How can I compete?

The picture on the left is of the oh-so-scary Flatwoods monster. He's in my front window, and he lights up at night. What-- you don't know the story of the Flatwoods monster? Oh, okay, I'll tell you.

Flatwoods is the geographic center of West Virginia. It's where everyone comes for state meetings so that nobody can complain that they're driving further than anyone else. Along about 1952 or 1953 (I forget the actual year), a mom and her kids were wandering around in some woods near Flatwoods when they saw something streak across the sky and heard a crash as it landed. They went to investigate. That's when the Flatwoods monster appeared: 12 feet tall, glowing, with a head shaped like the ace of spades. My version was designed based on the witnesses' description and a re-created sketch. Yup, pretty scary. So I put my monster out for Halloween. The rest of the year it sits on my bookshelf in the living room.

The picture on the right is what the neighbors right across the street have done for THEIR Halloween display. How can my Flatwoods monster look even remotely scary compared to body parts hanging out of a nuclear drum and a beheaded mannequin right next to it looking for its head that's rolled off? Sigh . . . I just don't have a gruesome enough mind, I guess.

But whose house would you feel safe sending your kids trick or treating to?

Speaking of Halloween decorations, you might also want to visit the blog of my Relief Society president's husband: www.insidetoddsbrain.blogspot.com. His first October entry shows what they've done for Halloween. I'm hanging out there for Halloween. It's quite the show!

antibiotics all gone

This morning I took my last amoxicyllin (however you spell that) horse pill! Yay!! For those of you who haven't been hit by the weird flu strain that wants to settle in your chest and the bottom of your lungs, count yourselves lucky. I'm still not entirely sure that's what I had, but I got scared enough after almost a week of having fevers off and on and then getting winded going up two flights of stairs that I actually went to the doctor. The doctor actually ordered a chest x-ray, which made me feel consumptive or something. (But I passed my TB screening in August with flying colors . . .) "There's one little spot in your lower left lung. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, but here's a prescription for an inhaler and antibiotics."

That spot had better be gone after ten days of swallowing horse pills twice a day!

But if I relapse and end up with lung cancer from, oh, I don't know, second-hand smoke damage from my mission, can I have pansies on my grave?

It's Fall!!

I took this shot from an upstairs bedroom window. It wasn't quite in it's full blazing glory until a day or two later, but you get the idea here. I don't think I'll ever be able to live anywhere again that doesn't have fall colors. I've spent most of October driving through amazing panoramas of orange and red trees.

Too bad the leaves fall off. This tree, in my front yard, is now completely barren. I got the leaves raked up the other day and couldn't bend for a day or two afterwards. (No, I'm not getting old . . .) One tree done, five or six more trees in the backyard.

Why can't the color just stay through November? I know, I know, opposition in all things. I find the post-color season very anticlimactic, though. Good thing Christmas lights will go up in another month.

a lesson in balance

I'll start with my Wednesday schedule from this past week:

11:30-1:30- Lunch meeting with other professors and a few local teachers, two of whom had just told one of my student teachers days earlier that he couldn't teach in their building-- and he hadn't even taught a class yet.

1:30-4- Try to make sense of my chaotic office papers and get working on an article due Monday the 27th.

4-7- Methods class. During the last ten minutes, while I was trying to wrap class up a bit early because we had a guest speaker coming to a 7 PM Student Education Association meeting, one of my students confided that she worried about being able to balance the demands of teaching with having a real life and family. Crucial discussion that we started, but had to postpone for next week because we were out of time.

7-8:30- Student Education Association meeting with guest speaker from George Mason University. Fabulous presentation, but I hadn't eaten since the lunch meeting.

8:30-10- Girls' Night Out at Cheddar's. I finally eat dinner (tortilla soup).

Ironic that my student's comment in class came on such a crazy day. I've been thinking about it all week. How do you maintain a balanced life in this teaching world many of us have chosen? Before Thanksgiving, the following are due:

article for National Writing Project professional writing retreat anthology

faculty workload report (all done except for copying- whew!)

article for English Journal (currently in draft form)

revision of JAAL article

NCTE presentation

Needless to say, October's looking a little crazy, and I'm wondering if I'm a big hypocrite to my students who want to believe they can have a life outside of living in their classrooms, sleeping on a pull-down bed.

