Family in the Digital Age

Sorry to have been so silent for the last month; even though the semester ended for me on April 26th, I was really tired when it did end and I just didn't feel like writing. So, let's see. What have I been doing for the last month? Well, I'm getting ready for my Ireland study abroad trip, have been home a couple of times, started working full-time in the English department office, then dropped down to part-time for two weeks (this and next) because of my summer school class for my study abroad trip; I leave for Ireland in 10 days!!! I'm also working on paleography and Latin with my department head/faculty mentor (which is awesome for a nerd like me), writing conference abstracts to submit for the fall, and oh, have I mentioned that I'm going abroad in 10 days? Super, super excited about that! Hopefully I'll get to a computer a few times while I'm there to update, but if not, there will be lots of pictures when I get back. Needless to say, however, my life is not dull :)

However, I have another reason for writing tonight other than catching my friends far away up on my terribly exciting life. My grandparents have joined the digital age! Now, some people might want to hide their online activity from their grandparents, but I try not to write anything that I wouldn't want them to read anyway. So in honor of their recent technological leap, I'm going to indulge myself and tell the internet about how wonderful these two people are, even though it will embarrass them (I will, however, respect their privacy and not post a picture of the three of us, no matter how badly I want to).

There are so many people who have influenced me in the last 23 years, but my Grandma and Grandpa are the twin pillars who, along with my mom and dad, are always there, supporting and encouraging me. In all of my childhood memories, we are physically close to each other:

I remember sitting with Grandpa in his big brown chair to watch cooking shows, then practicing peeling potatoes with his hand over mine, guiding the peeler.

I remember Grandma sitting on their guest room (the "cherry bedroom") floor, letting me do horrible things to her perm with a spray bottle of water, a comb and her amazing collection of scarves, playing beauty shop.

I remember Grandpa sitting next to me on the piano bench, listening to me play and reading the music along with me, helping me when I hit a hard few bars.

I remember Grandma sleeping in the cherry bedroom bed with me during my sleepovers almost every weekend, singing songs and reading stories so I'd go to sleep quickly.

These are just a few of the million moments, big and small, that I've shared with my grandparents. I've always known I can count on Grandma and Grandpa to be there for concerts, recitals, and graduations, even if they don't care about the even itself; they come because they care about me and being supportive. They have always been close by, and now that they have internet and a webcam, we can skype since I'm now 4 hours away. It's not quite the same thing as being in the same room, but being able see their wonderful faces on my computer screen runs a close second. So, Grandma and Grandpa, welcome to the internet! I'm glad you've joined the digital age!

Spring Cleaning with the Grandmas

Unlike apparently everyone else I know, I haven't been bitten by the royal wedding bug. I have no idea why I don't care, but I just don't. Although I will say that I've seen a few pictures of Kate Middleton's dress and she was gorgeous. That's the end of my royal wedding talk, though :)

What I have been preoccupied by the past few days, though, is cleaning. This is the first year that I've done a good, thorough spring cleaning and I have to say, I love being in my apartment right now. My reasons for spring cleaning now are that 1) I'm having some friends over for dinner tomorrow night and I wanted the place to be spotless and 2) it's the end of the semester and I felt like I needed to purge the literal junk that was leftover after I turned in final papers. So yesterday, I started working like a madwoman, cleaning everything in sight.

The book pictured above is one of my new favorites. The author, Erin Bried, combines practical advice for how to do all kinds of tasks with anecdotes from grandmothers. The book is divided into 10 sections: cooking, gardening, cleaning, dressing, nesting, thriving, loving, saving, joining, and entertaining. I've been using it as a reference guide as I learn how to run a house on my own. For instance, in this bout of cleaning, I used one of her entries on using vinegar to clean with; commercial cleaning products make it hard for me to breathe and they make my hands peel awfully sometimes. Vinegar does not, so I now know what I'll use to clean my apartment. The only downside to vinegar is that it smells, but I combated that with burning candles, and the smell fades pretty quickly anyway.

I would highly recommend this book for any other recent college grad who needs those kinds of basic life skills. The next portion of the book I want to tackle is gardening, since I seem to have a black thumb that I'd like to get rid of!

The Dream of the Rood

One of my favorite Anglo-Saxon poems is "The Dream of the Rood," a poem about the crucifixion told by the cross itself. The Anglo-Saxon conception of heroism is clear, as in this poem, Christ is not nailed to the cross but as a heroic young warrior climbs up and embraces it. Jonathan Glenn's translation is a lovely (and annotated!) version.

