Mama(e) in Translation

17 Hour Flight

2012-03-03T13:16:00.002-05:00

We're about to leave for the airport. I hope we have a good flight, even though it's the 4th longest flight there is on earth.

The boys are excited because they just love flying on jet planes. :)

I'll try to blog from Africa as much as I can. Lots of people were also asking for photos on fb and I suppose I can open an exception and post there too...

P.S. I have before and after hair photos. The haircut is fantastic and goes really well with my new glasses. I couldn't post them last night because I was way too tired and today I didn't have time, but I'll do that later this week if possible.

Because Packing for a 10 Day Trip Is Not Enough...

2012-03-01T21:30:00.000-05:00

... I committed to bringing (home baked [vegan]) cupcakes for my sons's class tomorrow, since he won't be here on his birthday, May 9th.

... and I have to submit mid-term grades for 24 students whose papers and journals I haven't even read.

Well... at least I did piles of laundry so when we come back with 10 days of dirty clothes, I won't have to do laundry right away. Now... how am I going to find time to put away those clothes?

And the cherry on the cake? We don't leave until Saturday afternoon, but... just wait for this one. The only date the nearly 2h away clinic for vision therapy had to do my youngest son's 2h long evaluation was... you guessed it, tomorrow afternoon! At 2:30 pm!!

Because my dad is paying for the treatment and has been asking me every single time I talk to him or my mom (which is nearly every day) if I've taken L to the doctor yet and we'll meet them in Africa, I really jumped at the chance to go tomorrow.

That means that we need to be all packed and ready to leave by NOON tomorrow when we'll take the cupcakes to the boys' school and pick them up. After the doctor's visit we'll head to my brother-in-law's house in Maryland because it's 1h from the airport as opposed to 1h40 minutes from our place.

Crazy, huh? Please send positive thoughts and any free energy that you have left my way, dear friends, 'cause I'll need it!

Expectant place

2012-03-01T14:13:00.001-05:00

I finished teaching my classes. In fact, it was very weird because it was only one class. For the first time in a long time none of my (six) students showed up to class (this happened before to me back in Brazil when I taught English to small groups of students). There was a misunderstanding of their part -- because I won't be for the first class after the break. I was, still am a bit upset because we're really behind, but I will request that they meet on their own outside of class and catch up...

sigh...

I feel expectant a about the trip, and a bit stressed about preparing for it, but hopefully everything will work out just fine. And I hope the haircut comes out OK too. I can post photos and then "poof" them later... ;)

Gotta go!

Scheduled Haircut

2012-02-29T21:51:00.002-05:00

I just thought I'd let you know, following our previous "conversation" about this (OK, It was a conversation between me and one commenter, Ink*, and I didn't even respond to her comment but whatever.)...

...that I scheduled a haircut for tomorrow! I'm excited, though I've decided not to go radically short just yet. I'll go medium short in the back and see how I like it before going even shorter.

I need to be brave, so I thought I should blot about it to help me out! ;)

I don't know if I'll post before and after photos or not. I'm thinking I have to delete all photos of me from my blog for the sake of keeping my semi-anonymity intact. I don't want to be Dooced, you know... or something. I should have known for years that Jo(e) was right not to include faces in her blog. (sigh... pout... sigh again). I LOVE photos, though and I don't mind having photos of me taken and sharing them. I'm really upset about this issue.

OK.. gotta go now, my to-do list is so despair-inducing that I'm not even writing it here, I'm just trying to remember everything I need to do and not to panic, which is really, really hard. OK... not so hard.

I'll "publish" this silly stream of consciousness post that is probably annoying enough.

* I have to add you to my blogroll, Ink, and go read your blog too! Thanks for the comment in that post, BTW, it was oh, so helpful! And encouraging! [checking your archives]: Wow... you've been blogging for as long as I have. [checking out your first post]: Oh, OK, I'm wrong, several years longer, but you archived them. Got it.

"The City of Samba" -- An Amazing View of Carnaval by Jarbas Agnelli

2012-02-29T09:25:00.000-05:00

I have already featured Jarbas Agnelli's work on this blog (remember the song about birds on wires? This is well worth checking out if you haven't already).

This is his latest production, based on footage from last year (2011)'s samba-school carnaval parade in Rio de Janeiro (desfile das escolas de samba). I'm definitely sending a link of this video for all my students! I hope you enjoy it!

The City of Samba from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.
Tilt shift of the Carnaval party in Rio de Janeiro.

Made by Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli.
Captured during Carnaval of 2011.
Music by Jarbas Agnelli.
Special thanks to Rede Globo, Liesa and Jodele Larcher.

keithloutit.com
adstudio.com.br

The Grant-Writer Scientist's Wife

2012-02-29T03:05:00.001-05:00

It's only my husband's 2nd year as in a tenure-track job and I'm already getting tired of all the grant writing. And this is because the real deal (applying for NSF & other agencies) hasn't even started yet, these are his "trial runs" with university and state sponsored grants.

The thing is, preparing for teaching at the beginning or one's career does take hours upon hours (over 10 hours [mostly at home] each week for him, not counting grading, office hours, etc.) and when you add time at the university teaching, trying to run the lab, etc.... if you add grant writing to the equation, wow... there's one busy professor! So... in anticipation of his upcoming deadline and also our trip, K is pulling an all-nighter at the university. Sigh.

Digression: Why am I still up, BTW? Well, my youngest son asked me to lay down with him and I "dozed on an off" for about 2 hours. I got up at 12:45 and then spent one whole hour cleaning the kitchen (which totally made me want to have domestic help) and one whole hour answering email, and wasting precious minutes of my life on facebook (gotta hate that, but it sure is nice to be in touch with a few people -- I should unsubscribe from a lot of others).

But back to the subject at hand, this feels very similar to what it felt to be the wife of a newly-started-in-the-lab wannabe-scientist graduate student husband (with a crazy army trained Israeli post-doc as a vice-boss). K spent many nights in the lab running experiments back in 1999. I'm glad he moved to a different lab later and then he only pulled various all-nighters right before the annual conference in his field.

All right, I should go sort the laundry and try to pack my bag for the trip a little more and... hopefully sleep.

Should I disclose that I was supposed to be grading now and pulling my own all-nighter? It goes without saying that this is the last thing I want to do in the world, so I'm procrastinating like I always do. No wonder my sons left their work on their school project that is due tomorrow for the last minute as well (hence the late bedtime, hence the exhausted parent who had to help them write their reports). A pathetic family of procrastinators, we are. Sigh.

Not my poor husband, though! He's been working on this grant literally for years... He's come a long, long way from those days as a dedicated graduate student and I'm sure all his efforts will pay off in the end, but it will take many more nights of patient wifely waiting for that to happen!

Edited to add: K got home less than 10 minutes after I posted this (3:14), yay! I get to talk to my husband! And I hope he gets this grant.

It's OBVIOUS that a roaring Samba wouldn't win!!!

2012-02-26T22:36:00.002-05:00

I will say one thing about the Oscars... I thought it was ridiculous that only TWO songs were nominated for best songs -- the only "Brazilian Oscar nod" this year (Rio's "Real in Rio"), but when I googled the question, Rolling Stone magazine had the answer (two many songs initially nominated -- 39, so only two got enough votes to make the cut).

In any case, Real in Rio isn't even the best song in Rio (my sons were listening to the soundtrack in Spotify everyday two weeks ago), but it is one with pretty authentic samba drumming and rhythm. So... yeah, OF COURSE it wouldn't win!!

"Am I a Man or a Muppet?" is feels WAY more familiar and American (thus comforting, and not "the other"), so... of COURSE it was going to win...

Here's a link to a Youtube video of it (embedding disabled).

So... are you a man or a muppet? I prefer to be a Brazilian... ;)

Utterly Frustrated: I CANNOT watch the Oscars

2012-02-26T21:29:00.000-05:00

I guess this is the first time in many years in which I won't get to watch the Oscars. And was almost positive that I'd watched it online before in the past, but maybe I was wrong. Or maybe the rules for online live-streaming change every year. And this year is a "nay" year for Academy Awards online streaming.

In any case... I have been watching the Oscars live for many many years, even when it aired really late in Brazil (2 hours ahead of the U.S. right now). I think the first time I watched the whole broadcast was during my senior year of high school, 1989. I went to bed sooooo late, it was crazy! But I totally loved it.

(Slightly unrelated subject: You may not know this, but I am a night person and have always been).

More related to the subject... I have always been a big fan of movies, even though I never watched a lot of them (and when I did, it was only on video or on TV). I always read film reviews (in the São Paulo edition of the Brazilian national news magazine Veja, in the cinema section) and invariable followed which films won Academy Awards so I could watch them if they interested me. Another BIG motivator to watch the Oscars was to see clips of the nominated films and performers, so I could get a glimpse of what they were, even though I probably would never get to watch them. I felt it was part of my "getting to know what's going on in the world" strategy.

Now, the problem is that I want to watch the Oscars every year, but I do NOT watch any TV and I cannot possibly pay for a cable or satellite subscription only to watch live events a few times a year (thankfully I'll be in Brazil for the Olympic Games this year*) [side note, we would probably have the "antenna cable" of about 14 dollars if we had comcast, but this house is subjected to a HORRIBLE local company owned by Sprint, so they are totally to blame for this fiasco tonight. :(] So... yeah... frustration.

I even live blogged the Academy Awards (with LisaV) back in 2008 -- ha! I saw La Vie En Rose (LOVED it!, but still haven't seen Dream Girls, should I?).

Anyway... I don't know if abc picks up well here in this town. All I know is that the first thing I'll do when we finally buy a new TV (ours is from 1996, can you believe it?) is to get an antenna and figure out whether we can get anything over the air... Sigh.

I wish I could be happy that I'm not wasting my time, but instead of doing something useful, all I'm doing now is writing this post and moping. BLAH. I will get started with our packing for the trip right now! Promise!

Sorry for being so annoyingly frustrated!

P.S. I was equally frustrated about the Super Bowl (which this "mashable" site tells me way too late WAS available streaming online) -- and in the end I was glad I didn't watch because the Patriots lost (I lived in MA for 8 years, peeps, my first state in this country, my sons were born there... that state has my allegiance, sorry!) AND about the Grammys. BLAH!!!!! :(
* I think I may have mentioned my OUTRAGE with the Olympic Games coverage in this country in this blog before, maybe I'll write more about that later this year.

A Week of Firsts, Part II (Stephen Sondheim!!!)

2012-02-26T01:13:00.001-05:00

I discovered years and years ago... 23 years, to be more precise, that Stephen Sondheim was a brilliant musician* (I blogged about my favorite song EVER, "Send in the Clowns" here), but it took me all these years to finally see one of his musicals, isn't that crazy?

Nah... not really. I couldn't really afford it earlier, so I'm at peace with it, why regret something I cannot change? I just hope that now that I've seen my first, others will follow. Perhaps even on Broadway someday. A girl's gotta dream, right? ;)

It was this musical and it was an amazing production!! The best part of it is that I knew two of the songs really well ("Pretty Women" and "Not While I'm Around"), but I had no idea of the context in which their appeared -- AWESOME! And I didn't know the details of the plot, so I was surprised and moved at the end.

OK, I can't stop gushing about this, so I will just close with a clip of when Sondheim was interviewed by Stephen Colbert. Don't miss the "Send in the Clows" conclusion:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Fun, huh?

*He's both a lyricist and composer and in his best works he does both.

A Week of Firsts, Part I

2012-02-26T00:42:00.000-05:00

The first "first" is so prosaic I even considered not blogging it, but... since this is a "mommy" blog, I decided to go for it in the end! ;)

This past Monday was the very first day EVER we had a "baby-sitter" (the grandmother of my son's classmate who lives in the street at the back of our house) come to our house to take care of the boys for several hours. We have left them with friends before (generally at our friends' houses), even overnight, and, of course, with my parents and in-laws both at our house and their in Brazil. However, I had never let them with an actual sitter, an acquaintance who had never been to our house. This week they had two days off from school and it was a big hassle, so we had no choice but hire a sitter! We anticipate that their Spring Break (which will be a busy week for us) will be even worse! We've already asked the "Neighbor Granny" to help again!

It felt strange, it really did, to leave and wonder what the kids would be doing and how that lady would handle being with them (and her grand-daughter) at our house for so many hours. Obviously, everything had gone smoothly, my youngest son had done his homework and they had all played games together and watched videos only after lunch as I had recommended. It seems like they all enjoyed it and the granddaughter (who lives with her mom and grandma and sees her dad and two older half-brothers every other weekend), didn't want to leave, particularly because she loved playing with the cats. I think they will all have a good time on Spring Break!

I had prepared plenty of food (rice and beans & some veggies) ahead of time and when I came back, "Neighbor Granny" had washed the dishes and said the only reason she hadn't cleaned my (dirty) stove was that she couldn't find S.O.S. pads... and I felt glad she hadn't. You see, even after having grown up with people helping my mom our household all my life, I've never had anyone help me at my own house and I've grown more and more unaccustomed to the idea, to the point that I feel strange and somewhat bothered by it when I go to Brazil.

It does make perfect sense to have help, though, particularly when I think of both of my parents working full time (or more than full time since my dad was both boarding school chaplain + church pastor [which included building a church over a period of 4 years]). Now that I'm working almost the equivalent of a full-time professor and I'm getting home so tired that I often don't have the energy to cook, let alone clean, etc. So... yeah, it would be great to have help. I don't know if we'll ever go ahead and hire it, though... (and we obviously can't afford it either! ;)

Well... I don't like this post, but I'll post it anyway... :P

Panic and Relief...

2012-02-25T23:40:00.002-05:00

... Phew!!!

I can cross a few more items of my To-Do List (I'm doing that right now, including the book reading ;)

Today's item was hard to achieve, though... and nerve racking. Mostly because trying to book award travel tickets with United Airlines is incredibly difficult! After waiting for the necessary miles to be credited to our account, we tried to call them last night to book the boys' tickets and we were on hold for ONE FULL HOUR with that annoying music & announcement music playing before we simply gave up.

And the whole time I was panicking because I'd just checked the mileage booking online and I could only see travel for 110,000 miles on the dates we needed to travel whereas 10 days ago there were 60,000 mile seats available.

Tonight we tried to call again and costumer service picked up after less than five minutes. It was an Indian lady -- I don't know whether from a call-center in India or here, I don't really care, I was just delighted that she picked up my call -- and she was really patient trying to look up flights for me for nearly an hour before we finally decided on a date.

In the end, we're flying only a week after our desired date, on the 4th of July, but the trip is through Toronto (way longer)! :( Now I need to get ALL the information to the travel agent that works for the university and I hope that the office who awarded me the grant can agree to pay for a much higher (by 800 dollars) airfare than I had originally anticipated. Even if the grant money gets to cover only airfare and one car rental in Brazil, that will be fine with me, since I am able to travel with my family.

