Snowed Under

I wish I could claim actual snow--that would be interesting and fun--but alas, no. The blizzard I’m facing is the end-of-term stack of paperwork. Grades are due Wednesday, so I’m full up with whining children who complain about bad grades (usually due to missing assignments) and grovel for makeup work. As I like to tell them, “There’s not enough extra credit in the world to make up for credit credit you didn’t bother to get in the first place.”

I’d feel sorrier for them if a more hard-line stance didn’t help. Just today, I got a Facebook post from a former student. She’s adjusting well to school and has an A in her college English class thanks to her “mean” teacher. It came at exactly the right time.

Now, an evening with friends, and a weekend of grading. Reality bites.

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The Bed List

Took Frack and a passel of her friends to the movies today to see Captain America: The First Avenger. May I just say that Chris Evans is one red, white, and blue hunk of YUM? More, please. Preferably before they release The Avengersnext summer.

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Readin' and Writin'

One thing about summer that I love is the time to catch up on reading. During the school year, most of the reading I’m doing is either keeping up with (or ahead of) my students, which often crowds out any meaningful time to read what I want to read. As a result, I’m usually woefully behind on the new hot books. It takes me forever to get to the old hot books—for instance, I just finally read Water for Elephants. I waited until Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire before I took myself to Hogwarts the first time. I’m like the person in the world to read The Help. And don’t even get me started on the books I’m allegedly supposed to read, the award winners and lauded tomes like Freedom and The Pale Kingand the international sensations like Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. Don’t know the girl with the dragon tattoo except what I’ve read in newspapers and such, but I’ll get around to her sometime. But not this week. I have a stack of YA I picked up at RWA National that’s going to migrate to my classroom, and I’d like to be able to talk them up when they get there.

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Downsizing

Four pounds doesn't seem like much when you're hefting it in the grocery store. Heft that thing in a travel bag through a bunch of airports (Atlanta's being a standout problem), up and down elevators and across pedestrian bridges in hotels, it gains mass the way most of us do during Christmas cookie time. Four pounds of laptop over your shoulder starts carving a groove in said shoulder, let me just say.

A month away from home can teach you a lot of things, like how to find laundromats in strange cities, how expensive it is to buy Dr Peppers from a hotel snack bar, and how—no matter how nicely they make it up or turn it down at night—that pretty hotel bed just isn’t as nice as your own. But the one thing all that traveling really teaches you is how heavy that laptop of yours really is.

All that traveling wasn’t for naught, however. I did get paid. And one thing I did with my check was give my back and shoulders a bit of a break. My new MacBook Air just arrived this morning. Two pounds and a teeny bit of change. The screen’s smaller—it’s the eleven-inch model—but I think the weight loss will compensate for it. Especially in the Atlanta airport, which all folks from the South are doomed to roam whether they want to or not.

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Just a Few Notes...

Revision time! My notes arrived from Dream Agent (Longest. Email. Ever.), so now I need to revise. Which is fine. I like revising. Really! The notes themselves aren’t that awful. Fixes here and there that several sets of sharp eyes managed to catch. Validation of nagging worries that I tried to ignore, but which kept creeping in. A roadmap for some progress. Little things. Really! Not at all like dynamiting and starting over. Even if it feels like it.

Okay. Enough whining. Back to work, since nothing else will do the trick.

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Knotwork

Sixteen years ago today, I stood in a custom-fitted raw silk dress (thanks, Mama), hand lightly resting in the crook of my Daddy’s arm, smiling at Mr. Man, handsome in his morning coat and striped trousers. Within a few moments--a few breaths, really--we were slipping Celtic knotwork bands on each other’s hands, promising to be true and steadfast, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The choice of vow wasn’t lightly made. Celtic knots are formed with one solid strand, woven in and around itself, with no beginning and no end. I’ve seen plenty of badly-done, broken knots (usually on cheaply made pretty things) to know the real thing when I see it. When I was a teenager, my mother gave my sister and me Celtic heart pendants. The Celtic heart is the single stranded-knot formed at the intersection of three circles--one strand, eternal; three circles, Father, son, and Holy Spirit. Mr. Man and I thought it fitting symbolism, both in the bands and in the vow.

The ring he placed on my finger that day fits more tightly than it did then, but the knots are true. One strand, woven closely with memories and promises, with no breaks despite sixteen years of wear and the inevitable conflicts of two people forming one life together. The strand of a life, woven in love, sealed in the Spirit.

I know the real thing when I see it.

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New York State of Mind

I’m writing this from my new apartment in El Barrio. It’s nice: One decent-size bedroom, a living area, a full kitchen, and a shoehorned bathroom, parquet floors, natural light. You know, something that would rent for more than I pay for my 4 bedroom, 2 bath house on a quarter acre in the ’burbs because even though I’m in Spanish Harlem, this is MANHATTAN, baby!

It’s worth the outrageous money we’re paying to stay here this week because Frick and Frack have never been to New York. We did the tourist thing in Times Square yesterday and have had enough of that, thank you very much. Today we have tickets to How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, starring Harry Potter himself and Dan Fielding from Night Court. We’ll eat amazing food on Restaurant Row tonight and begin the austerity plan tomorrow (spaghetti cooked “at home” instead of one more restaurant meal with ridiculous taxes added on). We’ll do plenty of walking and gawking and photographing and even squeeze in to watch the big fireworks display tomorrow night.

My kids are already in love with The Big City. I appreciate it again--the variety of people, the arts on your doorstep, the vitality of neighborhoods and round-the-clock activity. But after nearly a month of travel, mimi has to admit that flying home to her swamp and staying for a while is sounding mighty tempting. Her Empire State of Mind has an expiration date.

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