All kinds of miscellanea

I love rainy days. I don’t know why. I just do. As long as I don’t have to go outside, that is. If I have to go outside, then I prefer clouds but no rain. Odd, right? I am. Maybe that’s why I picked Luna for a blog name. I wonder if there’s some underlying reason for picking Neville….

No news yet. I keep wondering whether or not we’d actually get a call on the weekend. The offices in Korea are closed during the weekend, but then again, it is thirteen hours ahead of here, so technically it is Monday there while it is still Sunday here. Assuming they open at 9:00 a.m. Seoul time, it means that we could get a call any time after 8:00 p.m. today, if my Sunday-afternoon-I’m-feeling-kind-of-foggy math is right. 

I thought I had given up jumping every time the phone rang. I proved myself wrong on Friday when I pulled a hamstring trying to get to my cell phone, which was charging downstairs while I was upstairs getting ready to go out. It was Neville. Imagine my surprise.

Then yesterday I decided I was going to stop waiting for the phone to ring, and that I won’t risk any further injuries by running to pick it up before it goes to voice mail. Now it seems I have replaced the obsessive phone-ringing habit with a habit of keeping an eye on the clock and counting the hours until the office opens again in Seoul. *sigh*

The hamstring pull didn’t bode well for our planned 23 mile run yesterday afternoon, although it wasn’t the hamstring that did me in. We ran along the Cape Cod canal  - great place for a long run – but we only made it 19 miles before my plantar fascia gave out. I’m not convinced we’ll be able to run the entire marathon in October. I might have to cut it back to a half-marathon or risk another stress fracture to my hip.  After a year of physical therapy and another year of sitting on my butt waiting for my hip to fully heal, I really don’t want to chance it again. Add that to the fact that I’m 30 now so I have to be cognizant of how my age affects what I am capable of.

 

On another (final) tangent…. I’ve been wanting to post pictures of the beautiful favors that mom and sis made for the shower, but as busy as it has been I haven’t had time to take pictures, no less post them. I’ll get those going soon…

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You know you’re busy when…

…there’s not even a moment to blog. The fall semester is in full throttle. Here I am at 11:00 p.m., only 1 hour after leaving my last class of the day, trying to determine what lesson I’m covering in class tomorrow, which happens to meet at 11:00 a.m. No – I am not kidding. It’s just been that busy.  Update – so I realized after I wrote this that those of you who have to be at work at 8:00 a.m. probably think I’m complaining about nothing – so I felt the urge to throw this in too: the problem is that I have office hours before every class – so I have to be ready to go as soon as I get to campus, which is significantly earlier than when I actually start teaching.

I PROMISE to have something more to write by the end of the week. I will include pictures of the most AWESOME, FUN baby shower EVER when I do manage to write more. Hanna?…. Who’s that? She didn’t keep anyone away; not even friends and family coming all the way from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It was so great to see everyone. The generosity and thoughtfulness was just incredible. I ended up misty-eyed quite a number of times. The pictures say a thousand words (so stay tuned…)

Jaden… we are ready for you!!! Just get the agency to call us and we’ll be there!!!!  Your family and friends are all eagerly waiting to welcome you!!!

Well – unfortunately that’ll be it until my next 5 minute break… in the meantime I hope everyone is having a great week.  

p.s. Neville finally made it home from ‘the week’ on Saturday evening (after the shower)….. he drove 4 or so hours through Hanna’s wrath to meet me at Mom’s. I’m very happy to say he’s home for good.

10 more days

Recently my brother-in-law was talking about how hard it is to go back to work after being off for two weeks. I feel his pain. Possibly ten times over. I haven’t taught since May 5th, when I had my last class. So I have been ‘off’ nearly 12 weeks, if you don’t count doing research (which most people don’t).

If I did not own a calendar, the knot in my stomach would tell me that I have little time left before classes begin again.  The nightmares have started.  I dream that I wake up to suddenly realize that classes start TODAY and I haven’t even completed a syllabus, no less a lesson plan for the first class. 

Generally I am prepared for classes. Neville tells me that I prepare too much. It’s not like I haven’t heard it before.  It has been the general consensus of my colleagues as well. No matter how many times I’m told that I’m doing too much, and no matter how hard I try to just do whatever is necessary to get by, I just never feel prepared enough. I tend to spend every waking minute doing ‘just one more thing’ for my classes. (Come to think of it, that’s pretty much how I run my entire life.)