I'm very relieved that it all worked out, I just hope my travel authorization can be processed soon (I hadn't submitted it yet because I wanted to know how much my airfare would cost before filling out the form), in spite of the fact that it will have to be signed by the university president! Keep your fingers crossed for me so that it all works out in the end.

On (Electronic) Feedback (or trying not to panic because I have 43 papers to grade)

2012-02-24T15:50:00.002-05:00

Before I forget, I want to register here that I think that this post by Anastasia is excellent (and not really a ramble, BTW, because it's important to revisit one's history with this particular subject ;). Maybe I should check the post she links too (Dr. Crazy's), but I'll do that later.

I have a hard time giving significant feedback to my students. I even participated of a "rubric design" workshop a while back, but I still have a hard time coming up with a good rubric. I wrote TONS of the "bad feedback" comments that Anastasia describes in her post in my three years as a teaching assistant and my two years as a instructor during grad school.

Anastasia's argument in a nutshell: "The clearer a teacher can make expectations and feedback, the better the work she'll get from her students, and the more they'll grow."

Sigh...

I wish I could do that for my students -- but I don't know how clear my expectations about the paper that they turned in last night are. Several students talked to me and two of them even provided me with drafts so I could annotate them (I did that twice for one student yesterday! I hope it helped, because her paper was really bad).

In any case, let me ramble now. I could even find lots of links for posts in this very blog in which I talk about the kind of feedback I received for my dissertation (useless from one person, way too useful from two others -- thankfully! That's why I'm a doctor today), but I'm too tired to go look and re-read these posts.

During my classwork in graduate school I didn't receive very good feedback (similar to the feedback received by Anastasia), but in the last three months "dissertating" I guess I received a huge mountain of feedback that would be enough to correspond to all of my ten years of being a graduate student!

Why so? Because of electronic annotating and track changes in ms word.

How many of you use that? I know (from my horrifying experience working for Axia/ University of Phoenix for a few months) how hard it is to provide electronic feedback, it truly is. And I am eternally thankful for the effort my former advisor and the (unofficial) co-chair of dissertation for having provided me with electronic feedback.

So... I argue here that writing with pen on a printed copy your student's makes it harder to give good feedback. At least for me and based on my experience with the dissertation. Most people can type way faster than writing on paper and that alone helps with the amount of feedback that can be given. Of course, since it's easier to make comments, we run the risk of writing excessively when annotating a paper electronically (I did get really long, rambling comments on the dissertation and while they were helpful, they were sometimes overwhelming).

Now, there might be a downside to tracking changes when correcting grammar and structure -- do the students really learn if all they have to do to have their paper corrected is to "accept changes." Isn't that part of the job of a good teacher, though? To help the students write better?

OK, I have no idea whether my arguments make any sense from you. Can you please let me know what's your opinion about giving electronic feedback to students?

One important perk: it saves paper and trees!!
(but you risk taking forever to actually grade and a pile of paper is lighter than a laptop!).

I wrote this late last night, but I'm publishing today 'cause it looks like I'm in a "blogging binge" these days & I have to spread out the posts!

Reading 'till 2 am

2012-02-23T23:27:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to make a dent in the backlog of blog posts I "need" to write to catch up (to the roster of scheduled posts that is inside my head, mind you!), so here we go, a quick one.

I stayed up 'till 2 am to finish reading this book last Monday to prepare for an upcoming conference. I first started reading it back in January when we were driving to Maryland and I couldn't stop, I was really enthralled, but I obviously had to put the book down when we arrived at BIL's house. Then I read it in short spurts at home and then got stalled for a bit -- there was a part there in the middle that was hard to plow through.

Then on Monday once I started I had to finish because I wanted to know the end of the story. Too bad I was a bit disappointed at the end. More than a bit, actually. This is one of those times in which I fully agree with the book's reviewer (at the NYT). I think that Michiko Kaukutani nails it when she says: "the novel as a whole feels simultaneously contrived and improvisatory, schematic and haphazard."

I also like these statements by Kaukutani, the first referring to various hard to believe scenarios in the novel (grandfather who doesn't speak and [my opinion, not hers], the man who had never left the apartment in years): "There is something precious and forced about such scenarios, as though Mr. Foer were trying to sprinkle handfuls of Gabriel García Márquez's magical realism into his story without really understanding this sleight of hand."

On a positive note, turned negative at the end (that's how she concludes her essay), certain

passages underscore Mr. Foer's ability to evoke, with enormous compassion and psychological acuity, his characters' emotional experiences, and to show how these private moments intersect with the great public events of history. Sadly, these passages are all too few and far between in what is an admirably purposeful but ultimately mannered and irritating novel.

I was disappointed at the "revelations" at the end, I expected more of them. I felt that there were still lots of unanswered questions and loose ends that weren't tied up -- probably on purpose. But some of these unfinished plot lines weaken the book considerably, particularly because of the sense atmosphere that surrounds certain sub-plots. Of course if I wanted any "closure," there couldn't be any, since there is little, if any closure for most people who lost loved ones in 9/11. It was a senseless and world-shattering event and the book demonstrates that.

The book does have lots of strengths, but I feel that it lost considerable steam towards the end. And I fully agree with Kaukutani that Oskar is a really annoying character. I actually thought (was convinced by him, I guess) that he was 12, but he's supposed to be NINE! No WAY! I have a nine year old who's geeky and all, but I don't think Oskar is a realistic 9 year old. Twelve would seem fine to me, but then, again, I don't have a 12 year old son and maybe even 12 would feel off.

Ultimately, it was funny because when I re-read the book I'm presenting on (after having started this one) I was really disappointed with it, thinking, something like "Oh, this is definitely a book for kids, pretty simple, with not enough psychological depth and complexity, etc." And when I went back to reading this one I was pumped up (though it seemed WAY too complex for a children's book and it does talk about sex quite a lot, so it would be more appropriate for older kids, probably not for a 9 year old like the protagonist). I think my disappointment with this book was bigger because the expectations were higher.

Oh well... I'm not even that excited about seeing the film now, just curious. I can definitely wait until I can see it streaming online.

P.S. And I was really tired the next day, which was really intense and in which I stayed at the university until 11 pm for a show.

Anxiously Waiting...

2012-02-23T09:07:00.002-05:00

... for this month's credit card earned miles to post to my mileage account so I can schedule the boys' flights to Brazil.

It's complicated because the travel grant I was awarded. Since I'm traveling with my sons, who are flying with miles, I need to book their flights first.Then, I'll contact the university to let them know which flight their travel agent should book for me, since they'll be paying for my trip. However, before they can purchase my ticket, I need to have my travel authorization form approved and I haven't even filled that because I don't know the boys' travel dates and how much my ticket will cost. What a nightmare!

Here's the problem: this process is WAY more involved than I thought it'd be because K could only transfer 15,000 miles to my account and not the nearly 20K that we needed. That brought our total of miles 2K under what we need to book two tickets for the boys. so we had to go ahead and buy K's ticket as well as computer to his mom on our credit card to earn the necessary miles to reach what we needed.

The miles were supposed to have been credited yesterday, but they haven't (YET), so I'm on pins and needles here, obsessively checking the mileage plan website and (yesterday at least) and the credit card site. I hope everything works out smoothly. I really need to have this trip all figured out so I can stop feeling anxious about it.

Sigh...

And that's just ONE of the many things that has been in my thoughts lately. That's why it's hard to blog... I have way too many things to ~~obsess~~ worry about.

The Boy and the Blue Flowers: @ Longwood Gardens 2005 - 2010

2012-02-23T00:53:00.000-05:00

2005: 9 months old

2006 - Almost 2

2008 - Almost 4

2010 - Almost 6!

Closer:

2005

2008

Growing up:

2005

2006

2010

2010: Complimentary extra photo, tree-hugging brothers

(following in the footsteps of their tree-hugging forester uncle!).

Too much talking, very little action

2012-02-21T00:16:00.000-05:00

In the end, I wrote that I was going to edit past posts, and I never did it! I should have done it without a "warning" because when I went back, trying to find those mistakes, I couldn't anymore. I know they're all there, but now I'm not so keen on looking for them anyway... Sigh.

Life continues to be crazy-busy and I don't know how it's going to be next week before our trip. The boys have their Social Studies fair (to which a large part of the work needs to be done by a parent, or at least all the checking that the boys have fulfilled all requirements). In fact, I shouldn't be writing this post, I should be making homemade playdough so my son could build his "island" tomorrow with mountains, lakes, hills, etc. You know... I feel it'd be easy just to buy playdough or use everything we have stashed somewhere so he wouldn't have to paint it all later. Would that be cheating? Maybe I'll call his teacher tomorrow morning. :(

In any case... I just thought I'd say hi. I want to post older photos, particularly of foods, but these resolutions never seem to come true. Let's see!

Editing as I re-read old posts

2012-02-17T08:28:00.002-05:00

I began systematically reading my archives last night, starting with May and then June 2008, and I realized that there are typos and errors in those old posts, so I will being to do some proof-reading and editing. I think the typos were from before the time when browsers had automatic spelling correction (I like that so much, it keeps my writing much cleaner!).

In any case, I don't know if editing old posts shows up in peoples' feeds of my blog, so I wanted to give you fair warning before I do "republish" edited old posts, OK?

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

23 lovely comments...

2012-02-16T21:45:00.001-05:00

... that was what I got on the day I defended my dissertation: April 16, 2008.

I was just browsing through the blog archives and I came to that post. Wow... it was so amazing to have so many people sharing my triumph that day. I get emotional just thinking about it. Two of those commenters were already my friends (Lucy & Keiko) and I already knew Libby since 2000. As for the other blogging friends who commented, I got to meet five in person: diber, Articulate Dad, Rocket Mom, Jo(e) and Scrivener.

I still want very much to meet everyone else, although I'm no longer in touch with Prisca & Jennie and I don't know if they still read. I hope I get to meet M, Aliki, Jody, Tracy, Dawn, and Prof Mama (no longer blogging under that name, brave friend) and Alice and Kate in Europe.

I'm sorry for not including links... it would take too long and most of you know who you (and the others) are.

Blogging is amazing and it brought so many dear friends into my life! Thank you for being there and also for sharing your life with me in your blog as well.

P.S. and I acknowledged my blogging friends in my dissertation too, remember?

My Valentine's Day Gift (to myself!)

2012-02-14T23:03:00.000-05:00

Last year I leisurely read my favorite Jane Austen novel on Valentine's Day, but this year I took a different approach. I decided to go to my very first "real" yoga class (i.e. in a yoga studio, not a fitness class at the university, where most of the classes are taught by undergraduate students).

I chose this particular studio and teacher because last July she was a substitute teacher one day and I thought that was the most perfect class I'd ever had, the first time I was doing "real" yoga. This semester, I'm enjoying the instructors I have at the university (I take classes two days a week), the Yoga II one is really good (the others not so much), but I wish I could try to go to this studio to have a third class each week.

I really loved it, too bad it was a lunch-time class that only lasted one hour (I shouldn't even complain about that because at the university the classes only last 50 minutes because it's lunch time too).

I did go out to lunch and then frozen yogurt with my dear (and cute)* husband afterwards, but the yoga class was the highlight of my day! I wanted to watch this (which I got for Christmas), but I have to prepare to teach tomorrow! :(

*OK, I have to share this silly thing. K is still kind of puzzled as to why I think it's so cute, and even I can't explain it, but I just think it is. Here's what happened... he turned to me last Friday and said, "Hey, I listened to the song that won the Grammy, and it's nice!" And I -- really puzzled -- responded, "What do you mean, by 'won the Grammy'? The Grammy is on Sunday!" And now he was confused and said, "I don't know, then maybe it's the song that's going to win the Grammy." "Is it by Adele?" I asked, and then I got really excited because I like Adele and I immediately opened a couple of videos for him to watch online and he confirmed that it was "Rolling in the Deep" that he'd heard and liked. I just thought it was so cute of him to be so clueless both about the Grammy Awards and Adele! At least he has good taste, right? (look who he chose to marry! ;) -- silly joke, fit for VD, though!

Would you do LASIK @ 40?

2012-02-13T00:24:00.002-05:00

I actually wanted to title this post something like "Cranky Lilian is Back, with the eye & eyeglasses trouble," but it was too unwieldy and negative.

The truth is: I can't stand wearing eye-glasses. They make me beyond cranky and depressed because I'm constantly reminded me of my physical "handicap" of having poor vision. Not to mention that they are uncomfortable, a pain to wear with hats in winter, get smeared & foggy, etc.

I don't like glasses because I never had to wear them, since I was blessed with good vision for the first 18 years of my life and then wore contacts for the 22 years after that. Well, except for the nearly 6-7 months I was forced to avoid wearing lenses last year (because of this, you'll recall), a period in which I was always cranky and upset too, but I tried not to express those feelings in the blog.

The problem is that when I'm wearing contacts, I act like I have good vision & wear them for 16 hours straight (for as long as I'm awake, which most nights is very late, like 1-2 am). I suspect that this is what caused my GPC in the first place. You'd think I'd learned my lesson after having a "sick eye" for most of last year and then having it finally heal, but no! :(

I will probably have to go back to my new doctors -- optometrists this time because the ophthalmologist plain LIED to me about GPC's connection to contact lenses (as I wrote on the post linked to above, he said it had nothing to do with lenses, which left me flabbergasted) -- and get my GPC treated.

I wonder, though, should I even consider getting LASIK*? At 40? (when the chances of needing reading glasses increase every year). It annoys me that to even consider it I have to wear contacts for at least two weeks before the doctor's visit to check surgery eligibility. One good thing is that I don't have to pay for the visit! One other thing to consider is that the surgery is risky, am I willing to run this risk just so I can ditch the glasses for a few years?

After I buy new, more comfortable, eyeglasses, I think I will schedule an appointment. Let's see. One thing is certain, if I new I could safely treat and, most of the time, prevent GPC, I wouldn't even give LASIK another thought because I'm really OK with contacts and I don't mind having cloudy vision in the morning... I can read without glasses or contacts and use the computer, I just can't see far away.

What would you do? I think I'll go as far as having the appointment, for now... and I'll keep you posted.

* I never liked this acronym (thinking to myself that people "had" to say here in the U.S. it because it was a trademark or something, and it IS. In Brazil we call it simply "laser eye surgery"), but I was surprised to learn that it actually means something: "laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis." The description of the surgery is pretty scary!

On Giving Up (Academic Publishing)

2012-02-10T17:12:00.000-05:00

I gave up on academic publishing and, in a way, on being a "real" academic, many years ago...

In fact, in digging through our desktop just now, I came across and read the two blind peer review reports from the first and last article that I submitted to a more serious and prestigious academic journal (Children's Literature). I received those back in September 2005 and I never revised and submitted that particular paper (which I had written 5 years before to begin with) -- re-engaging with the literature would have been a lot of trouble and, besides, I had my dissertation to work on. I began working on the dissertation that same month and three years later I finished.

