Countdown to Vacay!

I leave at crack o'dawn Saturday. Just about 16 hours from now, and I am excited. Antsy. Blithery. Dog-less. I don't do the last well; it just seems unnatural to have no dogs around. And they were not happy to be heading back to the kennel either. The cats don't seem to mind being dog-less at the moment, but by dark they'll be wondering and calling for them.

To do, updated:

• laundry (god yes) on the line until it's cool enough to bring it in w/o heat stroke
• pick up rx
• pack - need the stuff on the line
• take dogs to kennel
• clear back patio & put plants in more shaded area where they might just survive the week
• water, water, water - still too hot
• fish tank maintenance
• clean house (so that if i die/disappear whoever comes in to clear out my life won't be appalled at the chaos and think badly of me)
• load up on critter love
• run to post office & UPS
• prepare & pack week's worth of meds
• nap
• forward email to checkable acct
• get rid of headache (sinus? insufficient caffeine? food?)
• find passport (gee, ya think???)
• change water - still too hot to start

I hate waiting for good stuff to happen.

Hot June

As in it's too damned hot to do more than scurry from one air conditioned space to another. Humidity is up too. Dee-light-ful.

I'm having a good time. Really! It's quite astonishing, given how unproductive I am. I've read three novels since Sunday, just fun stuff (I can recommend Phoebe Atwood Taylor). I'm starting to drift towards some flotsam/jetsam re: research direction. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stick with French X Republic, probably same period. That keeps me going back to Paris periodically, saves me from another language class. (I learn languages like I walk through brick walls. It can be done with great pain and massive amounts of effort and is rarely pretty.) I have a bit of Serbo-Croatian and Greek, but don't really want to pursue either of those. Italian... maybe. But not for primary research, more for travel and fun. This means that the fantasy of 'tourism in the Adriatic' is still fantasy and shows no sign of a future for me. Doesn't hurt to put that in the fantasy-delayed column, which is interesting.

Got a new Mac at work today; the 24" monitor is HUGE (bigger than either of my TVs). And they give you a 12-16" mouse cord. I assume from this they either want to to sit 12" from the damned monitor or invest in a wireless mouse. Or buy a USB cord extender, which comes out of my own pocket. I can do that, but it wasn't in the budget. Oh well.

What gripes me about the new Mac is that it's not cheap, but my laptop needs a new DVD - R/W drive. My tech guys say ~$300... 'it's not worth fixing.' Gah. I use the laptop all the time... not worth fixing?????

Family Updates

Back from a lighting visit to CA to check on Mom, facility, to guard against more charges of indifference and inaction from IB. The weather was incredible, the visit to friends good. Seeing the changes to the family home harder, but since I knew what Buyer was going to do to the place, not shattering. The gut-blows came from Mom's current state and the destruction of trees around Family Home.

A failing body is all that remains of my beloved mother. There was no flicker of awareness from her, of her surroundings or of me, much less recognition. And her poor ravaged brain (strokes, dementia, diabetes) is shutting down body functions. The caregivers said hospice is not far off, and hospice means 6 months or less. Thank god my mom had the vision to put all her wishes in writing, so that artificial life-lengthening procedures won't prolong the suffering. Without giving IB any benefit of any doubt, I can see why he freaks out. Confronting her situation without the comfort of knowing and accepting the causes (he's been told by all doctors etc, but he lives in denial) would be horrific. He blames externals (the facility, the doctors, the caregivers).

I met with the caregivers and professionals who deal with all of this all the time; how they can still care about their patients is beyond my understanding. I'm just damned grateful that they so obviously do. Gentle, patient, giving... all that my mother was too me is what they are to her. I am humbled by their generosity.

