Tracking Rita

My meteorology prof has us doing the coolest thing. He had us print out a Hurricane Tracking Chart, then go to the National Hurricane Center website. Every couple of hours they post another Public Advisory about the Hurricane Rita. At the end of that report is a summary that gives the wind speeds, direction of travel, and pressure level, as well as the latitude and longitude coordinates of the storm that I plug into my map.

I’ve been watching this thing since it was still a tropical storm near the Bahamas. Mr. B also asked us all to send him our prediction of the location of landfall by noon today for extra credit. The closer we are, the more credit we’ll get. I chose Sabine Pass, TX, which is basically right on the Texas/Louisiana border.

According to the 10 PM update, my location will still be a little bit west of the actual landfall of the eye of the storm. I should have known! They always seem to turn east just a little more than people expect them to just before landfall. Sigh!

The end result of my map will be pretty cool.

Just Like a Newborn

A friend of ours just had a baby the other week. She came over to Mom’s this evening with the little guy in tow. I had just finished mowing so stopped in to see the baby and chat a bit. Two of Mom’s babysittee mothers came to pick up children while I was there.

They were oohing and aahing over the baby as he sleepily blinked his eyes slowly at them. They were talking about how newborns seem to struggle to stay awake and how they blink their eyes so slowly in the process. Mom, probably not really thinking about what she was saying, said, “That’s exactly how I am at church in the evenings.” We all cracked up. (Our church is having revival meetings this week.)

Mom is probably well justified being sleepy when she sits down for any length of time. She often gets up around 4:30 in the morning, sometimes earlier but not often much later than 5:00. She babysits all day, so she has reason to be exhausted. She has a lot of mothers that depend on her. For a short period of time today, she had nine children at one time, including four babies ranging in age from 10 to 18 months. Fortunately, most of the children are school age and are only there before and after school for a couple of hours.

I love my Mom…

Unusual Breezes

As I was walking from Algebra to German today, I spotted, several people ahead of me, a true nightmare.

There was a girl walking in the same direction I was going, to the same building in fact, and she was wearing a nice full, white skirt. When she had donned her backpack, she had evidently pulled it up from a rather low point and had managed to catch her skirt with her backpack. There were several things in her favor: it was a full skirt so the extra fabric kind of drooped around the tucked portion of the skirt and it was a long skirt and while it had been caught fairly low and pulled fairly high, it still left her with about a miniskirt length at the highest point.

My own hand snuck around to the back of my skirt in a discreet smoothing kind of fashion, just to make sure that I hadn’t done the same thing in some horrible twist of fate. Things seemed to be as they should have been.

My heart went out to the poor girl. As people dwindled down to only one person between us on the sidewalk, I determined that if I could catch her as we walked into the building, I would try to discreetly tell her of the problem rather than holler ahead to her on the sidewalk and possibly embarrass her further.

She entered the building just ahead of me, with the one remaining person continuing on down the walk. As we entered the building, there was a kind lady from the cleaning staff standing there and spotted the problem before I could stop the girl. “Excuse me, excuse me,” she said, “You’ve got a problem.” Rather than stick around and embarrass the girl further, I turned to head down the hall in a different direction. As I continued on my way, I heard the lady say, “All them folk walkin’ behin’ ya and couldn’ none of ‘em tell ya’.” I felt a twinge of guilt for not having been able to catch her first, for I was “one of them folk.” Oh well, my intentions were good, for as much as that counts.

A Lesson Learned: BE AWARE of any unusual breezes. It could be more than a change in the weather patterns.

The Highs and The Lows

Several evenings a week, Jolene stops in to get/return the German book we share; therefore, we often have Story Time with Jolene.

It has been interesting to watch her hit the highs and the lows in the three weeks since school started. She went from “I’ll never be able to do this” and “My English teacher scares me to death” in Week One to “I love, love, love my English teacher” and “I really look forward to school” in Week Two. Then she hit Week Three in which her teachers began to assign homework and set deadlines. Story Time on Thursday evening had a decidedly negative, grumpy tone to it.

I can identify with the emotions she is experiencing and am currently in a very low Low. By the time I got home from work on Friday evening, I felt like I’d have to look up to see the belly of an ant.

I’ve got so much homework that if feels like I’m barely keeping my head above the water. None of it is particularly hard at this point, but it’s all busy work and so time consuming, a commodity I don’t have an abundance of.

I’ve got a German test on Monday morning, which has great potential for being a disaster due to indefinite articles and gender. I’ve pretty well been skating along in that class and not been giving it the attention that I need to because it wasn’t as demanding as some other classes. Now it’s catching up with me.

