Doing Better

Thanks for all the encouraging comments, folks.

Please know that were my Mom to blog, you'd probably get to hear that I'm uncommunicative (I don't talk much, confide, and so on); I'm impatient; I'm not as respectful as I should be, and I don't listen to what she has to say, or treat it with appropriate respect.

I also don't dress appropriately much of the time, and don't bother to think how I look. (I also don't wear makeup, despite her encouragement, nor do I wear proper shoes, or skirts/dresses, etc.)

I'm not as supportive as I should be; this is especially true in comparison with several of my cousins and their relationship with their mother.

I don't think about other people enough, and am too self-centered.

All of these things are true, just so you know.

That said, we're doing a bit better. I think we're both trying hard.

We went to Hiroshima yesterday, and that was good for us. It's a good reminder that our petty irritations are just that.

We're off for our tour, and probably won't have internet access in the near future. Take care, blogfriends!

Trying

In both senses.

It's just after 11 pm. My Mom just came out of her bedroom to check if I'm not in bed yet. (She did the same thing last night at this time.)

When I got up to use the bathroom at 5:30 am, she popped out of the bedroom to say good morning. She had been waiting to hear me stir. We had plans to meet someone at 9:30 at the train station, so it wasn't like we needed to be up at 5:30 to rush around to get breakfast. And being evil, I went back to bed for a bit.

Let's just say we're on slightly different sleep schedules, and one of us really believes there's a moral rectitude to getting up early.

In the past, I've thought to myself, "never again." But I realized today that I know that's not likely, and that I can't even tell myself that to feel better. So when she was off on a racist tangent with one of my friends, well, I wasn't happy. But I think I've learned to trust that my friends are aware enough to realize that my Mom and I are separate beings, and if my Mom says something, that doesn't mean that I endorse it. So I kept my mouth shut and wanted to think "never again," but couldn't.

I'm trying not to care and counting the days with despair in my very center.

And now I'm going to bed so that I can start again tomorrow at whatever hour.

Regan or Goneril

I love King Lear. But just today, I find myself wondering which I'm more like, Regan or Goneril.

I'm feeling guilty, and frustrated, and doubly guilty for being frustrated.

I see my Mom growing old; not seeing her for a while makes the changes more apparent, perhaps. And the changes scare me, more for my own future than anything else. Yeah, I'm selfish enough to know that things will be pretty sucktastic for me if I hit my 70s.

But back to Lear. Remember when he wants to take his retinue to stay with his daughter, because, after all, what's another 100 mouths to feed? They won't be any trouble at all! We're "supposed" to sympathize with Lear; his daughters should take him in, should care for him in his old age. It's a no brainer. They should take some time off from work to make sure he settles in, to take him here or there, or just visit. And if he tells them how to run their households, to bring a sweater, to get this other brand of toothpaste, they should listen respectfully because he raised them, and he's older and wiser than they.

It's part of our mythology, that in the "old days," children took care of their parents when they grew old. But, as historians of western Europe will tell you, it's mythology, and not how households were usually organized from at least the middle ages on. Certainly all those colonial types who left "the old country" didn't bring the 'rents along. Nor did the pioneers have a "mother-in-law" apartment above the ol' Conestoga.

But it's still a potent myth, isn't it?

And there's the rock and the hard place, Scylla and Charibdis, of how to deal with the reality. I think my Mom's articulating her own frustrations more fully, too, both with my sibling and myself. I get the feeling we're both big disappointments in the family responsibility department. Usually, in the past, she's pretty much held my brother exempt from criticism, but not now. And while at one time I would have been glad not to be the only one subject to criticism, now I feel doubly defeated. She's critical, but at the same time she realizes that she didn't spend her middle age taking her parents or in-laws on family vacations. It's just the rock and the hard place.

Of course, we're neither the first nor the last family to hit these issues. It's same old, same old back to Leir.

Shoot Me Now

nt.

The Calm Before the Storm

I got a lot done today, mostly a visit to Kyoto, to see Nijo-jo, which was at one time the Shogun's castle in Kyoto, and is now a world heritage site. It was well worth the visit.

I was weirdly happy walking in Kyoto, feeling like I've gotten to know the basic city enough to find my way back to the train station. (That doesn't mean I can necessarily find my way to places not marked on the tourist map in big ways. I'm geographically challenged, and the smaller streets aren't laid out in ways I can easily suss.) As someone who's not really good at geography in general, I'm a tiny big egotistical that I can find my way around Kyoto. Kyoto is laid out as a grid, with obvious big hills to the east, a north-south river along which runs my train line, hills further up to the north, and then hills further away to the west. If I can see the hills, I can find my way to a train station. And yet I'm still sort of proud that I can find my way around, so I can just relax and walk.

