Whew

So, as predicted, this last semester was hectic. Lots of driving, juggling, squeezing, scraping, and running. And, as of today, it's over. I submitted all of my final grades this afternoon, and now it's done until next year. I always experience a combination of relief and sadness every time a term ends. On the one hand, having the anvil weight of papers lifted off my shoulders for a few weeks is a wonderful feeling. On the other hand, I often look back at the previous sixteen weeks and see a wide variety of my own screw ups. Sometimes I have classes that I feel really confident about, like I really helped students get valuable knowledge and skills they wouldn't otherwise have. Other times, I feel like a Borscht-belt comedian who spent the last four months bombing in a tough room. "I just flew in from my office upstairs. Boy, are my arms tired!"

One of the nice things about this semester was going to work with Suzy. We both taught at IVCC's satellite campus in Ottawa three times a week, so we were together, driving, talking about teaching, having lunch together literally all the time. And it was fun. I liked it. While neither of us liked the time and cost of driving to Ottawa all.the.freaking.time. I enjoyed having Suzy as a colleague - trading stories about students' ridiculous excuses, discussing the virtues of Blackboard, gossiping about coworkers - how many spouses ever get that? Most people, I imagine, go off to work for eight or nine hours, come back, and say, "Yeah, it was fine." It was a unique experience to sit side-by-side with Suzanne in the work room, grading quizzes, making copies. While much of this semester can lie down in the snow and freeze to death as far as I'm concerned, I liked working with Suzy and will miss that aspect of Fall 2012.

A lot has happened in the world, and, of course, no one is poorer for a lack of my comments about any of it. We had an election and a subsequent wave of Mormon weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Internet so profound, you would have thought Church leadership said something other than "We support the President and pray for him. You should too."

We had a Frankenstorm hit the east coast. It makes me more and more sure that the ocean is cool to visit but nothing I'd ever want to live next to.

Of course, last week's events are just too terrible to even contemplate. I have had to be careful about how much coverage I watch about what happened in Newtown, Connecticut because I have a surprisingly low tolerance for it. It's simply one of the worst things I can think of. There aren't really even any words for it. It makes me deeply sad when I think about it.

I do much better when writing about silly movies and books. I'm better with snark than sentiment.

In news closer to home, it has been a season of birthdays for us. In September, Parker turned 3, and Avery turned 10. Just this last week, Maryn turned 12. I remember the last 12 years -- it's not like I blacked out in my first year of grad school and then woke up with a 12 year old daughter. (Although that sounds like a failed ABC drama produced by J.J. Abrams doesn't it?) I just can't figure out why those twelve years have gone so fast. There were so many days when I've thought, "Holy crap, will this day ever end?" How could have so many days like that and so many years that seem to have just clipped by?

Parker is maturing, but it's taking some work. She's very smart, quite verbal, and playful - but she also has a naughty streak in her. Staying put, listening, not running like crazy in the opposite direction when I tell her to "come here!" are not her strong suits right now. She is pacifier free and sleeps in a big girl bed. She can go potty in the toilet when she feels like it - the problem is that she rarely feels like it. We will work on that over Christmas break.

Avery is still the tallest kid in her class. We went to their Christmas concert tonight, and she's always in the back, in the middle because she towers over every other person. It makes it easy to forget that beneath all her physical maturity and bravado is a very tender heart. She's a sensitive kid, but she covers it up with a lot of bombast. She knew I'd had kind of a crappy afternoon and so, before bed, she offered to show me all the embarrassing choreography she learned but didn't end up having to perform for the Christmas concert as a way of cheering me up. She knew it would make me laugh, and so she put herself out there a little because she wanted me to be happy. She's a sweet kid, despite what she'd have you think.

Maryn is becoming a young woman, and it is freaking me right the freak out. Occasionally, she'll come around the corner and I'll just be struck by how mature she looks. She's still a goof  and likes to play dress up and snuggle with her dad, but she's also officially in the Young Women program at church and will be attending the Sunday School class I teach to the teenagers. There's a boy who has a crush on her at school - and she doesn't mind. I like to tease her about it, and, frankly, the idea of a boy liking her kind of gets my hackles up a bit. But she said something really important the other day when I was giving her some good-natured fatherly grilling about this kid. I asked why she liked him back and she said, "Because he's nice to other people. He's not like the other boys, always trying to be cool or tough or funny or whatever. He's just nice." If we can keep her on that track, valuing kindness and decency in a boy, through the rest of her life, I will be thrilled.

In pop culture news, I am woefully bereft. We've barely seen any movies at all, and I've hardly read a book worth mentioning in months and months. Television has been my big pleasure this semester. We like all the soapy stuff -- Revenge, of course, and our new find, Nashville. Downton Abbey is coming back in a little less than a month, and I'm happy about that. The thing the girls and I have really loved is watching the BBC show Sherlock on DVD. I'm a fan of Sherlock Holmes and of re-imagining classic characters in alternative settings, and this show is both wonderfully faithful and brilliantly re-envisioned. I could definitely do with more from Dr. Watson -- Martin Freeman isn't given enough to do, I think. But, other than that, my only complaint is that they keep pushing season 3 back and back and back.

There are good things for movie nerds on the horizon - but I undoubtedly will end up watching most of them on DVD rather than in a proper theater. Ah well.

I hope to make some progress on my prospectus over Christmas break and to get a few small things done around the house. I'm going to keep my goals small this time around. I will also try to write a little more often here so that cobwebs don't accumulate on my blog.

See this in 3-D? Yes, please.

I thought this was pretty great...

Teenagers 
by Pat Mora

One day they disappear
into their rooms.
Doors and lips shut
and we become strangers
in our own home.

  

I pace the hall, hear whispers,
a code I knew but can't remember,
mouthed by mouths I taught to speak.

Years later the door opens.
I see faces I once held,
open as sunflowers in my hands. I see
familiar skin now stretched on long bodies
that move past me
glowing almost like pearls.

What Happened At Our House After Church Today

First of all, don't worry. No injuries, no apparent structural damage to the house. We were in the kitchen eating lunch, listening to the wind bully its way against the house when there was a massive sound -- like thunder but lower, longer, and much closer. We rushed to the other side of the house and through Parker's windows we saw this:

We have asked our neighbors (it's their tree) repeatedly over the last four years to please, please, please cut down the obviously dead, precariously perched tree that stood right over our youngest child's bedroom. Every time we asked, they said something like, "Oh yeah, you bet. We'll get to it this weekend." For four years.

They abandoned their house three years ago. They moved somewhere else in the area and just never came back to the house. They mow the grass three or four times a summer so they don't get fined by the city, but otherwise, they don't do a thing to maintain their rotting house and property. We know for a fact they haven't paid their property taxes because it was in the paper. I doubt they're bad people -- they're probably just crushed under by poverty, underemployment, and a lack of education like so many others around here. But if they'd just come over with the chainsaws I know they have and spent an afternoon before now, I wouldn't have had to put a call into my insurance company and they wouldn't have to be sweating bullets about how they're going to make up for the damage done.

Ah well. Hopefully, it will all work out for the best. I know the real blessing is that no one was hurt -- but if we managed to get a new roof out of it, that would be nice too.