Spring?

At any rate, the start of the “spring” semester. We’re also getting unseasonal warmth with rain instead of the snow and sub-freezing temperatures that are more usual in these parts at this time of year. This makes me feel strangely adrift in time and place. But at least I don’t feel like I need to stay indoors in my iguana cage. Though Sir John dislikes cloudy rainy weather, I’m okay with it. That is, I can stand cold if it’s bright, and I can stand gloomy if it’s warm(ish); what really gets me down is the combination of dark and cold.

I just hope the plants realize they’d better hang on for a few months before putting out buds, because I’m sure we’ll get real winter eventually.

At any rate, it’s a new year, and not only that, we’re well into it already. Halfway through January! I’m back from a delightful week in the company of Queen Joan and Lady Maud, spent in the land of bougainvillea and rosemary hedges. We visited the sites, we cooked together, we did some vintage shopping (just as we did in college), we worked a jigsaw puzzle (and had to give up on a second one). We survived what the locals saw as a fearsome rainstorm (in the midwest, we call that sort of rain “summer”). Unfortunately, on a previous stage of Queen Joan’s royal progress, she caught a cold, which she generously shared with her attendant ladies; fortunately, it was no worse ailment, and I had warning enough to go get zinc lozenges and start on prevention / amelioration in good time, so I’m only rather snuffly. But I’m pretty damned tired of being sick, and I hope that I can be healthier in the rest of the coming year.

I am not up to making resolutions or even picking a theme for the year. I am in the mode of putting one foot in front of the other, and my main hope is that things can just keep keeping on much as they are right now. Life is pretty good, as I have indicated in my posts about retirement, and I would like to keep enjoying this pleasant state of affairs.

Anyway, hello blogosphere! I’m sorry I haven’t been commenting much lately, though I do read. Happy belated birthday to Ganching, and I look forward to hearing about more of Carolbaby‘s creative explorations; I hope MLA went well for those, like Undine, who attended. May all the academics have good semesters, with delightful hard-working students and plenty of writing time!

What was I going to say?

I logged in awhile ago, and opened up the New Post page, and then got distracted. Possibly I had some really brilliant idea, but on the other hand, maybe I was just going to whine.

It’s mid-July, and past the middle of the year, and more than past the middle of the summer. Boo. I have not done those things I ought to have done. We are contemplating a road trip before the summer is truly over, and I feel (a) that I’m not sure I want all the hassle of driving and sleeping in strange beds and figuring out how to feed both of us with our different finicky diets in unfamiliar places, not to mention the struggle to find a suitable cat-sitter* and also (b) that I really want to do this because it will be a very Summer Thing To Do, nice to look back on, and great to see friends we haven’t seen in years (and years, in one case, due not only to The Covids but also to these friends’ normally very international lifestyle, as in, it’s difficult to be in the same country as them without going to another hemisphere).

Things I have done this summer: visited family, painted the guest room, cleaned my closet, planted a vegetable garden**, wrote a conference paper, drove to conference and delivered it (and stayed in swanky hotel and saw Real! Live! People!), accepted an invitation to expand it for publication, did at least a few hours’ worth of planning for all of the classes I will teach next year***, recycled literally years’ worth of Brita filters, made a date with a retired colleague, watched a lot of cycling and read a lot of trash. I’m negotiating with Queen Joan about a January trip to somewhere sunny, and hope to get reservations nailed down before I settle into the winter gloom in which I just endure circumstances rather than finding the wherewithal to do anything about them (aside from SAD light and pretending to be an iguana).

Things I have not (yet) done: nope, not going there, too depressing! The list is long. Let’s just say it contains various items that should have happened a year ago, and that really all my electronic items need updating.

If we go on this trip, I have about two weeks left (give or take depending on friends’ schedules) in which to do any work, and then another week (or so) after it, and then I’ll be on contract again, though classes don’t actually start till a little later in August. Ack. Ack! Will this realization make me buckle down and do some of the things I ought to have done? Or will I stick my head firmly in the sand and pretend that summer really is endless****?

*We no longer live near the vet-assistant person to whom Basement Cat objected here. I’m sure he’d rather have her than someone completely new. The cats think their normal human servants should never even have days off, let alone extended holidays.

**Have not yet re-planted lettuce and spinach seedlings after the wretched squirrels destroyed the last batch. Must do that.

