Pancakes

This morning I woke up (at 5:41 like I do) thinking, "I want pancakes!" So I washed my face, brushed my teeth, pulled on my jeans and a t-shirt and off I went. Making pancakes for one person just is not possible, so I decided to go out for breakfast. I drove to the local Perkins, just a couple of miles down the street. I have two comments about this experience.
1) A short stack of pancakes and four strips of bacon should not cost 10 bucks. Especially when the pancakes are incredibly bland and they give you faux maple syrup to put on them.
2) On the drive home I saw about 300 people out for their morning run. I'm serious - all decked out in their short shorts or stretchy pants, sleeveless tops and good quality shoes, they were running in a long line. Some of them were pushing babies, others had their dogs and many of them looked to be having actual conversations as they jogged along the sidewalk.
Okay, so now I feel like a real slacker, no more early morning trips to Perkins for me!

1st Semester Completed!

I completed my first semester at the University of Kansas this week. It has been an interesting adventure with a wonderfully smart and enthusiastic staff. It has been my pleasure to contribute to the 2873 consultations with writers that were done this semester, including over 320 online consultations. I have learned so much from the staff, about the practice of writing consultation, about my own practice and about the vibrant culture here at KU. And as always seems to happen with me, every day I learn that I have so much more to learn. 

It is also bittersweet to have to say good-bye to the graduates. On the one hand I am proud to have known them, and on the other hand, I am sorry we didn't get the chance to know each other better. I wish them all the best of the adventure that they are facing at this time in their lives. What a ride!

Spring has sprung!

I have to admit to being a little disappointed when I moved to Kansas in mid-January and was greeted by a blizzard. I thought, "I moved pretty far south, I thought winters would be milder!" But someone I met that first week told me that I would be happier in a couple of months when spring arrived earlier than in Michigan. She was right!

February was very wintry, but March in Kansas is more like April in Michigan - many mornings with frost on my windshield, some days early in the month with snow that stuck and piled up, but also many days where it was sunny and 'almost' warm. I went back to Michigan for my spring break week in late March, and had to face lots of snow and single digit temperatures. I wasn't very happy. And it snowed a bit in Kansas the Sunday before I came back. But that was the end of winter in Lawrence!

Spring arrived kind of abruptly. The Sunday after I returned it was 92 degrees! Holy cow! That was an unusual day, record breaking, in fact. But spring had definitely arrived. The next day there were trees in bloom all over town. There are huge trees covered in white blossoms, the red buds are in bloom and the crab apples are in full bud. Daffodils and tulips are blooming on campus and the students are running all over campus in shorts and flip-flops.

Yesterday I walked across campus in the sunshine and students were promoting their clubs and charities with a basketball free throw contest, boys on stationary bikes raising money for the homeless, and various other fun outdoor activities. I almost died laughing when I saw a campus police officer riding down the sidewalk on his segue! (A thoroughly emasculating device!)

I have had a very busy week, since my boss, the lovely Terese, is in Atlanta at a conference. I taught our tutor training class by myself, have had a steady flow of interns in the writing center (along with a plethora of writers), have been doing formal observations, and yesterday I got to spend an entire class period with Sociology Masters and PhD students. That class is on the top floor of the highest building on the hill. The view from up there was stunning! Even more fabulous for me personally was that I spent an hour with my kind of people. It brought me back to the time when I was in my Masters program, all kinds of wonderful people studying all kind of things that I find fascinating.

But as I drove home from campus last night, I was struck by the feeling of being alone more than usual. When I was in Istanbul there was a small and tightly knit group of ex-pats who welcomed me, and kept me from ever feeling like I was alone. In Kansas though, I have arrived into a society of people who already have their very busy, well organized lives well in place. Out side of my work environment, I am not feeling like I have a 'place' here yet. I found myself missing home, my friends and family last night...

Fat Tuesday

I woke up feeling very strange this morning. The first thought to pass through my semi-conscious mind was that today marks one year since my Dad passed away, and I felt sad. I remembered my sister in-law calling me on the phone, waking up on the sofa in my parents apartment in Tucson and hearing her grief stricken voice telling me that Dad had passed peacefully. Then I thought about going in to wake my Mom, laying down on the bed beside her cancer stricken body and telling her that her husband of 65 years had passed away. "I guess we should get up" she said to me. Then I thought, I can't let the sadness swallow me whole... I get to go to work today, I have to find a way to find some joy....