This is the fate of a professor who cares too much. I care whether or not my students enjoy class and whether or not they learn something. I care whether or not they like the textbook, and how much they have to pay for it. I care whether or not they stay awake during class and whether or not they study at home. I care whether or not they do well on exams. I feel responsible, to a certain extent, for how well they perform in the class. Of course, I do realize that they have to put in the effort as well (I’m not stupid — just caring), but that is my only relief in the entire caring nightmare of my chosen career.

This has created a conflict for me: It was very difficult for me to balance my teaching duties with my dissertation research and writing. I wanted to be prepared for my classes, and preparing for class is what I default to if there’s no ‘plan.’ So I had to be careful to make a weekly schedule with enough time set aside for the dissertation, or I’d wake up on Sunday to find the week gone without a word written in my research. 

This conflict created tremendous anxiety. The guilt over spending more time than needed in one area while not getting to another area eats away at me. It is the source of my nightmares. It is a good part of the reason my stomach aches the week before classes start. 

By now you’re saying “But Luna, you’ve finished your Ph.D. – the dissertation is no longer a factor,” and you are correct. That anxiety has given way… the dissertation is finito. Yet there is a new factor now. A wonderful, amazing, lovable, anxiously anticipated factor — Jaden.

For the first time in my life I can understand why people don’t want to work. I want to stay home and spend every minute that I can with him. I don’t want to have to leave him to go teach classes. I don’t want to have to prep for teaching and go to meetings and hold office hours. I want to enjoy every waking moment with my son when he comes home. Alas, I can’t. So the anxiety is here to stay.

I seem to consistently operate at a high level of anxiety. Maybe it is just my destiny… persistent high anxiety…. or maybe, just maybe, the real estate market will turn around and our situation will change. Until then, we remain unwilling land barons, and I face the start of the semester. The happy ending to this story is that I face it with a gigantic smile on my face, knowing Jaden will be home very, very soon.

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Organic Cleaning Part 1: Vinegar the great

As promised yesterday, I’ll try to post a few of the more organic solutions I’ve been using around the home to clean with. I started out by naming this blog ‘Organic Cleaning.’ Then I realized I was writing so much about vinegar that I’d probably have to do more than one blog on this topic! So here we are with Organic Cleaning Part I: Vinegar.

Vinegar is one of my favorite all-purpose, around-the-house and outside staples now. I either use straight vinegar or a solution of 50/50 vinegar and water. I have it stored in spray bottles at my kitchen sink and in every bathroom. Vinegar is also a disinfectant. Click here to get more information on using vinegar as a disinfectant.

I’ll list some of the more common things I use vinegar for (as well as caveats) here…

I spray my shower lightly with the 50/50 solution after I shower to prevent soap scum and mineral build-up, making cleaning a breeze. When I clean the shower, I use baking soda and vinegar. I either sprinkle some baking soda on the tub and then wipe it down with a washcloth soaked in vinegar, or I spray it down with vinegar, then sprinkle baking soda and use a damp rag to wipe it down. Works wonderfully. 

Vinegar acts as a disinfectant. Before I eat vegetables or fruits with edible skins, I wash them off and then hit them with the straight vinegar.

I add a 1/2 cup to the rinse cycle of my laundry to keep whites staying whiter. I accomplish this by putting the vinegar in the fabric softener receptacle in my washing machine. Vinegar also acts as a fabric softener, so I eliminated dryer sheets from the drying cycle. It is important to make sure you don’t over-dry clothes. Over-drying is part of what creates static cling, especially when lycra, nylon, or polyester are present. 

Vinegar is great at removing mold and mildew. I had some green growing on my deck where the sun can’t reach it so I sprayed with vinegar, waited a few moments, then wiped it up with a towel. It hasn’t grown back.

Vinegar can be used as a weed-killer instead of the nasty chemicals they sell in the stores. It’s safer for our environment too. ) I just spray straight vinegar on the weeds and wait a few days – voila. When doing this I have to be careful not to spray it directly where I’d like to keep the grass or allow my plants to grow – vinegar can affect the pH of soil and make it difficult to grow anything. Driveways, walkways, etc. are the types of places to use this as a weed killer.

