A hellacious week

Perhaps calling this week hellacious is a bit much.  After all, no one's died, there are no additional life-threatening illnesses and no car accidents.  Of course it's only Wednesday, so who knows what the rest of the week holds (knock on wood).  Personally, I'd rather not find out...unless the rest of the week holds me mysteriously winning oodles of cash and getting a nice vacation to make up for the beginning half of the week.

The week started on Sunday, as weeks are wont to do.  Shortly after midnight, early Sunday morning, Honey heard running water.  This was odd because we were all getting ready for bed and I didn't have laundry going, so there shouldn't be any water.  After a few minutes of searching we discovered the problem.  A pipe burst or broke underneath the concrete in our garage, causing the garage to flood.  We turned off the water to the house and went to bed -- after I sent a message to Bestie #2 saying "We're coming over for showers in the morning!"  Thankfully she lives nearby.

The broken pipe and lack of water did not seem to adversely affect the cats, who continued to sleep and look adorable as Honey and I cleared out the garage and tried to get things ready for a visit from the plumber first thing Monday morning.

The Teenager also didn't mind -- he just moved his sleeping spot from our house to Bestie #2's house.  She has been kind enough to let him stay there until we get this issue fixed.  I can work without water, but I don't want kids to do that.

So the water issue is interesting.  If all goes well, it will be fixed by tonight -- so four days without running water.

It's apparently time for things to break around here.  Last week, my car's CD player finally bit the dust.  It was ready for retirement, but I tried convincing it to hold on a little longer.  We won't replace it because we're planning on getting a new car within the next year anyway (as long as things like broken pipes stop surfacing).  My baby car has over 215k miles on it, all courtesy of yours truly.  It wants a break.  I want it to hold on a bit longer.  And I want it to play CDs again.

I've been stressed by a bazillion things that are due, but that's life.  This week I was supposed to handle things but I feel rather derailed by the pipe issue.  And then yesterday I received bigger news: I am apparently 1.065 elective credits short in my degree.  WTF????  Yesterday, as I was sitting in a meeting, I received word that Oh, BTW, even though you graduated and thought you were done, you're actually short an elective credit.  Short by 1.065 elective credits, to be precise.  (Originally the email said 3.5 credits but I found an error in their calculations.)  WTF?!?!?!?!?!  I graduated and you're telling me this now???

Words actually cannot begin to express my level of frustration and anger.  The registrar sent a credit audit in February that showed I just had to complete my dissertation and I'd be done.  I completed the dissertation.  I went through the hooding ceremony.  If I had attended the commencement I would've received my diploma -- three weeks ago.  Perhaps one of the most frustrating things is that my credit audit in February said I was done.   

After speaking to my advisor, I realize I have no real recourse other than to take a class over the summer, wait for the whole long process of transferring credits/credit review/credit approval/degree conference, and then be done.  And one good thing is that I had already signed up for a free workshop as part of my job and I can just pay a state university to get enough credits for the workshop so that I can be done.  I am not giving any more money to my alma mater (which should, perhaps, be termed conculco mater; forgive my inexact knowledge of Latin but hopefully I conveyed my point).

The horrible thing is that I have now heard of two other colleges that have done this to friends -- wait until they've graduated or are graduating and then say "Whoops, we miscounted!"  I am continuously amazed at the level of incompetence in the education system.  One would think that after years of dealing with it I would no longer find it surprising.  Part of me hopes -- each and every time -- that it's just a fluke.  The rest of me -- the experienced me -- realizes that the world is full of idiots.

In times of frustration and stress, all I really want to do is sleep.  I want to go to bed and hope to wake up in a peaceful world.  Since I can't do that, I am trying to content myself by looking at cute things, like pictures of Lotus and her newest toy from Bestie #2: a stuffed bunny.

Normally, Lotus rips up any new toy immediately, but this one she has carried with her the past few nights.  I think it's adorable.

In a rather apropos moment, as soon as I was done with the post -- and before I had a chance to save or post this entry -- my computer crashed and wiped it out so I had to re-do everything.  Really, computer?  Really?

I would like to go back to bed and wake up to no more problems, please.  I am stress eating and that is really not a good look for me.

Life is never dull (aka "How my time in Vietnam prepared me to live in the U.S.")

I am a flexible person.  I am a busy person.  I am a tolerant person.

I am a person who wants a break.

Life is never dull, that is for sure.  When thinking about what to title this blog post I had several different ideas.  I almost chose Why the Universe does not want me to write academically, but thought that would be too simplistic.  Yet it does seem that way at times.  For the past year and a half or so, every time I work hard so that I can set aside time to complete academic writing by a self-imposed deadline, something happens.  Something major.  Something like an illness, a burglary, a death, a car accident, or some similarly horrific crisis that usually impacts life in a momentous way.  This weekend was like that.

Sometimes I think that my dissertation could have been finished six months or a year earlier if I had been able to devote all of my time and energy to it.  That did not happen.  Our house was burglarized as I was conducting research, my grandmother was diagnosed (and eventually died from) end-stage lung cancer, Bestie #2 was in a bad car accident, and there were numerous illnesses, a major divorce, and several other life-altering events all in the course of about 18 months.  And while the events themselves are distressing, the fact that they keep happening when I am trying to be productive, the fact that I am derailed frequently, is starting to amuse me.  I am sure that there is a lesson in here somewhere, I'm just not sure what it is yet.