My only two publications were basically "requested" by the editor of another, much smaller journal, who is a friend of mine and a wonderful editor. I really like my two published articles and the Brazilian children's author I wrote about in one of them loved it and after I translate it to Portuguese, it's supposed to be published in the journal of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Have I translated that yet? How long ago did she give me the good news of the possible publication? I don't even know, maybe three, four years ago?

I guess you could say that in fact I gave up on myself and my capacity to put concentrated effort on something that is interesting but, in the grand scheme of things, meaningless like most of academic research, particularly in the humanities. Don't get me started on that... of course you can say I'm only using this argument to justify not working, which is true, but... whatever. I'll try to think and write more about this some other time.

I feel frustrated and like a failure because I gave up, though. I guess I'm just plain lazy and I'm only doing easy academic things, i.e. presenting at various conferences, I really enjoy conferences and I generally do a good job (except back in 2009 at Harvard when I we were putting the house on the market & I was a wreck). I just don't try to work on my papers and submit them to publication.

Another problem is how incredibly hard it is for me to deal with negative feedback. I literally cannot get over it. So... there you go. Another reason why I knew I could never ever apply to a tenure track job and gave up on that too... sigh.

Sorry about the depressing post. I just needed some space to vent a bit after reading those reviews (very helpful, by the way). Now I'm going to go and have some Chai. Recipe and photos upcoming!!! So exciting!!

Tidbits of Acute Inarticulateness

2012-02-10T13:19:00.000-05:00

I am just loving my "job" right now, but I can't really articulate my thoughts about it at the moment. Because it's complicated, this adjuncting gig-thing, as Anastasia says it always so well -- (I want to come back and blog about that post, BTW).

I'm slightly stressed out but wildly excited about our South Africa trip.

The mommy thing. It's hard. HARD! I cherish & adore my sons, really, I do, but it's so involved, this parenting gig, especially the piano practicing and the homework and what with the constant bickering and fighting. I don't swear, ever, but this "iconoclastic" Pulp Fiction-style* post by Jo** is pretty fantastic and may be shocking if you think that parenting is this holy sanctimonious institution.***

I'm falling in love with my house too & need to write about it, but I'm afraid can't be sufficiently articulate for good blog post.

I'm deeply into an Asian food phase: cooked very first Thai vegetable curry two weeks ago, had sushi, miso, Asian noodles overdose two weekends ago with large group of friends, cooked sushi again last week (have.great.photos! have to blog 'em!); & you already know I'm craving & drinking tons of chai (post coming up later today).

I miss Brazil and don't miss it at the same time. Can't articulate that either. How frustrating! The good thing is that I'm perfectly happy with how I feel about it. Weird, no? That's why I can't write about it either.

Oh, this and that other thing are totally complicating a whole lot my feelings about the first item above. I don't want to feel exploited. I CAN'T! And in a sense those things make me exploited if I don't have a real deal (job) but get these perks here and there. HUGE SIGH.

Edited to add: My eye trouble came back. It's mild, I'm being careful, but I'm upset and, understandably, I can't talk about it because of that. :(

There's one place that I seem to be super articulate now, thankfully: when writing emails and guided reading questions for my students. Maybe that's why I love my job? I feel articulate & pretty capable?

P.S. and I'm getting addicted to Pinterest & writing lots there too. NOT GOOD. One more thing to add to my horrible and incurable (because I don't want to be cured) internet addiction.

from the queen of the footnotes to you, my dear friend!

* When many years ago I told my brother that I'd seen Pulp Fiction and loved it -- up to a certain point, obviously -- he was astounded.

** Who came back to blogging, YAY, Jo!

*** She blogged about people getting upset about it here the very next day.

"As Vitrines" - my favorite Chico Buarque song

2012-02-08T21:03:00.000-05:00

Today Joy Mars commented on my post about the song "Beatriz."

While I wait for Joy to tell me which are her favorite Brazilian songs, I thought I'd post about my favorite song with music and lyrics by Chico Buarque. I chose to share my favorite interpretation of it by Gal Costa:

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Here are the lyrics and my (quick) translation, I'm sure it doesn't do Chico's lyrics any justice, but at least it conveys most of the meaning:

Eu te vejo sumir por aí         I see you disappear over there
Te avisei que a cidade          I warned you that the city
era um vão                        was an empty space
- Dá tua mão                      “Give me your hand”
- Olha pra mim                   “Look at me”
- Não faz assim                  “Don’t do that”
- Não vai lá não                  “Don’t go there, no.”

Os letreiros a te colorir         The neon signs coloring you
Embaraçam a minha visão     Entangle my vision
Eu te vi suspirar de aflição     I saw you sigh from affliction
E sair da sessão,                   And leave the screening,
frouxa de rir                          weak from laughter.

Já te vejo brincando,        I already see you playing,
gostando de ser               enjoying to be
Tua sombra                     Your own shadow
a se multiplicar                 multiplying itself
Nos teus olhos                 In your eyes
também posso ver           I can also see
As vitrines                       The shop windows
te vendo passar               Seeing you go by

Na galeria, cada clarão   In the gallery,* each bright light
É como um dia                Is like a day
depois de outro dia         after another day
Abrindo um salão           Opening into a large room
Passas em exposição      You go by as an exhibition
Passas sem                    You pass by without
ver teu vigia                    noticing your watchman
Catando a poesia           [who’s] picking up the poetry
Que entornas no chão    You pour on the ground

sigh... I just love this. I actually enjoy singing it and hopefully I will later this semester when we have our MPB night at the university.

* Before there were shopping malls in Brazil, the bigger cities had "galleries" which were long "corridors" with shops on both sides on the first floor of commercial buildings. People could actually enter the building on one street and exit onto another street crossing a whole city blog. It was like a small mall. Sometimes galerias were open in the center to the floors above with stairs and balustrades around looking down.

My New Sweet Obsession

2012-02-07T21:21:00.003-05:00

I know it may sound lame because it's made with decaf black tea (with added red rooibos tea) and because I'm using almond milk (should I try a non-dairy creamer in my chai if I want to keep it vegan? suggestions appreciated), but...

It is really delicious. If you're not a big coconut fan (I only like coconut on certain things), I must say that you can barely taste the coconut that they've added to this particular blend and it has just the right spiciness and body. I drank a lot of chai in Florida (this one, provided by my SIL, thanks!), but I'm not used to caffeine and had headaches for a few days at the end of our week there, so I need to drink decaf chai. I know Tazo sells it too, and I'm planning to check it out.

I'm actually buying the spices to try to make chai from scratch. I'll try to blog that if I do it, OK? Meanwhile, I have a lot of grading to do for tomorrow, so I should probably go make some of it right now!

Off with the fluff/ To-Do List!

2012-02-06T23:39:00.002-05:00

I don't know how/why I left that post there for so long... it's true, or was true, but it's a bit embarrassing, I think. whatever...

the truth is that I embarrass myself more often than I'd like. A place I do that A LOT is in other people's blog's comment sections.

truth is, my brain's too tired to think up & write intelligent & coherent blog posts. All posts I can think of writing are "fluffy" so... I may throw a few more at you just to keep this blog going. Not that much goes on here.

One non-fluff stuff I can say is that my to-do lists are so big that I just haven't been able to finish them and I'm getting really nervous about the big trip coming up next month. I really NEED (I'd written want, it's NOT want!) to be all caught up with grading and everything I need to take care of before we travel to South Africa.

Ha!! there's nothing less fluffy in the world than a matter-of-fact to do list. And I'll get to come and cross out the items with the date of completion (which is a bit fluffy, but, whatever....!)

Lilian's To-Do List before March 2, 2012

- ~~Finish filling up travel authorization form for conference and submit it to dept~~; 2/7/12
- ~~Submit book receipts from last semester for reimbursement~~; 2/7/12
- ~~Buy plane tickets to conference at the end of March~~; 2/7/12 (night)
- ~~Become a member of Professional Organization and register for conference~~; 2/7/12 (night)
- ~~Finish re-reading book I'm writing my paper on~~; around 2/9/12
- Order film based on book (it's being released before the conference, YAY!) & watch it (again) to help write paper;
- Write paper (IMP: start before I get the film) and prepare presentation;
- ~~Finish reading book from panel~~ and see the corresponding movie before it's not in theaters anymore (I'm afraid I won't have time to do the last part! :( ); (2 am, 2/21/12)
- ~~Decide dates of trip to Brazil & "buy" award travel tickets for boys~~ -- do that ASAP!!; Woo-Hoo!! It worked out!! 02/25/12
- Get documents notarized & mail the paperwork for L's Brazilian passport (ASAP too!);
- Be up to date with the grading;
- Clean and organize endless piles of paper in my office (probably won't get done).

If I remember anything else, I'll come edit this list. I should probably be able to cross out at least one item by the end of the night. Maybe.

P.S. feel free to email me if you're curious to know which books & films I'm talking about!

Beauty Brings Me to Tears: "First Impressions" & "The Summer Day"

2012-02-02T21:57:00.002-05:00

Last week I turned on our desktop computer maybe for the first time since we moved to this house (it is not connected to the internet just yet)* and while digging through old files and checking out the music that is in that computer I found this piece (together with "Appalachia Waltz," which is beautiful, but cannot compare to "First Impresions," IMHO) -- the audio quality is not great in this Youtube video, but it's better than nothing (if you have Spotify, please listen to it over there!):

I wasn't expecting such beauty when I clicked on that track, so I promptly burst into tears and cried silently for several minutes (my boys were in the room & I didn't want them to freak out), listening to the song over and over again. Even I was surprised at how deeply it touched me. Then, while the song was still playing, I found this poem by Mary Oliver (by all means, read it while listening) and I cried even harder:
(I hope Oliver doesn't mind that I didn't ask permission to reproduce it in the blog, I found it here -- a government site)

The Summer Day
Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA

Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver.

Those last lines I knew, from longtime blogger and talented writer Catherine Newman. The piece of music and the poem together just filled me with beauty in such a way that it simply overflowed in tears that I couldn't contain.

And then I desperately tried to remember who had told me about this album by Yo Yo Ma, Frank O'Connor and Edgar Meyer. I thought it was Susan Ito and I combed through her archives to try and find a reference, but I couldn't (maybe it's there somewhere). If it was you, by any chance that first told me about this music, could you let me know? I want to heartily thank whoever gave me this gift of beauty.

*because the room we chose to be our office/library doesn't have a phone jack (unfortunately we have DSL internet) -- we need to pull the cable from the next room to inside the closet and install the phone jack, but we haven't done it yet.

Sick Children & Academic Work Days/Schedules

2012-02-02T00:12:00.003-05:00

It is hard to work when one's child is sick, but K & I have been juggling our boys' sicknesses and not skipping work (i.e. teaching our classes). That's one of the many good things about an academic (or, in my case, "pseudo-academic" ;) career -- it generally gives you more flexibility.

We didn't really work on it this semester as we should have (except for office hours), but K and I will probably try to always teach at different times so we can "juggle" the kids if needed. I will never forget those days back in 2002 when I would hand newborn Kelvin to K so I could go teach my class and then I'd get him back after the class period and go home. We did that for two years (including one summer session [class almost 4h long, baby 4 months old], night teaching [2.5 h] and one winter session) and it worked just fine!

What complicates matters considerably now is that we live about 20 miles away from the university, so when the kids are sick and we want to teach anyway (this is what I did today -- after all, I only want to miss a teaching day when I am sick, not my children!), we have to drag their poor sick selves to the university with us for a couple of hours.

Last semester Kelvin stayed in my office for 1h15 minutes one day with a high fever, poor thing, while I taught my class and the next day he had to stay at his dad's lab for a couple of hours. Today, I had to cancel appointments with five students in the morning because Linton woke up with a stomach bug. I didn't want to miss teaching my class, though, so I put him in the car, brought him to K's office (where the poor boy had to stay by himself for about 15 minutes until dad finished teaching his class), taught my class and 2h later came to pick him up and bring him back home.

It worked out fine, but only because K didn't have to teach and could stay with Linton while directing a student at the lab. Tomorrow K will stay home from the university in the morning (since he doesn't teach until 12:30pm) while I go in early for office hours and teaching. The boys have a half day of school tomorrow because it's ski day (I doubt poor Linton will go), so K will have to bring them to the university to teach his class and I'll pick them up in his office at 1:50pm... Sigh...

Talk about Tag Team Parenting! (which used to be the very fitting name of my friend Aliki's old blog).

P'Interesting -- and my Dream Destination

2012-02-01T23:24:00.000-05:00

So, yeah... today, after I read my friend's Anjali's post, I went ahead and logged back into Pinterest after a couple of months not going there.

Then, I began to pin photos of my UTMOST "Dream Destination" (The Havasupai Reservation, close to the Grand Canyon National Park where the amazingly blue Havasu river flows, falling into four spectacular waterfalls.

It all started one day back in 2006 when I was supposed to be hard at work on my dissertation. I "needed" to take some time off, so I spent HOURS day-dreaming over this Flickr set posted by Jessica/"Crunchy Girl" May of 2006. I would post some photos to this post, giving full credit to Jessica (and I have been wanting to do just that for nearly 4 years), however, I don't feel comfortable simply saving her photos and posting them here as I've done with random internet photos in the past. That's why I didn't do it in the past 6 years (I always thought I should send her a message and ask permission, blah, blah, blah).

Well, a few minutes ago, I pinned several of her photos, and... low and behold!... within SECONDs tens, almost hundreds of people were liking and re-pinning my pins. I hope Jessica doesn't mind!! But I do feel a bit guilty.

This just demonstrates that Pinterest is something that people definitely "dig" nowadays... is it just a fad, though? I also pinned some recipes today, it's easier than writing full blog posts about thinks I like online.

Am I officially hooked? I don't think so, but I'm definitely p'interested! ;)

Tele-Teaching (?!)

2012-01-30T15:56:00.003-05:00

Well, well, well...

I was communicated this morning that next semester I will be "tele-teaching" a class for students at another university in addition to mine here and I was not that excited...actually, when I first heard of the possibility last week, I was positively scared and stressed out.

a quick phone call to my husband changed my mind just a bit ( he argued getting involved with this brand-new development in higher education might be another advantage to me, making me more "indispensable" blah, blah... though I only see it as further sign of my exploitation).

so, yeah... I know very little about this "thing," except from news releases I found online googling the name of the project (which I'm obviously not going to share here). My office-mate (the lovely lady from Iraq) will have to do it too and she already told me that we should receive more compensation for it & I fully agree. I just sent an email to the dept. chair giving her more information about my class (that she'd requested) and I put a line in there about compensation. I'm beginning my slow but sure fight over here, you can count on that.