I use vinegar instead of glass cleaner on mirrors, windows, glass, etc. It is a great glass cleaner. I use straight vinegar but you can also use the 50/50 solutions. If working in a delicate area (e.g. the glass on a picture frame), I spray it on the rag first then wipe. If you try this method and you’ve been using store bought glass cleaners for a while, it may take a couple of vinegar applications before all the residue comes off. Commercial glass cleaners contain some kind of chemical that leaves a waxy residue (I think it might be wax but I can’t remember where I saw that). Once that residue is gone, you’ll have shinier glass and mirrors than ever before.

Things to be aware of:

The vinegar smell dissipates shortly after using it. When spraying in the shower I find it more pleasant to hold my breath while spraying then immediately walk out of the shower. I’ve read that you can infuse the vinegar with natural oils, but I haven’t done this as the smell doesn’t bother me that much, and it really does go away. The less ingredient mixing I have to do, the better.

I use WHITE vinegar only. I buy the regular household strength (5%) solution. I make sure the bottle says the vinegar is “made from grain”, otherwise it may be petroleum based. Heinz sells made from grain white 5% vinegar in giant jugs at places like BJs’ and some supermarkets. These are what I pick up. They last a long time, even with 5 spray bottles hanging around the house.

As mentioned above, if you have been using lots of chemically-based cleaners in your house you may find the first couple of times you use vinegar that there is a film on the things you clean. That will go away eventually.

DO NOT USE VINEGAR on calcium based stone such as marble or granite. They can cause staining (as can any acetic food such as lemons and fruit juices). You can use it to clean the grout between tiles, but make sure it is diluted and rinse thoroughly afterwards otherwise it can start to break down the grout.

There are hundreds of other ideas for uses of vinegar in one of my favorite reference books: “Vinegar: Over 400 Various, Versatile, and Very Good Uses You’ve Probably Never Thought Of” by Vicki Lansky. I highly recommend it. Everything is indexed to make it easier to find. I also recommend “Green Housekeeping”  (also sold as “Organic Housekeeping”) by Ellen Sandbeck. Many of the cleaning tips I use now I found in these two books while I was researching greening up my house. 

I also just happened upon a website located here, that claims to give 1001 uses for vinegar although I have not checked it out thoroughly yet.

Of course I need to add the disclaimer that you have to use these tips at your own risk, because what works for me might not always work for you.

Happy greening!!

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Prepared… who, me?

When I finished defending my dissertation in May I really convinced myself that this would be the summer that I finally prepared in advance for the coming semester. By August 1st I would have all my lectures planned out, all my exams, quizzes, and homework assignments ready, my course websites designed, and my office cleaned. Here I am on August 5th, and not only have I not accomplished any of the above, but I have not even ordered my desk copies (textbooks), so I have no idea what my first class is going to cover yet.

I’m off to campus today, for the first real meeting before the start of classes this semester, which means that I need to be ready for take-off. After today, the first day of classes will arrive so quickly it will seem as if it were to happen tomorrow. This semester I am teaching two new courses that I have not taught before. One of them is new to the department and I’m the lucky one who gets to set the curriculum (in other words I get to make all the mistakes that everyone teaching it in the future will learn from).  The other is a twist on a basic finance course I taught in the past – but the last time I taught it was probably 2001.

Of course I have my excuses for not being ready for the semester; first I was food poisoned at a restaurant the night of my defense and ended up in the hospital and bedridden for a week, then the meetings and all the paperwork started for the change to Korea, and once that was finished (not too long ago) I started to catch up on all the visits with friends and family that I missed out on since 2000 while working on my PhD. As a matter of fact, this week I have a friend (or two) to see each day that I’m not on campus. So all is not lost. It just feels that way when weeks go by without me noticing.

As I look at my “to do” list with amazement I wonder how I’m going to do all of these things AND keep up with a 9 month old.  If the weeks go by this quickly now, how fast will they go when Jaden is home??? I can’t imagine…. maybe those of you in the know can give me an idea. Does time just fly by at Mach speed? It sure seems like it will.  

Funny how I want time to speed up now so that I can go to Korea to pick up Jaden, but at the same time I feel like classes are approaching too quickly. I’m sure once we return from Korea, I’ll want time to slow down again. As soon as someone has developed a time-bender, let me know – I’ll try it out for you. )