Experiment: Success.

It's been over a week since I've written, and it's not because there's nothing to say. Things move and change as ever they did, and I've explanations for some of them, interpretations of some of them.

I unexpectedly got called in to sub the other day, and I went quick as I could, without knowing what grade level I was even in for. It turned out I was a reading teacher, who pulled out small groups from second and third grade every fifteen minutes to a half hour. I loved it-- it was a lot easier for me than trying to control a whole roomful of kids.. being reading support kicked ass. I got to work with ESL kids (from Turkey and Chile) and the slower readers, I suppose. We read scripts and did rhyming words, and talked about adjectives. I also spent some time just floating around as in-class support for some third grade rooms. My favorite moment was Craig's guileless face as we listened to the assignment given and he asked, "Will you help me?" We went to the back table and wrote a poem. I promise I didn't write it.. I just asked him questions til he did it himself.

Otherwise, subbing has remained relatively quiet. I may go hang out at the Junior Classical League convention at LHS next weekend and be a certamen reader, or something. A sort of last little goodbye/hurrah with the Latin kids.

Teaching GRE is going pretty well now. I'm getting used to having a very small class. It was difficult, a week ago, for me to believe I was going to leave because I didn't have enough work, but now that my KC job has come to its natural endpoint, I certainly can. I have a lot of extra time, now. I should be spending my extra time thinking about what it will mean to pack up the stuff in my room.

But I don't want to. It's begun to sink in, and people have begun to ask me not to go. That in itself is pretty gratifying. That in itself makes me want to pronounce the Kansas experiment a success. When they say I've become associated to sunshine and light, when we stay up laughing and sitting on the porch, I know I'll miss this.

It's finally gotten into the 80s of degrees two days in a row, now, and I'm wearing what skirts and dresses I have, just for the fun of it. Most of them are in GA because I brought them back in the fall; I didn't think they would fit in the car along with the sweaters on the drive home. All the windows are open, naturally, to let in the air and light. Today, I'll go shopping because my flip-flops finally became dangerous, and I have a twenty earmarked for "something fun." ;)

I haven't even seen Roommate in a couple of days, because our schedules are so off. He began his training for the census job he'll have for the next chunk of time, and so is doing the 8 to 5 style thing. I only work evenings and weekends anymore.. and since I have nowhere to be in the morning, don't really see a problem with hanging out until 3am on a Tuesday listening to people play guitar. Once I get up, he's gone.

So I spend my extra time being an arguably lazy girl. But I submit that I'm being responsible to enjoy myself, so I won't regret the time I had left in KS.

Epistulae and news

For the second day in a row, we are blessed with moderately chilly rain here in the middle of the midwest. I was going to bounce around Loose Park and take photos for another "travel guide" kind of thing, but bouncing around parks in chilly rain is simply not my thing. Staying inside, writing letters, and contemplating life..? Ah, that is more like it.

Letter writing is something that comes in waves, for me. It is, in fact, the very thing that prompted me to start this blog in the first place. I had let the letters pile up in my little desk organizer, and when I finally dispensed with replying to all of them, I realized I'd written the same thing fourteen times and sent it to different places around the country. There's nothing wrong with this in and of itself.. but the whole reason I had let them pile up was a general lack of time to deal with writing. Remedied here.

Not too long ago, I bought a rainbow pad of paper. The pages are "A5," so they are large enough to say something, and small enough to never say quite enough. There are a total of ten colors, but here are seven spread across my coffeetable.

I later put six under the glass and made them a permanent color fixture.. because I like colors.

Anyway, they may make me write more, or I may just like to write more than I used to, when it comes to letters. I'm going to say my record is the letter I sent wherein I used one of every color of paper, front and back. I used to just give the news, but now that this blog does that, I get introspective and deep as well. It allows me to tailor my letters a little bit more when I don't have to spend any time giving the basic facts, maybe?

I make a list of all the people to whom I need to mail things on my whiteboard in my room. I tend to go in order of who sent me something first and work my way down, but that isn't always how it works out.