My car has a new quirk that is getting worse. It does a lurch-y kind of thing. This would be in addition to the occasional transmission-going-on-vacation problem that the mechanic tells me isn’t a transmission problem, as well as other small quirks that thus far haven’t really affected the car getting me places. I really don’t have time to fix it, but then again, I don’t have time not to fix it.

The grass won’t quit growing, and I don’t have time to mow it now.

For once, I’m having somewhat of a hard time keeping up with stuff at work.

I’m not getting any more sleep than I was during my previous semesters. As a matter of fact, I think I’m getting less. Every once in a while we don’t have algebra class on Friday mornings, but if I want to park anywhere in the vicinity of the university, I have to arrive at the normal time. I was so exhausted on Friday morning that I just put my seat back and slept for an hour and a half in the parking lot before going to German class.

And to top it all off, I’ve come down with a throat-hurtin’, fever-inducin’, nose-stuffin’, eye-waterin’, body-wrackin’ cough/cold. When I got home on Friday evening, I was so cold that I put on a sweatshirt, turned on the electric blanket, and climbed into bed with my German book and papers and tried to study, in spite of my desire to sleep. An hour or so later, I got so hot that the sweatshirt had to go and I couldn’t take the electric blanket anymore. I woke up this morning hot and sweaty with a headache that felt like I’d burst a blood vessel if I coughed one more time.

Yeah, I’ve been feeling very blue and gripe-y. But surely there’s something positive in all this. You know, Pollyanna, silver linings, and all. This is what I’ve come up with:

Too much homework: At least I’ve got homework. I could not be enrolled in school, working two/three/four jobs at once, and bored with life in general (been there, done that, tired of it).

German test on Monday: I’ve done some studying over the weekend. I’m feeling *a little* better about it. Praying for Jesus to help my memory come test time.

Quirky car: I could be Amish and not have a car. So far it hasn’t failed me on my way to class.

Growing grass: The grass isn’t so tall that the City Ordinance Officer will fine me for not cutting it this week.

Difficulty keeping up at work: I can put in some extra time after business hours and get more time in than if I went home right at 5:00.

Getting less sleep: Hmmm, tough one. Oh, I haven’t overslept more than ten minutes…yet.

Cold/Cough: Really tough one. Well, I can still breathe, albeit through my mouth part of the time.

There you have it. Just call me Pollyanna. Or Ann-with-an-E.

Needed: Encouragement

I had an appointment in Bowling Green on Tuesday afternoon so I didn’t bother going to work. I only had one class that day: algebra. After class was over, I figured it would be a good time to go to the Meteorology lab and try to get my first lab done, but I was about ten minutes too early to get into the lab.

As students disappeared into buildings, I sat down on a low wall outside the building and got my algebra homework out to finish up the few problems I had left to do. I was deeply ensconced in radicals, exponents, and “to the power of's” when I heard someone say, “Hey, Sharon, what are you up to?”

I looked up and there stood my Meteorology instructor. He had just finished chaining his bike to the bike rack, his official protest to the $75 parking permit. I explained to him that I was passing a bit of time before heading up to try a dreaded lab. We chatted for a bit, and then suddenly he asked me if I thought his lectures are disjointed. I had been sensing that he has been frustrated in class. I told him that I thought his frustrations come from the fact that he knows so much more that he’s supposed to tell us right now and he’s having a hard time separating introductory stuff from how this stuff applies. He agreed.

I talked with him for quite a while. He voiced his frustration at the lack of caring on the part of many of his students. He wanted to know if some of his policies are unreasonable. I told him that I thought he has gone above and beyond the call of duty when trying to work with students and help them get good grades. I think that the students are taking advantage of him and exploiting his policies.

After we were done venting about all the spoiled students that have everything handed to them, I packed up my books to go to the lab. He went with me just to see if everything was working okay, since there had been major problems with people getting into the system. We walked up two flights of stairs to the lab. The lab assistant saw Mr. B and told him that his students have not been able to get into the system yet. I made an attempt but it didn’t work.

We then went our separate ways.

The next day, he basically opened the class up for questions over the material that we had already covered. I was one of the last to leave after class and considered sticking around to give him a bit of encouragement but he had asked to see one student after class and there were several others waiting to talk to him, so I just left.

I walked down the stairs and was about ten feet from the door when I heard someone say my name. I glanced around the lobby, pretty sure it was Mr. B’s voice I had just heard but didn’t think that he could have beat me down to the lobby. I didn’t see him there, but remembered that the landings of the stairs also serve as balconies. I looked straight up and Mr. B was standing there smiling at me. “What did you think of class today?” he asked. I gave him a thumbs up, and he shot me a big grin and walked away.

