I want to be one of these women in my next life

During her review of the MLA, Dr. Crazy made some pretty astute and funny observations about the way people dress at conferences. At first I was horrified to realize that the way I dress (jeans, usually with a blazer) marks me as someone old and jaded, but upon reflection, I think maybe she is on target. I am old and jaded.

Here's a new category of conference goers I have seen emerge over the last ten years: the Up and Coming Young Female Professors. They dress in suits, often, or some version of that, often in conservative colours like navy blue or black, and yet somehow radiate a sense of high fashion. I'm not sure how they achieve this. Maybe it's the accessories. Somehow, their hair always looks good, even though they are staying in a hotel that features dry air that creates static electricity for everyone else and makes my hair look like shit. These women are immune to static electricity. Sometimes their presentations can sound a bit like they might be reading a chapter of their dissertation - incredibly dense and not easy for a listener to grasp - but when they depart from the text or answer a question from the crowd, they are amazingly articulate, smart, poised, and self-confident. They are able to shmooze at parties until the wee hours of the morning and yet appear at 8 am sessions, all bright and articulate, with their hair still looking good, sustained by endless cups of coffee. They carry laptops computers, talk on cell phones in the corridors, and the technology always works for them. Despite a conference climate where in-focus projectors seem to break down about half the time, these Up and Coming Professors never seem to have any trouble with their Power Point presentations.

These women amaze me. I'm not sure what they are doing in academia but I think some of them ought to go into politics. I'd like to see them running the country.

Kindred Spirits

My favorite characters from the books I read as a child:

Betsy in the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. She got into snowball fights, had the same best friend all through school, and fell in love with the theater after seeing her first play. She knew from an early age she was going to be a writer.

Laura Ingalls in the Little House on the Prairie books. She loved wild places. Town was too noisy and crowded for her.

Ramona the Pest in the Beverly Cleary books. She was willing to make a Great Big Noisy Fuss to get what she wanted.

Holly Hollister in the Happy Hollister books. At the age of six, she was a detective, and she traveled with her family to all kinds of cool places all over the world. She was a tomboy who wore her long brown hair in pigtails.

Anne of Green Gables. She had a quick temper, she lived in daydreams half the time, and she romanticized nature shamelessly -- a kindred spirit.

Charlotte in Charlotte's Web. The little girl in the story falls apart when she hits puberty and the pig is just plain stupid, but the spider is damned smart. Did you know that a female spider will kill a male spider after mating with him? That's not in the book.

Jo in Little Women. A tomboy with lots of sisters. I hate the part when she cuts off her hair to sell it and one of her sisters says, "Oh, Jo ...your only beauty!"

Randy Melendy from The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright. The third child in a close-knit family of four kids, she was always getting into scrapes but she put her whole self into anything she did.

Mary in the Secret Garden. She believed in magic.

Portia from Gone-Away-Lake. In one scene, she gets to play dress-up with beautiful old ballgowns from an ancient trunk.

Arrietty in the Borrowers. She didn't want to live trapped under the floor. She wanted to emigrate, live outside - and she did.

Betsy in the Carolyn Haywood books, especially Snowbound with Betsy. She decorated a tree with peanut butter for the birds and learned how to make angels in the snow.

Pippi in the Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren. She was way stronger than most men. And totally unconventional. In one book, she gets to sail the south seas.

Posy in Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild. Like me, she was the third girl in the family. She wanted to dance, and nothing would stop her.

Harriet M. Welch, in Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. She wanted to know everything and write it all down.

Snow falling

After the chaotic frenzy of the holidays, the household has returned to normal. It's quiet here with just the six of us. Spouse is at the big wooden table with his laptop open, doing some kind of work-related paperwork. Daughter is reading on the couch, nestled cosily into the spot nearest the fireplace. Boy in Black in upstairs on the computer, doing chemistry homework while simultaneously chatting with friends on IM and checking online to see what the conditions are like at the ski slope where he snowboards. Shaggy Hair Son is settled comfortably with a book in his red bean bag chair, which is positioned under the branches of the big potted orange tree. With-a-Why has just fallen asleep, after listening to me read a chapter of the book Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright. Even the cats are calmer now, sleeping on couches and chairs and beds, taking of course all the most comfortable spots in the house. Things will get noisy again Friday afternoon when extra kids begin to arrive but right now I am appreciating the peacefulness of a winter evening. The downstairs of my house is one big kitchen-living room area, except for the small office that is mine. As I sit at my computer, I can look out through the open door at my family and know that all is well with them.

Lingerie Lingo

Every time Dr. B mentions a corset, two images flash into my mind. The first is of Scarlet O'Hara clinging to a bedpost while Mammy pulls tight on the strings to make her waist as small as possible. Scarlet is gasping for breath but all this is clearly necessary if she is going to catch a husband. The other is a scene from one of the Little House on the Prairie books. Ma and Laura have been sewing a dress for Mary, the oldest daughter, but when Mary puts the dress on, it doesn't fit. The buttons are popping. They figure out the problem. Mary's corset strings have stretched. So Mary hangs onto the bedpost while they pull the strings, pulling the whale bones in to crunch her ribs, until she is thin enough to fit the very stylish new dress.

