does this count?

maura @ 11:50 pm

So the magical green anti-inflammatory seems to be working a bit, but maybe that’s just because I was sitting a lot today.

Aaaand, that’s all I got tonight.

in which i declare defeat

maura @ 10:45 pm

So. Today I had a research day, and it was back to the article I got halfway through writing over the summer. But also my leg, which has been hurting when I walk for 10 days now, felt worse. And I finally got tired of it (I come from “walk it off” stock, but that only goes so far). So I fired up the internets* and found a rheumatologist with an opening this afternoon

* Why didn’t I ask my GP, whom you may recall that I love love love, for a recommendation? Because she moved to the suburbs last summer, sniff, and I am so sad that I have yet to find a new one.

Apparently if you are a mostly healthy person you will make a rheumatologist’s day, because he kept making comments about how it’s good to have someone healthy come in every so often, just to make sure the equipment is working.

The verdict is tendinitis (though he took an xray just to be certain), but the mystery remains as to why. I’m definitely clumsy, but I didn’t bump it or have any sort of injury. The dr sent me away with a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and instructions to rest, which of course I’ve been trying to do all along. As you can tell, I am cranky: I haven’t had my mind-clearing, thought-provoking walk to work in over a week!

I’m also incredibly busy, and thinking that I should drop this NaBloPoMo thing this year before I go insane. Or at least move it to the back burner.

Of course, having decided that, I had to blag to tell you. So maybe…

this is the day

maura @ 11:24 pm

Why I Am Tired, by Maura

6:30am – Everyone gets up. Usually Gus + I sleep in until 6:45am, but this morning I had an early class so we all got up. J makes coffee, I feed the cats + scoop the litter, Gus plays video games until we make him eat breakfast. Everyone eats, Jonathan + I shower, Gus brushes teeth, everyone dresses. Minimal nagging today, which was nice.

7:40am – Gus + Jonathan head to the city bus stop to go to school. I head to the subway.

8:05am – At my desk, turn on computer, check email, nothing urgent. Set up the classroom (turn on computers, fill my water bottle).

8:30am – Meet the students and prof at the library entrance and start teaching! Short library tour, head to the classroom, experience students’ shock + awe when they learn that the internet is neither 1) always reliable nor 2) a repository of all information in the universe, demonstrate finding books and articles in the library, discuss why plagiarism is bad and how to avoid it, distribute handouts.

10:00am – Repeat above w/different students + prof.

11:15am – Grab my stuff and rush to the subway for my noon dermatologist appt. Realize that I should have bought an all-day unlimited pass for today, since I’ll be riding the subway 5 times. Eat my sandwich on the subway. Get there a bit early, copay, catch up on twitter, skin check, all-clear, head back to the subway and the library.

12:45pm – 15 bonus minutes, woo hoo! Buy coffee, check email.

1:00pm – Reference desk, medium-busy. One student is writing a paper on Hobbes, Rousseau and Plato. Another student is looking for As I Lay Dying (which is not in, unfortunately). Also, review student evaluations from this morning’s classes.

2:00pm – I was supposed to have a meeting but it was cancelled, which is just as well since I’m pretty tired at this point (dang late night election returns). Snack, answer email, photocopy handouts for classroom (supplies are getting low).

3:00pm – Meeting. Good + productive, yay!

4:00pm – Dinner, tea, more email, chat a bit w/colleagues.

5:10pm – Head to the subway to go into Manhattan.

5:45pm – Get to Pratt — I’m tonight’s guest speaker in my former professor’s class. Chat with my former professor. Decline offers of coffee, in case it comes back to haunt me later.

6:30pm – Have a few pieces of chocolate (to celebrate the guest speaker! very flattering). Talk about my job in my former professor’s class. The students ask lots of questions — as you all know I love my job so I could go on and on (and I do).

7:30pm – Class breaks, time for me to be quiet. Get gifts! (including a Pratt mug, very nice!)

8:30pm – Home. Gus is getting ready for bed, wicked tired + pissy (he had swimming this afternoon). Hugs + they’re off. I take some advil, grab an ice pack and sit on the sofa with my phone (my stupid leg is still sore for no apparent reason — I think I’m going to need to see someone about this, bah). Catch up on interwebs, ice leg.

9:00pm – Have a bowl of cereal, do the dishes.

9:30pm – Download email to big computer. Open a beer. Leg up. Have some more chocolate (Jonathan is a Halloween thief, but at least he shares).

9:55pm – Stupid wifi has been crapping out lately. Start writing this blag post in a text file.

10:19pm – Post this blag! Bed to follow (as soon as I finish my beer).

we wait for our plans to come true

maura @ 9:59 pm

So, you know, I wasn’t going to blag about the election. I’ve been ignoring the whole shebang for the past couple of months, partly because I’ve known my voting choice forever (duh), and partly because just thinking about the election even a tiny bit has threatened to send me into spasms of paralyzing anxiety. I much preferred to rock it ostrich-style, head in the sand.*

* Did you know that’s a myth? Now you do! (And so do I.)