It kind of spoofs me that he would even seek my opinion, but I’m sure that it all stems from the fact that he was a classmate of Kris’s and so he feels a bit of familiarity there (since I look so much like her and all).

I guess it just proves that we all need encouragement…even professors.

Hannah

Fact: an adult that is accustomed to sleeping alone will probably not sleep as well with a 5-year-old in their bed.

Hannah is a 5-year-old that mom has cared for since she was 3 months old. She has been at Mom’s house nearly every weekday since she started coming and sometimes on weekends and overnight. She is more than a babysitting charge. She is the grandchild Mom doesn’t have; she is the niece that Mom’s children don’t have. She has gone on vacation with us; she has gone to church with us; she has gone with Martin and Dad while running errands for work. In short, she is family.

Hannah started school in early August. Because of school and the fact that her parents are splitting up, Hannah no longer comes to Mom’s very often. It’s pretty hard to go cold turkey on Hannah. I didn’t get to see her very much anyway, but for years, I’ve stopped in at Mom’s house between jobs, after work, on my way to school, etc. to get my small dose (sometimes only five minutes) of Hannah. I got a thrill every time I stopped in and she would come racing to meet me and jump into my arms.

For the past month when I’ve stopped in at Mom’s and asked if Hannah was there, all I got was a “no.” So when Hannah’s mom called yesterday to see if she could come stay while she went to the grocery store, Mom was glad to say she could come. She called Kris and I to tell us that Hannah would be there for a while and that we could come see her. We were doing homework and wondered if she couldn’t come over to our house instead. Mom said that Hannah wanted to be there. (I think that Mom wanted Hannah there.) So Kris and I went over for a while. Hannah gleefully told me that she could stay until she called her Mom to come and get her. Hannah was going to help Mom clean the playroom so Kris & I told her that we would go do more homework and then call her later and we would do something.

Mom called several hours later to say that Hannah had just gotten up from a very long nap and wondered what we wanted to do with her. I asked her if she had any suggestions. She said that Hannah thought that maybe we could have a Sleepover for her at our house. I told her that would be fine. Since Dad and Martin are on a trip this weekend, Mom decided to order pizza for supper and we could eat over there. Hannah and I went to get the pizza and then after supper she came home with Kris & I to spend the night.

I had a few misgivings about her spending the night. I thought back to the last time she spent the night with me. She may have been eighteen months old at the time. Everything had started out all right. I had fixed a spot on the floor for her and put her to sleep just fine. Around 2 or 3 in the morning, she started to cry. I did all that I knew how to do to get her to stop and she wouldn’t stop. She repeated something over and over, which I finally figured out was an attempt to say Mom’s name. I finally gave up and started up the stairs into the garage to take her to Mom’s, not looking forward to waking her up at that early hour. Around the third step from the top, Hannah finally stopped crying. I stopped where I was and stayed there for a good five minutes waiting for her to go to sleep. I descended the stairs and sat down with her for a few minutes to get her good and sleeping before I put her back on her blanket.

So I feared her backing out on me at the last minute last night. Her mom had said that if she changed her mind at the last minute to just call her and she’d come get her. We entertained her for a while then I fixed her a big bubble bath and music in the bathroom and let her play in there for a while. When she finished her bath, Kris lay on my bed for a while and let Hannah rub her back. Hannah then declared that she was ready for bed. Kris tucked her into my bed and left the room. I was at my computer and fully expected her to get back up, but she never did. When I finally went to bed, I had to move her legs out of the way to get in.

At one point during the night, Hannah was lying in a position perpendicular to me with her legs on top of me and I think her head nearly off the bed. I turned her ninety degrees and went back to sleep. She poked me several other times with her legs and kicked the covers off several times. It wasn’t the most restful night of sleep I’ve ever had but I’d didn’t mind. This morning she shyly thanked me for letting her spend the night. I told her that we’ll have to do it again.

I love Hannah.

One Week Gone

It’s such a good feeling to have made it through Week 1 without any major mishaps.

I managed to get up early every morning, only oversleeping by ten minutes on one of those mornings. I have since implemented the two-alarm system. I do crazy things to my bedside alarm at that time of the morning. Alarm number two sits on the other side of the room.

I’m enjoying algebra, for now, but it’s taking a bit to get my algebra legs back under me. It’s been nine and a half months since I’ve thought of exponents, factoring, FOIL, etc. Mrs. P, the professor, likes to ask questions of her students and get immediate (and correct) responses from them. For the most part, I’m not one that is able to give those quick responses. I’m usually still processing the problem she just whipped out on the board. We’re already into factoring, one of my favorite things in algebra thus far. I’m just worried about the time when we quit reviewing and start on the new stuff.