***Any time now I’m going to have to concentrate on those for the fall, but I hope that January Self will be grateful to Summer Self for doing some advance work on next spring’s classes. I fear she will just wonder what the hell Summer Self was thinking.

****People who have retired (see my last post) might suggest that it is like having endless summer, but unless I can move somewhere with a decent climate, it’s no such thing. If I have to live with snow, I’d rather be working, because it’s a distraction and give me something to do that isn’t sulking at home in my iguana-cage, and Sir John actually likes it Here and does not want to move to Mexico or the Southwest, let alone Morocco, so here we are. My husband may be a winter-loving nut-job but I’m quite fond of him and would rather be with him than alone in a warm dry climate, even if I have to remind myself of that frequently from November to March.

Six from my sister-in-law’s garden

I’m not at home this weekend, so you get photos from a garden I would love to see more often.

Fuchsias

Lilies and sedum

more lilies

more fuchsias

still more fuchsias

Feverfew and something whose name I can’t recall though I have some at home

Six on Saturday is hosted by the Propagator.

What urban soul?

Apparently, all I need to trigger a sense of home is hills and hemlock trees. The new house is in a town that has hills (this is a big deal in my part of the midwest) and lots of evergreens among the deciduous trees, including hemlocks. From my front door, I see two hemlocks silhouetted against the sky, and they make me feel so peaceful and happy. Despite the vile heat and humidity, suddenly I have no desire ever to move back to my home state, or to the one where much of my family live now. I don’t ever want to go anywhere again.

Well, I would like to go to the UK and visit some manuscripts. But apart from that, I’m fine right here.

Earlier this week, we went back to our former town to do some errands. It seemed like years since I’d been there, and very strange to think that I had lived there for so long. What was I thinking? Why didn’t I want to leave? I love the new house and the new town.

The enormous yard makes this place like living in a park. It’s tremendously relaxing to look outside and see so much green, and so little that has to do with other humans. We have squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, birds, and probably other animals who are more nocturnal; I’m sure there are also deer, possums, raccoons, and either foxes or coyotes.

I’ve been looking up old posts on Clarissa’s blog because I recalled her making a similar transition when she bought a house surrounded by greenery. She went from liking concrete to preferring leaves. She felt like she’d become a completely different person. She could see herself in that house at 80. Well, maybe by 80 I’ll be ready to move somewhere with no stairs. But I’m amazed by how much at home I feel here. Clarissa is one of those bloggers I find interesting precisely because often we are so different, but on this topic it’s like we’re soul mates!

Maybe it’s because humans in general need to be exposed to nature a lot, and it’s good for us. I spent a lot of time outdoors at my old house, gardening, going for walks, shoveling snow (oh, you know what? if you don’t have sidewalks, you don’t have to shovel them), and there were plenty of trees and other green things to see from the windows. But this is a whole new level of nature, and it makes me feel like a whole new person.

To be sure, there’s a grocery store and other shops about a mile away, perfectly walkable, so it’s not the level of isolation that both my brothers have, which always makes me long to rush back to civilization. I’m not willing to drive ten miles to buy groceries, and I think my feelings on visiting family influenced my sense that I needed to be urban. But now I think the suburbs are a fabulous place to be (even though I don’t recognize myself). I feel like I get to spend the rest of my life on vacation.

Of course there’s bougainvillea

There is also beach glass:

And beach rocks:

Feral chickens, of which here an example:

Red hibiscus:

Here’s our rent-a-dog:

And white hibiscus:One jigsaw was too easy, and the other was too hard. It’s coming home with me. Maybe Sir John and I will be able to work it when we have more than a week.

Syllabus status: written. Article: still coming along. It now stands at 3360 words, and when I’m back to my stacks of books at home I expect I can finish it off reasonably briskly (knock on wood, with the help of the Lord and a long-handled spoon, all that). There’s a book coming ILL, and another I’ll need to get from LRU’s library. Why can’t I ever . . . but I think I asked that recently, and answer came there none.

The rent-a-dog was very sweet, but I am eager to resume my regular duties of worshiping and attending on my feline overlords.

Wait till next year

It is not really the end of a decade. Start counting at 1, not at zero. You knew I’d be pedantic like that.