Anyway, I got some sweet new stamps that I'm excited about using. I had to keep myself from also buying a bunch of sunflower ones, being in Kansas and all. It was almost too cliched.

So, in general: things are going pretty well. I've settled into a sort of schedule and am getting better at these things I do. My GRE tutor student has, I think, improved, although her diagnostic wasn't terribly encouraging. My Latin tutor student has worked his way up to an A, which rules. My GRE class last week wasn't the most awesome thing ever, but I have a feeling this week will be much better. D$ has expressed some interest in being my friend (and it's different, this time--). Zig's has added me for Saturday nights as well, so my frustration at only being given four hours a week is assuaged. And, literally, the sun just came out as the clouds are migrating southward before my very eyes. The sunset side of the sky is pinkish.

..spring indeed (grumble)

The equinox has come and gone and we in the northern hemisphere are now getting more sunlight than darkness. Provided, of course, that the clouds allow it to pass through and reach us here on earth.

This does not, apparently, require it to become springlike in any weather fashion. Chilly grey weather has progressively worsened over the course of the week. Today's sleet, snow, and freezing rain (or "wintry mix," as they call it down at the weather channel) actually caused my tutoring job to be canceled today! Which I certainly don't mind, as I was not relishing the idea of driving to Kansas City in this weather.

This would not, by the way, be the ACT tutoring, but GRE tutoring which I've begun with an extremely intelligent woman from Libya. Her challenge will be the GRE verbal, which is of course a challenge even for English-speaking native sons.

Anyway, I'm crossly stationed in my apartment, unwilling to do the bundling required to face windchill of even 20 degrees. Since the weather does tend to have a pretty big impact on my mood, I've been cranky lately.

Last night was my first night back as food expediter at Zig's. People seemed happy to have me. I, in turn, was happy to have a food runner assistant.

Still, it felt like old times when I rolled up and had to bend my head to the windy cold, since I last worked there in December. I suppose if I got random 60-degree days in January, I must also accept random freezing rain and sleet in late March.

Blah, I say!

The grass has begun to green! The trees, to bud!

The photo doesn't really capture the way the wind is blowing those clumpy flakes around.


Hey, ice layer, hey.

(There, and) Back Again

I've been doing some thinking. I'm not sure I could ever not be doing thinking, but I've been doing it. And a little math, too.

What with the recession and all, this sub gig might have dried up more or less for good. I am starting to get the feeling that they have cracked down on the teachers, saying "no more sick days unless you are dying," or, they are skimping on subs and having regular teachers cover classes during their planning periods. Either that, or I'm totally blacklisted from district work.

My last 'big' check arrived today, its size owing to the fact that I get more per day in a long-term assignment, not to mention the more-days inherent in that term. My last full week of Latin-subbing has come to its eventual result.

It's quite possible that I have done what I needed to do within this substitute thing and it is receding as quickly and strangely as it appeared. But if it's really gone, I'm not sure the Kaplan KC thing is going to be enough.

So I've been seriously thinking about going back to Zig's and asking for my job back. It makes me feel good that the last time I was there, several waitresses asked when I was coming back. Not having the heart (nor the certainty) to say never, I said once I stopped making enough money at subbing. Well, that day might be quickly on its way. In April, I'll be doing a GRE class with Kaplan here in town, but I'm still not sure that'll make it up.

I have felt a bit sentimental at times, and I have missed the restaurant stuff now and then. I suppose it wouldn't be so terrible to go back and work a bit less hard for a lot less dollars. I may go up there tomorrow and talk to the manager I still know (they replaced the GM just after I left, and I don't know him basically at all, but the kitchen manager thinks I am pretty cool).

I'm still piecing together the cosmic implications of the idea that I had a specific task to complete, for myself and in service to the universe, and that it was maybe these several weeks of Latin teaching (+ learning I am not meant to teach first grade + kind of liking the idea of English teaching), and now I'm done with this piece of it. Wrapping up is strange. I have my very last day in that classroom on March 30th, when their real teacher is in Nashville (of course!) with the Greek class.