German isn’t too bad so far. My prof, Mr. S, is an interesting character. He is willing to do all sorts of contortions in order to get his point across. He did an amazing job of learning nearly everyone’s name in the first thirty minutes of class. My Dutch is serving me well, but coming back to haunt me at other times. Oh, and remember the vegetarian that came for Sunday lunch? I think one of their sons is in my class. I’m still horrified at the whole episode.

Meteorology should be an okay class. I think Mr. B will be a student’s teacher. He still has his experiences as a student fresh on his mind so he knows about the things that make a prof a terrible teacher. He will give us plenty of opportunities for extra credit. He plans to use our top ten quizzes and homework assignments for that portion of the grade. He even gave us a choice between a five-problem quiz worth twenty points each or a ten-problem quiz worth ten points each. We chose ten problems.

Basic Computer Literacy is my Tuesday, Thursday class. It turns out that I only have to show up on Thursdays. Maybe I’ll learn some useful stuff about spam, viruses, and spyware. Almost everything except for the tests can be done at my own pace, on campus or at home. The only former classmate of mine that I’ve seen in any of my classes is a guy from Speech that is in my BCL class.

I met another of Kris’s classmates on Friday. Fortunately, it was only a “Hey” moment because we met on the stairs, surrounded by other students and I was late for German. The meeting was so brief that I couldn’t even describe him. The only thing that I really noticed was that his glasses had photo gray tint on them.

Several thoughts from the week:

If I’m not careful when it’s raining, Hydroplane is one adventure ride I’ll be taking.

New shoes have to be broken in. They can inflict pain until such breaking in has taken place.

Compliments are always nice, even when given grudgingly by a person that rarely distributes compliments.

I'm Not Trouble. Serious.

On Wednesday morning, I was rushing along the sidewalk on my way from my German class to my Meteorology class. I decided to take a little different route than I had taken on Monday morning and try my hand at jaywalking straight over to my building as opposed to going up to the crosswalk and then backtracking down the sidewalk. I had nearly reached my jaywalk point when a man walking toward me made eye contact with me. His face lit up like a light bulb and he said, “Look, here comes Trouble!”

Now, I knew that I did not know this man, and almost no one, I don’t care who they are, has the nerve to call your average Amish woman “Trouble” without knowing them personally. Using this deductive reasoning, I knew that I was about to meet one of Kris’s former classmates. I smiled at him in a friendly sort of manner and said, “You must know my sister Kris.” He sort of chuckled a little bit and wanted to know how I’d been. I told him I’d been fine and that he must have had a class with Kris. “Yes,” he said, “Algebra.” I asked him what his name was. He chuckled and said it was Bill. He started to say something else and suddenly stopped, looked at me with a deadpan expression on his face and said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the poor guy and told him I was very serious. Up to that very moment He thought that I was pulling his leg when I said I was not Kris but Kris’s sister. I asked for his name again and told him that I’d tell Kris I saw him. I had to get to class and he seemed quite eager to go on his way, or I would have attempted to make a bit more of a conversation out of the whole thing so he wouldn’t feel too bad.

Last semester, Kris had stopped at Java City, the coffee shop at the library, and had gotten a white chocolate mocha something or other. I was on my way to meet her and we talked on the phone as I was leaving my car. She told me how delicious it was and that I needed to stop and get one. I walked up to the counter and ordered the drink. The guy behind the counter said, “Another one?” I explained to him that there are two of us and I hadn’t had one yet. I should have pretended to get all huffy and asked him “So are you calling me a pig or something?” I never think of good comebacks until it’s way too late.

From time to time, I meet people on campus, at Wal-mart, in office supply stores, and various other places that smile at me in a friendlier-than-just-being-polite way, and each time I have to choose how to handle the situation. I know they think I’m Kris, and I know that it will be awkward for both of us if I have to tell them that I am not Kris. Those that throw out a smile and a “how are you” in passing I generally handle with a smile and a “just fine” as we each continue on our way. Then there are the people that want to chit-chat a little that get the “you must know Kris” bit. I used to leave it at that but more recently I’ve started taking names because inevitably Kris wants to know who it was.

Kris is much more visible than I am. She deals with a lot more of the general public in her job; she has taken more classes with the general population at Western; she is in Bowling Green nearly everyday; therefore, I get to be Kris much more often than she gets to be Sharon. So while I’m always tuned into and have clear reception to the “Sharon” frequency, I also have staticy reception to the “Kris” frequency.

I simply judge each situation as it comes along and try to deal with it in the least sticky way possible, but some days, there is no help for it but to jump right into the glue.