Had dinner with life-long friends to catch up. These are women who lived next door to my mom for the past 48 years; her best friend (MBF) and MBF's daughter, the latter Mom's former caregiver (and another childhood victim of IB's abuse). We managed to not dwell on IB and his antics, although they both expressed surprise at his wife's actions in support of his idiocy. Both said that they'd thought she had more brains than that. Since neither of them have any illusions as to her intelligence (both consider her a twit), they'd expected her to quiet him down, not urge him on. (On that topic, she too is now persona non grata at the care facility). Anyway, most of the evening with friends was delightful: excellent food, good margaritas (I was the only one imbibing as I didn't have to drive home), lovely conversation in the hotel pool/spa. These women are now all the family I have, and life's not been kind to them either. Yet they still manage to care about Mom and me, to laugh and love and live.

Getting home was wonderful. I heard myself telling somebody that while I loved the weather and scenery of CA, it wasn't home, and I wanted to get back to RNC simply because it is now home. After ten years here, it's finally home: a moment of self-recognition for me. Since my trip was simply overnight, a friend had come by several times a day to care for the pups and cats. Coming in and finding 4 wiggly critters, all excited to see me was great (the fifth couldn't rouse herself from her afternoon nap). I'd left a CA of 78 degrees to come back to a place that was 101 degrees, smelled like a kennel and yet all I felt was joy. Good stuff.

Less than a week before Paris. Countdown is on!

Shiggles

Shits and giggles, that is. The mural has reached a semi-public point. I still have stuff to do, mostly minor. Then I'll seal it, frame it with window-type moulding, et voila!

I'm very pleased. High art? Nah. Fun art? Absolutely. It takes up the entire wall over my stove (about 6 feet... er, 79 inches) and is 30" high. It makes me smile, and dream of unspoiled coastlines, limitless oceans and carefree days.

Once Upon a Summer...

Last summer I redid my kitchen. I then asked y'all to help me decide what view I wanted from the newly redone giz. A year later (almost) I started doing the view. The process isn't quick or pretty or over, but so far I'm thrilled with the outcome. I didn't do any of the ones proposed, but rather one that is an adaptation/invention influenced by a picture in a magazine of a California coastline something like this. I'll post pics when I get it to a point where it looks like something other than a work in half-assed progress.

Anywho. I've started it, and am taking it slow so that each color has time to dry before I layer the next over it. I'm semi-giddy with it so far, always amazed that I can do this and not have anybody looking over my shoulder saying 'you can't do that....!!!'

Meanwhile, I spent the morning on campus, and have nearly finished rearranging & organizing the chaos that has been my office. Like that too: lots more walking space, less furniture, much less junk. Oh, the shredding that awaits the fall work-studies!

All this is rather fun, as is the continued contemplation of potential research directions: something called imaginative geography, women on the Grand Tour (19-20 century style), gardens (Ireland, France, Italy, GB, Croatian coast, Corfu), Celts, etc.. The possibilities are intoxicating.

A Father

After reading Clio's superb posts (here and here) on the complex relationship with her father (and brothers), I realized again that I am rather lucky.

My father had only one redeeming feature: he was a brilliant artist. His drawing and musical abilities were amazing to behold.  His cartoons were the greatest wonder of my childhood; they displayed a humor I never saw anywhere else in his life around his family. He could hear anything, and within minutes, play it back on any instrument at hand. He honored neither of these talents, and left us nothing of either to hold on to.

For years, I struggled with the reality of his behaviors. Tried to explain and understand the neglect and cruelty, the indifference and infrequent attempts to connect. Like Clio's father, mine saw women as servants to men. He certainly indoctrinated my brother with that, but most of the families I knew did too, so it wasn't until I got out of that environment that I found any kind of space to think and feel differently. Before I got out, all I knew what that what was being taught wasn't quite right, didn't feel fair. But there were no words and no space to figure it out, feel it out, articulate it. I simply knew that I didn't fit there, and that only a few would notice my absence. Those few would find that absence an inconvenience (loss of a servant, a sympathetic ear). Only my mother would find my leaving and staying away painful: I was one of two allies she had.

Snatches of conversations are my memories of my father.

• "Damn dog; scared of guns. In the old days, if a dog flinched at the first shot, the second was for him." (I was probably 5, and he was talking about my beloved cocker spaniel.)
  
• "No, you stand there and watch. I don't care." (This as he chopped the heads off my pet birds, so that he could have squab for dinner. He insisted that I 'get over' the grisly process.)
  