I'll keep you posted. It's like I always say, there's never a dull moment in my "adventurous life." (sigh)

ha-ha-ha :p

The "Hair" Post, or how I've been agonizing about hair since 1977 ;)

2012-01-26T23:32:00.002-05:00

Here's the plan, folks. I'll write the post, then I'll take my time and make a photo album & link to it. And then, maybe I'll insert photos in the post later. I'll do this because I've been writing this post in my head for at least four or five years, it's hard time I get it out, isn't it?!

I think it must have been 1977, the year I turned six. I don't know for sure. All I know is that my mom must have overreacted and been so upset about it that now I remember details from that day. Walking down the street and entering a door that led to the hair salon and leaving the place afterwards.

Problem was, the hairdresser cut my hair way too short, not exactly what you call a "pixie" cut here, but short and ugly. And I think that my (yes, that's unfortunately true) "unfulfillable" lifelong wish to have beautiful, long hair must have started that day. Alas, it was not to be!

I don't think I cared much about the short haircut, but I most certainly remember it. My mom kept my hair at "bob" length for most of my life. And she always carefully combed it and tried to straighten it, so it didn't look that great, but it was OK. What I never understood was why my mom never let my hair grow long (and I don't have the answer to this question, I never asked her, but I can speculate why).

At 13 I rebelled against my nicely combed curls. For the first time in my life I tried what was called (in Brazil, in English!) "rinse" cream (creme rinse). I distinctly remember the first times I put it in my hair and rinsed it off. I hated the sensation in the skin down my back, I got all slippery and sticky and even after the shower, it still felt strange. But... it made the hair so soft!!

And I quickly found out a secret! If I washed my hair, got out of the shower, shook my head like a wet puppy, and let my hair air dry like that, I would have a head covered in curls! That was new and pretty much it consisted the bulk of my "teenage rebelliousness."

From that day forward (I think it was 1984, time for the "New Wave" fashions, bright colors such as neon and lime green, hot pink, strong lavender... sigh... it was fun), my mom never touched my hair again.

A few years later I was able to proudly wear my hair in a short bob, parted on the side, kind of puffy, shorter in the back, just like a famous actress, I felt so cool!

That must have been my "high point" as far as hair is concerned. After that, I could never find a good hairdresser and I had a series of bad haircuts. The one I hated the most was the "mullet," which is how my hair looked when met K. I started growing it out soon after we met, though, and let it grow long for our wedding. Sigh.

My hair cannot be grown long, though. You may think that such a thing doesn't exist, but that's becaue you don't know my hair. It's curly, so it looks like a lot, but I don't have that much hair and... the worst part of it, it's extremely, horribly fine, super thin. So... I can let it grow all I want, but it will thin out at the bottom and just look bad. (I rarely did it throughout my life, only now in the past 3-4 years -- but blow-drying the hair straight just make it look even thinner and lifeless).

After I moved to the U.S. I never cut my hair. Lack of money, fear of having a bad haircut. I went for years without haircuts, literally. I know. Horrible. The worst was during my pregnancy with Linton, I think it was the longest it ever got in my life. And it didn't look good, no, it did not.

I found some wonderful hairdressers in Brazil, though, and they cut my hair short and I realized it that I could even blow dry it (only during late Fall, Winter and early Spring) because the heated and dry environments here in the U.S. would keep it nice.

One of my favorite jokes (with just a hint of truth in it) is to say that I cannot go back to Brazil because that would mean living constantly with "bad hair days" (and, summers are one looong, never ending "bad hair season" for me, I have the photos to prove it, many of them).

In conclusion, I'm writing this post to document this angst with hair that has followed me all my life. There's obviously more to this topic (not to mention tons of photos documenting every single thing I say -- remember the day of my 40th birthday, for example?), but I'll stop here for now.

The reason I wrote this post? I am always 100% decided that I will have the most radical haircut of all my life, in which the back will be really short and the front longer, which is the total opposite of how I've had my hair for the past 7 years when I began to have a "bob" most of the time.

You have no idea how "brave" I need to be to do this. This post cannot convey all that I've felt about hair and having haircuts over the years, but... you know what? I think it's time to "rebel" again, enjoy my forties, enjoy my dark hair before more white ones starts to crop up and when getting highlights won't be just an option, but a need if I want to disguise them. ;) I have this crazy "dream" though, that like my dad, and his mother before him, I will have very few white hairs. Except that I've got my mother's genes & everyone in her family gets to have gorgeous silver hair... Well, the future will tell what will happen to mine!

blogger's block

2012-01-26T23:00:00.000-05:00

So much that I want to write and yet... I'm so tired, I don't feel like doing anything, much less writing in the blog.

We've been really busy, as usual. I'm in a cooking groove. So much so that I'm hosting two meals this weekend at our house... I'll make a few soups for our friends tomorrow night and on Saturday a group of our friends is having a "Sushi & Friends" (friends=foods that go with sushi) potluck lunch!

I will try to post some photos later. If I find the energy.

You have no idea whatsoever how many meals/recipes/foods I photograph because I want to post them to the blog and then in the end I just don't. I see other people's gorgeous photographs of foods, I get frustrated (and tired, and blocked) and I reason that none of my readers cares about what I've been cooking anyway (and that it would be in that horrible category of "what I just had for lunch" tweet, or facebook update)... so... yeah, I just don't.

All right, after this couple of paragraphs I'm officially "unblocked," but I need to go to bed. K & I don't teach on Fridays, so I've volunteered to let him sleep in & I want to take the boys to school tomorrow.

P.S. that means that I've got to start working and planning and stuff. I'm trying to stay on top of things, though. Tonight I wrote a page and a half of my paper presentation for the conference coming up in March.

Oh no! Not again!

2012-01-24T21:02:00.003-05:00

Do you remember this? In a subsequent post, I gave more details and the latest update is that he is going to undergo radiation therapy starting in a few weeks. He had a bit of a hard time (pain due to the nerve that was removed) during K's family reunion during the holidays, but he was fine and we are all optimistic about his prognosis.

Well... what I don't think I shared here was that someone else in the family had undergone a biopsy back in November, but hadn't picked up the results until this week because of the Florida trip and another trip in Brazil that ended last week.

It turns out that my MIL has been diagnosed with a malignant growth in her body as well, just as we feared. Even more than my BIL's, hers is eminently treatable -- literally everyone we talk to say that if a person had to choose a type of cancer, this should be it, because it's contained and can be removed without too much trouble. (What a thing to say, isn't it? But several people have expressed that to me, today alone).

My own mother had her thyroid removed (due to abnormal growth, nothing malignant) several years ago and she explained to me that the biggest problem is figuring out the correct doses for the hormone replacement, so we're hoping everything will be well in the end. We just don't know she's going to deal with the trip to South Africa (by postponing treatment again? I hope not). Well, it's her life, not mine and I don't feel 100% comfortable blogging about this (she's such a private person, after all), but I had to share.

Sigh.

"Blogs vs. Term Papers" -- I tried to do it and was told I shouldn't

2012-01-24T09:09:00.000-05:00

Matt Richtell wrote about this a few days ago in the NYT and I just wanted to let you know that that's precisely one of the things I had planned for my brand-new class last semester: weekly blog posts by students and a portfolio collecting the semester's class activities (which included questionnaires about the readings, group discussion activities, etc), in addition to a final research project.

When the (tiny, 3 people) general education committee reviewed my syllabus (which I designed after a week-long workshop back in June), they responded that there were not enough "formal writing assignments." In spite of the fact that we were on the third week of the semester (and a bit overwhelmed by 3 blog entries I hadn't yet "graded") and also eager to please the committee and comply, I substituted the remaining 9 blog posts by 4 short academic papers... BLAH...(one thing is true, it's hard to "grade" blog posts, they should basically all receive the full grade, unless it's too short or not engaging enough. Grading papers is more objective).

This semester I adopted a hybrid approach: 6 blog posts throughout the semester and 2 academic papers. Someday I hope to be able to switch to a more interactive approach to writing assignments, particularly because I believe that when the students can share their feelings and reactions about the readings and, most importantly, relate the subjects to their own lives, they learn a lot more!

In Richtell's article he reports that English Professor Andrea A.Lunsford from Stanford "has collected 16,000 writing samples from 189 Stanford students from 2001 to 2007, and is studying how their writing abilities and passions evolved as blogs and other multimedia tools crept into their lives and classrooms."

Her conclusion is that students feel much more impassioned by the new literacy. They love writing for an audience, engaging with it. They feel as if they’re actually producing something personally rewarding and valuable, whereas when they write a term paper, they feel as if they do so only to produce a grade.

Lunsford conclusion is very interesting and my students seemed to feel the same way. The end of course survey that my students answered last semester demonstrated that students thought that blogging helped them learn better than academic papers.

I wrote the first three paragraphs of this post before finishing the NYT article, so I had to smile when I reached this statement: "As Professor Lunsford illustrates, choosing to educate using either blogs or term papers is something of a false opposition. Teachers can use both." Yeah... I guess I figured that out on my own, didn't I? :)

Awarded!!

2012-01-23T21:12:00.001-05:00

Remeber the suspenseful waiting from last December?

Well...
I've got great news: I got the grant!! Isn't that awesome?

The best part is that this grant* and the subsequent study abroad program (if successfully implemented) mean that the university is investing in me and that maybe someday I can have more certain employment there.

I know... I shouldn't be relying on that (and I am not), especially because the sad truth is that if the academic job market is bad it's certainly much worse for foreign language instruction. However... now that I began to infiltrate into general education (my specialty in graduate school), there may be more hope for me.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my class, let's see if I'll be able to memorize the name of 40 students! (sigh)

*which was supposed to be awarded only to full-time faculty -- who are normally those who teach abroad.
Note: I only applied after my chair, who was the person who suggested I apply in the first place, talked to the study abroad people and gave me the go-ahead to apply.

One Year Ago Today

2012-01-21T23:55:00.000-05:00

So, one year ago we made an offer on this house, which was accepted a few days later. We closed and moved in in April. I have a post about the house brewing in my mind for a while now, but I can't write it tonight... I just wanted to post this for the record! ;)

Vera, or How I Don't Care About "Looking Professional"

2012-01-19T09:16:00.001-05:00

This is my new (laptop) backpack (from here) and it makes me soooooo happy!

It's the most expensive (even on sale) backpack I've ever owned, but it is undoubtedly the very best. And I'm not saying that just because I think it's pretty, but because it's well made, roomy, seems to be resistant (it's all lined with synthetic materials on the inside) and it is very comfortable to wear, even with a heavy 16 inch laptop (in the main compartment since it only fits laptops up to 15 in.), two heavy textbooks and other books and things. It was just what I needed to be more efficient at work!

It does not look one bit "professional," but it's just what I wanted and I'm definitely taking it along when I go to my discipline's annual conference in March to present a paper. Flower Power!

Downton Abbey Overdose

2012-01-18T23:17:00.003-05:00

OK, it's all your fault -- my friends in the computer!!

You kept tweeting (it's not twittering, right? that would be the actually birds, no? ;) about Downton Abbey to the point that you made me want to check it out! The laundry is to blame too, because after feeling so efficient I wanted to reward myself with something fun and... well... frivolous. ;)

Oh, and I'll go ahead and blame it on Time Magazine's article too (from last week) that featured the real house and its actual owners (and how they need to rent out their estate for filming in order to maintain the house since they don't have much money). It definitely made me curious.

So on Monday night, after I loaded the washer for the fifth & last time, I went to look for it and figured out that the first season was available for viewing online on PBS.org (note: it's not anymore, more on that in a minute). I watched the first episode (because I had to get ready to teach the next morning) and liked it. The problem is that I didn't realize that all of season one was only available until last night (1/17).

I needed to prepare classes for today last night, but I ended up caving in and watching episodes 2, 3 and part of 4 until 3 am! -- just because I knew they were going to "disappear" from the website (which they did). That was silly of me because they're available for streaming on Netflix -- that's how I watched the end of episode four (which is 7 in Netflix -- different number of episodes there from pbs).

The "bad" thing was that when I stopped viewing it and finally went to bed (midway through last episode of the season), I thought it was going really well, but tonight, after watching the end of the episode, I didn't like it quite as much.

The truth is... I realized years ago, that I don't really like TV or cinema, I like literature, so... I generally like book adaptations much better than original scripts (even when I haven't read the original! it seems I can "recognize" it's a literary work even without knowing sometimes). The latter seem shallow and contrived to me and that's precisely how I felt about Downton Abbey this evening...

I will continue watching, though (online, we have no cable or tv that picks up the air signals). These things are addictive, unfortunately. Mindless entertainment (which I don't care much for, but... isn't literature that too? Well... yes, but it's more of an art than made-for-TV things, right. Right?!!

Anyone else out there watching?

Efficient Monday (just for the record)

2012-01-18T22:42:00.000-05:00

I'm a couple days late posting this, but you'll soon know why...

I just wanted to record in the blog (for my own benefit, no one else's, as everything else I write here) that I did five loads of laundry on Monday and by the time I went to bed (very late, more on that soon) four of the loads had been folded and put away (while the fifth was drying): two loads of dark clothes, two of light colored ones and one of "hand-washables" (including six of K's dress shirts that needed to soak in oxyclean, my favorite stain remover, before washing).

I felt so efficient! (and, BTW, I prefer to do lots of loads in one day every two weeks or so rather than spreading them out several days a week).

P.S. I really enjoy doing laundry and I've blogged about it on and off. I haven't written more because I think it's probably a boring subject for other people.

Edited to add: since I started, and because I'm just plain crazy, now I'll have a full list of my main "Laundry posts:" :)

2007: I wrote this "intro to clothesline" and this closet post;
2008: had a good laugh about my January 2008 clothesline disaster,
2009: I went all out and couldn't shut up about laundry in this post about boy's underpants (I still can't believe K had/maybe has 22 boxers, Kelvin probably has the same number. Which means that doing laundry once a month is feasible in our house ;).
2010: feeling accomplished (before we moved); and productive (after we moved);
2011: the attack of the crazy ADHD housewife and her laundering & cleaning, among other domestic stuff! ;)

Fun times! At least for me!

Total & Complete Schedule Disconnect*

2012-01-16T12:50:00.001-05:00

We knew that our Spring Break would probably never coincide with the boys', but we never expected that the disconnect* between their school's schedule and ours at the university would be so great!

Our university has a slightly different schedule from others -- we begin before Labor day, and the school year ends on or around Memorial day. The school also operates on most major holidays (including Labor day) -- except for today, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Day (good thing: as a result, we have a week off on Thanksgiving).

The boys, on the other hand, have all holidays off from school, except -- obviously (and as "Murphy's Law" would dictate it) -- MLK's Day!!

Isn't that just awfully aggravating? So today we are enjoying a peaceful day of work at home while the boys are at school while next month on Presidents' Day we're going to have to bring them to the university with us. In addition to the holidays, their school has several days when their teachers have an "in-service" day or other training activities. I guess the worse will be their Spring break: what are we going to do with them for four days? (at least both K & I have Fridays off this semester).

