Afternoon at the Park

I’m writing this at the playground of the Methodist church across the street from our house. Parker is sliding down the slides, climbing stairs, and poking her head through portholes. Unlike most Wednesday afternoons, I didn’t have any meetings today. Suzy and P picked me up from work and we had some pretty darn good Middle Eastern food at a place in Saginaw called Taboon.  Now, I still have an hour until my evening class, and so we are here at the playground. It feels luxurious to have an hour to just sit. That kind of extra time just doesn’t come around a lot right now. 

It’s almost completely still here in the neighborhood.  A Schwan’s truck went by about five minutes ago, but otherwise, there’s no traffic at all. Parker has the place to herself. The only sound is the breeze rattling through the ash tree behind me. Leaves are beginning to yellow and turn here and there. Michigan is gearing up for its big autumn show. The soy bean and corn fields that surround my school have all turned yellow and brassy. It’s officially fall, and there aren’t too many other places I can think of that are better to be at this time than Michigan.

Things are going okay. Suzy and I were talking over lunch about how each of us in the back of our heads kind of thought this move was going to be the silver bullet for all of our problems, that the glittering magic of a bigger town/school/ward/etc. was somehow going to cure all our ills. Obviously, that’s silly. Moving here has remedied some problems but created others. There are always problems and worries wherever you go. It’s never really a question of if, but more when, where, and what kind of problems you’ll have.

One thing that’s weird for me is starting over at work. At IVCC, I’d been there long enough and was established enough that I felt confident in almost any situation. There wasn’t a question or a concern a student or colleague could fire at me that I didn’t feel  reasonably well-equipped to handle. Now though, even though I’ve been a teacher of one kind of another for thirteen years, I haven’t been a teacher here, you know? Being untenured again, relearning a new culture and a new bureaucracy, and dealing with a different set of students have got me feeling slightly shaky. I’m not as confident in the classroom today as I was two months ago. And that’s a weird feeling that I don’t enjoy very much.

There’s nothing to do but teach through it and let time and experience accrue. Some classes are more fun to teach than others, so I’ll just let myself be nourished by them so I can handle the others. Just like any other job, right? Use the good moments to help you endure the not-so-good.

It’s been about twenty minutes since I started writing. Parker has filled up several pieces of playground equipment with pea gravel and is now brandishing a spear-like stick. I fear for my life at this moment. Time to shut down, walk home, and prep for my Wednesday night 5 -9 (yeah, you read that right – 4 hours of one class all in one shot – it’s like trying to inhale a Buick through a straw). Wish me luck.

Update

That last post was actually only half finished. It was late when I was writing it, and I'd decided to finish the rest the next day. Instead of pushing "Save," I apparently clicked on "Publish." Ah well. My devoted reader Linda commented on it anyway, thinking it was meant to be an interactive, finish-this-sentence activity. Yay for her giving me more credit than I deserve.

It's morning here, and I just dropped the older two off at school. We've been in Midland for about a month now, and we are still trying to figure things out. So far, Maryn has already had a more positive social experience here than she ever did in Illinois. There's a girl in her grade who lives just down the street and she has been a real sweetheart about stopping by and checking on Maryn regularly. She's been a valuable source of information about the school and neighborhood for us while making Maryn feel welcomed. It's been really nice.

What we thought might happen with Ave is happening. She started school in Tonica in the first grade and so was more or less an insider from the start. She had her little crew of friends there and even had her bestie, Faith. Here, for the first time in her life, she's the new kid and doesn't have a built-in social set. It's clear she feels unsettled and uncomfortable right now. You know how different people react to stress? Some people get weepy, some people withdraw, some people get all proactive about things? Well, some people turn into angry crab creatures from the Crab Nebula. Avery is of this sort, so the peace level in our home is a little low at the moment. It's only the second week of school so I'm not too worried about it. Ave is outgoing, funny, and confident (most of the time). I have a feeling she's going to find her footing sooner rather than later. (And hopefully she'll cheer the freak up when that happens. That kid is like Hurricane Avery when she's unhappy. Eeeesh.)

Parker is slowly adjusting too. Her first two Sundays in Primary at church were rocky, but she has stayed put for the last two weeks so we are moving in the right direction. She's very excited to start preschool at Chippewa. The way she even says the school's name is hilarious to me. You can hear her enthusiasm when she blares, "I'm going to Chip-uh-WAH!"

The ward here is funny. It's big, well-staffed, and full of very experienced members of the church. On the whole, members are very sincere and earnest. It's also kind of a humorless, not overly friendly place. It feels as though the entire place is made of skinny, marathon-running Dow chemists with crew cuts and six kids. It's a little Stepford in that way.