And then I remembered it is Fat Tuesday. I thought about the Flint tradition of paczkis. I never even heard of these until I moved to the Flint area where on every Fat Tuesday, thousand of these giant jelly doughnuts are purchased and consumed. I don't really know where this tradition came from, but my guess is that the Polish immigrants who came to work int he automotive industry brought them to Michigan. I wondered, briefly, if they have them in Kansas, but I doubt it.

And then I thought about the most fun I ever had on a Tuesday... it was at the Fasching parade in Cologne, Germany. (Koln for the purists.) The whole area has a huge party, thousands of people in costumes - whole families of cowboys, Indians or clowns - gather along the streets to watch the fun. Each little town has a section of the parade - which lasts for hours and hours. The village participants dress in matching costumes, bring their town band and huge ancient wagons filled with the town's favorites who toss flowers to the ladies lining the street and candy to everyone. Every town has its own candy which is wrapped for the event in papers which tout the town's name. I had been told about this so Larry, Nick and I went prepared to grab as much candy as we could. I was thinking probably little squares or maybe 'fun-size' bars of chocolate... which there were... I had not been expecting them to throw 3 pound boxes of chocolates at us! It was the most amazing parade I had ever seen - and I have seen a lot of parades! After about four hours, we were exhausted and ducked into a nearby cafe to sit and watch the rest of the parade go by while we had soup and something to drink.

Now I realize that this parade was not as spectacular or glitzy as those in New Orleans or Rio, but it was the most fun I had ever had on a Tuesday. I have decided that I am going to focus on the Fasching parade today whenever I feel sad.

Struggling to focus

I hate it when I can't focus. When I suddenly forget what I was going to do and get distracted by something that I can't do anything about. It has been happening a lot lately. And I am pretty sure that it has a lot to do with the grieving process, and moving through it. A year ago last week my Dad was stricken and hospitalized, and I left Michigan to go to Arizona to help. It never occurred to me that the events would transpire as they did. I never thought I would loose my Dad first... and so suddenly.

Grief is a strange thing. I will be doing something totally normal, driving to school, or waiting in line for lunch, or washing the dishes... when suddenly, a simple thought passes through my mind - a flash of something my Dad said or did, or a look he gave me. There is a constriction in my chest, grief washes over me and tears spring, unwanted, to my eyes. My face gets hot and I can't breathe, for just an instant. Then I take a deep breath, and recognize the grief and it passes. This is followed by fear. I am afraid the grief will come, and I wont be able to stop the tears from rolling down my face - when I am in some very public place and people will stop, and stare at me in askance. I am afraid I will pull others into my grief.

It is hard to continually "out-create" these feelings. And I have to. I have to stay busy, and keep myself occupied all the time. And that is hard to do in this little apartment in Kansas. If I were home, there would be plenty of distractions and plenty to keep me busy - except I wouldn't have work that I love. So I dig in to the work with gusto, and that keeps me going during the day. During the week I come home and am tired, so it is easy to keep the grief at bay. But on the weekends... I am still in the transition stage here. I don't have a circle of friends to socialize with on the weekends... yet. I haven't 'created' my life here in the ways that will keep me happy... yet. I am still struggling with keeping myself busy on the weekends - keeping the grief at bay. I know this is all part of the "grieving process", but I hate it. And the worst part is that I know with complete certainty, that it is up to me to create myself out of this. Starting with dinner tonight. I think I'll make Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and green beans.

