40 books?!?!

It has always been one of my dearest pleasures to sip good German coffee while I watch the sunrise over my backyard. I have taken to checking my e-mail on my laptop at the kitchen table each morning since I have been home from Istanbul. Normally this is a very soothing process: sip some coffee, watch the changing sky over my evergreens, sip some more coffee, read an e-mail add from Harry and Davids, sip some coffee,etc. You get the picture.

However this morning there was an e-mail from Dan which sent my blood pressure through the roof. I had asked Dan for an accounting of the money he needs this semester for books. Having finished 56 credits at Pima Community College in Tucson (all his general ed requirements) he is in his first year of the architecture program at the University of Arizona. As I understand it, they accept 200 kids into the program for the first year, and the top 60 get to go on from there. So Dan is really feeling the pressure to do well this year. He is taking a full load of courses, which includes an art class and ARC 101 - which has a lab component and requires all kinds of supplies.

This is the part that makes me crazy... they gave him a book list of 40 books for ARC 101!!! 40 at a total cost of over $1700.00! This list includes a book which costs $151.00 which is in French! This is for one class, and 140 of these students will not make it into their second year. Needless to say, I told Dan to clarify this with his TA for the class, because I cannot believe that they actually want him to purchase 40 books for this one class. Meanwhile, with clear blue skies, the sun has broken over a still morning in Michigan. I am going to finish clearing out the flower beds in front of the house and plant some mums so we have some color out there. Then I plan on watching as much of the US Open as I can this afternoon, and try not to think about the crazy professors who have given my son a list of 40 books for one semester! :)

Welcome to Martha's Life Cafe

Welcome to Martha's Life Cafe. I am planning to make this blog a place where you can choose from a variety of topics and delve into some of the strange and wonderful subjects I have running through my life. I plan to try to post daily and some of the topics I plan to discuss include not only my life, but issues that that we are all facing as part of the global community. Let me start with a little background information. I chose to include the word Cafe in my blog title because there is a whole menu of different kinds of items I want to write about: love, unemployment, empty nesting, recipes, how globalization as a porcess effects us all, world travel, helpful tips and hints for anyone about just about anything, health care, facing mortality, aging parents, raising children, movies, books, fun and games, etc. But first I should properly introduce myself. I was born in the late 50's in Michigan. My father was a professor at Michigan State University, but he worked in agricultural education and moved on to International Programs pretty early in my life. I made my first international trip at the age of two when we went to Jamaica for a short term assignment he had there. He spent the next five years working on a project in Nigeria and was traveling most of the time, so he wasn't around the house a lot. In 1965 we moved to Nsukka Nigeria where my father was the Chief of Party and my Mom taught and did research. During our stay there was political turmoil and eventually we found ourselves living in Biafra and in the middle of the ensuing war. This chain of events had a profound effect on my life and my current situation. (More on this as time passes.) I have always loved to sing, and have some talent in the area. So after graduating from a small high school in Michigan I started a career as a singer. I sang in bands in night clubs and concert venues and did a lot of work in recording studios in Michigan. This career choice was, however, uncertain, unstable and not very lucrative. (more on music as a career later.) I married Larry on January 1st, 1983. He had custody of his two sons, so I became an instant Mom. We had two more son's together, Danny in 1985 and Nick in 1989. Larry was an automotive designer, engineer, and program manager. We lived in Anderson Indiana for 10 years while he designed headlamps for General Motors and moved back to Michigan in 1995. In 1997 he took a job with Bosch in their lighting division and this move led to our time in Germany. In August of 1998 we moved to the beautiful small town of Reutlingen in south-western Germany with Dan and Nick (who were then 9 and 13). We both wanted the boys to have a good international experience as they grew up and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity since we would be living on the economy and Larry would be on the German vacation schedule (6 weeks vacation + 13 holidays). Also, the money was great. Unfortunately, Bosch assigned Larry to a project for Ford - which was in Koln - a five hour drive away. He ended up spending almost every week in either Koln or the UK or the US or Mexico - which meant I was in Reutlingen alone with the boys for most of the two years. Trade-offs; the boys got their international experience and we had the great vacation and pay, but I had to carry the brunt of the home and children alone in a foreign country. (Tons more on living in Europe later, too!) After we returned to the US in 2000, Nick said to me one day, "Mom, you need to get a life." So I did. I decided that I wanted to go back to school and get my Bachelors degree. I applied and was accepted to Uof M in Flint and, starting with just two classes, I worked myself up to going to school full time and working in the Writing Center. To make a long story shorter, I ended up working at the Writing Center for almost five years while I got my bachelors degree and my Masters in Social Sciences. Larry continued to travel a lot of the time for his job, and so I was raising the boys mostly on my own and going to school full time, thinking that I had a pretty good plan for the future. Then everything changed. Larry was laid of from his job in March 2007. I always used to think that his employment would never be a problem for us since he worked in automotive, and they are always going to be building new cars. Boy was I wrong! I never would have forseen the downturn in the automotive industry, and the hundreds of thousands of people who would end up unemployed. Nearing 60, and with years and years of experience I thought it would not be a problem. Unfortunately, there are a lot of other people in the same position, and many of them are younger and more highly educated. Just after finishing my Masters in September 2008 I took a job as an Academic Skills Instructor at Istanbul Bilgi Univeristy - yes, Istanbul Turkey! By this time Dan had been living in Tucson for a few years where he was working and going to school. Nick graduated from high school in June of 2008 and was working at a local office supply store, not sure about college yet. So I left Larry at home and went to Istanbul by myself. (There is a ton more about this for later, as well) Now I am back in the States. The boys are both in Tucson, Larry is still unemployed, my Mom is now getting hospice services, my Dad has Alzheimer's, and I am looking for a job. So, with all that, I have decided to open Matha's Life Cafe as a place where I can discuss these issues, and hopefully where you can find the humor in the situations being thrown in my direction! Again, Welcome.