Day 12 of steady research/writing, still working on the long-overdue R&R, but I now have 1600 words in the new and improved version, so I’m at least 1/4 of the way there. I gave up on the document that has all-caps notes to myself saying things like “ADD PARAGRAPH ON ANGLO NORMAN SOURCE HERE” and just started over, although of course I can transfer large hunks of material from that document into the new one. It’s easier to think on a blank page, and faster to just do it my way than try to argue myself into doing it some other way.

I hope to keep the chain going. However, Queen Joan and I are off tomorrow on one of our royal progresses to warmer climes, so we’ll see. I also have class plans to work on. I hear vacations are lovely, but I’m fine with working in a more exotic setting. It is a great pleasure to noodle around with something interesting on my laptop while looking out at blue seas and tropical birds, rather than staring out at snow and bare branches. So I look forward to putting in an hour or two every morning before we go out sight-seeing, then come back to work on a jigsaw puzzle.

We know how to have fun! Tonight we’ll be turning in around 8:00 because of an 0-dark-thirty departure tomorrow morning. Woot! So Happy New Year now! Enjoy the Eve, and happy writing (and other pursuits) in 2020: finish off the decade with a bang!

On August, time, and grace

It’s being one of those long, busy months. I still feel the stars hurtling through the heavens, the northern hemisphere slouching into a new season, but there’s less time to appreciate the passing of time now that classes have started again. My life is carved into lists, lists for each class, lists for research, lists for house, health, finances. Sleep, once again, is iffy, because I am over-stimulated. Not worried, there’s nothing to worry about, but change is coming down the pike, this year, next year, soon, and I feel unsettled.

August has been long in part because of two trips. I went to a most excellent conference, which stimulated in all the good ways; research is definitely exciting at the moment. Sir John accompanied me on a trip to my old stomping grounds, during which we had a very active social life. It was great to see people, but I wish we could have scattered all our events over a couple of months instead of cramming them into a week!

We went to a dinner that assembled several high-school friends and our spouses. We all married “out,” that is, to people who are from somewhere else, met when we were adults, who know only by hearsay of our long-ago parties, excursions, jokes, and catch-phrases. In such a mixed group, we can all be our adult selves, with minimal reminders of the teens we once were. Maybe my friends would be okay with the reminders, but I am much happier as an adult and prefer to think that I have moved far beyond my young self. Long ago, when I was slightly freaked out about turning 18 and thus being legally adult when I had little notion of how “to adult,” as the phrase now goes, the host of this dinner assured me, “Grown-ups have more fun.” I have found this to be true.

We also attended a memorial service for a friend’s father, a beloved and influential teacher. My friend told me that he had kept the poems I showed him when I was, what, 18? 20? I am not, now, a poet. I channeled my creative impulses into literary research, and as a scholar I am tolerably successful. (That is, employed!) I may have a better appreciation for poetry because I once wrote some; I don’t know. My friend’s father’s great gift was to see and respect young people, children and teens, as complete people, interesting in themselves, not for what they might become. If they were interested in basketball, poetry, or rap music, then he talked to them about basketball, poetry, and rap. He learned from them. They learned—we learned—something about how to be an adult who pays attention, who is kind, who takes people of any age seriously.

These are not lessons I learned from my parents.

I am still most extremely imperfect in putting those lessons into practice.

These two events, and others with them, have me thinking: who do I want to be, and how can I be that person? My lists and obligations do not sum me up; they are part of me—I’m sure my friend’s father made his own lists—but not all of me. I want to live with something of the attention, intention, and grace that he had, that he gave freely to everyone who passed through his life.

Awesome idea, plus some whining

Apart from going to Mass every day (or at all), this sounds to me like a fabulous vacation, and I am going to try to do something like it after the semester is over:

https://lafemmefollette.typepad.com/lafemmefollette/2016/06/castaway.html

 

I have ideas for at least two substantive posts but I still need to Do All The Things even though I am nearly done with one Enormous Thing (style-check of the Huge Honking Translation), and I just don’t have the time/brain to engage with blogging ideas. I found a wonderfully soothing, repetitive loop of classical piano and cello on YouTube that was exactly what I needed to keep my monkey-mind distracted, or do I mean focused, both/either/whatever, while I read through 150 pages of translated medieval text. Only another 50 or so to go! Starting Tuesday I’ll be able to see if the music works for grading as well.