But last night, as I was snuggling with Gus at bedtime, he started chatting me up. Of course I knew it was just a ploy to avoid sleep a bit longer, but he was so charming that I fell for it. I spent a few minutes answering the repeated + rephrased question, “why can’t kids vote?” (the one that finally seemed to sink in was, “elections are complicated, and the issues can be hard for kids to understand”). Then he busted out with: “will Obama make things fair?”

I have to admit that I teared up a bit at that one. Not the least because we haven’t really talked about the election with him much at all. But living where we live, in this community of neighbors, friends, schools, the city, the kid gets it. It’s all around him, that things are unfair and should be more fair. And it made me so incredibly grateful to live here, to be raising Gus in this place where there are all kinds of people working hard to make things more fair.

I wasn’t weepy for long, though, because then he said: “I wish Obama would make a law that parents have to sleep with their kids all night.” Which was completely hilarious.

—

I couldn’t get it together to vote before work today (why is it always harder to get ready on days when Gus has no school?) so I left a bit early and went afterwards. It was a beautiful day, cloudy but warm, and walking through our neighborhood I ran into the parent coordinator for Gus’s school. All of which brought back those warm fuzzies about Brooklyn (yo).

I was prepared for heinous lines and was pleasantly surprised to walk right in and vote after waiting only a few minutes. I was also surprised to feel so moved by the whole experience. I actually stared at the little lever for a few minutes before flipping it down to vote (and nearly took a picture). To stand there in the voting booth and finally, finally be able to vote for a person of color for president was just amazing. I’ve always enjoyed the visceral thrill of pulling that big red lever back over to record the vote, but today it was incredible.

PLUS, the post-voting election day bake sale at our local school/polling place had oatmeal scotchie bars. Of course I could not resist! It was warm + sweet, and I scarfed it down on my 4 block walk home. And dared to break my prohibition on election thoughts and let a little hope, just a little, sneak in.

everyone is waiting for the next surprise

maura @ 10:53 pm

Yep, it’s only day 3, and I’m already relying on photos. Ah well, tomorrow’s another day, right?

We order wine from this great place in Manhattan that’s reasonably priced, sells mixed cases *and* delivers for free. With our last order we decided to keep the boxes for the cats to play with, because you know how cats love boxes. Gummy, in particular, just likes to hang out underneath a box, with his tail sticking out and everything.

Last weekend we got another shipment of wine, so Jonathan and Gus decided to create a low-rent kitty condo:

Here’s Gummy stalking around the outside of it yesterday. They’ve been having a bang up time chasing each other around, over and through it. J+G cut holes in many of the walls and ceilings so there’s lots of entrances + exits. Gus and two friends decorated it with markers, drawing cats all over the outside.

Caramel likes to be inside. In fact, he loves it so much that he napped in there for most of yesterday. Little did he know that I could use my magical phone to take a picture of him inside, just when he thought he was invisible! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.

nice limbo you have here

maura @ 10:38 pm

This has been the longest day in the world. Falling back is the reason, I think. And yet, I didn’t even get everything done that I wanted to do. It was like daylight savings inertia took me over. Or maybe it was a sleep hangover: I went to bed @ 9pm last night. Or both.

I kept trying to do things like coop work and some lingering work emails and this dang blag. But I kept getting distracted by things like hemming a pair of pants and surfing random anticonsumerist websites and twitter and facebook. Also one cat kept jumping all over me and kneading me to death, then meowing pitifully when I tossed him off my lap.

Facebook is starting to take up way too much of my time lately. I mean, I like it, but I do kind of feel weird about the way it started out as an investigating-this-thing-the-kids-all-love-for-my-work thing (but not in a creepy treehouse way, honest!), and now I’ve suddenly got 102 friends — including all of my sibs — and my high school is recently in the hizzouse. I blame the phone. That damn phone just makes facebook too easy.

I still wish everyone would move to twitter. But I guess it is easier to comment and add photos in facebook. And neither have ads on the phone, which is sweet. But between twitter + facebook + the blag, it’s going to be a long month.

that’s our job but we’re not mean

maura @ 1:56 pm

Happy November! And happy NaBloPoMo, day 1. Fasten your seatbelts! I had to add a reminder to my phone’s calendar in a (hopefully not vain) attempt to remind myself that I need to be blagging every day. Wheee!

So, what should I blag about? I do have a few meaty (I hope) ideas for the month, but I also have a pile of stuff to do this weekend, and since Gus is making me sit with him and watch Nightmare Before Christmas for the eleventy-billionth time, I should make hay.