These are problematic, but minor disconnects, though, when compared to the big "vacation disconnect." K's summer grants go from June to the end of July (but not in May, when the boys are still in school), so the best month for him to take the month-long vacation he's entitled to would be August. Guess what? The boys' school starts in the middle of August. Thankfully their school year ends at the end of May, so they have all of June off, so in the future when K doesn't have to rely in the university grants anymore and has outside grants, we can schedule our vacation trips for June.

(annoying first world problems, I know, but still real)

* I'm not 100% comfortable in using disconnect as a noun, but I truly enjoy the plasticity [flexibility] of the English language in which "better" can be a verb too, not just a comparative adjective. This post by Ubuntucat (which I found by googling "disconnect as a noun" is pretty good. I might have to start reading her (?) blog).

That's why we spoke only English in Florida :)

2012-01-16T11:40:00.001-05:00

As you know, we try to speak only Portuguese at home and not let the boys forget their first language (they didn't know any English until they were 4.5 years old). It's getting harder and harder, though, particularly for our youngest boy, who talks a lot -- he has to think before he tells us things in Portuguese. The boys' language skills would be better if we could travel to Brazil every year, but that's no longer the possible. :(

Why then, would you ask, we spoke mostly English in public with the boys while we were in Florida? Well, well... this may sound ridiculous or crazy, but there were so many Brazilian tourists all around us everywhere we didn't want to: (1) have them overhearing our conversations; (2) be thought of as tourists and not "locals." (K was the one who was most adamant about this & I was the one constantly having to struggle not to speak Portuguese -- he's not too excited about me writing this post. ;)

And why am I sharing this anyway? Because of this report that came on today on CNN's website:

Brazilians LOVE to shop in the U.S. and they come to Florida (and New York city) by the hundreds of thousands every year.

I just didn't know that there were so many wealthy Brazilians buying properties in Miami, but Time Magazine's "2012 User's Guide" should have tipped me off. On p.60, Michael Duffy* posed the 10 multiple choice questions for the readers, #2 was: "The U.S. economic bubble most likely to reinflate is: A. Miami Beach condos, because of record investment by Brazilians." And while that is not the correct answer -- "Iowa and Illinois farmland, because or record corn shortages in China" is -- it's defintely something that's making waves in Florida's economy and, consequently, in the country as a whole.

P.S. I guess another reason for what we did in Florida is that we're identifying less and less with people from our country, which is true, but sad.

* apparently I can't link to this because Time Mag. content is only available for subscribere.

Talk About Feeling Sore!

2012-01-12T23:10:00.002-05:00

Last week I was really surprised that I wasn't sore after the two hour-long "body-sculpt" fitness classes that I took, but this week was "the fitness-classes' revenge!" ;)

Yoga 2 is probably the one to blame because today's 45 minutes of body sculpt probably only exacerbated the soreness of yesterday's 50 minutes of more advanced yoga. It was my very first Yoga 2 class and I loved it! Most importantly, I think I'm ready for it, but... I think I will feel sore for the first month at least!

I enjoyed learning new poses, such as the dolphin (which I may have done once or twice last summer):

(photo from The Yoga Journal)

the supported shoulder stand (my one year of gymnastics back in 1990 in college helped me with this one!):

(photo from The Yoga Journal as well)

and one I'd never heard off, that flows out of warrior 2 -- the bird-of-paradise (I love this flower, BTW!)

(photo from that's fit's "Transform Yourself with Yoga" with Mandy Ingber)

This will be a great semester with yoga!!! Bring on the soreness!

Blackboard Sucks

2012-01-12T01:40:00.000-05:00

and that's all I'm going to say about that right now. BLAH!!!

The most counter-intuitive piece of software I've ever had to use in my life.

Qualtrics (for surveys), on the other hand? ROCKS big time!

I wish the they could be one and the same ;)

The Joy of Books - AWESOME!

2012-01-11T18:54:00.000-05:00

Have you seen this?

It came about because of this: (a bookcase organization project gone crazy ;)

My son Kelvin and I LOVED them just couldn't stop watching these videos over and over. And, of course, I immediately looked at these in our home library:

and felt like spending a few nights taking photos to produce similar animation -- of course we won't do it, it's lovely but too complicated! So I'm very glad that Sean Ohlenkamp and his wife Lisa Blonder Ohlenkamp did it both at home and at Type Bookstore in Toronto.

Long live to books! (I can't bear to think that they may be on the road to "extinction")

Fraud!

2012-01-10T21:04:00.001-05:00

Phew...
I'm just coming off the phone after talking to my credit card company regarding two fraudulent charges that I just noticed on our credit card.

Thankfully I had logged in to check our balances both in the bank and the credit card and I noticed the two charges for over 1K, for tickets in an Israeli airline that were done today and I called right away. That's why I'm not even that nervous right now...

This is so scary and annoying! I cannot imagine how those who suffer identity theft feel. The bad part was that I had just purchased a gift for my brother (whose birthday is in two days) with the card, so I'm not cancelling and getting it replaced until that purchase goes through (all the way in NZ). The credit card company will call me to verify each transaction, though, until I replace the card.

Very unsettling, but, hopefully, a problem that can be solved.

The Second Day was Better

2012-01-10T20:17:00.000-05:00

The classes I teach Th-Th are different from Mo-Wed so the second day was actually my second "first" day and it went well.

I still had trouble with the syllabi, but this time, instead of handing out a document with errors, I decided not to hand out the syllabus just yet since most students have been with me since last semester or previous ones and they know how our class works (this is the fourth semester with me for four of my students).

I was glad to see that both of my classes today have windows too! I miss some students from last semester that didn't return, but we have good groups and three new students who are starting Portuguese in the 2nd semester and who will have some catching up to do.

Now, feMOMhist asked yesterday in a comment whether I'm planning to teach wearing yoga pants Mo/Wed and here's my plan: in the winter it's pretty easy to go straight from yoga to class, all I have to do is to wear tight cotton leggings under my regular work pants and a workout top under my blouse or sweater. I wear long underwear all winter long anyway, I'm always cold, so the leggings will replace those on Mo/Wed. Then all I have to do is to remove the top layer for yoga class and put it all back on quickly to go teach. The class is only 50 minutes long, so I don't get very sweaty, which is good.

When it warms up it'll be a bit trickier. I have a couple of shorter dresses that I wear over leggings and which won't require changing clothes if I wear the workout top underneath, but I will need to change if I want to wear other dresses or other kinds of pants (e.g. capri). I don't really wear skirts & blouses much, so that helps. That's my plan, what do you think?

OK, I have to go update the faulty syllabus now and do a zillion other things. It's hard to work in the afternoon since I have to coax two boys to do homework and practice piano while I try to cook something for dinner, which reminds me I haven't posted about food and cooking for a while, right? I have to post a "to-do" list for the blog as a reminder.

First day wasn't bad

2012-01-09T23:55:00.003-05:00

I didn't post yesterday because my post was going to be too negative, with snippets such as this one:

(post title: Back to teaching)
"sense of being perennially under-prepared (I was going to say unprepared, but I'm generally prepared, but not as much as I wish I were)"

This was the only thing I'd written of the post, BTW.

So... I just decided not to blog and to spend my time preparing a bit more to teach and then I went to bed (at my usual 2 am time, I know, very very bad, right?).

This morning I consciously decided to sleep for one more hour (after getting the boys' lunches ready) and I then I was unable to go to the yoga class that's just before the class I teach.* It was OK, though and I like my 43 students a lot. Four were already my students last semester, so I already have some "groupies" who will see me four days a week! (they also take Portuguese with me) There is a large group of freshmen and I hope they like the class!

A few things went wrong, obviously: (1) I couldn't check out the documentary that I was planning to show the students because the department's resource center was closed, but I had another DVD that I could show (downside -- I hadn't previewed it, but it was ok); (2) I had minor trouble printing and copying the class materials and... (this one happens every.single.semester... [sigh!!]) (3) I had put several dates wrong on the schedule... :( I blame this last one on my ADHD. :P

Most things were just fine, though. Because I couldn't go to the yoga class I had time to eat and finish the power point presentation which was OK. And things went well in class... looking at the survey results (the PP), going over the syllabus, meeting the students and... I was very happy that this is my very first time teaching in a class with windows in my 1.5 year here!! I was delighted to see the snow falling outside during class.

I have a feeling this is going to be a great semester and I truly hope it is! For my friends who are teaching or going to school, how is the beginning of your semester going?

*I changed my class's time on purpose so I can go to the lunch hour classes, but didn't realize I will have only exactly 20 minutes to leave the yoga class to come and teach -- lucky for me, it's a 2-3 minute walk.

"Body Sculpt" is fun!

2012-01-06T23:30:00.000-05:00

This week I went to two "body sculpt" classes and I really enjoyed them. Of course I selected the lightest weights and the least resistant stretch bands to be on the safe side, but I'm really surprised that I haven't felt any pain after both classes (I often feel quite sore after yoga and even more after "yogalates"). Maybe I should use heavier weights next time? I don't have to feel pain after every fitness class, right? Or maybe I'm just not that out of shape. ;)

So... as far as "new year's resolutions" go, I'm doing really well on # 1 -- including spending more time with my husband, but, sadly, that will change when we start teaching next week. :(

Songs from when I was born (July 1971) - facebook meme

2012-01-06T10:42:00.000-05:00

I can't stand facebook, so I decided to post this fun fb meme on the blog instead.

The challenge is to find which song was the #1 on the week you were born, find the video on YouTube and post it to one's profile -- or blog! (Another meme I saw yesterday asked for the song from when you turned 9, but I like to go back further in time!). :)

According to Wikipedia's List of Billboard's Hot 100 for 1971 singles, when I was born (July 7), there were two Carole King songs that were #1 (and they were in this position for five weeks in a row!):

Now, I remember the first one really well and I like both, but I was positively delighted to find out that one of my favorite songs was #1 by the last week of July, James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend"

Last, but not least, since my husband doesn't have a blog & doesn't post on fb either, I thought I'd share the song that was popular on May 26 (1971) when he was born -- so much fun -- "Joy to the World!"

My Christmas Books!

2012-01-05T22:26:00.000-05:00

I received many lovely Christmas presents -- we exchanged presents among all five families, including all adults, we even had lists on Google docs ;) -- but I think these were some of my favorites! My dear sister-in-law gave me two of the films I wanted (Jane Eyre and Once) and the book on the right The Annotated Persuasion, and K gave me Michael Moore's book!! If only I didn't have to prepare syllabi and classes and could sit back and enjoy them... sigh.

I desperately NEED to stop reading stuff online and to read more books -- both to prepare my classes better and just for my enjoyment. So... one more "resolution" for me, a person who has always been pretty anti-resolution. (see how blogging has been changing that? ;)

At 1:30 am, after 15 Hours... Home Sweet Home!

2012-01-03T11:53:00.002-05:00

We drove back home yesterday from Florida and a trip that was supposed to take 11 to 12 hours at the most, took 15 exhausting hours because of weather and road conditions (some accidents). After a good night of sleep in our own beds, though, we're really happy to be home and the boys are delighted to have one last day to play at home before they head back to school tomorrow morning.

This vacation was definitely too short, next time we need to plan to get our grading done as far ahead of the deadline as possible so we can be packed an ready to leave as soon as we post our grades! Maybe... just maybe next year we'll go to Brazil for the holidays. I don't know if it'll be possible (too costly), but maybe we can work it out and my dream can come true.

Now, we need to get back to work, getting our syllabi ready and preparing classes. I'm not ready to start just yet, but we have no choice. Sigh...That's the problem with vacations, getting back to "real life" afterwards is really tough! :(

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T23:34:00.000-05:00

I hope you all have a wonderful 2012!

2011 went by too fast, didn't it? I have a feeling 2012 will be the same way. Maybe it feels that way because I'm getting older... oh well.

(and I thought I had posted this on the 1st, but I'll do it now, keeping the date/time when I wrote it).

In 2012...

2011-12-31T18:33:00.001-05:00

... I want to exercise more* and to spend more time with my husband;

... I want to go to Brazil, my dream would be to go twice, but once will be good too;

... I hope to become better at teaching my classes and to make a difference in the life of my students;

... I wish that good health can be re-established for all those friends and family who are experiencing health issues;

... we'll travel a lot and I hope we can have wonderful trips, starting with South Africa in March and Brazil in the summer (winter there).

... my son will be ten years old, I can hardly believe that he's growing up so fast.

I'm sure there's more, but this is what I can think of now.

Happy New Year for everyone!!

* I know this is the most cliched new year's resolution there is, but it is something that I already started working on in 2011 because I started doing yoga.

The Best of 2011

2011-12-31T18:31:00.000-05:00

Our new house -- my only "actual wish" this year (in small print at the end of my "what has to happen" in 2011 post).

My nephew's birth (my first wish for this year).

K's whole family's trip to Florida that is ending tomorrow (and which I knew would be a highlight of this year). We took some great pictures here, but I won't share them in the blog since there are too many people involved.

Meeting Jo(e) (another wish).

There were many other things and I'll try to write about them later, but I think these are the best.

What didn't happen in 2011

2011-12-31T16:51:00.002-05:00

About a year ago I wrote a post about "what will happen in 2011" and one thing did not happen: my 7 year old did not lose his front baby teeth just yet... but I don't think they'll survive 2012. :( He's the one on the right:

I'm editing this post because there are more things that did not happen this year from my "wish lists:"

I did not get to see my brother and his wife at all -- I suppose the "every two years, from two days to two weeks rule" will continue, maybe forever. :(

Not everyone is healthy in the family (my brother-in-law had two surgeries to remove a tumor from his leg. My mother-in-law had a biopsy done in her thyroid, we're hoping the results will be OK -- she didn't get them yet because of her month-long trip here).

I didn't plant raspberries and grapes and I don't think I ever will. :( I did plant lots of bulbs, though, and I can't wait for them to bloom in the Spring!

I wasn't able to meet other bloggers just yet, only Jo(e).

And, obviously, I didn't get to post 365 times in the blog, but I will be able to post more than last year as I wished to.

I'm missing them a lot...

2011-12-31T16:39:00.004-05:00

they are my babies, after all:

Lighted

2011-12-31T16:16:00.003-05:00

Isn't it pretty?

Our Christmas, Before & After

2011-12-30T23:34:00.000-05:00

The other families were too busy enjoying their gifts to come play with the wrappings. :)

Two Days Left

2011-12-30T01:51:00.002-05:00

To post a whole bunch and be done with 2011. I'll miss this year, it was positively great and about to end in great style with K's family reunion.

Tomorrow night I think I'll have more time to post and try to meet my own challenge.

K & I took the boys here yesterday and it was awesome, except for the crowds (which we mostly beat with the fast track tickets we printed) and for missing the fireworks (long stupid story). More later, then!! (sleeping at 2 am every night and waking between 7-8 when the little kids get up is pretty hard!)

