celebrations

It's EM's birthday! It's my dad's birthday! AD is in remission! It's a blue moon! It's a blue moon and a super moon! It's raksha bandhan! 

After work, I was in and out of the house all evening taking soup to AD and pastries and presents to EM (whom we celebrated over dinner last week). Many folks do all this commuting everyday with their kids' activities and sports and... wow. It's a lot.

Our rakhi days are different from everyone else's. This year, only Nu is wearing their rakhi on their wrist; At is wearing theirs on their ankle (work doesn't allow bracelets), and Huck and Max are wearing theirs on their collars. The kids--human and canine--have been tying on rakhis and promising to protect each other for as long as I can remember. But the years are distinct. This is Max's first; we missed Scout. I looked back at last year's celebration, and it feels like a different pandemic world!

After dinner, we called my dad to serenade him with birthday songs and then went outside to look for the blue super moon. My city kids (pointing at a distant streetlight) "Is that it?" (Face palm.)

We finally found it later and higher in the sky--so, so lovely!

at night when

I walk  past  our  house 

again and again... again

with  our  dogs, actually 

silent  blue  super moon 

close  enough  to  touch 

I feel a bit like... a ghost

on the outside I can feel  

only flowing and falling 

the swallowing of places 

like  I'm  not  even  here

our windows like pages 

in a picture book, maybe

a  passage  from  a novel 

this bloom in your voice 

as I finally open the door

Pic: Nu, Max, Big A, & Huck. These guys! Being so cute when I returned from a long day of teaching. 

High: seeing new and familiar faces in class. + Being able to remember the names of a hundred or so new students. 

Low: Saying goodbye to JD, a dear colleague-friend who's moving to U of M.

It's happening...

Fall and the fall semester are here whether I'm ready or not.

I'm ready.

I'm not.

I don't know! 

All my materials are ready, so I should feel ready too? Tomorrow will be here soon, anyway.

I've been excited and anxious about the first day of school since I was about five or six. It's probably the longest unbroken seasonal tradition I've got. That and sitting in the first row. The child advocacy organization we visited on Saturday posted a picture of our group on the socials... and there I am... sitting nerdily in the first row as always.

Pic: A lone maple leaf settles on our freshly redone street.

three-dog night

Yesterday--I think--was national dog day and my lovies didn't get their own post. 

Scout

The last time Big A and I cried about Scout was... today. One of us regularly comes up with stuff that then makes both of us cry. Today Big A wondered how long Scout had known he was sick and if he'd been in pain before we noticed. Yesterday I was remembering how Scout would entice Huck with a toy so she'd leave us and he could get all the pets. At and Nu seem so much better adjusted to Scout's absence.

Huck

I continue to be worried about Huck, who has not recovered from losing Scout either. Very worried. Huck was always such a princess and doted on by Scout who would groom her for hours (it was never reciprocal!). Our smart boy Scout was afraid of stairs, a bad catcher, and couldn't jump very high, and Huck used to take so much joy in routinely showing him up in each of those spheres. So Huck always took many of Scout's treats, bullied him about toys, and generally took him for granted... and now she misses him all the time. Sometimes I think she's asleep near me, but she's just staring into the distance and looks like the picture of depression. 

Max!

Max is so... Max! He looks more like Scout every day, but of course, he's not Scout and not at all like Scout. He's his own flopsy, mopsy, happy-go-lucky, Koolaid baby. He's got a goofy grin, loves everyone, is so easy going, eager to park himself on anyone sitting down, and just seems so cheerful all the time. He's learned to bark in the last month but still doesn't understand how to catch a treat. He'll just let it slide off him and then grab if off the floor. Huck plays with him, especially tug--and we know she's into it because when Max loses his grip on the tug toy, she'll sort of feed it back to him so they can tug again. But they rarely cuddle together. Max likes to torpedo into Huck who's smaller and older and and we're trying to teach him not to. School is coming up soon for this guy.

Pic: Max resting his puppy chin on my laptop, Huck looking back at us (sadly).

out and about

A service day with my new first year seminar class; youth advocacy will be the focus of our semester-long project. We got started today by getting on a school bus for a tour of the public school district, which incorporates very different neighborhoods from regular homes to mansions to farms to trailers to condos to... anything you can think of.

I learned that some students ride the bus for two hours to get to school!

And I saw a handmade poster that asked "Are you an American or are you a Democrat?" I'll be musing on that one for a while. It was close to a cluster of houses displaying the confederate flag--make of that what you will, I guess.

Pic: Our school district superintendent and my FYS class on the school bus.

down

Woke up to see these two huge trees down. The backyard is about 75-100 feet in width and these trees are all of that and more. 

I was grateful that they seemed to have missed stuff that was important to me: my people, the house, the picnic table my parents gave us when the kids were small, the dogwood tree my friends gave me for a birthday, and so on. But the tree fall took the pink cherry blossom tree out, sadly. 