I used to count my work weeks in terms of hours, not dollars. Even when I scan my schedule like that, though, I could be doing more. I don't mean that like it sounds. But already, even knowing I 'worked' today, and even though it took much longer than it should have because I locked my keys in the car and had to make my poor roommate drive all the way to KC to bring the spare... I've still got most of the day to just hang out. Not that this is a bad thing, and not that I shouldn't be prepping my ACT lesson for Friday (and yes, I do get paid for prep time also, just not quite as much).

Perhaps it's time to effect a return! Someone tell me, was I stressed out at the restaurant job because I had no other change of scenery, and no other friends, then?

Potentially Officially Affliliated; also, beer

As we know already, I have a tendency to relish connectivity. There's nothing better than a little web of seemingly random interconnected meaning.

Today, during my planning period/lunch break, I was browsing the interweb as one is wont to do. I remembered that I meant, last night, to look in the phone book to see if I could find some martial arts for myself. Yes, I'll only be living here a few more months, but hey, I could be back later.

Here is why: I was recently accepted by the KU Classics MA program, stipend and all (but I've always known that humanities grad students don't pay for school but are paid to be graduate teaching assistants.. I can see no other way a poor humanities major should survive unless independently wealthy). I submitted an application in a sort of just-in-case fashion, hope still being high for the JET experience. In the process of writing my cover letter, I realized that I really could gather quite a bit of enthusiasm for the program. From the ground up, Lawrence is a grea town-- this is a pretty big deal when choosing a place to spend several years, because even if your program rocks, if there is nothing for you outside of it, you'll be in a less than ideal situation. Also, the department has been nothing but great to me since the day I first wandered serendipitously into their halls posing as a prospective graduate student.

Actually, I would not have been there, but my roommate wanted to go check out the East Asian Studies department; I rode along (well, I had nothing better to do that day.. this was back in the late summer/early fall, when we didn't have friends yet). Classics was in the same building. I couldn't think of a good way to say "I'm a classics-hanger-on and would like to skulk around this department, offering tutoring and snagging friends," so I said I was "interested in the grad program." The Department Chair was busy, but she graciously suggested I come to the gathering/party the following day where I could meet and speak with grad students and more faculty.

This gathering also happened to be at the home of a name familiar to me through a professor at Vandy. This whole thing is rife with random connectivity.

I went to the party, and the Graduate Director, Professor Corbeill, told me all about the program. It seemed quite meritous, even if I were only posing as a prospective. Professor Corbeill later gave my name to a certain high school Latin teacher who was about to go on paternity leave.. without this, I would not be where I am, at this moment, sitting. This gathering was also where I met Erin, a first year grad student, and my Lawrence best.

So I filled out that application, warmly confident that it was a great program, and I am a great candidate for it. As time has passed, I've gone to a lecture or two, and hung around the department office a bit more. I even went to an afternoon translation session and made a good showing by sight-reading some Livy. In due time, I think I impressed Dr. Corbeill with my hanger-on ways, and I'm sure my shiny little transcripts didn't hurt either.

So anyway, I was looking for karate, right? And I decided to go to lawrence.com, because that's potentially a place to find all things Lawrencian. And there on the front page was this article! I beamed with pride. I know Heath from restaurant times at Zig's.. I used to be food expediter, and Heath was hands-down my favorite cook. His genuine good attitude was, especially some days, an absolute Godsend. He would laugh where others would get testy or blame me for things, and he was always upbeat and encouraging.

There in that barnyard is where I was when Professor Corbeill called me to invite me aboard the good ship KU. I had just toured the tiny facilities in my slacks and low heels on a chilly grey afternoon and was sampling a bit of the red brew courtesy of Heath when my phone rang to an unfamiliar number.

So, I might be back after all. I am not yet sure; I like the town, I like the department, and I like the connections I've made here. It's been fun being technically independent of the University, and would be cool to be in a program there. For now, we've still to wait and see what happens.