I should point out that it's not an unfriendly place per se, it's just not very warm. I think that comes from the fact that there are a lot of transient members that come through. Dow brings in interns and contract workers for nine months or a year here and there, so members are used to people showing up, renting for a bit, and then leaving. Consequently, it seems they hold back on really investing in welcoming new people. Ah well. I'm confident I won't hold three callings here, nor will there be a Sunday when I literally teach or speak all three hours of the block. Humorless, Dow-android members or not, that's got to be worth something.

The job is good. My students here skew younger than at IVCC. I have more traditional, fresh-out-of-high-school students here than before. But they seem open and game for what I've got going on in class, so I don't mind. My colleagues are pretty nice and welcoming. The facilities are a million times nicer than what I had at IV, and generally speaking, I'm just really happy with it.

Moving just kind of sucks. It takes a long time, it's expensive, it's tedious and sweaty, but also it just means dislocation and discomfort. It puts you in this new place and, even if it's a better place (which this is), it's still unfamiliar and you have to figure out how to make friends, how to fit in, how to get around and get along. It's uncomfortable, you know? I am not complaining. I'm merely pointing out some of the challenges inherent to our new situation. They are welcome problems to have but still problems.

Anyway, last week was Parker Faye's 4th birthday - which is bonkers - and next week is our own Avery Jane's 11th birthday. My, how time flies. We drove a mere hour and a half and met the Griswolds at Chuck E. Cheese's to celebrate Park Fu's big day and then went over to Paul and Linda's for dog-shaped cake. It was so wonderful to feel like we could just hop on the road, visit family, and be back by evening. I mean, how great is that? We are just right up the road from family more or less. Suzy and Linda and Erin and Amy can meet up at Birch Run for lunch. When some big superhero movie comes out, Ben and I can go catch it together instead of lamenting the fact that our wives hate stuff like that. Our kids can see their kids. Our kids get to have nearby grandparents. That, to me, is worth any discomfort and any number of weirdo Dow employees with very short hair. (Seriously, the hair thing is almost cult-like here.)

Anyway, it's probably time for me to prep for work. I only have one ENG 111 class today and a couple of office hours. I'm going to get some prep done for my classes next week and get myself organized so I can return to work on other projects (i.e. the dissertation - shhhhh - don't say its name too loudly. We don't want to scare it off again.)

So it's been days of orientation, days of inservice, and I have an all-day division meeting tomorrow. It's exciting to get familiar with a new school, meet new people, and all that stuff, but it's also exhausting. It took me three hours to get my office unpacked and put together yesterday because people kept stopping by to introduce themselves and chat. I've come every day wrung out like a dishrag, and classes haven't even started yet. Eeeesh. Still - high class problems, you know?

My department has over thirty people in it - that's more than four times the size of my last department. It's fascinating to meet everyone and see this little subculture at work without having any preconceived notions. Some things just seem so obvious from the get -go.

I can see the department cynic who questions everything. I can see the faculty member who expects the department to be her whole social life.  I see the

Home Safe

One week ago, we were sweeping the empty floors of our Tonica house, anticipating our drive to Midland the next day. We were soaked in sweat, bone-weary, and sad to be leaving the best house we ever lived in.

Tonight, we are comfortably settled in our little rental on Gary Street. After six days of pretty constant effort, the main floor looks like a home and not the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The house is small but comfortable, and as usual, Suzy has worked her feng shui magic to make it look better than it actually is. The neighborhood is quiet and tree-lined with a couple of parks just around the corner. The girls' school is a mile away, and, all in all, it seems pretty nice.

I started work on Monday and went through three-days of new employee orientation. There was lots of good information, and I'm sure I'll remember at least 18 % of it. Comparatively speaking, Delta is huge. Its campus, its enrollment, its number of employees -- there's a lot to take in. But my overall impression is that people really strive for excellence there. IVCC was a pretty disheartened place over the last couple of years with its massive budget shortfall and all the resultant cutbacks and resentment. It's a huge relief to be in this bright, well-staffed, well-designed place where people take pride in what they do.

Anyway, the point is that we are here. We are on the other side of THE MOVE, that event that we have been both praying for and dreading. We had a ton of help and had some miraculous things happen that allowed us to get here on time and in one piece. Thanks to all of you who sent good vibes and/or prayers our way. We felt the difference for sure.

On the clutter front, we took five boxes of books to the Midland library today as well as a ton of old VHS tapes and a box of bricabrac to Goodwill. This is just the first step. We will have less stuff in a year than we have now, I guarantee it.

Our Shame

So here it is: our stuff won't fit in a 26 foot truck.

In fact, it wouldn't fit in a 26 foot truck, a completely packed pickup truck bed, and a large trailer loaded Beverly Hillbillies-style. Nope. After all that, we still had to rent an additional U-Haul truck, a 15 footer, to empty the Tonica house of all our belongings.