I’ll leave you with a picture of today’s lunch: tagliatelle, roasted beets, parsley, tatsoi, romano cheese and olive oil. Yum!

guest post!

maura @ 10:11 pm

So I’m tired + have a ton to do tonight, as usual, and I wasn’t planning to blag because I’m saving it all up for NaBloPoMo. BUT, Gus went on a field trip at school today and lately the homework on field trip days is to tell a grown up what you saw and did and have the grown up write it in your writing notebook. Except that Gus forgot his writing notebook so he convinced me to type it up and print it out for him. And this is what he said:

“Castle Clinton was surrounded by water, except for the wooden planks that let it go to New York City. It was used for 4 different things. First it was used for war (there were 28 artillery cannons that aimed out of the windows).* Then it was used for an immigration center. Then it was used for an opera house. And then it was an aquarium. It still is all 4 of those things but it doesn’t look exactly like what it should look like. It had a little chunk of everything that was in it before it was changed to how it is nowadays. Now there is one cannon, one tank of fish, one book to sign your name in.”**

* I should note that here he paused and said, “Mommy, what are those curved lines that go around words?” to request parentheses.

** He’s talking about the register that immigrants had to sign, I think.

“It was built in 18-something. I don’t exactly remember when it was built. But it was built in 1820-something. It also has thick walls. When it was first built it had walls that were 8 feet thick. They were that thick to protect itself from enemies. They were having it for the battle of 1820.*** It’s hard to believe this part but the water that used to be surrounding it is now land that has benches, trees, and other things that you should normally see around your neighborhood.”

*** = War of 1812. But he was close!

“To get there was a long trip. We took the F train to the R train to the island it’s on, and then after we were done going to the island we took the Staten Island ferry back and forth, but when we were in the terminal waiting for the ferry to get back we found a woman who was playing music on a violin and we sat there for I don’t remember how long but it seemed like a half an hour. We kept on asking her to do more songs until M [his teacher] said that the boat was here. We could see our school from the Staten Island ferry ride.**** It was pretty cold so I spent most of the time sitting down on the outside or sitting down on the inside. The ride was pretty fun and I saw lots of different boats. It was a whole day trip, if you can imagine how long it would take.”

**** I’m not sure that this is true. But they could probably see close to their school, at least.

“On the outside of Castle Clinton it looked like a semi-circle. The view that we had of it looked like it was a whole circle but it actually was a semi-circle. I had a good time.”

sometimes you’re so heavy, sometimes i don’t feel you at all

maura @ 9:03 pm

Some Things I Learned Today, in Roughly the Order In Which I Learned Them:

1. Walking to work is much more conducive to thinking than scooting. I guess my brain is too busy planning my scoot path to really think of anything. It takes longer to walk, but I think I will segue back to it as the seasons change, because the scooter is cold + windy.

2. When you have a good class in the morning it can energize you for the whole day.

3. Some things are more trouble than they’re worth.

4. Cheese ravioli, turkey sausage and garlicky broccoli rabe taste just as good the next day.

5. When your office is near the office of a colleague who works with the hospitality management department, you will occasionally be offered cookies. And they will be good!

6. My plate is full.

7. I need to refill my metrocard soon.

8. Avocados are awesome. Why has it taken me ’til age mumble-mumph to realize that?

9. The inside of The Little Red Lighthouse is dark and boring, but at the top the view is awesome. (Gus had a field trip today).

10. I can do all the dishes and make tomorrow’s lunches in exactly the amount of time it takes to listen to the entire Throwing Muses record “Limbo.”

11. If you accidentally + spazzily hit “Publish” rather than “Save” in wordpress, go back into the post and hit “Unpublish” to finish your blag. Then you can publish it!

ETA: Bonus! 12. My World Wildlife Fund calendar tells me that a newborn panda is about the size of a stick of butter. So now you know!

in this town we call home, everyone hail to the pumpkin throne

maura @ 9:14 pm

I might be slightly insane (and I barely even had any wine with dinner tonight so I’m definitely not drunk), but I just up + signed up for NaBloPoMo again. “But, but, but,” you splutter, “you haven’t managed to blag more than 3 times this month, and next month you think you’ll have time for 30 blags?” To which I reply: yep, and yep. Clearly I need the push right now. I mean, it’s not that I’m not busy (I am), but I’m sure there’s some space for blagging if I squint and look at my days sideways. Or upside down.

The holidays are coming, so we’re breaking out all of our favorite holiday videos. We’ve watched the Charlie Brown trilogy and The Nightmare Before Christmas a few times in the past week, and now all of the music from all of them is running on an endless loop through my head. Which is not so bad, really.

Somebody had a birthday today, and got lots of new electronic things with which to play. Including a 200x microscope that plugs into a computer. Said person is now roaming around the house looking for blood (literally). One cool thing is that you can take a motion capture video from the microscope. I’ll let you know when our friends the sea monkeys become You Tube stars.