Other than that, no lasting damage, but it is terrifying to think what might have happened if the trees had fallen across the house. The trees are not ours--they belong to a neighboring church. I wrote the church's people again, urging them to get a tree survey and prune/cut as necessary before something horrific happens. 

Every day when I take Max out in the morning, I go by Scout's memorial and sound the wind chimes. I was blocked on both sides by these trees this morning, and couldn't reach Scout's memorial--that was when everything began to hit me.

Pic: Two trees lying across the backyard. I took this picture in the early morning light and from a second floor window, so the size and scale of the damage are a bit off.

crashing

Opening convocation today. The energy was a bit off without families in the stands, but clapping students into college life through a faculty gauntlet is still fun. 

Also a ton of meetings; I crashed hard at my seventh meeting of the day at 4:00 pm. I was so afraid I was going to fall asleep right at the conference table, I started to rearrange the stickers on my computer.

At came to dinner and when I was dropping them off at their place we got caught in a terrific thunderstorm: trees falling onto the road, tornado warning, the works. Visibility was so bad as the rain was just sheeting across the windshield--there was no way to tell where I was driving, if the river had flooded etc. And nowhere to pull over safely either.

Terrific crashes in our backyard too, I guess morning will show us the damage.

Pic: Before the storm--Nu, Big A, & At at dinner; Max and Huck are under the table. We're planning a trip to a state park for Big A's big birthday in two months!

Day One

I'm sharing Nu's first day of school pictures with so much hope this year, may the universe be good to this child. On FB, I wrote: The tee says "gloomy," but the smile seems to say "ready." Hopeful!

I watched from the end of our driveway as Nu chatted with bus stop friends and the bus showed up on time. When the bus doors close, Joni's always in my head singing "and a big yellow school bus took my little baby away." Mostly icebreakers and fun at school today, apparently. So far, so good.

For me: A detox/day off. I hiked with Big A this morning (eight+ miles) and we took a long soak. Then a CASA meeting, puttering around with online work, house chores, ordering stuff online for other families needing stuff for back-to school, a call with an old student, etc.; pokè delivery (Nu's choice) for dinner.

Pic: Screen-grab from my FB post. Each time someone wished Nu, it felt like a blessing.

Ok, half-full

If yesterday was being amused about colleagues coaxing me to eat more food, today was indignation.

If yesterday was perfect picnic weather, today was the sudden rain right as we had to move to another building.

If yesterday was the magic of shaving seven minutes off the commute, today was the delay brought on by tens of thousands of MSU students moving into the dorms across our house.

If yesterday was the euphoria of seeing my people, today was the reality of budget cuts, missing colleagues, metrics of the market, defunding of programs, polarization of higher ed, marginalization of the humanities, potential terminations, and so many new people hired as adjuncts. StephLove was right to remind me in the comments yesterday.

I'm on the Educational Policy Committee and just got elected to the Faculty Tenure and Promotion Committee. Let's see what I can do to make this a place that works for students and makes my colleagues want to stay. Once more into the fray to do the best I can.

Pic: MSU flower bed from last week. I haven't hiked or walked in days.

full

Such a full day! I was on the road for sunrise, sunset, and sickle-moon-rise.

We're officially back at work as Fall Conference started today. And I'm so full and excited from seeing everyone after summer break and catching up and being introduced to new people and talked into new committees and and and... It hasn't been quite like this since the start of the pandemic... Being with colleagues and friends is not something I take for granted anymore. I may have sardonically shared The Chronicle's "First Faculty Meeting of the Year Bingo card" on the group chat, but I sincerely and nerdily love my work.

A lot of the socializing took place over three meals on campus, so I'm feeling pretty full on that count too. 

Pic: Walking back to my car after the all-campus picnic.

family stories

1) Burr (not brr) 

Nu spent a lot of time outside with the puppies and when they all came in, Max was covered in burrs. Nu started to brush them out of his fur when they noticed that Max seemed to be nibbling at their clothes... Nu thinks Max was trying to get burrs off of them! 

What a sweet story! I love so much about this story including Nu being up early enough to catch the sunrise with Max, spending time outside, taking care of Max without being prompted, building a story about Max... Max adores Nu and that has been so, so good for Nu. 

2) Hair today (gone tomorrow)

At some point last year, I may have said in passing that a ponytail would look cool on Big A or maybe I just thought someone's ponytail looked cool. However it started, the next thing I knew Big A was growing one. And then I kept saying how cool it was, so he kept growing it out. Turns out neither of us really liked it that much and now he's relieved to be getting it cut tomorrow. 

I would never change my hair for Big A or anyone, just saying. I do think it's kinda sweet that he'd do that for me though. Being adored by Big A is so, so good for me.

Pic: Huck, Max, and Big A. This is why we call Max the Kool Aid pup--the floofball'll just flop all over people with no warning and in the strangest of postures. Don't miss his eyes!