Good thing I had a fun weekend planned to re-establish equilibrium . . . It included a new women faculty "slumber party" at a colleague's cabin in Canaan Valley. On the way to the cabin, we passed the "smallest church in 48 states"-- we HAD to stop for a picture. The pews have room for twelve people. Twelve skinny people. I even bought two postcards. Then on to the booming metropolis of Davis, West Virginia for pizza at a place with the grumpiest waiter I've ever met. The food was great, though. We stayed up late talking and eating at the cabin, then got up early the next day for . . .

A trip to FallingWater, a house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for a really wealthy couple and their son. It's a weekend house, built literally right over a waterfall. It was built in the 1930's for the whopping sum of $155,000. I know that was huge for the Depression, but I kept thinking, "Hmm, my house cost $135,000. Where can I find an architect . . .?" The coolest thing about FallingWater is the sound of the waterfall. It was rainy today, so that added to the effect. So restful. Windows that can open out into gorgeous views without any house frame getting in the way, cantilevered decks for sunbathing (literally balanced over the waterfall), cool built-in closets and shelves. Yeah, I could live here. Well, the tubs are set a bit low into the ground. Okay, minor flaw.

On the way home, a stop in Uniontown to buy a new winter coat. I bought my present winter coat my first year of teaching. Hmm, that would have been in, oh, 1994. The friend who was with me said that if I plan on this new coat lasting that long, the cost of wearing it will be a HUGE bargain. What was it Olive wrote in her blog about a cost per wearing ratio . . .? I think this coat will cost me maybe $.20 per wearing. Or less.

Have I touched any school tasks today? Nope. Will I before Monday? Nope. Do I feel bad about that? Nope. Maybe I'm starting to figure out this balance thing after all.

an apple a day

Apples are healthy, right? I'm not so sure about picking apples-- that involves ladders, which increases the possibility of me falling. Take a close look at the ladder I'm on and you'll realize this is very much a posed picture. It scared me to get on step three because the only thing that was keeping me from falling was if the ladder was balanced properly against the tree trunk. So here's how things REALLY worked:

My friend Jo Ann, whose trees these are, and who's several inches taller than me, got on the ladder and picked two full buckets of apples. I stood on the ground and grabbed branches to yank the apples over to where I could reach them. Result: lots of twigs and leaves in my hair and half a bucket of apples picked in the time Jo Ann picked two buckets. But the apples are yummy (winesaps), and it was a great fall day to pick.

One more thing: I'm not as big as it looks like in the picture. The jacket really does make me look fat . . .

A Happy Discovery

I have to preface this blog entry by saying that those readers who are unfamiliar with Iowa City and its surrounding area probably won't appreciate the magnitude of this discovery. But for those of you who have moved to other parts of the country, you know what I'm talking about.

Let me back way up, to my first year in Iowa City. I was at a friend's house and opened a cupboard to find it packed with little plastic spice containers. My question: "What ARE these? Why don't you have spice containers from the regular grocery store?" Her response: "Don't you know yet about Stringtown? I'll have to take you there."

Stringtown Grocery: inexpensive spice and bulk foods mecca, located 15 miles away in Kalona, Iowa. I don't think I ever spent more than $3 for any spice I bought, no matter how exotic. When I knew I'd be leaving Iowa, I did a Stringtown run and splurged on all the spices I could. I restocked my entire spice supply for $25 (and that's a lot of spices, trust me).

As my spice supply dwindled, I started looking for an equivalent bulk store. I mean, come on: Stringtown is Amish-run and I live six miles south of the Pennsylvania border. There had to be an Amish store somewhere, right? I looked. I asked friends who were also looking. No luck.

Until this past Friday. I went with a couple of friends to the Springs Arts and Crafts Festival, located in Springs, Pennsyvlania, about 35 minutes' drive away. We ate homemade bread with apple butter, sausage sandwiches, freshly roasted peanuts, homemade fudge. We were happy. Two quick errands to run on the way home. I had already had a good day. First stop: Springs Grocery. I walked in and knew I'd found my mid-Atlantic Stringtown. Talk about making my entire week! Who would have thought a $1.34 plastic container of curry powder could be such a mood enhancer?

Life is good.