• "Girls can't drive stick shifts."
  
• "Belle? Belle, who?" [Your daughter? Belle?] "Where are you? You didn't sleep in your bed last night?" I'd been gone for more than 6 weeks, into basic training for the USAF. He'd just noticed I wasn't around. He was angry that his 16 year old daughter had run off (I was 19).
  
• "It's time you learned how to drink like a lady...." This as I was coming to terms with my own alcohol abuse. I drank him under the table out of spite.
• "You have a baby, and give it to me to raise." This as I was divorcing my husband. My father was worried 'the name would die with him' as my brother was also mid-divorce and childless.
  
• "I had a daughter... she died a long time ago. She was 12." Closest I can figure, that was about the time I started looking like a girl/woman. Yeah, I was the daughter who 'died.' He was old, sick, senile and meaner than you can imagine. It still hurt.

Unlike Clio, I don't have the good moments and memories to balance the bad. Yet I am lucky. I used to be conflicted about my father, but I don't think I am anymore. My feelings for him died about the time he died. By then I thought I loved him (had to, he was my father) but I didn't like him. Within a few years, I realized I didn't love him, probably hadn't for years. I loved the idea of father, my fantasy of a father who would love, honor, respect, protect me. That's not what I had. My luck is that I am at peace with who he was and how he was with me: he was a sperm donor and a paycheck, cruel and indifferent at the same time. He neither offered or accepted love or friendship. His choice, my reality.

So on this Father's Day, I wish all fathers the wisdom to love, respect, honor, cherish and protect their children, especially their girls.  To teach their sons to respect and honor all women. To free their children from the burdens and obligations of patriarchy, and to help those children learn to live in freedom and equality.

Blessed be.

Mid-Epiphanic Musings

My week has been full of interesting developments. Since the last post, I've examined all kinds of manifestations of my own mental processes, and am now off on a new angle of same.

My research field has always centered on power & policy. I do dead white men of extraordinary privilege, and focus not on the resulting policy, but the thinking that leads to the policy. Which, really, is simply the scholarly pursuit of that same impulse that is at the base of my searching for rational explanations of those who have hurt me (e.g. IB, my father, my ex, best friends who slept with ex-before-he-was-ex, etc.). The advantage of doing it in a scholarly manner is that I have real evidence to deal with... except of course all I have are the documents and texts surrounding their careers. (As I tell my students, climbing into the brains of dead men is a dirty business.)

I'm now wondering, given that I'm breaking the habit of rationalizing IB's actions, if I can move into another field of research. When I've considered it before, I've always constrained myself by what I call the straight-face factor: could I keep a straight-face when I talk about it? Or would I giggle hysterically and denigrate my own work as being silly and unserious? That's always stopped me, when I was thinking about venturing into something less political.

Now those thoughts bring positive joy and excitement, not immediate self-dismissal. Now I'm trying to figure out what limits, if any, I want to put on the new journey. Place? Period? Things? People? Region? It's a rather heady prospect. The last time I felt this sense of possibility I dealt with it by finding a quiet Santorini taverna with a fabulous view, ordering a cold beer (or four) and thinking away the afternoon & evening.  

(That's not me, but close to my chosen view. That decision was to continue toward my PhD despite my program closing. Long term and short, it was a good decision, and that day stands out in my mind as one of those golden days when all was possible.)

This life-direction moment is less gorgeous, but I have lots more time to think about it. I also have the luxury of a 'safe' job and tenure (then, I was unemployed). I'm going to take some time and space for self, and really explore some possibilities. I have a week in Paris ahead of me too; lovely places to sit and think, good friends to bounce ideas off of. (Something lacking here in RNC, where I have - count 'em - 1 good friend.)

So you'll be hearing about this in the coming weeks/months. My shrink is a bit astonished that such a momentous change isn't freaking me out; that I'm excited at the possibilities. Which I find both reassuring and comforting and more than a bit amusing.

I get to re-invent myself! And go in any direction I like. How cool is that?