That Sinking Feeling

The old blog has been the victim of my general malaise the last week or two. Really, there's nothing wrong at all, but I'm feeling rather overwhelmed with the quantity of work that needs doing in the short term here. And, as always, my reaction to having a lot of work to do is to do none of it. Avoidance is my dance partner, and I know all her steps.

It also strikes me as odd that even the most hopeful and exciting projects intimidate me. I wouldn't have thought that old saw about being afraid of success would apply to me, but I begin to suspect that it might. Part of that comes from the balancing act between the things I desire to do and those I am required to do. I can't happily dive into writing the murder party or my novel while I still have all the course planning and organization to do, and I put off those because I don't really want to do them. The wise man would perform the work of his vocation in order that he might pursue his avocation, but a wise man I am not. Nor one with any willpower or work ethic.

But away with such gloomy thoughts! I recognize this as self-defeating and a kind of attack, and I recognize, too, that greater things are within me (and, far more importantly, greater is He that is within me). Would that I had whatever it is that makes people good workers, but I seem to be lacking that particular brain clockwork.

In other matters, I spent the weekend gaming with the Parkers, which was terrific; haven't gotten a face-to-face roleplaying fix since they were out for Christmas a couple of years ago. Many snacks were consumed and many very strange jokes were cracked, and that was good.

Now to get to that work, and get back up the mountain before the next installment of snow arrives. Maybe I'll put down my thoughts on that next time out. Oh—and using my own chainsaw for the first time yesterday. (The power! The absolute power!)

Eeep

So the "every day" thing rather fell apart here during the first week of the semester. This is partly due to the craziness at the opening of the year, and especially because I am wrangling an extra class this time around. With three online courses, I'm answering at least 33% more email about which server the class is on, passwords and logging in problems, and people desperate to add the class. Some of these are quite rude.

The other part is... I'm not even sure. The feeling of being in a moment of transition is strong on me right now. And with a great many projects all crying out for attention (the novel, the murder party, setting up new web sites for my classes, and a double handful of other things), putting the house back in order and still generally getting back on track after the holidays... It's madness.

I'm going to take a bit of time this afternoon to unplug from everything and just sit with God for a while. I think I need it to stop my brain spinning. That would be good.

Perhaps Sanity?

Just dropping in to fulfill my contractually obligated blog post. It's been crazy. Actually, it's been pretty crazy, as Joanna points out, since December 27th. (We took December 26th off to recover from the pre-Christmas craziness, you see.) On Wednesday the carpet got finished up and we spent the balance of the day putting the house back together. It looks fantastic, but we were wiped out.

But we were also faced with grumpy kids, more adjustments to be made, and a house that would be full of those heretofore unexpected carpet fumes. So we chucked the whole thing and went for a family vacation. We loaded up the van, agreed that no word of the house, home school, or any other pressing thing would be mentioned, and motored down to to San Diego.

We spent the night in a hotel (a bit strange with all the kids—Born Dancin' found the wall-length mirror at the Ramada the most entertaining thing she'd found in days and spent the evening posing, spinning, and giggling), and yesterday was spent at the San Diego Zoo, where I do believe we saw every animal ever created and rode the Skyride a handful of times. It was a fine day and helped out psyches a lot.

Today was back to the office for me for an all-out cram session to try to get everything ready for the semester starting on Monday. I'm nothing like prepared, but I still don't begrudge spending yesterday on more recuperative activities. And now it seems I've missed our staff in-service and other activities today, which I don't even remember hearing about. Not an auspicious start, but I'm hoping to get into the swing of things over the weekend in a somewhat normal home and start afresh next week.

Now it's off home to get ready for the grandparents to visit and prepare to show Grandma how to play the Wii...

Not My Fault!

Just popping in here for a minute to defend myself against all these wild accusations about my failures.

Actually, there have been zero such accusations, but I feel them anyway.

I have only a few minutes here before the carpet guys come back. (At least, they'd better show up in the next few minutes...) Yesterday we were trying to clear out the kids' rooms, so there was a mountain of furniture in front of the computer here in our room. Then they left and we moved all the accoutrema back into the kids' rooms—but because of concerns over "new carpet fumes" (I thought Joanna was a paranoid conspiracy nut—turns out there are such things. Who knew?) (Well, Joanna, I guess.), all the kids camped out in our room for the night, so I couldn't get on the computer last night, either, lest I wake them and earn the Wrath of Wife ™. (It turned out that it was Born Dancin' who did all the awake-keeping last night—nutty little widget.)

For those interested in such things, our current carpets are (1) dark brown shag from the mid-70's at the earliest, or (2) a dank berber in the bedrooms. It's being replaced with a light, creamy beige carpet sprinkled with tastefully multicolored specks in order to hide the buckets of dirt we end up dragging in every day. It should also be dandy at hiding Legos and the chewed-up bits of whatever inedible substance Born Dancin' is currently gnawing on. Compared to our old, thin-padded carpets on the concrete slab, though, it feels like walking on non-sticky, non-sweet marshmallows. (Not a very good simile, I guess. The new semester hasn't started yet and I'm not required to have my literary device engines running at full capacity yet.)