I don't know...

2011-12-27T01:49:00.002-05:00

... if during this bustling week with family here in Florida I will be able to achieve my goal of posting more than last year, but I don't really mind if I don't make it. Blogging is important and meaningful for me, but way less than most everything else in life, as it should be.

I am enjoying spending time with K's family and we had a wonderful Christmas day yesterday -- I hope to be able to blog more about it, but if it doesn't, it's ok! Gotta go to bed now!

Our Old iPod 30GB Died...

2011-12-25T20:14:00.000-05:00

... taking with it all the Christmas music we planned to play over the holiday. (Kelvin had transferred a bunch of music to the iPad, but then accidentally deleted it during an update and our laptop has no music and neither do our external hard-drives -- we'll change that soon).

Thankfully, Spotify saved the day and we were were listening to one of my favorite Brazilian Christmas albums when we opened presents this morning -- Ivan Lins' Um Novo Tempo (this link is only to one of the songs, all the others are also available in Amazon).

"Festas" is one of my favorites because is shows how Brazilians love feasts & celebrations (festas, which also means parties ;) and this album is the reason why now I really love "Feliz Navidad" (at least this version!) which I used to hate with a vengeance.

My other favorite Christmas album is the quirky Mercy Me: The Christmas Album and for me two classics are Amy Grant's Home for Christmas and A Christmas to Remember, both absolutely gorgeous.

OK, here's my short-list of Christmas music. I barely heard Xmas music this year, so I think I'll listen to some more during the rest of the week. More photos to come soon, OK?

Merry Christmas!! (Before and Before photos :)

2011-12-25T01:55:00.000-05:00

Well... I'm glad that being stuck in traffic on Friday evening didn't prevent us to from going to buy a Christmas tree before we made it to the rental house. Our car was horribly packed, but somehow we were able to fit a (live) Christmas tree inside it! I'm delighted we did that!

There's no mantel in the rental house, so we had to improvise where to hang the stockings. Oh, and we're all putting stuff into each other's stockings... ;)

Before fully stuffed:

After significant stuffing (but before opening them!):

And here's the tree before all presents were under/around it:

After most were there (but before opening, right?):

This Christmas promises to be awesome!

Beach!!

2011-12-25T01:54:00.000-05:00

We're having a lovely time here!

We spent some time at! the! beach! on Friday and that delayed our arrival in Orlando and we got stuck in traffic for a good while. :( But it was, oh... so worth it!

P.S. I took only the first photo, I think. K is way better photographer than me! ;)

Safely Here in Florida

2011-12-23T08:44:00.001-05:00

We still have a few more hours of travel from Jacksonville to Orlando and we'll probably drive down for a bit along the beaches! The weather will be beautiful this weekend, up to the 80s, so if we can dig into our suitcases in the car for swimwear, we might even go into the water for a bit!! And then after Christmas, it will cool off a little bit (lower 70s, still nice).

K's brother ("K2") and his family are at a hotel a few blocks from us, but I don't know if we'll meet up with them or if they're in a hurry to get to Orlando. We can't get into our rental house until 4 pm... We need to go grocery shopping and to buy a live Christmas tree, but we don't have any room in our minivans for those items! We'll be meeting up with K's parents, though, and we'll probably fill their rental car with stuff!

I didn't blog last night because I didn't want to bother my sleeping family with the computer's blue light. Well... I can't wait for the biggest Christmas in K's family history (17 people, including the "babies" [two 18 month olds]) -- there will be hundreds of presents under that tree! That's why our car is bursting to the seams!

Oh, last but not least, the in-laws, as well as "K3" and "K4" and families just spent 5 days in Cancun -- lucky them!

Hey, I just opened the curtains of the hotel room to let in the sunlight and Linton said, when Kelvin asked for some music and I said we should have Christmas music, "It's not Christmas, it's summer!" I suppose Christmas in Florida will feel similar to Christmas in Brazil, since it's summer in the Southern hemisphere now. We'll enjoy it for sure!

I'll be back, but let me send out my first with for a Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Leaving in a Packed Car...

2011-12-22T09:42:00.001-05:00

... instead of a jet plane. Sigh.

Well, packing for flying is even more stressful, though way more organized.

OK, gotta go.

Traveling to Florida

2011-12-22T02:06:00.001-05:00

I'm not 100% packed yet, but I need to go to bed because I can't keep my eyes open anymore! :(

I hope I don't forget anything -- this concern, coupled with my inability to decide or choose what to bring (these small decisions are the worst ones in life for me and they make me miserable at times) is the main reason why I can't stand the day(s) that precede a big trip.

OK, I have to go to bed now... am I even making any sense in this post?

My Uncle Called Me!

2011-12-20T17:35:00.001-05:00

Remember my uncle? Well, I guess that another update is in order, since I last blogged extensively about him nearly two years ago (post above).

Now that my brother-in-law moved close to my uncle, I'm seeing him and my aunt more often. We last saw them back in October and I even got to help care for my uncle by staying with him for one morning while my aunt went to talk to one of the ladies she works for (Have I already told you that she's been working for over 25 years for this guy's wife, so, consequently, at his house? She has an autographed copy of his book).

Anyway, physically, my uncle is doing pretty well, he can walk a little bit unassisted and he can have conversations with us and eat on his own. He sleeps a whole lot during the day, though. And during those 2 days in October, he was pretty confused. He was mixing up things he sees on TV with real life and the conversations we were having, but apparently he has good days in which his mind seems perfectly clear and he can talk to you normally.

Well, this afternoon he called me. I think it was the first time in over three years that I talked to Uncle O on the phone (he had his surgery 2.5 years ago). He wasn't confused at all on the phone, we had a lovely conversation about this time of the year, he thanked me for the Christmas card that they just got in the mail from us yesterday (I mailed them last Friday) and told me about their plans for the holidays (they're going to Ocean City). It was so nice to hear his voice and talk to him! I wish he could recover fully, but the likelihood of that happening is very low. :(

In any case, his phone call made my day! I have to see if my cousin (his only daughter who lives in Vienna now) will be still there when we return from Florida because I'd love to see her!

OK, I have to go back to packing and cooking dinner now, but I just thought I'd share this today.

15

2011-12-20T01:21:00.001-05:00

I have to write 15 more posts before the end of the year to beat last year's posts. I hope I can make it, in spite of the busy times ahead with K's family in Florida. Had I told you that we're going to Florida? I probably did.

OK, gotta go to bed now.

Free!!!

2011-12-19T14:56:00.000-05:00

Yeah... free from grading to go work some more, and more... Make packing lists, pack, pack, clean house and garage, get people in the airport (a favor for a friend), pack car... shop for the Xmas presents that I still didn't have time to buy. Host friends so we can eat some yummy food... and cancel lunch with friends because of going to airport to pick person up. :(

and K thinks we won't be able to leave on Wednesday morning to Florida, and he's probably right. :( Oh well... I wish I could work faster than humanly possible, but I went to bed at 3 am last night and I'm sooo tired!

Well, let's see what happens. I'll keep you posted. Grading take SOOO much time, but the truth is that I like to do it all concentrated in a couple of days like this. It's crazy, but I think that I go way faster. The good news? My students got tons of As!! Which is fine with me! If they fulfilled all their obligations and my expectations, why not As for those who earn them? Yeah... that's what I think.

OK, gotta go pick up the boys in school.

17 Years Ago...

2011-12-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

... K and I got married! I blogged about it before several times (16th - last year, 15th -- with photos!).

We were able to leave our sons with a friend and go out to eat some Italian food and I had very yummy tiramisu (I needed it to be awake grading).

OK, now I have to go resume the "regularly scheduled programming" of grading jail. Sigh... (that's why I wrote earlier that the timing for our anniversary will always be a little troublesome).

In Grading "Jail"

2011-12-18T09:23:00.001-05:00

I have to grade everything today and I'm actually thankful for the deadline (tomorrow). It will be a glorious feeling to be free from that. Too bad the timing is of this grading period is not good and it will be the same thing year after year for me and K... (you'll see why at a later post today)

Let me get to work now!

Ayrton Senna do Brasil

2011-12-15T23:56:00.001-05:00

The year was 1994 and my job was teaching English for one class period (45 mins) a week for 2nd-4th graders. Maybe you'll think I'm lying, but it's true that the week after Senna's crash, I couldn't really teach my 4th graders. They spent all of our 45 minutes of class humming his name under their breath "Senna, Senna, Senna."

I watched the crash live with my dad, as I typed a paper on the computer next to the TV in our family room and from that day on, after 10+ years of watching Formula One races as a family nearly every Sunday, I never watched another race.

I just found out through wikipedia that Senna was the last pilot to die in an F1 race -- they changed many things in the sport to avoid another tragedy such as this one.

This is the song we heard throughout my childhood time and again on Globo television in Brazil during the "victory lap" whenever a Brazilian pilot won (I believe they still play it today, but I could be wrong) -- I have it on a CD and my boys are very familiar with the song (and other TV Globo songs from my childhood):

And here's the trailer of the Senna documentary (not yet released on DVD), which won the Sundance Festival this year and which I didn't even know existed until last night when I clicked on Michael Moore's twitter link to his theater in Michigan and saw their schedule. My lucky brother got to watch it on an IMAX screen in New Zealand:

I can barely wait until the DVD is released here to see it. The reviews say it's a riveting documentary, just like Senna himself. I wish I could fly to Michigan to see it in Moore's theater. :( And I wish I'd found out about it earlier, while it was still playing in more places.

Go see Hugo while you can -- this is an order, not advice!!!

2011-12-15T23:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had a lovely and oh... so rare! :( afternoon date with K. We had a nice meal at one of the great all-you-can-eat dining halls at the university (which -- horror! -- just reminded me of one of those buffets in Las Vegas [I HATE Vegas with a vengeance, BTW]) and went to see a movie completely by ourselves in the theater (it was 1 pm after all, on finals week).

I have seen movies in theaters so few times in my life that it was a unique and very enjoyable experience to have the whole place to ourselves for the first time in my life. Oh, the joy of commenting loudly, as often as I wanted, and in Portuguese too!

OK, I talk too much, don't I? How am I supposed to convince you to go see Scorsese's Hugo?

First... there was Brian Selznick's book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret which is great. Here's the book trailer (seriously, book trailers are WEIRD! Who invented book trailers?):

And then, Scorsese made Hugo, the movie:

And now I will have to buy this book (because of the previous post, get it?).

I have to write one more movie recommendation today and then I'll be off!

I've Got a Paper to Write (or... Accepted)

2011-12-15T23:19:00.002-05:00

I still don't know the answer to that, and, at this point, I'm getting a little discouraged, thinking that maybe it's a "no," but... I have good news nevertheless!

Well, not groundbreaking news or anything, after all -- the MLA excepted -- insiders know that most everyone that submits a paper or a panel for presentation at an academic conference gets accepted, so... I was accepted and have a paper to write for a conference in the Spring. The timing couldn't have been more perfect, but I won't say much about that because I don't want to reveal too much about my eminently googleable paper topic.

I'm pretty excited, except that... saying that March and April next year will be CRAzy HECTIC months (I'll keep the small zy there, it looks funky) is a huge understatement. I better get started with my paper right now -- it's a great procrastination strategy for 100 papers that need grading (booo hooo!!!!!!).

OK, got at least to more posts to write, or else I'll never complete my race to "outpost" last year in the blog.

Link Love: Best Picture Books, Climate Change & the Right, Poor Academics & More,

2011-12-13T22:44:00.003-05:00

I've been collecting a bunch of links in the two browsers opened in my desktop. Generally, I just email them to myself when I decide it's time to shut down the computer so those pesky updates can get installed, but today I decided to blog them instead.

Shall we begin with the picture books? (And, as an aside, Library of the Early Mind, the great documentary about children's literature and its most celebrated Anglophone authors [most American, I think] that I blogged about back in June is available for order as a DVD and for renting online!)

Here's a list of the 11 Best Picture Books/Illustrated books of 2011 -- some of these are gorgeous!

Next, Naomi Klein takes on the disgust that conservatives have about climate change.

Rachel Wagner has a sad account of being an academic and still remaining poor (it has lots to do with having a child in graduate school and, well, also with taking loans to pay to get a graduate degree -- definitely a HUGE No-No!). She received lots of awful criticism, but I think her piece is pretty interesting and informative.

Adjuncts versus Full-Timers in the fight to unionization.

OK, that's it for now... maybe more later!

Still Waiting...

2011-12-13T16:28:00.001-05:00

... to hear about that. Maybe this means bad news. :( Since there's nothing I can do about it, I might as well try to forget about it for a little bit and wait (before sending an email to the "grant-givers"). Sigh... I hope I can do that.

Edited to Add: well, I checked their website and the award will be announced this week, so I have to wait until Friday. That's OK, I can do that. It'll be my reward for finishing of all my grading.

Suspense

2011-12-12T14:13:00.001-05:00

I applied for a travel grant for next year and I just remembered that we're supposed to be notified of the receipt of the grant by today... Now I'm pretty nervous and anxious about it. I hope I get it! If I do, my expenses to travel to Brazil next summer will be covered, so I can plan for an upcoming study abroad there. This will help me fulfill my dream of going again to Brazil for the holidays next year, to meet my nephew and have the four cousins (same link as above) together.

(I am planning to pay for the boys to go in the summer and use our mileage to go in December -- let's see if this will work).

I'll keep you posted about the grant! I just checked my email, but there's nothing yet.

10:42 am

2011-12-12T13:19:00.004-05:00

I was able to sleep in this morning until 10:42 am!! YAY!!

I got up for a few minutes at 8 am to wish the boys a good day at school and make sure they had everything they needed (like books for the piano lesson) and then I went right back to bed.

It was LOVELY and just what I needed today! Now... on to grading and the last night of the Bethlehem tours (4 hours long in the cold... good thing there are fires & hand+foot warmers help too). More later.

breeze

2011-12-09T23:30:00.001-05:00

if you read my earlier post and you're wondering how it went... well... I really couldn't believe what happened!

I had to miss my relaxing yoga class, but fortunately it was a breeze to get in and out of those stores, I even got to park right in front of the door in both Target & WM something that hardly ever happens on either place! Of course Costco was as crowded as ever (and I forgot to buy contact lens solution -- 'cause it obviously was not on my list! :p ), but it was ok.

There were only two problems: 1) I forgot that I had to recharge my store card to buy gas (put only 5 dollars to be able to go back home); 2) the traffic in the parking lot and surrounding streets after I finished shopping was horribly jammed, so I was late picking up the boys. :(

I'm beyond exhausted after 4 hours and saying my lines 19 times... sigh. And I'm still smelling like smoke, even after a hot shower. only three more nights to go. (I will have a substitute for part of Sunday, though, which is good).

dread

2011-12-09T10:55:00.001-05:00

I cancelled the yoga class reservation (mopping and cleaning took too long on top of blogging) and I'm heading to town now. I DREAD going into the stores, though. I wish I could go to sleep and woke up after the holidays... I can't stand the crowds. I just need to buy food for our family and cleaning supplies and stuff. Sigh. I'll let you know how bad it was later, OK?