It's my last relaxed visit in Japan, probably. My Mom comes tomorrow. I'm hoping it goes okay, but the last email I got from her sort of irritated me. It was one of those "send this to all your friends" emails, with several pictures of confusing overhead street-type wiring, from India, with a caption about how that's where the call center you end up talking to for computer problems is. It just seemed to have an easy assumption of racism and irritated me.

Why send the email to me? She knows I get irritated at racist stuff because we've had any number of fights about such things. So why poke at me with an email?

We're going to be in this area for a couple days, then do a tour. That may have been a mistake; we'll see. I'm pretty willing to get myself good and lost, and try to ask directions, walk an hour or so out of my way, and so forth. But I'm not willing to do any of that with another person being unhappy about being lost. I get lost rather frequently, and at some point, I just learned to relax about it. People who don't get lost frequently are maybe a bit less relaxed about it. So I decided to get us on a tour; that way we have arranged hotels, transportation to get us here and there, and guides to explain things. It could be great.

Or not. We did a tour once together, a couple years after my Dad died. The first summer after, I talked her into going river rafting with me and a friend, and it went well. I think she enjoyed it, but not enough to really want to do it more. But she wanted to do this bus tour of the Badlands and Yellowstone. (I can understand why she didn't want to just drive together, because while my Dad was alive, he pretty much drove, and that meant they didn't stop unless he wanted to. So if she's going to feel powerless about driving, she'd rather feel powerless on a bus where the power is abstract, than in a car where it resides with the driver, pretty much. My family is a bunch of control freaks, and I'm up there with the worst of them.)

So, off we went on this bus tour, because my Mom really wanted to go, but didn't want to go alone, and by the way, I'm single, so my vacations should be spent with my Mom, right? especially now that she's alone.

I like animals and wildlife a fair bit. So there we'd be, driving along, and the tour guide would point out that there were often elk in this particular meadow, a meadow we were passing at 45 miles an hour, passing the parking area, and I'm trying to glimpse to see if there are elk from the wrong side of the bus. Or we'd pass an area that's famous for birds.

But we couldn't stop, or even slow down, because we had to get to some big, famous drugstore, or gambling/shopping town so that we could all have a couple hours to shop or gamble. And this wasn't fun shopping, no hardware store, bookstore, or bike shop.

As if that weren't bad enough, we'd be driving through some grainfields, a two hour drive to our destination, and I'd be ready to fall asleep (because basically in a car, I'm either driving or wanting to nap). And just as I'd start to nod off, the guide would decide to make a couple comments about the area where we were headed. And then she'd add in some conservative comment about the joys of Reaganomics or something. My head would pop back up at the noise, just in time for her to stop after four sentences. At which point my eyes would start to droop, until fifteen minutes later, she'd realize she'd forgotten some point about the wonder we were going to see in a couple hours. And this would go on until we got to the scenic spot.

So my desire to be on a bus tour is sort of low. I'm hoping this will be way better; keep your fingers crossed.

On the other hand, I'm working on being a more generous person. My first step is to not try to pick fights. And since the one person in the world I'm most likely to pick a fight with is my Mom, I need to work on this seriously.

It's not that my Mom is a bad person; she's a really fine person. Ask anyone. And she certainly wasn't abusive as a Mom; quite the opposite, in fact, she was an amazing Mom. My college friends all thought my folks were the cool ones. And the things she thought to do when we were kids, so creative and neat.

But still, I have a lot to work on. Wish me a good attitude!

Busy!

I went to my last meeting of the English club today, which was fun and sad at the same time. I think meeting up with G, getting to know people at the club, was probably the best thing that could have happened to me here. It was a great opportunity to talk to people away from the university, to get a little understanding of some different people's lives and thoughts.

When I look back at myself as a young woman in the Peace Corps, I regret not being more active in getting to know people more away from my work there. And I'm grateful for the new opportunity here.

I have a busy time ahead. I have to clean the apartment, finish preparing the final exam, pick my Mom up at the airport, grade the final exams, figure grades, turn in grade reports and evaluations, get the apartment inspected, and figure out how to feed my Mom and myself all the while. I also have to get my laptop changed back so that it isn't set for here, but will work at home. And that will mean the end of blogging or anything else on the internet until I'm back home.

G and another friend from the club are coming with my Mom and I to Kyoto for a day this week, and are going to explain stuff; both are trained guides, and both fluent in English, so I'm feeling pretty amazingly lucky.

