Category: family

Monday Musings

Today is my parent’s 35th wedding anniversary.

I began my distance learning certification today so I can eventually teach courses online. I am glad that I elected to take this course during the summer break, but so far it isn’t the nightmare people made it sound. Knowing the technology is half the battle.

Here are two more videos from our house hunting adventure. These two homes are in the Bates-Hendricks neighborhood. The house on 738 Orange Street is at the top of our list right now. The space was just incredible.

Monday (A Week Alone) Musings

It was a busy but fun weekend. My sister came in from out of town and we went to the bar, shopping, and a few other local events around town. She left this afternoon and RJ left this morning for Buffalo. He’ll be gone for a week for work, so I have a quiet week and weekend to myself. It seems a little weird to have all this quiet after the excitement of the weekend, but I kind of like it too.
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Let Birds

Eight deer on the slope
in the summer morning mist.
The night sky blue.
Me like a mare let out to pasture.
The Tao does not console me.
I was given the Way
in the milk of childhood.
Breathing it waking and sleeping.
But now there is no amazing smell
of sperm on my thighs,
no spreading it on my stomach
to show pleasure.
I will never give up longing.
I will let my hair stay long.
The rain proclaims these trees,
the trees tell of the sun.
Let birds, let birds.
Let leaf be passion.
Let jaw, let teeth, let tongue be
between us. Let joy.
Let entering. Let rage and calm join.
Let quail come.
Let winter impress you. Let spring.
Allow the ocean to wake in you.
Let the mare in the field
in the summer morning mist
make you whinny. Make you come
to the fence and whinny. Let birds.

Linda Gregg
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This was one of the local happenings that we enjoyed this weekend. I bought a cool pair of earrings made from all vintage materials. I also bought a cool little denim pouch that can hold cosmetics. RJ also bought an excellent tie and some fun letter press items. Pictures of earrings and pouch displayed below displayed below.


Monday Musings

This weekend my mom and sister drove in from Erie and we went to the Vera Bradley trunk show. It was awesome. I bought $250 worth of stuff for $98. My mom got a bunch of presents for her friends and we’re already making plans to go to the one in May. We also spent some time at Trader Joes and the T.J. Max Home store. Erie isn’t exactly the shopping mecca of the world, so we like to get our shop on when they come.

Kwe finished his first week at doggie school. He received good marks on his “report card” and I’m going to work with him on the skills that they introduced him to. I might take him back in about a month, but we’ll see. I am intrigued by this medication proposition, so I’m going to call the vet this week and get some more information.
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Here is your weekly fall poem:

Frog Autumn

Summer grows old, cold-blooded mother.
The insects are scant, skinny.
In these palustral homes we only
Croak and wither.

Mornings dissipate in somnolence.
The sun brightens tardily
Among the pithless reeds. Flies fail us.
he fen sickens.

Frost drops even the spider. Clearly
The genius of plenitude
Houses himself elsewhwere. Our folk thin
Lamentably.

Sylvia Plath
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Madonna never stops.

When I heard about the message that Alec Baldwin left his daughter, I thought he was an idiot. However, this article brings up an interesting point that I had never considered:

In short, it’s the women­folk who make the kids hate Dad. Dad then spirals out of control and leaves an obscene, emotionally violent message for his prepubescent daughter on her cellphone (as Baldwin notoriously did in 2007, calling her, among other things, a “rude, thoughtless little pig”). The message is leaked to the press, which really makes you wonder which parent should be tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged down a gravel road at night, but nevertheless the father is left with egg on his face, and his daughter with one person fewer on her speed dial.

Check out the rest of the article from the NY Times.

Friday Musings (thank the good lord)

Yesterday began as any day would. I came to school way too early, finished some grading, and taught my two classes. Later in the afternoon with all of my grading completed and entered into Blackboard, I began to edit some poems for my manuscript.

At about 4:00 my sister, who is in town visiting because she had an interview earlier this week, calls to say that my mother wants me to take her to the ER. Turns out she had this “rash” on her leg that somehow turned into a flesh eating disease during the course of conversations with my mother. The long and the short of it is she’s fine. We went to Urgent Care. They gave her two shots and three prescriptions and sent her on her way. Apparently she got bitten by something (spider, ant, rabid katydid) and then the bite became infected, hence the nasty looking welt on her leg.

I think I may have been more worried about this initially if a). I wasn’t so exhausted. By the time we left Urgent Care to go get her prescription, I had basically gone into auto pilot mode. b.) I’m not the personality type to think the worst in most situations. c.) I knew she didn’t have what some people thought she had because I’ve had it. Anyway. She’s fine. She’s heading back to Erie this morning leg safely in tow.
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Normally I would not be up in my office blogging at 7:30 on a Friday morning. I don’t even have to be here till 8 usually for my new faculty orientation meetings, but the powers that be finally aligned in the stars and my new office furniture should be arriving in about a half an hour. I’ve packed away all my paper, so all they have to do is come in and arrange it. I believe they are also going to put up a cubicle wall, which will give me a little bit of privacy.
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I received my Emerging Writer’s Network Newsletter this morning and see there is a review of Erin McGraw’s book The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard. I just finished her book The Baby Tree which I bought close to two years ago (I know. I know) when she came to give a craft lecture at MSU. Looks like this is another book to add to the stack…