I've been working on an article for an academic journal for a while.  A long while.  And each time I get close to the end, something happens and I allow myself to be distracted.  This weekend I hoped to put all of that behind me and finally finish the work so that I could stop thinking about it.  I was close -- so close! -- and then Life struck again.  The pipe that brings water into our house, the one that connects to the water heater, broke underneath the cement in the garage.  At least that's what we think happened.  We'll know for sure in the morning when a plumber comes out and inspects.  And so Life throws another curve ball and we attempt to hit it out of the park.

There are several things for which I am thankful this weekend:
 1) Honey's amazing sense of hearing, which caused the "I wonder why there's water running at midnight" musing that led to the discovery of a garage on its way to being flooded.

2) Bestie #2 living only 1.5 miles away and being willing to have us under her feet for most of the day -- after all, it's really hard to stay in a house when there is no running water.

3) Our trip to Vietnam a few years ago -- and life experiences before that -- that taught us how to shower in a bucket, wash clothes in a bucket, and all that other fun stuff that goes along with no running water.  Thankfully, right now we haven't come to that (see point #2 for the reason why!).

4) A flexible job that allows for me to say "I'm working from home today because I need to wait for the plumber."  I actually do have to run a training in the afternoon, but at least I can be home in the morning and hopefully by the time noon hits (please God, before that!) I'll have an idea of what we're facing.

Now my fingers, toes, legs, and everything else are crossed hoping that insurance will cover this if the plumber needs to rip up the concrete in the garage to replace the broken pipe.  Actually, I keep hoping that somehow we're wrong and it will be an easy fix, but Honey is very handy and sadly pretty sure that all signs point to our initial diagnosis.  And so we wait for the big day, tomorrow.  Don't worry, Life, I can take it.

Raising a teenager can be funny (aka "Why God gave Man eyebrows")

Parenting a teenager isn't always easy, especially when that teenager is a sophomore and thus exhibits the corresponding sophomoric behavior.  I think that part of my constant exhaustion comes from working very hard to raise The Teenager into an upstanding young man.  Over the past couple months that The Teenager has been living with us, we've seen remarkable improvement in many areas -- he laughs more, can be more respectful toward others, sometimes does his chores without being told, and he seems more relaxed and happy.

That's not to say that life is all wildflowers and kittens.  No.  In fact, often we have some sort of struggle, like this past week when I insisted on making sure his essays were edited several times before he submitted them, or last Monday when I tried to explain that using rude and harsh tones in public is not appropriate.  The Teenager has not had much guidance or consistency or reasonable expectations (and support to reach them) in his life, so this is a learning process for all of us.  Sometimes, I get so frustrated that I break down and cry because I want him to be successful in life, I want him to turn into an admirable man, but sometimes it seems I'm fighting a hopeless uphill battle.  Sometimes.  And sometimes I see glimmers of success just beyond the horizon and that is enough to keep me going.

Parenting a teenager is rarely "fun," but it can sure be funny!  Take last night, for instance.  Wait, let me back up a minute and explain that the men in my family have very bushy eyebrows.  Or eyebrow.  All of the brothers take different approaches in handling this.  Music Man lets his brow grow free, Tin Man shaves a bit around the edges, My Baby gets hardcore and a bit extreme with the tweezers (but at least he has two brows and they are neat).  Up to this point, The Teenager has ignored his brow(s), although he's acknowledged they need a bit of help.  He doesn't like tweezers because he says it's painful to have one's face plucked, and so a few weeks ago I mentioned waxing as a solution.  He seemed, I thought, open to the idea because he responded with a teenage non-committal grunt.  And so, last night as I was setting up a brow wax appointment for myself, I set something up for him.  Then I told him.

"What?!? No way, I'm not waxing!"

"Come on," I say, "it's not even a full wax of your brows. It should only take 30 seconds and then you're done."

The Teenager was not buying any of it, and so I told him it was okay, I wouldn't force him to get it done, and I walked out of the room.  I heard the bathroom door open, close, and a few minutes later open again and I was greeted with this:

Of course I started laughing hysterically and could barely hear his comments: "This may be a decision I come to regret, but I'll deal with it then. Take that, Society!"

I knew that The Teenager tends to do some pretty extreme things just to see what kind of reaction he'll provoke (he is a teenager, after all) and I knew that he admires Marilyn Manson's hairless appearance, but I didn't quite think he'd do this.  At least not during the school year.

A few minutes later I walked downstairs.  "Okay, Mr. Manson, I'm off to get Honey and I'll be back in about 45 minutes."

"I scared myself when I looked in the mirror."

Of course I had to start laughing again, but The Teenager just continued talking.  "There are pros and cons to this.  On the one hand, I'll never be able to look at myself in the mirror again.  But at least fewer people will try talking to me and I don't have to get waxed."

"Um, sweetie, I told you that you didn't have to go if you didn't want to."