Please tell me I am not the only sorry procrastinator who still has not taken tax-related stuff to the accountant. But if you file E-Z on the 15th don’t tell me, we need the accountant and at this point I am procrastinating in part because I feel so guilty about giving them more last-minute work. I have a stack of documents. I have the checklist from last year. I can do this.

And then the rest of the Things will not seem so bad. Right?

What we saw in London

Attentive readers may recall that I wanted to see the Edward Burne-Jones exhibition at the Tate Britain. We started there. I loved it. So many pieces I had seen only in reproduction; I had no idea of the scale of many of the paintings. Some were much smaller and others much larger than I had imagined. I amused Sir John by referring to an early Annunciation as “Treehouse Mary.” Our old neighbor’s daughter Meg bears a certain resemblance to Margaret Burne-Jones, so I got her parents a postcard of MBJ’s portrait. Circe’s panthers were another highlight (since I’m fond of black cats).

We also saw Sir John Soane’s house, nipping in before it closed for a week for renovations. I enjoyed that very much, as I love house museums. I can’t imagine why I hadn’t seen it before, considering all the time I’ve spent in and around Lincoln’s Inn, but perhaps on previous trips it was being renovated, or was just too crowded. I bought a fascinating little book about the Soanes’ domestic life.

We visited the Museum of London, where we concentrated on pre-history, Britons, and Romans. After that, our feet gave out and we went to lunch, followed by a brief return to the gift shop. I’ve seen the medieval and early modern galleries before. I would have liked more time with the later materials, but we were just too worn out. There may have been some time in a bookstore later in the day.

At the British Museum, we focused on “I Am Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria, King of the World.” Well done and interesting, we thought. I did think the gift shop missed a trick in not having coloring books based on Assyrian designs. I had in mind flowers, birds, horses, and abstract borders. Sir John said, “Severed heads in the bushes, and corpses in the river, and refugees leaving town, just the thing for coloring books.” I conceded that he had a point. Methods of warfare really didn’t change much over the millenia; the siege ladders and wall-defenders looked much the way they do in medieval depictions.

We spent a pleasant afternoon in Wimbledon with an old friend, following a pub lunch with a wander around the common and a rummage through some charity shops.

Had our airline been a bit more timely in advising us of a delayed flight, we would have been able to put in a morning at the V&A, but that didn’t happen. I had thought possibly we’d get tickets to some theater production, but didn’t organize anything before we left, and in the event, it’s just as well. Sir John needed a nap every day in the late afternoon/early evening (I’m faster at adjusting to time zone changes, or maybe just more used to functioning on insufficient sleep, thanks to years of sleep disorder), so I fear he would have fallen asleep in a dim theater.

It was a good trip, and I’m glad we went. Thanks to traveling to more northerly, gloomier climes, it seems much brighter at home now. And I can’t believe it’s still not quite the middle of January. Thanks to two trips over the winter break, it feels like the break lasted for months, even though each trip was only about a week long.

There and back again

Any time now I’m going to go over to TLQ and post some session goals. As soon as I’m no longer whacking the TRQ moles. I got up at 6:30, fed cats, unpacked dirty clothes, put in a load of laundry, looked things up in order to fill in missing bits on two syllabuses so I could send them in to be copied in time for Monday classes, made and ate breakfast, sent more work e-mail, tried to fix a clogged sink, put it all back together and asked Sir John to call the plumber, did a bit more unpacking, had lunch, gave the cats more food, let in the cleaner and explained about the sink and the plumber, looked up more stuff and sent more work e-mail, let in the plumber and showed him the sink and the pipes in the basement, wrote a belated Christmas thank-you, sent more work e-mail, wrote checks to the plumber and the cleaner, made a cup of tea, and hello! Here I am.

I ought to go to the gym and I really do not want to. I feel like I’ve been running around since 6:30 getting stuff done on not enough sleep and I should get to be done now please thank you.

24 hours ago I was on a plane. Yesterday when I thought it was the time it is now, I was hanging around Heathrow. It’s hard to believe that yesterday morning I had breakfast at the Giraffe World Kitchen (World Giraffe Kitchen?) near Victoria Station. And that although it was chilly, with a wind that would cut through you, nonetheless it seemed like spring, with flowers in boxes and hanging baskets. We even saw flowering trees in Wimbledon on Sunday.

This is why I’m having trouble contemplating goals for the next twelve weeks. I need to catch up to myself.