Since there is nothing sexy about these images, it's clear that I am just not up to date on this whole corset thing.

Maybe I need to buy lingerie more often.

Learning the Shimmy

It was grey afternoon so I decided to put on some Middle Eastern music and practice some belly dancing moves while cleaning the kitchen. My youngest son, With-a-Why, was sitting at the table with his crayons and colouring paper.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"It's called the shimmy," I said, pleasantly surprised at his interest in learning the proper names for dance moves. The older boys just roll their eyes when they see me belly dancing.

"Oh," he said. He coloured for a few more minutes and then looked up again.

"Well, it looks to me like you are just shaking your ass."

Random Thoughts about Spring Semester

Why do they call it SPRING semester? We will have snow on the ground for most of the semester. We'll be lucky if we get a few nice days somewhere near the very end. It's really winter semester, at least where I live.

I love buying new office supplies. A new stack of yellow legal pads, new reams of paper for the laser printer, a new box of pens, a new box of folders. I buy lots of plain manila folders, but I also get a box that are red, blue, green, and yellow because I color code my courses. I've done this for years, so even though my office is jammed full with stuff, I can glance through a pile quickly, and pull out all the green folders that I used for the Green Course other years. Tonight, I've lined up three new clean green folders for the Green Course. One folder for the class roster and stuff I want to do that day, one folder for student papers, and one folder for the syllabus, handouts, things like that. Tomorrow, I'll work on the Red Course.

The first job I ever had was working under the table as a legal secretary when I was about fourteen. That began my lifelong addiction to yellow legal pads. At any given time I have 4 or 5 yellow legal pads on my desk, with different lists on them.

About guilt. New Kid was talking about how she feels guilty adding books she hasn't read to a course. What's funny is that I am feeling guilty because I am using all stuff I've read and taught before. I read a lot to keep on top of what is getting published in my area, and most years, I add at least one book to each of my literature courses, dropping some book that is kind of outdated. Last spring, I added a couple of new books that worked really well so this year I didn't make any changes. I feel guilty when I don't make changes. One nice thing, though, is that I am having fun rearranging what I am going to teach and that is soooo much easier to do since I've taught it all before. I do always reread everything the night before I teach it. That's part of the job that I like. I get paid to read great books, always ones that I've chosen.

Always when a new semester begins, I have this sense of getting a new start. I can rewrite the syllabus. I get new students. I can vow anew not to procrastinate when grading papers. I make plans to reserve more time for writing. I love the academic calendar because it offers so many chances for a new beginning.

Like jumping into an icy river ... without the fun

For the last two weeks, my school stuff has remained tucked away in my grey shoulder bag. I've been busy cooking and cleaning, hanging out with my kids, visiting with extended family, going out to the movies with Spouse, reading books for pleasure, surfing blogs, eating big meals, or just sitting by the fire. The teenagers in the house are nocturnal when they are on vacation, and I have fallen into their pattern. It's been a relaxed, lazy time of staying up late to watch old movies and sleeping as late as I wanted.

This morning, the alarm rang at 6 am. It was dark outside. And cold, bitterly cold.

Makes Me Want to Scream: Part Two

I hate it when the word BABYSITTING is used to describe a man taking care of his own children.

When my kids were very small and I had papers to grade, my spouse would take them out for the afternoon on a Saturday so that I could grade papers in peace. Sometimes he would stop to see his mother. She would later tell everyone how wonderful he was to babysit the kids. BABYSIT? They are his kids! Her assumption, of course, was that watching the children was the woman's job, and a man who takes care of the kids for a few hours should be praised to the skies for helping his wife out.

Things People Say that Make Me Want to Scream: Part One

REVEALING USE OF THE FIRST PERSON PLURAL. It drives me crazy when married people talk in the first person plural. I don't mean in logical ways, like saying, "Yesterday, we drove to Boston." I'm talking about things like: "We think this" or "We believe this." With the exception of some alien beings I saw once on a Star Trek episode, thinking and believing are not collective acts. I feel uneasy around married people who have given up their own identities, their own thoughts and beliefs and opinions, to the extent that they talk in first person plural. It's creepy.

I'm glad I did

I'd rather give advice than plan my own life. So here's my list of things you should do if you ever have the opportunity:

1. Take a whitewater raft trip
2. Go winter camping
3. Take some kind of dance lessons
4. Get a professional massage
5. Visit New York, Paris, and London
6. Hike through a rainforest
7. Sunbathe naked
8. Spend time with someone who is dying
9. Be with someone when she is giving birth
10. Be hungry for a day
11. Go to a rally to support something you care about
12. Learn to sail
13. Go canoeing with someone you love
14. Go hiking in the desert
15. Learn the names of at least ten plants where you live
16. Volunteer at a soup kitchen
17. See a Broadway play
18. Spend a weekend at a monastery
19. Spend a day at an art museum
20. Read something you've written aloud in public