Soon the carpeters shall show up, I have faith, and then we'll be moving all of the baggage from here in our room elsewhere (and don't ask me where that might be). So I'll probably be offline all day, and our connection is quirky enough that I'm never certain I'll get it back in working order if we dare to touch it. I have to get into work tomorrow, though, so I'll be back with you somehow. Lucky things, you.

Winter Wonderland?

My intention was to blog today about books and such (as all those amused and/or annoyed by my invitation to GoodReads might have guessed), but my arms are too tired to type long. The storm finally did show up, and after pouring down rain on us for a day and a half, yesterday it started snowing.

And it didn't stop.

I shoveled the car and driveway out twice yesterday, and this morning got to do it all over again with another six inches. Overall it looks like we got at least a couple of feet. As always when it snows, this means I get a lot of very specific exercise which is repeated far too infrequently to be of any real use. If I shoveled snow every week (not really something I'd look forward to), perhaps I'd have manly arms. As is, I struggle and groan through the winter, and just as I'm getting to the point at which my arms are able to handle extended digging, winter is over and I have three more seasons for them to go flabby again.

It's the same phenomenon that affects my hiking: when I do go, I wear myself down to nothing and wreck my legs by pushing myself as far as I can (which is a disappointingly short distance) until I feel like I'm going to die and become a cautionary tale for future trekkers, but I don't get any benefit from it because I do it too rarely to be of much use as training. Sad, really.

I must admit, however, that while I am trying to work regular walking into my schedule, I'm not really amenable to going out and shoveling dirt during the off-season to stay in shape for winter...

Waiting for the Storm

The weather gurus keep claiming that a gigantor storm is set to crash down upon us, and even Slater over on his blog claims that he is being battered by winds and rain. For three days I've been all prepared, covering all our outdoor furniture, laying in a stock of firewood, putting the new bikes under the new canopy, digging trenches and laying in sandbags—everything.

Currently it's sunny and very pleasant. There are some clouds over the Rim, but they seem very innocuous. I tell you, if we don't get some further weather, I may have to pull up stakes and go to someplace where they do have some.

Oh, wait—I want to do that anyway.

Speaking of bikes, those new conveyances aforementioned are the boys new Transformer bikes which came courtesy of the grandparents this Christmas. Sadly, they do not actually transform into small robots, or even powered exoskeletons which envelop the boys on command. I'm kind of disappointed about that, but otherwise they are great little bikes, save that the plastic "Transformer" parts come off at the drop of a hat (or when you crash, as Poncho discovered a few times). These are the first "big kid" bikes the boys have had, and even with training wheels the cycles give them a sense of power. My mom and I took them down to a park this week where it was (A) warmer and (B) flatter for them to test out. After some initial hiccups, they were doing great—so well, in fact, that they took me on an "adventure ride" around the entire perimeter of the park. Three times. Good exercise for all.

I know that teaching your kids to ride is kind of an iconic parent moment, and it proved so here, too, even though there wasn't much we had to show them; the training wheels kept them from needing to balance on any but the sharpest curves, and other than having to occasionally push a boy up a hill, they didn't really need us. Still, seeing them in their helmets and pads (Harley Davidson branded! Sweet!), riding high, brought home just how big they are getting. People who haven't seen them for some time (like the recently returned Parkers) comment on how they've grown, but since we see them every day, the change is incremental.

I know there's nothing new in these musings, but I suppose everyone must go through life's experiences for themselves before they become reality. I used to hate when parents said things like, "You can't understand until you have kids of your own," but there is some truth to it. Some events have to be lived to fully appreciate. And suddenly the idea that the boys will only be in the house for another decade or so (I've vowed to put them on the curb on their eighteenth birthday—just ask them), rather than seeming like lifetime, seems all too short a time.

Still, I'll be happy to stop stepping on Legos every blessed day...

Opening with Excuses

As the astute among you have noted, I did not post yesterday. So much for that resolution. I quit.

Hah! I kid, of course. Truly, in this one instance, it really wasn't my fault. Currently our house is a mass of turmoil made up of post-holiday recovery efforts and smoke damage-related home improvements. New carpet is coming next week, which will be great but is a daunting prospect. And before the old carpet leaves, the walls needed repainting (both for aesthetics and further smoke-scent mitigation). So furniture is everywhere, the kids play amongst a maze of painting supplies, and all is chaos. Yesterday, as Joanna got started on our room (she's doing the lioness's share of the painting by far), we had to move out all the computer equipment. Since we're still limping along with a "slow DSL" line, that left me without internet access. I've convinced her that with my increasing online class load and doing most of my work from my laptop, it's time to upgrade to wireless, but as of yet we're still on the land line.