On Holy Saturday, the Church waits in silence for the Easter Vigil Mass. This ancient poem, excerpted below, provides much fodder for meditation in Holy Week; for me, translating it, which I have done twice, has been a profoundly spiritual experience.

it is glory's beam

which Almighty God suffered upon
for all mankind's manifold sins
and for the ancient ill-deeds of Adam.
Death he tasted there, yet God rose again
by his great might, a help unto men.
He then rose to heaven. Again sets out hither
into this Middle-Earth, seeking mankind
on Doomsday, the Lord himself,
Almighty God, and with him his angels,
when he will deem--he holds power of doom--
everyone here as he will have earned
for himself earlier in this brief life.

"The Dream of the Rood," lines 97-109

Bookstores

Ever since I was a very little girl, I have had a love affair with books. One of the most memorable Christmases I had was when I was 5 and got a boxed set of the Little House on the Prairie books; if I'm remembering correctly, I took off the wrapping paper, got through the cellophane and immediately started reading the first book. This love is why I majored in English in college and why I've continued into grad school for literature. It is also why I boxed up all 200+ books that I own and moved them and two bookshelves down to South Carolina. Even though I have very little time to read for leisure, I like to know that I have all my books at hand because they may (and have) come in handy at unexpected times (so, Daddy, you didn't move them all down for nothing. Some of them, maybe, but not all :))

Since books are such a huge part of my life, it should come as no surprise that I love bookstores. Like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, going to a bookstore, even if I have no money, cheers me up when I've got the blues or the mean reds. But I'm a bit peculiar when it comes to bookstores. I prefer small used bookstores to the mega-stores like Barnes and Noble. I like other people's books because they sometimes have notes; I also feel like I'm rescuing books that were unloved and thus sold to a bookstore. This is not to say that I dislike big stores; they have their own special feeling, but it's different than the little places like, say, Reader's Corner back home. I suppose the small places also feed into my slightly hipster pretensions ;)

At big stores, I always look first at the bargain books because I feel like they're just a little less loved; clearly, somebody decided that the books should get a sticker proclaiming that, more or less, the store just wants to get rid of those volumes (Perhaps I'm projecting a bit? Probably just a tad). Sometimes the bargain racks and bins have real treasures, like the $7 copy of Yeats' Irish Fairy Tales that I picked up the other night with the gift card my sweet sister-to-be gave me for my birthday; sometimes books are in the bargain bin for a reason, like the $7 biography of Grace O'Malley, the Irish pirate queen, that I bought several months ago--it's full of shoddy scholarship and rampant misspellings, despite being in its second edition (and yes, I'm a little bitter about that purchase).

I also have a hard time buying magazines at bookstores. It somehow seems like a cop-out, to go to a building full of glorious (and not-so) volumes, in hardback and paperback, with pictures in black and white and color, without pictures, large and small: to take in all those options and decide instead to purchase a publication that the publisher knows will end up in next month's recycling just seems wrong. For the record, I like magazines too, but I prefer to buy them at the drugstore or where have you, not a bookstore. Back to bookstores.

Just for giggles, I'll walk you through a typical trip to a bookstore, whether large or small. When I walk through the doors of a bookstore, it's as if I've entered a trance. I scan the room, trying to decide where to start. Once I pick a row to start with, I slowly make my way up one side and down the other, picking one up, scanning the covers, then placing it back on the shelf where it goes (I can't stand people who don't follow alphabetical order when reshelving books. That's just rude). Sometimes I back up because I think I've missed something good. It literally takes me forever to get through the fiction section until I get to the horror/Western/romance shelves. Those I breeze through, since none of those topics interest me. I skip certain sections in non-fiction as well, but that depends on my mood; the sports section is the only one I shun consistently. Very rarely do I pick a book on my first trip around the store. I need to absorb the selection, to see what I'm in the mood for, and then make my choice. As you can imagine, bookstore visits are long, involved rituals that I can't perform too often, because I don't have time and for which rarely have the money, though looks, thankfully, are always free.

(the above post inspired by Tuesday night's trip to Barnes and Noble, where I bought Yeats while [inadvertently] dressed like Olive Oyl from Popeye. True story)

Thoughts on fostering and the ivory tower

I discovered this blog this morning via StumbleUpon and have been reading it off and on, with my heart breaking, all day. The blogger, Rebecca, makes her love for her foster child obvious, but so is her pain at losing the little girl, whom she calls "Jacket." I've gotten through about 50 pages now, and I'm almost overwhelmed at what this woman is doing: essentially single-parenting while working full-time, while also dealing with the emotional ups and downs of knowing that the child you have come to love will eventually leave you and probably go back to an unhealthy environment. It's definitely worth a read, though I will warn you about getting sucked in.