Frankly, it was embarrassing. We had close to thirty people helping us pack, and, while that made a lot of work go very quickly, it also means that a third of our ward was witness to our shame - we have too much stuff. I could see people looking at the truck and talking in hushed tones. I know they were saying, "There's no way they're going to get all of these things on that truck." and "I just can't believe they have this many plastic tubs. How long have they lived in this house?" Eeeesh.

It's not like we're hoarders. We don't have feral cats living in our house. I don't have a room full of empty milk cartons and Christmas lights. We've never needed a snow shovel to carve a path in the stacks of newspapers from the door to the kitchen. All of you who have been to our house know that it was clean, orderly, open, and neat.

No, the problem is not that we can't control our belongings. The problem is that we had a very spacious house. Again, most of you know that it wasn't some ridiculous, look-at-me-look-at-me McMansion. It was just a roomy ranch with sizeable bedrooms and closets and a cavernous basement with all the storage space you could shake a stick at. This is the thing I have learned from this experience: unless you consciously choose to do otherwise, you will generally fill up however much space you have. If you have a little, you'll fill it. If you have a lot, you will fill it too. We had a lot of space and so, over the last four and a half years, we have slowly but surely filled up the space we had.

It's all well and good when it's in orderly, labeled stacks in the basement, but when it's spread out on my lawn and driveway as though my house drank Tijuana tap water, it becomes clear that it's a problem.

We are moving again within a year. We are renting a small (!) three bedroom house for 9-12 months until we find something more permanent that we want to buy. Consequently, we will not be opening or unpacking most of these boxes. They'll go straight the basement and stay there until it's time to move them to another house. More than that though, I want to downsize what we have. Suzy and I both made stabs at getting rid of excess during the packing process. While I got rid of a box or two worth of things, the last couple of days has made me rethink what kinds of stuff is really important to keep. The question is no longer, "Do I like this object?" The questions now are, "Do I like this object enough to haul it up steps, into a truck, out of the truck, and down some other steps? Is it really important enough that it's worth hanging onto? Would I miss it in two weeks or two months or a year if I just got rid of it today?"

I'm even reconsidering my devotion to physical copies of books. Now you know I loves me a good, solid book in my hand. However, it occurs to me that after I read a book, I put it on the shelf and it sits there. Rarely do I actually go back to it and reread it or check it for information. Most books I read once and then it sits on my shelf like a trophy, like the head of a gazelle after a safari. I think most of my books sit on my shelf as a kind of sign to visitors saying, "Why, yes, I AM an English major! Read a lot? Do I ever! Smarter than you? Oh, I wouldn't say that..." You know what I mean? Why do I need shelf after shelf of books? For the most part, I don't.

So, I don't know what we'll actually do in terms of downsizing over the next year, but I do know this: my goal is to not buy another physical book, DVD, or CD for at least the year we are in the rental. I will not add anything new to my stacks of stuff this year.

The CD thing is covered. I don't think I've actually bought a CD since 2011 or something - and that was just because the physical album was cheaper than the digital version on itunes. (Eddie Vedder's Ukulele Songs, if you must know.) So that won't be a big deal, but I will also get rid of the giant, heavy tub of old CDs that I have already burned to itunes long ago. Why am I still carrying them around? Insurance? Just in case the INTERNET crashes and itunes disappears? Whatever. If the zombie apocalypse comes, having a hard copy of Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend album will probably be the least of my worries.

Books? Easy. Library or Kindle. As much as I love them, I don't need the physical object of a book in order to enjoy them. Or if I really want to hold the book itself as a I read and not just the Kindle, why do I need to own the thing and carry it around with me ever after? Why not just check it out from the library and turn it back when I'm done? There is no need for me to buy a brick of paper just so it can sit on a shelf.

What's more, I'm going to go through the books I have and really evaluate whether not I need to keep them. I have a copy of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game that was a gift from the excellent Clark Draney when I left Twin Falls. That stays. My copy of Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, a book that I pretty much forgot as soon as I was done reading it? Goodwill can have it. If I don't absolutely love it or need it, I am going to let it go and find another home.

It is time to pare down, my friends. Less is the new more.

It's late here. We are holed up in the Best Western in Midland, Michigan. Tomorrow I'll get up early and head over to the rental house and start moving stuff in. Whatever ward members are going to show up will do so around ten. Honestly, the thing I worry about now is what all these new people will think when they see the new family pulled up with three separate trucks at a house that's not much bigger than an IKEA model apartment. I have a feeling we are going to be the subject of stories both back in Illinois and here. Bleh.

Here's my new living space goal:

Maybe after Parker graduates high school.