Apartment living

Since I have lived in houses that I purchased for well over 20 years, there are pros and cons to living in an apartment that I had forgotten about. Here is the short list I have discovered so far:
Cons: 1. My washer is TINY. I can wash two pairs of jeans at one time, only one sheet at a time, or just my socks and underwear for the week!
2. I don't want to turn the music on at 5:30 in the morning when I get up because I am afraid I will disturb my neighbors.(Not that I would have turned it on at home at that hour either, for similar reasons.) 3. I hear all the car doors closing when my neighbors or their visitors arrive - all of them.
4. There is very little storage space for things like boxes that I want to keep.
5. I have to scrape the ice and snow off my car before I can leave every morning because I don't have a garage.
Pros: 1. I don't have to remember to take the trash cans down to the curb on the appointed day. I just put my trash in the dumpster - I don't even know when it gets emptied.
2. If the pilot light on my furnace goes out, I just call the nice young man in the office and he comes to light it for me.
3. Someone else has to shovel the walk, drive and parking lot.
4. There is very little storage space, so I really can't keep things like boxes.
5. If the furnace goes out, the well runs dry, the roof leaks, the garage door breaks, or any other major calamity occurs, I won't have to shell out the five thousand bucks to get it repaired.
6. It took me all of 45 minutes yesterday to clean the whole house. Dusting, cleaning, vacuuming, mopping - everything - all done in 45 minutes!
A few other pros about my new home:
1. It is 3 miles to work.
2. It is three miles to Target.
3. I couldn't iron anything if I wanted to because I don't have an iron.
4. I can pretty much do anything I want on my time off from work - eg. I can eat what I want when I want, watch what I want, do what I want. Yesterday, after cleaning my house and doing 6 loads of laundry I watched girlie movies, followed by Star Trek and then I had popcorn and yogurt for supper. :)
The cons... should be obvious to anyone who knows me... I miss my friends and family.

Finding my way

Two weeks ago today I moved in to my new apartment in Lawrence Kansas. I have been so busy that it seems more like a month ago. Larry and Nick left on Monday after they made sure that the pictures were hung, drapes were up and that I know how to make all the electronics work. It's not that I am that slow, but they know that if I don't use something electronic, I will probably call them and have to ask "which button makes the DVD player work?" or "How do I switch to the Wii?". So they sat me down on the sofa and put me through my paces... "So Mom, say you are watching TV and then you think, I want to watch a DVD... which button are you going to push?" Thank goodness they came with me, and were patient enough to help me get everything where I want it!

I went with Larry to the Avis shop here in town and he rented as big a car as he could get because we had agreed that the desk I brought from home was just a bit too big for comfort in this little apartment. He and Nick took it apart and somehow got it into the back of the car, loaded up their belongings and drove home - all in one day. It was a very long drive, but they were trying to get across the country between snow storms.

I am getting settled in to my new job at the Writing Center. I had some computer issues (like you do) but I think those are pretty well sorted out at this point. The user name and passwords for the system at KU is pretty ridiculous however. When I described it to Nick he said something like, "Someone has delusions of grandeur. Who do they think they are, the Pentagon?" I find I waste a lot of time every day entering my user name and password over and over, every time I want to look at something different within the system.

I have been trying to get to know all of the current tutors - or, consultants as they call them here. I made 26 appointments, and I either sit down and just get to know them, or I have them tutor something I have written. I want to know each of them, not only as people, but also get to know their tutoring style. So far I am very impressed with the tutors I have gotten to know - both as just plain nice people, but also in their love for tutoring and their goals for their own educations. While just like a lot of other writing centers, many of the consultants are English majors, there are others with very diverse interests. (Linguistics, Film, etc.)

I am also on the books as co-instructor for Eng 400 - their 'tutor training' class. We met the class for the first time this past Tuesday, and next Tuesday I am teaching the class by myself, since my Director, Terese will be lecturing at Stanford. There are 26 students in the class, so I am looking forward to creating a lively group. And, I am looking forward to teaching my first class of native English speakers!

I love the fact that I am less than 3 miles from work, that it is easy to get to fun restaurants, shopping and services I may need. I am not so thrilled with having to walk up a very steep hill from the parking lot with snowy and icy sidewalks, but I am sure I will get used to that. Parking, like on many college campuses, is nightmarish... but I will adjust. I am also not thrilled about having my car parked out in front of my apartment where it gets cold at night and needs to be cleared of snow, ice and frost before I can leave for work. But again, I will adjust.

So far I am doing okay, finding my way around, getting to know people and my surroundings. I am not completely in create mode yet - I feel more like I am catching up. But it will come. I think it is going to be trickier to get the consultants to treat me as their peer than it was at UM Flint - because I am their boss, not a student sitting next to them in class... but that, too will come. I attended a "Professional Development" day at the Union on Wednesday. The Provost and others gave talks and we went to various sessions that caught our interest. I am excited about being a part of a 'writer's guild' where we will meet occasionally to support each other in our personal writing endeavors... but the highlight of the day, for me, was during the session on using social networking media for our jobs. During the presentation there was a slide which had a quote on it. It was the only quote, and it was from UM Flint!