Busy, Relieved, Worried

2011-12-09T09:07:00.000-05:00

Busy
Well, this word is a bit too weak to describe this week. Yesterday was the busiest day, by far, so, a quick summary: I arrived at the university at 9:45 and administered 3 oral exams before teaching ,my 2 last classes, from 11-1:45. Then, three more oral exams and a meeting of 1h30 with two students who need looots of help. I barely eat on Tu/Th because I teach right over lunch time (and I don't like/can't [IBS] have breakfast, so that's a problem for me. I generally eat a plate of food during my 11 am class). In fact, I've been so busy this semester that I've been buying frozen food, like the 1.50 pasta & vegetables on tasty sauces that I can find at evil-superstore-that's-open-24h-and-in-which-I-shouldn't-shop or the nice and yummy organic & vegetarian dishes of Amy's kitchen, which is what I ate yesterday (enchilada verde, my favorite).

I had to be getting ready for a performance in church (more on that in a second) at 5 pm, but I only left the university at 4:50! I ran home to put on a few more layers of clothing and to "grab" my family that was going to participate too. We were a bit late [it started at 5:30], but it was OK in the end. You see... we're doing this huge Bethlehem town representation for five nights. It involves hundreds of people and it's really nicely set up with a great script (it takes about 45 mins. to go through) and I'm a poor widow (with my youngest son), my oldest son is a school boy with a small speaking part and my husband will be the Inn-keeper for a few nights. The whole thing goes from 5:30-9:15 or later every night until Monday. Sigh... We've had several nightly practices in the past weeks (even before Thanksgiving), and the last was on Tuesday (and on Monday I cooked to help feed a group of homeless that is given shelter in various churches around town, so Wednesday was our only "free" night this week). It does feel good to be helpful, though.

If all that weren't enough, my mother- and father-in-law are coming tonight to spend the weekend, so K & I were cleaning the house until 1 am last night, mostly because today he has to work and go to a holiday party (until roughly 4 pm -- remember that by 5 we have to go to the performance!) and I have to go shopping for food and other necessities since I didn't have time at all the whole week! I should be mopping my kitchen floors right now and yet I'm blogging (I need some "therapeutic" me time to help me keep sane in all the busy-ness). But... I'll try to have an hour for myself later today too.

Relieved
Remember those bad news? Well, they were about my brother-in-law and there's some good news to supplement those. He's had the first surgery (prior to the news), then a CT scan -- which scared him more than anything -- and which came back negative, no metastasis anywhere else in the body! Which is great news, since that makes it more treatable. His second surgery was on Tuesday and it was successful. He will undergo radiation therapy in January. The only thing is that it seems that he's feeling much more pain and other side effects of the medication (nausea) than he did after the first surgery, so I hope he can recover and feel better soon.

Worried
I'm really really worried about my sister-in-law, my brother, and the new baby (in that order). I think Andi Buchanan's phrase "Mother Shock" is too weak for what they're undergoing, really... and I feel sorry that there's nothing that we can do to help, since it's hard to even talk to them and just talking won't help relieve their sheer shock, exhaustion, etc. My poor SIL was diagnosed with acute anemia after the baby was born. She is being treated, but the extra exhaustion brought by that condition, added to not sleeping, etc, is just too hard on her. Then, she couldn't take the pain of breastfeeding and suffered greatly until she was given nipple shields.

We only talked to them last week on Saturday when they took & sent us some photos and skyped with us briefly. All I hear is through my mom, who's communicating briefly with my brother every day. Ever since the baby came, my SIL realized she cannot sleep -- she gets stressed out about the baby being OK. My brother is trying to help, but he's working full time and her parents are there, but they only help during the day... The latest I heard is that the baby is crying up to an hour a day -- they think he might be colicky!! -- :( I hope that's not the case, but if it is, I just pray that they can survive. Of course we all know they will... but... I feel for them and worry. Especially because I had it so (comparatively) easy -- well, I never wrote in the blog in detail about the nightmare of Kelvin not nursing/latching on for a month and me pumping for that whole time. I will try to do that someday. It's always been too difficult to even remember.

So... yeah, I wish I could feel simply happy about the birth of my nephew, but that's not to be. :( I wish the birth of a new baby could be easier on the parents and family, but it never is. So many people (SIL especially), worry so much about the labor and delivery, but those are nothing, really compared to what comes after, there's nothing that can prepare you for a new baby, NOTHING. That's why there's this sharp division in the world between those who are parents and know and those who don't. There's no way the latter can ever understand the former, seriously.

All right, that's enough for now, I have to do some mopping and run to town for food shopping. (outrageously ridiculous rhyming, I know, and not on purpose, I swear!).

my greatest fear

2011-12-07T01:14:00.000-05:00

It was early evening and raining when I entered the highway driving home from work today. I immediately thought that it was dangerous to drive under those conditions, but I hoped & trusted that everything would be fine. I felt that way because every time I drive I feel a keen awareness that driving is one of the most dangerous things we do every day and that there is a real threat of getting into an accident and getting killed.

That's why as I was driving earlier today I thought about my greatest fear as a mother. I don't know if I shared this here in the blog before or not, but after I became a mother my greatest fear is of dying and leaving my sons' mother-less. I'm not afraid of dying, not one bit (well, I'm sure I will/would be if I knew for sure it was happening), but in general I don't think much of it, but the idea that my sons won't have me anymore while they're still young and need me terrifies me.

I know the boys would be OK in the end (though it would be positively awful if both K & I died), well cared by any of our family members (yes, I think that my parents, my in-laws, any of my brothers- & sisters-in-law, my brother & wife and even extended family members such as aunts, uncles, cousins, would do a wonderful job caring for our sons), but I still feel sad to think that I wouldn't be around to comfort them and help them and mother them. And, believe me, this is not about me, but them.

Good thing they're growing and becoming more independent, etc. I think every year that goes by will make it easier for me, little by little, to let go. Because I guess that in the end this feeling has to do with my need to be needed by them -- especially since they don't need me even half as much as they did when their nourishment depended entirely on me as well as 100% of their physical care.

One of the saddest things I've ever watched on TV was a documentary about this young mother in Canada whose own mother had early onset dementia or an Alzheimer type degenerative disease and who had had genetic tests/ analysis done to determine whether she had the gene that would doom her to the same fate. Even not knowing, she already did lots of things that would help preserve her mind while it was still cognizant -- such as writing incessantly all her thoughts in a journal and recording audio tape messages to her children.

It turned out that she did have the gene and seeing her reaction was simply heartbreaking. She began to actively record tapes for every milestone of her children's lives and to try to prepare to lose all her mental ability and memory. This, in fact, sounds worse than actual death, doesn't it?

Well... I will stop here, my apologies for the gloomy subject. I do have one more post in me about a related topic, but I don't know if I'll write it now or later. And, hopefully, my sons will still have me for years to come!

the little bad things

2011-12-07T00:53:00.001-05:00

I should be grading, but I'm just so tired after a very busy day that, obviously, I'm spending time online checking my twitter feed, reading friends' blogs and, before that, several minutes being really annoyed by the random stuff people post to facebook -- can't stand that thing!

In any case... I'm really frustrated by a few bad things that happened and one of them is not even so little -- I dropped my cell phone and it broke. It's still functioning, but I don't know how much longer since the little panel on top of the button to make/take a call and turn it off fell and now won't stay in place.

Of course our two year plan doesn't end until June next year!! :( The only option I know to hold off until then, and which we've used before (TWICE for K who ruined his phone -- and his is half ruined now too, just the touch screen), is trying to find a friend who had a phone from the same carrier that was discarded, but still works. Is that really the only option, though? I know some carriers offer to "buy out" your remaining time with another carrier, but I don't know if any carrier does it around here (Sprint was going to call me back if they ever decided to offer it).

I HATE HATE HATE the two year plan requirement! (when we joined T-Mobile years ago our plan was for only one year.. and obviously we ended up using it for over two years, so we didn't even take advantage of it. :( We have Verizon now (in spite of the fact that once upon a time I was the #1 google search result for "Verizon Sucks" [which it does]) because it's got the best coverage in our area.

OK, the second little bad thing is that one of my kittens vomited today and I'm hoping they are fine and that he (the one who did it) is not really sick.

Well, I'll try to grade a few things now... sigh...

A Gift to Myself

2011-12-03T00:24:00.001-05:00

Yesterday (or today, since it's after midnight on Friday and I just want to be accurate, for once in my blogging life ;) I had tons of things to do in town, including picking up an online order returning some stuff at a couple of stores and going to the university to take care of some stuff that I had neglected during Mon-Th (I don't teach or go to town or to campus on Fridays), but... I had told myself that I needed a reward this week: a yoga class.

You see, I have been unable to take the (free) yoga classes offered at the university this semester because I teach during the two classes I might be able to attend (I already changed one of my classes for later time slot next semester so I can go to yoga, woo-hoo!). My current schedule allowed for one "Yogalates" (yoga+pilates, pretty fun, in fact) class on Wednesday mornings, but I only went in the beginning of the semester, because later I was so swamped with trying to read the books and get ready to teach that I spent that time working instead. :(

I tried to get into the Friday noon class a few times, but I always remembered too late and it was already full (we have to register 24h in advance or less), but yesterday afternoon I finally remembered and registered! This morning, when I was running late, frantically looking for a lost netflix DVD (from last month) that I still haven't found :( I briefly considered cancelling the class, but changed my mind and decided to give it a try.

I rushed to town, stood impatiently in line at JCP to pick up my MIL's present, then wasted my time trying to return something at Costco (apples, K had already bought apples when I came home with more -- but the lady said they were going to destroy them, so I didn't return them in the end. I'm happy with my decision because they are very yummy honey crisps). I literally ran into my office where I had to email my students, print out stuff (printer out of paper! had to print it in the secretary's office since I didn't have time to go get paper, etc) and head out the door to walk 5-10 minutes to the class location.

Phew! I made it! And it was a lovely, lovely... too short 50 minute class that I really needed. I was so glad that I decided to try and go!

I'm considering another "gift" to myself next year in the shape of a once a week paid "real" yoga class to complement the free ones I get to take on campus, I think I deserve to take care of myself, right?

Getting Lazy

2011-12-03T00:19:00.001-05:00

Well... after the obligation to post by midnight every day last month was over, I just relaxed a little bit about blogging, still confident that I have tons of things left to say and can easily pull off 33 more posts (minimum). I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that I'm so confident about my ability to blog that much and... frankly, I don't care. One of my (always pretty lame) new year's "resolutions" was "to blog with abandon" and I need to take care of that before it's too late.

OK, I just remembered that I had a post planned for today, not this lame one so... let's get this one "published" and let's talk about something more interesting, shall we? :)

(Up)Rooted

2011-11-30T23:29:00.001-05:00

Slowly, very slowly... I begin to really like our new house. Not that I didn't like it before, it's just that it is hard, nearly impossible, for me to imagine how it feels like to live in a place for many many years... and I am beginning to think that maybe we will live in this house for a long time (we will? really? the skeptic in me cannot reconcile to this idea).

You see, that never really happened in my life... I've never had a "hometown," I've never known what having a family home (where you spent your childhood) to go back to feels like. A good metaphor for how "unsettled/unsettling" my life is and has been is my "birth country" trauma, caused by the fact that I was born in a country which doesn't allow me to have its nationality.* And then there are the many times I moved (either places or from one rental house to another. Five years was the most I ever lived in one house (I did live in the city of São Paulo for 12 years, but moved a few times during this period). For my husband's family it was worse. We calculated once that in 20 years K's family had moved, I don't know, 13-15 times (including a house or apartment a year in one city).**

A few months ago I was having a hard time thinking that we had finally "settled down" somewhere, but I didn't blog about it at the time because I didn't really know how to say this (not that today I'm going to be any better). In fact, the idea of settling down sounds nearly incomprehensible to me after so many years in my life -- actually, my whole life, all 40 years of it -- moving from place to place and not knowing where I would end up. Unconsciously I keep thinking that we'll sell this house again and move elsewhere and start from scratch once more... because this is just what "normal" is in my life.

The funny thing is that when I met K, my biggest desire in life was to be able to have what I never had -- a stable place, give my children a "childhood home" and roots. However, in these 21 years together, I seem to have changed and become just like K was/is: he has always said that after the first traumatizing move he remembers in his life -- when he was 6 years old and followed by many others -- he just can't stand living in the same place for too long, that he needs new adventures. I had a hard time adapting to that kind of thinking, but when we left Brazil and moved here, I think that changed.

So... as I contemplate many years living in this area, having the boys grow up here (OK, they're pretty grown up by now, poor things, having moved a lot too), I feel torn between that old desire I had of putting down roots somewhere, and the impulse to experience new things.

Ultimately, I don't know what will happen (and sometimes I fantasize about K getting an offer to go somewhere after he gets tenure, but that's sooooo unlikely!)... so the best I can do is to enjoy this house, this region and let those roots grow... after all, we should "bloom where we're planted," right?

* I probably blogged about this before (at least in my 50 things about me posts), but if you don't know the story, I was born in Geneva, Switzerland when my dad was studying in France (right on the border) and my mom was doing an specialization at the University of Geneva. There's only one small detail... Switzerland refused to give anyone born there their citizenship... they're just "too good." As a result, I spent my whole childhood being told "Oh, you're Swiss" and replying angrily -- no, I'm not!! I'm Brazilian!" Sigh...

** Of course I know that it's even worse for "army families" because then it's around the world...

I like teaching, but grading...

2011-11-29T23:51:00.000-05:00

... is a pain.

edited to add -- I'm sorry, folks!! I'm totally, 100% repeating myself in this post! I already wrote most of this rant on 11/7. Please blame it on NaBoPloMo, OK? (I do have an "extra" here, the link to a previous post about my traumatizing experience of online teaching).
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Seriously. Grading papers is SOOO subjective that it drives me nuts! I feel like all I do is "justify" the grade I give in my comments. I can't stand writing comments... I think I sound so hollow, so untrue!

Sometimes I wish I could simply give everyone As, but that wouldn't be honest, that's not part of my job. I need to help students get better at what they're doing.

But when I don't grade and give them back their assignments in a timely manner, I'm NOT helping them!! So... there you go. I'm officially the less helpful professor in the face of the earth (OK, maybe not, I returned one of 4 papers and most of the 2nd paper. A student [not mine] told me today that one of her professors didn't return/grade ANYTHING yet, and it was pretty tragic how hearing that made me feel less awful about myself).

Just for about 2 minutes, though.