And then my Mom and I are headed to Tokyo (I'm hoping I can get us there on the shinkansen/bullet train), where we'll join a tour group through Japan for 8 days, ending in Osaka at the castle. We'll come back here for a night at the apartment, and then head back to the US on (amazingly) the same flight.

One of the guys at the English club tonight gave me a map of Tokyo where he'd marked the places he recommends for our visit. Isn't that neat? He went out of his way to find an English map and mark it for us.

Busy days ahead!

Taking Credit

One of my students wrote a kick-ass final paper. Seriously good work!

I'm going to pretend I had something to do with it, and go out to play tourist for the afternoon. I may even get myself some ice-cream. Yes, it was that good.

(It was nice, when I returned papers, too. She'd worked really hard this semester, especially on this paper, and after getting it back, she was just one pure smile.)

Grading as Athletic Event

I try to warn my students to prepare for midterms and finals as an athletic event. If you're going to be clutching a pencil or pen for 2-3 hours at a time, writing furiously, then your hand needs some preparation.

Clutching seems to be my operative mode for writing when I grade. And since I sit still and grade for long periods (more than three hours at a time, for sure), I can feel it in my hand and in a sort of general antsiness/stiffness.

My thumb joint and second finger on my writing hand are a little sore. Unfortunately, I can't just change hands, since my other hand's primary life skill is holding down the paper while I write.

But the grading crunch should be temporarily over this afternoon, so I'll give my hand a nice soak in the bathtub with the rest of me!

One of my college friends had the most impressive callous on the second finger of his writing hand, just where he held the pen/pencil. I get sort of flattened skin there, but don't seem to develop a callous much.

Have you ever noticed if you look at your hands that some of your fingers seem to sort of twist in a weird way? Just me? (Nope, I'm pretty sure it's not arthritis, just my one finger sort of twisted outwards on each hand.)

Enough break, back to grading jail!

Thoughts from Grading Jail

I need better self-discipline about grading. I used to have better self-discipline, but I've lost some of it. I need to get it back.

***

In any given semester, I end up teaching at least three people (usually students, occasionally another faculty member) some basic computer skill.

For example, someone will send out a computer file that we're all supposed to read, naming it "important.stf," or something like that. And then they'll resend it when someone else responds and says they can't open the file. (Maybe Macs don't have this problem?)

Then there's the "tab" function, or changing justification/margins, footnotes.

I wonder how people learn this stuff? In Japan, according to one of my students, there's a high school class that teaches people basic living skills, including computer skills. (The class sounds great, too. Tool use, basic electronics, cooking, for all. But I've still been teaching my students some basic stuff about computers.)

I don't know how to solve the problem of computer knowledge gaps, but I do know that all of these students can text message, work an ipod, and program a dvd player to do the dishes. And I can't do any of those things.

I also totally lack self-discipline about grading. Did I mention that before?

Overwhelmed

There was a mid-size quake reportedly felt in Tokyo a couple days ago. The epicenter was out to sea, and so there wasn't a lot of damage.

And then there was Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. And now the big quake in China. The reports I've seen said a 7.8.

Loma Prieta was something like 6.8 to 7.1. And the Northridge Quake was something like 6.7. Since the Richter scale is logarithmic, a 7.8 is ten times the energy as a 6.8. My mind boggles.

Times like this, teaching writing, Shakespeare, the liberal arts, all seems pretty useless to me. Planting trees feels useless, too. It all feels useless.

***

I've been thinking about getting a dog when I get home. I'm worried about the time I spend at the office, time when the dog would be alone at the house, and the time I spend out biking. Well, and, to be honest, wanting to travel without having to find someone to dogsit. And worrying about the whole resource issue. (I'm guessing my old dog had a pretty serious carbon footprint, if I think about how far his food was probably shipped and stuff. I bet he had a greater carbon footprint in his short life than a lot of folks living in the third world.)

Still, purely selfishly, I'm thinking about getting a dog. I like being part of a pack, even if it's a pack of two.

If I were half the person my dog thought I was, I'd be a pretty amazing person.

***

I got my incentive check, the one we're supposed to spend on consumer goods so that we can support the economy. I'm trying to decide between Planned Parenthood and the local food bank. Both organizations do good work, and both can always use the money.

***

I can't give blood until late January, I think. It's weird, maybe, but giving blood seems like at least an attempt to do something meaninigful. When I got back from the Peace Corps, I couldn't give for five years because of the malarial prophylaxis. But now it's supposedly a year for visiting a malaria area. (Assuming I don't come down with a surprise case of malaria, of course. I didn't do the prophylaxis thing for my short visit to low risk places, but I did smear DEET all over myself, and slept in netted rooms and such.)