So there's my excuse. Wasn't that fascinating?

Other than the utter madness, life continues apace. My new semester starts up in a week or so, with a new online course I've not taught before and an overload class thrown in the bargain. On Tuesday I finally put together my course text for the new class—one day soon I'll actually have to get in and read what I have created. Always exciting, that. The kids will be back to homeschooling next week (between bouts of laying carpet, presumably). I'm actually kind of looking forward to getting back to work so I can, you know, relax a bit.

I've only eked out a couple of hours here this morning, so I'm going to get over to the writing. May you find profounder thoughts elsewhere today than you've encountered here.

New Year, New Blog

Well, it's the same blog, but now it looks different.

Well, it actually looks like it used to in the beginning. It's kind of a repeat. But it's a change, which is what I'm looking for this new year.

I think I've mentioned before that I am slavishly devoted to temporal markers in my life. Being able to pinpoint particular times for the beginnings of things, durations that they last, and the like are something of an obsession. (This might explain why, once upon a time, I actually kind of liked science.) My difficulty is that I let those temporal parameters define my action. If I have work, I'd much rather start it on the hour than twenty-two minutes before. I time how long it takes to grade individual student papers. And I've always been a sucker for New Year's resolutions because it seems so profound to be able to look back and say, "There. January 1, 2008. That was the beginning of my new life."

That also means that if I trip up on one of those resolutions, I tend to toss the whole thing out. If it can't be perfectly pinpointed to the start of the new year, what's the point? This is both ludicrous and absurd, I know.

All that said, I do have some goals for this coming year. The good news is, almost all of them involve an activity/action/mindset I already accomplished for some duration in 2007, so they aren't new resolves so much as renewed devotion to existing ones. In only slightly particular order, they are as follows:

1. Don't Despair If I Flake Out on One of the Other Resolutions: Very important.


2. Write Every Day: For about four months there, I managed this, and the novel rolled forward apace. Then the end of the semester, holidays, evacuations, and other madness all ganged up on me. (Upon me up ganged? Hmm... have to think about that one.) Yet I'm pleased to find Leaf and her pals are still living in my head, and the break may even have reignited some of my interest in their lives, so I'm looking forward to getting back to them.


3. Finish the Novel: If #2 goes as it ought, I should be done with the first complete draft of the monster sometime in the first half of the year. Sir Slater continues to bug me (in the best possible way) to get that thing written. (At least, he did before suddenly having a house for his family to live in became more important than my needs—sheesh.)


4. Pray and Read the Good Book Every Day: This is another activity at which I was increasingly successful last year. I actually read the entire Old Testament from beginning to end for the first time, and I'm moving through the New now. (I'm closing in on the end of Acts—Paul has just been arrested and is about to give his big speech.) This has made a huge difference in my life, my work, my attitude, and my just about everything else. As with other things, the holidays throw off my routine and this has suffered somewhat. So I have to get back on that horse.


5. Lose Some Weight: I know, I know—this is the quintessential New Year's resolution that 89% of all humans make and approximately 2% actually achieve for more than six days. But last year I did lose quite a bit of weight, and I'm going back on that diet beginning today. (It, too, took a break during the holidays. But I'm okay with that.) Joanna has actually slimmed down amazingly in the last nine months, and following her lead I lost nearly 40 pounds. I've gained about half of it back, but it really is a "lifestyle change" kind of thing, so I'm looking forward to my more svelte self, and then getting even svelter than that.


6. No More Fast Food: To that end, I'm swearing off Carl's and Jack-in-the-Box and all the other friendly purveyors of salty, unctuous temptation-curses. Surely, I'll go with my family when we occasionally go, but I've been in the bad habit of stopping in before or after work, and both dietarily and monetarily that needs to stop. Oh—this in no way applies to coffee, just for the record. Must keep the furnace fueled with something...


7. Keep Up with Grading: This is a heavy load to shoulder. I have an extra class this semester, as well as three online courses (one of which is a nine-week intensive course). I did relatively well at the opening of last semester, but much of it fell apart by the end. If I'm to survive, this one is essential. To that end, I also need to be more organized in my planning. Technically, that's what I'll be doing once this post is done.


8. Blog Every Day: Well, every weekday, at any rate. Yes, I know you've been clamoring for it, so here it is. I do intend to put up something every day here, minor as it might be. I realize that I look forward to the posts of my friends, and the occasional passer-by has mentioned wanting new posts (thanks for the impetus, Ornery's Wife...), so that seems like a useful thing.

There may be others, but this seems like plenty for the moment, and eight is a good number. I pray that all of you find God's blessings and glory in this new year, which looks to be a year of transitions and changes, of completions and new beginnings.