The reality is that grading is hard, no matter what. And for me, using a rubric doesn't help much. In addition, electronic feedback -- which I think is ideal -- is a pain for me because of that horrible, no good, very bad experience of online "non" teaching. (I totally have some PTSD from that). (I re-read that post just last week and I was surprised at how strong my feelings were, so many months later... yeah, I was definitely traumatized).

The good thing is that I don't think there's anything traumatizing with teaching in a real classroom and dealing with live, flesh-and-blood "kids." I enjoy that, and I hope the students can sense that. And... maybe, forgive me for procrastinating so much the grading. :(

I'm so lame!! (and "faking" the date today, the first time in over a week, really, so I should be forgiven for that too).

I still miss him... :(

2011-11-28T22:55:00.001-05:00

Wasn't he gorgeous?

Here he is!

2011-11-27T19:15:00.001-05:00

Isn't he precious?! I will try to come back and write more later, but I need to finish a grant proposal and do some serious grading before tomorrow.

I am also worried about baby, mommy & daddy because they are exhausted, he cries a lot, she feels her milk hasn't come in and is very anxious about that (she seems to feel very insecure and anxious in general as new mothers often are, poor thing!). Keep her in your thoughts and prayers, OK? I wish it weren't so hard to have a new baby. :(

(and, seriously, the second time around is WAY better, that's the truth!)

Locked Out

2011-11-27T02:27:00.001-05:00

We've been inside our cozy house for less than an hour now, in spite of the fact that we arrived about 11:30 from Maryland.

Today was one of those (fortunately) rare unfortunate occasions in which the stuff nightmares are made of come true. On Wednesday when we left, I made a fatal mistake: I suggested we bring an extra set of keys for the car, one that didn't have the house key in it. K was using that key to drive and had left the other key in the car (between the two seats, on the floor). On Friday, however, when the car was full of my Black Friday shopping stuff, I decided to bring the other key inside the house -- after all, it's not very wise to leave your car keys inside the car, right? RIGHT?

Except that tonight K used the spare key to drive to church, left it in his pocket and reused it again in the evening -- so he never had to pick up the key from the key hooks at brother-in-law's house.

We realized we didn't have our house key until we'd driven half way home. I remembered that we had the garage opener in the glove compartment and didn't stress too much. And then, we often forget one of the back doors unlocked, so I thought that those could be an option.

Well... guess what? Everything that could go wrong went 100% wrong. The garage opener wouldn't work. The other garage opener (inside our other unlocked car, parked in the driveway) didn't work either. ALL doors were locked. There's a balcony off our bedroom and I thought that maybe that door would be unlocked. K climbed on the trash can and hoisted himself up (getting hurt in the process), but NO, the door was locked as well!

We went to the two convenience stores in our small town looking for batteries for the garage door opener, but they didn't have any. We even bought a Phillips screwdriver to try to open the opener, but it was too big and I finally opened it with a paper clip. It was one of those tiny 6V batteries. In the end, we drove all the way to a Wal Mart Supercenter (20 minutes away) so K could buy the batteries. I was napping in the car (while the kids, who woke up when we got home, talked) and when K came back, he asked, what if the neighbor (who was looking after the cats) locked the door from the garage to the house? Oh no! I truly hoped that wasn't true. I slept on the way home and jumped out of the car as soon as we got here. The opener worked and the door was unlocked, PHEW!!!

What a night! K was joking that at least it would be an unforgettable night for all of us and that this would probably never happen again.

Seriously, besides sticking extra house keys in each car, I want to install one of those keypads outside of the garage, it's how we got out of situations like this in our rental house and our last house in Pennsylvania.

Good thing I got to talk to my brother on skype, though! It helped that we were still up. I will write the post about their experience (pretty interesting, as a matter of fact, more cultural differences in maternal and newborn health care) tomorrow. And it might even include a photo of the baby!!

Well, good night (for me)... good morning for my readers!

New Baby!

2011-11-26T19:03:00.001-05:00

I wish I had a photo to go with this post, but my brother hasn't seen one yet. My nephew was born today at 10 pm (5 am here) in New Zealand and everything went well (except the need for an episiotomy). Dani weights 3.5 kg -- 7.7 lbs, or, in the stupid (sorry, I really think so)* system you use here, 7 lbs 11 oz and it looks like he's nursing well, has dark hair and is calm (for now!).

My mom is reporting back what she hears from my brother -- who called her as soon as the baby was born and then again at 9 am their time [on Sunday] (4 pm Saturday here), while his wife was resting -- but I hope I can talk to him in the next few days. My sister-in-law's mom and dad couldn't be at the birth (or... I don't know, maybe they didn't want to?) and by the time my brother called my mom the second time, they hadn't yet seen the baby. (I understand that some couples want that, but I have the impression that these were probably requirements of the hospital there and not my brother and SIL's choice). My brother also said that he won't give anyone the telephone number of their hospital room just yet because his wife is very tired and a bit stressed out.

After hearing their experience, my mom is simply delighted with how my births were here in the U.S. -- she was with us both times (in addition to a family friend when Kelvin was born), we were all nice and comfortable in the birthing room, listening to the music we brought from home, and friends and family (including my 2 year old) were able to come see me and the new baby very soon after he was born (I don't know how it is in New Zealand, but in Brazil children don't go into hospitals -- I don't know if they'd make an exception for a sibling). When Kelvin was born, K stayed with me overnight in the hospital, but when Linton was born, my mom stayed, because K was home with Kelvin who was still pretty young 2 years 3 months).

In any case... I'm really happy my nephew was born, but a little impatient because I don't know much about him and how it went. I can't wait to see his little face! After each of my births, we called my brother from the birthing room and I have photos and video of me talking to him and telling him about how it went. Oh well... he has his wife and son to worry about, I know how those first few moments and days are, so I shouldn't be frustrated, right? My apologies if I'm coming across that way.

* Seriously, I think the metric system is way better, I've learned to live with lbs, oz, miles, Fahrenheit (the worst!!), but I can barely stand it. As for babies, everyone I know who is Brazilian American gets their babies' pounds/oz wrong when reporting back to their anglophone friends because it's just so complicated -- the geek in me goes crazy when people assume that the .7 pounds equals 7 ounces because they don't. Now, as my husband says, you guys really know your fractions because of your system (and we know our decimals).

Nephew Watch 2011 -- Contractions Started

2011-11-25T16:43:00.001-05:00

All the way across the globe in New Zealand, my nephew is coming!! My brother emailed us about an hour ago to let us know that the contractions have started.

We're all praying that all goes well. My sister-in-law is really apprehensive, particularly about feeling pain. Her mom and dad are there with them and my mom wishes she could be too.

I'll keep you posted!

Crazy Tired from Shopping

2011-11-25T14:30:00.001-05:00

I have to blog now because later I may be too tired to do it.

My sister-in-law and I went to the stores (Kohls & Target) at 1 am. Then we headed to JC Penney at 4 (I bought next to nothing there) and came back home close to 6 am. I got up at about 9 am and left again, this time for Costco and Trader Joe's. Then I went to the mall (crazy crowded) where I shopped at Gymboree, got lost walking around and came back home.

Now my sister-in-law and my husband (who stayed home and slept all night -- but according to him he woke up very often) are napping and I'm here trying to stay awake. Sigh. My brother-in-law (who had his own shopping spree this morning at Macy's -- beautiful and really affordable suits!) took the boys to the park and I'm really thankful for that!

What did I buy? At Kohls, a couple of big throws for our new living room (solid brown & caramel), a blazer for my husband, some gifts for the boys and a few other things... and going to Target was pretty much useless (I wanted a fire-pit, but an hour after opening, they were all gone. :P At least I bought a nice immersion blender -- which I thought was the one one sale, but which it wasn't. Booo... At JCP I bought a pair of red gloves & some funky tights and waited for my SIL to do her shopping.

I'm calling my aunt now, we want to go there and see her and my uncle (the one who had brain surgery two years ago).

I hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was great... I'm just awfully exhausted, but I think it was worth it.

I LOOOOOVE Thanksgiving!!

2011-11-24T13:40:00.001-05:00

After a rather unusual Thanksgiving last year (we went to the beach!), I'm delighted to be back to our Thanksgiving tradition of years back -- spending the holiday with K2 (Klebert's younger brother) and his family.

Exceptionally, this year we were ready with the food ahead of time! And we're just waiting for our guests, a Portuguese family celebrating their very first Thanksgiving in the U.S. They're bringing a codfish dish (bacalhoada) which we can't wait to taste!

Our four boys are downstairs playing the Wii and we are all very hungry, awaiting the best part of the day.

Well, the guests are here, and I will write another post later.

42

2011-11-24T01:48:00.001-05:00

Only 42 posts more and I will reach my goal of posting more than last year! That sounds imminently feasible now, YAY!

Now... if only my nephew could decide to arrive into this world! This suspense is not very easy for my sister-in-law and brother to deal with.

The pies are baked for tomorrow already, and I made the sweet potato praline dish too! Gotta go to bed so we can be thankful for all the food tomorrow! ;)

Getting Better

2011-11-23T14:40:00.001-05:00

Lepton, the kitten that was still sick is getting better. He still vomited once more this morning, but has been fine after taking his medicine. My friend is coming to give him medication tomorrow and I'm absolutely elated that my neighbor across the street happily agreed to look after my "babies" until Saturday night when we return from my in-laws! What a blessing! Look at them, sooo cute!

I love Lepton's tongue in this pic:

And Quark's sharp "embrace" in this one:

" 'Cause it's his turn, but his brother won't let him try..."

2011-11-23T09:48:00.000-05:00

wow... this sentence is half of my life as mother of two young boys.

but it was the beginning of the song that moved me (the part above it's very close to the end, which is also the same as the beginning):

it's like forgetting the words to your favorite song,
you can't believe it, you were always singing along
it was so easy, and the words so sweet...
you can't remember, you try to feel the beat
....eet.... eet.*

* sorry, I can't embed it.

The previous post sent me looking for cool stuff in Youtube since I'm woefully out of touch with contemporary pop music -- very loosely defined in this post as "music people are listening to now that is popular and/or good" -- with very few exceptions (e.g. Adele & Cold Play). Youtube is OK and all (lots of trash too), but I'm delighted that Spotify came along -- now I can listen to lots more great music without having to sift through bad resolution or cover videos.

In any case, I'd heard of Regina Spektor a while ago, probably through a post in my my sister-in-law's blog (she has great taste in music -- BTW, I'm glad you liked the brownies and other food [scroll down for photo] I cooked! As you know, I really enjoy cooking for company, not so much for only us ;) -- I'm looking forward to Florida already!). But I'd only heard one of her songs, I think, the great "Laughing With." So a couple of days ago I listened to a lot of her songs, both in Youtube & Spotify and though I don't really like many, some are awesome, e.g. "Samson":

I love the Narnia books and have been enjoying the movies (didn't like Dawn Treader too much, though :( ), but I didn't know that Regina Skpektor's "The Call" appeared at the end of Prince Caspian!

I still haven't bought any of her music, but I hope to be able to listen through Spotify and maybe someday I'll buy it too.

Drip, drip, drip

2011-11-22T13:02:00.001-05:00

It's raining here and today, because of the rain, I was reminded of how one of our "crumbling Hondas" -- the "younger" one, the Odyssey -- is leaking oil. Every spot I parked, even if just a few minutes, had a shiny "rainbow" colored stain mixed with the rain water coming from under it when I came back to the car.

It wasn't my imagination either. When I got home, I opened the garage and moved the car inside for a couple of feet so I could check the oil (we try to check often and constantly add more). I moved it out after less than 10 minutes so I could close the door and let the cats out of their carrier (I put them there so they wouldn't run our of the garage) and when I came inside and closed the door, there were a few drops of dark oil on the garage floor.

:(
Part of our big financial worries right there. I keep hoping, against logical thinking and hope itself, that these cars can last until we can afford to get new ones. Maybe they can, maybe it'll all be fine in the end, who knows.

Meanwhile... I feel guilty every day for polluting the environment and filling our waterways with horrible oil. (it seems that the leak cannot be fixed, unfortunately) :(

P.S. Thanks for your lovely supportive comment, Aliki. It's precisely what I needed to hear. I am at peace with the expenses and 100% sure that my "babies" are worth every penny. It's just that I have horrible anxiety & issues with money and K & I always have the hardest time talking about it.

Children of Deported Parents & Pepper Spray

2011-11-21T22:23:00.001-05:00

nothing like checking the news to put things into perspective, right?

I had always asked myself what happened to these children and this organization gives the heartbreaking answer. (see video below if you want)

In addition, I hadn't checked my Twitter feed since Friday and hadn't listened to/ checked the news so I didn't know about the pepper spraying of students at UC Davis -- how awful! Here's the interview of a victim and a discussion of how strong pepper spray is.

Last, but not least, Jo(e) wrote a great post about social media and the OWS movement. It's good that the world is watching, what effect will this exposure have?

can't

2011-11-21T19:18:00.001-05:00

I can't really blog today.

I mean, I'm a big over-sharer, but I need to stop it at times and this is one of them. I will just say a few things, but not discuss them.

My cat (I think it's only one now, but I can't know without spending significant time with them in the garage) is still vomiting, in spite of the fact that the vet thinks they're both fine and after I spent several hundred dollars there today (b/c I decided to go ahead and the the whole feline leukemia thing. worried mother preyed upon).

My mom is worried about my dad's health and I don't like that.

Spending money I don't have on the cats that I shouldn't have in the first place has caused me too much grief today (after I talked to K).

bye

P.S. (I can curb the over sharing, but not the prolix tendencies) and I have to go to bed early b/c I woke up at 4 am worried about the cats and spent the rest of the night in the garage with them (I brought in a mattress & blanket, but there's a heater in there, so it's nice & warm)

Sick Kitties

2011-11-20T10:31:00.001-05:00

(sigh)
My cats (who just had surgery last Wednesday) are vomiting and I'm pretty stressed out. I'm glad they are still playful and acting normal, so it shouldn't be too serious, but still... it's a worry.

To make it worse, I found out (and I'm so upset at myself for not having paid more attention earlier -- I did feel a lump after the surgery on Wed, but didn't look closely) that there's a huge tick on Lepton's neck. :(

Thankfully, I called our friend and vet and she called me back and gave me advice -- their office is actually open tonight and I can take them in!

(too bad that we may miss a Nutcracker concert we were planning on going, but I will try to go anyway!)

So, yeah... it's not easy to "parent" pets. Easier than children, for sure, but still stressful at times.

P.S. In a sense it's OK that K left early this morning for a conference, because he's always quick to remind me of the consequences of my choice to have pets ("See? I told you it would be a problem!") in typical "guy" fashion. Not very supportive at times. :( And I will tell him all that, BTW, I generally don't write anything in the blog that I wouldn't say to anyone's face (at least I not anymore!! ;).