding higher ed, especially the pressures that have been brought to bear on higher ed by technology. I still have some interest in those, but I find myself reacting to blog posts and articles on these topics with a big, “Meh.” Partly, of course, this is due to my not working in a higher ed institution anymore, though my husband still does and many of my friends do. Will higher ed change as a result of the economy and/or the influence of technology? Probably. Eventually. But not across the board. And not necessarily in ways that are good. And frankly, part of me doesn’t care. I’m still reading those blog posts and articles, but they don’t inspire much in me. Perhaps if I worked in a college again, I’d be inspired again. But part of me thinks it’s a lot of tilting at windmills. So it’s not that I don’t want to see change; it’s that I’m not seeing any truly constructive suggestions for how that change might happen. What I see is a lot railing about faculty not using technology or at administrations for hiring too many adjuncts or at state governments for reducing funding. It’s not that these aren’t legitimate complaints; they are. But few writers out there–whether for “real” publication or on blogs–are suggesting practical steps that might really change something. I know from experience that even if you do have some practical steps for small change, that change can get swallowed up, even reversed if it occurs within an institution or environment that is clinging to the status quo, or worse, grasping at some bygone golden age. Too often in higher ed, both of these are true, and frankly, a lot of it comes from the faculty. There’s a lot of whining and moaning about salaries, about “kids these days,” about work loads. And again, some of these are legitimate complaints, but a lot of people just whine and don’t do anything about it. In many places, faculty are still the ones who set the policies and more importantly, the tone of a place. If you want to change those policies, start working on it. Yes, it’s hard work, but it’s why you have tenure. I think my fading interest in higher ed has to do with this constant whining about the administration, about the students, about everything. I want to scream, well get off your ass and do something about it. And take a long, hard look in the mirror first. Maybe it’s you that needs to do the changing.
And I would say the same thing to the technology people out there whining about how people won’t use technology, how they don’t understand the changes it’s bringing, etc. First, I’d say think a little more critically about the technology you’re espousing. Too many technologists out there really sound more like evangelists, trying to convince people to use the snake oil. I understand. I was there. I felt the frustration, the worry. But I think technologists need to acknowledge the fear and the skepticism, not dismiss it as ridiculous. Yes, it’s a barrier, but not one that you knock down with a bulldozer. It needs to be dismantled bit by bit and it needs to be done with the help of the people that put it up in the first place. And we need to acknowledge that sometimes technology isn’t the answer and that some technology is being used in ways that are counterproductive to teaching and learning. Not everyone needs to blog and twitter and create multimedia presentations. Too often faculty see us as pushers of tools rather than as partners in education. And sometimes that’s because we project that attitude as often as that attitude is projected onto us.
In my distance from these issues, in only having to think about them once in a while rather than daily, I think (I hope) I’ve gained a better perspective. I’ve come to realize that real change is slow, that it’s a rare thing for transformation to happen overnight, and that it takes cooperation among many different kinds of people for change to happen. You can’t be the lone voice in the woods advocating for change. You need partners from across the spectrum. In places where nearly everyone is clinging to the old ways, those partners can be hard to find. But if I ever return to this work as a day job, those will be the people I’ll seek out first. And I would try to avoid the places that aren’t open to change. I know what those look like now.
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That’s what I’m virtually managing right now, thanks to Facebook. One of my former students posted on my wall, “Please stop getting me addicted to these Facebook games!” I have not been much of a Facebook person even though I’ve had an account for six years. I actually started playing the games to give Geeky Girl something to do on a snow day. And now I have two restaurants and a farm. I’ve also discovered that people who post a lot in Facebook aren’t usually the ones playing the games and people that I never thought are playing Facebook games. I know, because most of the games require you to share stuff with friends in order to move up the ladder.
One thing that’s kind of nice about the games is that you can spend ten minutes doing a few things and then come back in a few hours to see what’s going on. There’s no need to “play” constantly; it’s more like maintenance. But, I can see where these games will get old after a while. They have been a better distraction than tv.
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Meanwhile, on the Gracie front, we’ve decided she’s part prairie dog. She looks like she’s always on the lookout, even to the point of occasionally standing on her hind legs. When she’s not on the lookout, she’s asleep. She is extremely mellow and will sleep in our laps, on a towel, or of course, in our bed. We’re pretty much past any house training issues. She had one incident a couple of nights ago, but has been fine ever since. And I took her on her first ever walk with the Gentle Leader. It worked pretty well. She didn’t like it for the first five minutes, but after that, she quit pulling. I’m sure it will take a couple of weeks to get her to maintain that regularly. And I need to slow down her pace a bit. She practically sprints. It’s really more of a prance. The biggest issue now is getting her and the cat acclimated to each other. I’d welcome suggestions.