Reading and thinking about this corresponds rather nicely with a conversation Sam and I had this weekend about our chosen professions and, more specifically, perceptions of the "ivory tower." I told her that one of the things I struggle with as a training medievalist is the fact that what I'm learning to do doesn't directly help anyone. The conclusion that I've come to is two part. One, if I'm doing what I love, I'm a happy, productive member of society, which is better than me doing something I hate that I think I ought to do. Two, though my work with, say, Anglo-Saxon poetry may not be life-changing for any of my students, the way I teach can be. Everyone has had a teacher in the past (or perhaps has one now) that has changed them, even if they didn't like the subject that particular teacher was teaching. That's who and what I want to be when I grow up.

So while right now I may not be able to save the world one foster child at a time, there are people that I can impact by doing what I love and doing it well. I'm not entirely convinced that that's the answer to my ivory tower dilemma, but that's what I'm working with at this point. Any thoughts?

Spontaneous adventures with Sam

Anyone that has known me for any length of time knows that I am a person that loves order. I have a perpetual to-do list and I delight in checking off the items on it. I like schedules and knowing where I'm supposed to be and when. I love planning because it gives me something to look forward to. Margins, discipline, neatness: that's what makes me happy.

And yet, Thursday afternoon, I decided to throw all that to the wind. I knew I should spend the weekend reading criticism and starting to outline papers, but I just couldn't bear to. I texted Sam to see what she was doing this weekend; she responded that she had her play. My next question was "So if I were to show up in your part of the world could I see your play?" and with that, I had a new weekend plan. Well, sort of. I still didn't have a ticket, nor did I know when I was heading up to North Carolina; all I knew is that I was going. Let me reiterate here: I don't do this. Spontaneity is not really part of my vocabulary (although it might be working its way in!). Sam and I texted again later that night, so I knew at 11:45 pm that I needed to leave in time to be up there at 1:30--still no idea how long it would take me, which was easily found with Google Maps.

So yesterday morning, I got up, packed a small bag, filled up my car and plugged Sam's address into my GPS. And I just went. I called Mom from the road just so she'd know where I was; she told me to drive safe and have fun, which I knew I would. The drive up was pretty uneventful, other than a brief stop at a McDonald's in rural SC where some construction guys "helped" me back up with lots of hand signals (I told Sam I must give off the "helpless little girl" vibe because, really, it was just a normal parking space. Nothing weird about it at all. But the sentiment was kind and therefore appreciated, if still amusing).

Slightly less than 4 hours after leaving my apartment, I pulled up at Sam's. After lots of hugging, I brought my bag (note the singular. Sam was impressed) inside and we had lunch, then I went to work with her. We adventured around downtown Winston for a while and had coffee and sandwiches before her 6:30 call; I sat in her car like a creeper and read until the house opened at 7:30 :)

The play was Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins, which was wickedly funny. I did forget at one point that I was watching a play, though. The theatre was small and I was in the second row, so when the actor who played Giuseppe Zangara (attempted assassin of FDR) looked out at the audience, he was able to make eye contact with me. He looked so convincingly evil that for several minutes, I couldn't break that eye contact because I thought he was an actual killer. In reality, Sam says the actor, Neil, is a really nice guy, so she found the story hilarious.

After the show, we went out for beer and food, then came back to Sam's house and went to bed. We slept late and had a lazy morning that turned into an afternoon. We talked about everything and nothing and, just like always, I remember how fortunate I am to have a friend like Sam. We've known each other now for 5 years; in some ways, it doesn't seem that long and in other ways, it seems longer. Our friendship is one of those beautiful, indescribable things that doesn't happen very often, but you know it's a good thing when you've got it.

Thank you, dear friend, for making my first spontaneous adventure successful! Can't wait to see you again soon!

Post-birthday thoughts

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred moments so dear.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.

How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets,

In midnights, in cups of coffee,

In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife,

In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,

How do you measure a year in the life?

How about love?

How about love?

How about love?

Measure in love.

My 23rd birthday, which happened this past Thursday, can be summed up in one word: love. My family, who drove down for Corps Day an entire day early so that they could be with me on my birthday. My aunt and uncle, who came for dinner on my birthday and brought cupcakes so that I could have cake on my actual birthday (my real birthday celebration wasn't until Saturday night). My grandparents, who are two of the most generous people I know. My sweet friends, who called and texted and wrote on my Facebook wall. Everyone who made last Thursday such a wonderful day.

Yes, 23 is going to be the year measured in love. I can just tell :)