"WHAT?!?!?!"

"Yes, before I left the room I told you that if you really didn't want to go I wouldn't force you."

"Oh.  Well.  I guess I didn't hear that part."

By this point I was laughing so hard that I had to pause for a minute before I could say, "One day you will learn that unless it's something that I feel will impact your life long-term, like academics, I'm not going to force you to do things you don't want to do."

The Teenager's response: "Well lesson learned now!"

Every time I think about his tone and reaction from last night, I start laughing.  I offered to get him some white face paint so he could be a Manson groupie.  We'll see about that.  I also offered to paint eyebrows for him so that every day he could have a different expression (Monday is "I'm so surprised!" day!), but he wasn't too keen on that idea.

We're all having a good idea with this, although I am cautious because I know that with teenagers there's a fine line between good-natured teasing and something that bruises their tender egos.  This situation does make for some funny comments, though.  Like this morning, as we were leaving for school.  I was talking about one of the cats and made a silly remark.  The Teenager's response?  "The guy with no eyebrows thinks you're weird."

Sometimes focusing on what's important means doing a bit more cooking

Today I worked on being aware of myself and being "grounded" (in a good way, not a I'm six years old and was just grounded for a week for watching the new movie Ghostbusters because it's heathen and I could be letting evil spirits pollute my mind so I'd better be punished sort of way).  It helped.  Every time I felt myself starting to get a bit crazy I thought, "Okay, take deep breaths.  Connect with the earth.  Release stress.  Now go."  When I focus on being intentional and being aware, I feel more generous toward others.  And when I feel more generous, I cook.

I'm not sure why there is a good feeling = food connection, but it's there.  If I am upset with someone, I really resent having to do anything, especially cook a meal or bring the person a drink.  When I am well-rested (a rare occasion), I have more tolerance.  And of course etiquette sometimes dictates that I need to feed people (family) even if I am less than thrilled to do so...and so on those times I try to keep the meal as simple as possible.  I don't think that those around me (save Honey, who notices everything) have realized this pattern.  That's okay.  It can be a surprise.

This past weekend I worked a few things out with My Baby and The Teenager, and so I felt better about dealing with them and their adolescent antics.  Between that and my grounding exercises, I was feeling -- am feeling -- generous.  And so it's into the kitchen!  Here's what I made for today -- and all the recipes turned out well, so I definitely encourage you to try them, too!

Overnight Blueberry "French Toast" -- I would really call this more a bread pudding, but regardless it was easy and yummy.

Breakfast muffins -- These were the easiest things in the world and I loved that they were so portable (not that I needed that this morning, but the cool factor was definitely there).  "Muffins" made out of cheese, eggs, sausage (I used turkey sausage), and broccoli.  The Teenager ate several and he never eats breakfast, so I'll call this a win.

Sweet & Sour "Pork" -- The Teenager loves this.  I make it with chicken and instead of using celery and carrots I use bell pepper, but other than that the recipe is the same.  Honey has cooked the chicken out in the deep fryer for me before, but since Honey is out of town this week I took care of this part myself.  And I started teaching The Teenager to cook rice (he's gotta start somewhere, right?).  It was a bit of a "miss" today in the rice department, but he'll learn eventually (and perhaps it wasn't his fault -- our rice cooker is ten years old and on its last legs, so sometimes it doesn't do what it should).


I'm not sure what I'll make tomorrow.  Honey gets back late in the evening, not in time to eat.  I'll have a long day at work tomorrow.  The Teenager still has a huge tub of leftovers from tonight, so it's not entirely necessary for me to make something...but we'll see.  I'm been using my Pinterest board to keep track of things like recipes and so now I have more ideas than I have time.  I might make "Pop-up Pizza Pie" because it sounds interesting, but after today's heavy food we might choose to go for toast and fruit...

Time to get back to The Artist's Way

For some strange reason I thought that when I finished busting my tail on my degree, finished with editing jobs for others, I would have more time.  Truly, I believed that suddenly tens of hours would miraculously open up and I would be able to accomplish much and get some rest.  I would be superwoman!  Yes, I know...what was I thinking?  Life has been very busy with The Teenager, with working on our massive garden, with new academic writing assignments (those book reviews and research articles aren't going to publish themselves!), applying for jobs, and all of the other things that happen in life.

All that goes to say that I don't have much time to blog, at least when I look at my to-do list and think about the number of hours in a day.  I also don't have time to spend writing morning pages or working through The Artist's Way.  At least that's what my logical brain tells me.  But then there is the other part of me, the part that remembers my goal for this year was to learn to live with intention, to focus on learning to prioritize what's really important.  For me, writing is cathartic.  And yet, that's the first thing that gets put aside when life seems too busy.

Not any more.  Today I am going to pick up The Artist's Way for the first time in a long time and I am going to start reading it again.  I am going to blog.  I am going to writing morning pages.  And maybe, just maybe, if I am very lucky (or focused or inspired or energized or blessed or whatever) I will be able to work a bit more on my novel, knowing that I will feel better.  I will be in touch with me.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll figure out what to do with my life.  I'll have a goal, a plan, a dream.  Maybe.