And always carry a towel. That’s my new mantra. I’ve noticed that when I’m healing, even when things get a little scary, I don’t panic. I just calmly try to rectify the situation. Sometimes, I let the mage die. As long as the tank and most of the dps lives, I’m good. I find the whole process much more enjoyable when I’m not in panic mode. Even if someone gets mad at me, I’m cool as a cucumber. I’ve carried this over to tanking, which I’ve returned to doing since our guild is often short of tanks. I’m still not as good as a lot of tanks I’ve seen, but being calm really helps. Panicking when a mob gets loose doesn’t help as you’re not able to think clearly about what to do. By remaining calm, I can usually fix problems before they get out of hand and I enjoy myself a lot more than if I’m thinking, “Crap, crap, crap! Where’s the runestrike button?” I like the contrast of a situation where things around you are chaotic–mobs everywhere, the mage is taking damage, and the tank is on the verge of going down–and a calmness internally. When the mobs finally go down, the tank survives, and even the mage doesn’t die, it feels really good.
I’ve tried to carry this feeling over into my physical life by remaining calm in the face of stressful situations. I don’t have too many of these, thankfully, but when I feel overwhelmed, I try to draw on that feeling I have in WoW, where I’m calming taking down mobs or healing the tank. I think that other players could learn a thing or two from this inner calm I’ve tried to maintain. Those players who get really angry when they die or if someone makes a mistake should just relax. They’ll have more fun themselves and they’ll make the game more fun for others. I’ve found that when I exude my serenity through chat by telling people not to worry about mistakes or telling them it’s okay that they aggroed an extra mob that the whole group feels more relaxed. I know, I sound a little hippy dippy, but you know what, I’m having fun and I think I’ve learned something important.
And the towel? Comes in handy when you spill water near the keyboard. Just saying.
I think the New York Times stole my idea. 
On Motherlode, there are two posts that are an interesting contrast. In one post, the writer abandons a friendship with a childless friend and seeks out the moms with whom she feels more comfortable and can relate to. In the other, the writer realizes that just because you both have kids doesn’t mean you should be friends. I fall into the latter category. When Mr. Geeky took his first job, the wife of one of his colleagues invited me to join a “mommy” group. I enjoyed the group, but only established a friendship with one or two of the 30 or so women who were members. I, too, got tired of talking about what my kids were doing developmentally all the time. I wanted to talk about my work, my passions, my interests. And the women I got along with best in that group were the ones who’s children were oldest. One woman told me at some point that even though I didn’t look it, I seemed much older and wiser than I was. I took it as a complement. My closest local friends include both parents and non-parents. I also have quite a few male friends, and interestingly, when I look back at high school and college, I was closer to more men than women as just friends. Among my parent friends, though we do often discuss our children, we spend plenty of time talking politics and current events and about other interests. That’s what maintains a friendship, not having kids the same age.
Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday’s post. It is nice to know I’m not alone, but I feel sad that there are others of you out there that struggle with the same thing. So, two things I’ve done today. One, I found this book, The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You’re Not a Kid Anymore
I don’t know why I’m obsessing over this, but I am. I’ve spent far too much time on Facebook lately and when I do, I see the old friends from college and high school posting photos of recent gatherings, chance encounters, and regular parties. They’re still friends. Some live far away and some live near each other, but still they’ve maintained their relationships. I have to admit, it makes me just a little sad seeing that, feeling like there were things I did in the past that prevented me from forming a bond with people that would last some twenty years later. I’ve always been slow to make friends. I’m not shy or anything; I’ll easily strike up a conversation with anyone at a party. The harder part is finding people I can laugh with, get advice from and call up in good or bad situations. I haven’t had that since my first time through grad school. Once I got married, it seems, everyone assumed that Mr. Geeky filled that role. And he did/does, but he can’t do it all.
The sad thing is, I think it’s me. There are ways I’ve structured my life, values that I hold that make it difficult for me to keep friends. For example, we’re not church goers. Being non-religious not only cuts one off from the instant community to be found from going to church services and events, but it often means that people feel distant from you, feel like there’s something off about you because you’re not religious. And, I admit, that I sometimes have issues with people who are religious. Not most people, but some. Some people I’ve met are just “in your face” about their religion. Obviously, that’s not a relationship I’m going to pursue and vice versa. Not working outside the home makes things difficult, too. I formed lots of friendships at work and because of where we worked, we shared many of the same interests and values. That leaves making friends rather randomly. I have met plenty of people through my kids, and I find almost all of them pleasant people that I’d be willing to get to know and spend more time with. But many of them have solid friendships already. There’s no room for another. And how the hell does one go about this. Ugh. I feel like an idiot just writing that, but whatever. In high school, college, even grad school, it was easy enough to call someone up and say, hey let’s grab a drink. At work, that was easy, too. Now, it just feels awkward. At least for the solo outings. Inviting another couple out for dinner or having people over for a party is no problem.
So, to sum it up. I have issues. I have few opportunities to make friends. And I might be a little picky myself. Sigh.
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