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!

Growing up

The past few weeks have been crazy, what with finishing the early teaching term and starting the late term this week. I'm traveling twice as far this term (3 hours as opposed to 1.5), but the flip side of that is no extra travel to sub. I'm also fortunate in that my uncle/godfather and his family live halfway between home and my teaching site, so they're letting me spend Saturday nights with them for the next 3 weeks. My new kids are, for the most part, great and I'm sure I'll have some fantastic stories from this term as well!

I have also done some grownup things in the last few weeks. I have:

-Made my first car payment and my first car insurance payment

-Found an apartment

-Set up an account with the electric company

-Sent out 20+ resumes

-Scheduled a job interview for the next school year

-Begun furniture shopping

And in doing all of these grownup things, I've realized something: freaking out doesn't get you anywhere. I'm notorious for getting some kind of awful pain somewhere before a big life change. In high school, it was migranes, the summer before college (and before senior year) it was a stomach ulcer... my stress about new situations seems to manifest itself in my body; this year, it started out as the carpal tunnel in my left wrist that comes and goes (apparently wrist pain is part of being an academic, at least in the humanities!). And then I came to the conclusion that freaking out was really unnecessary. As St. Augustine wrote, "pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you." That's what I've been doing lately and everything is working out. I'm in grad school, with some funding. I have a place to live and will most emphatically not be living in my car. I've even got a job prospect. All of the pieces are falling into place and I'm quite serene about the whole situation. To quote one of the famous medieval mystics, Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." Yes indeed, all is well

Grownup life is... interesting

So, I bought a car this weekend. It looks like this:

That is not my car, though, but it essentially looks the same (picture acquired from here). I feel like I've officially entered the grownup world, as I now have monthly car payments and insurance payments. Which is OK, since I have a job.

Speaking of that job, I start in the classroom tomorrow. The pre-teaching jitters have begun in a major way already. I think part of it's because my first class is adult students and I'm worried about being too young. I've talked about this ad nauseam with my supervisor, who keeps reminding me that I am qualified for this job. I just have a horrible tendency to undercut my abilities. I'm trying to keep in mind, though, that I am a performer; I've gotten up on stage countless times and sung for crowds of strangers-heck, I did a solo for generals at the Pentagon! So why I am so worried about teaching 7 strangers how to improve their reading? Go figure. But I do know this: a little performance anxiety is good. Nerves mean that I'll have an adrenaline rush when class starts and, though I'll be absolutely exhausted after 2 and 1/2 hours, I'll be sharp and focused. And then the next day when I have my babies (no really, I have 4 and 5 year olds the next morning), I should be good. Little ones are easy! Really, though, it will be good tomorrow, I think. I know the material really well and I have pretty good classroom presence, or so I've been told. Updates to follow!

Alum life

Me and my wonderful parents at my graduation party

Well, I've been an alumna for exactly 7 days now. It's kind of like a birthday: I don't feel different, but I know that something's changed. I don't think it will really hit me until August, when I don't move back here and start classes again. Yesterday was Reunion Weekend here and I was giving a bunch of alumnae from the 80s an apartment tour. One asked when I would graduate, to which I shyly responded, "Well, I graduated last weekend. I'm class of 2010." She shrieked "You're one of us! Congratulations!" I hadn't really thought of it like that before. I am an alumna. Strange.

Graduation weekend was wonderful. The baccalaureate service was very lovely; our speaker, a Methodist minister/alumna (we like to keep it in the family around here!) talked about Lydia in the New Testament and how, as we go out into the world, we should be women of faith and women of purpose, just like Lydia. That afternoon we had Class Day, where the seniors and sophomores donned our white dresses and gathered in the amphitheater to recap our 4 years here and celebrate sisterhood. That was the first time I really cried; standing on the island, waiting to take apart the daisy chains that formed our numerals, I was holding Louisa's hand, with Hillary on her other side and it hit all three of us at the same time. Imagine the three of us, standing there, holding on to each other with all our might and sobbing because the realization that we'd be right back there the next day to take our diplomas and leave came upon us that suddenly.

Graduation morning dawned bright and early. I did lose my tassel on the way to line up, but my friend VC found it and gave it back :). My name was spelled right on my diploma (magna cum laude, too!), I remembered to shake Dr. Hartford's hand before I took the diploma from her, I didn't fall on the island, and I got the biggest hugs from my advisor and our class advisor. The graduation party was a lot of fun too; part of my family, who didn't go to the ceremony (we had a LOT of people in town), went to the shelter early to set up and they did a beautiful job. We ate, laughed, took lots of pictures: all in all, it was perfect.

And now I'm an alumna. It still sounds so strange. I'm in the process of moving out of MC for the last time (!!) and training for my new job. I'm going to be a reading teacher this summer, but before I get into the classroom, there is three weeks of intensive training that I have to go through. I'm on day 4 of week 1 and it is a lot, but I think I'm going to enjoy it. This whole being (almost) a grownup thing is a little scary, though. Mostly exciting and just a little scary.