There's a circle of blogs that I read that likely overlap some with yours but I doubt completely. Even Amanda and I have a few that just don't resonate for the other person. She reads scrapbook blogs that I sometimes find self-indulgent and in some ways econmically perverse in a sort of suburban housewife sort of way. I read lit. major and academic blogs that she likely finds self-indulgent and overdramatic and...but I guess that's the point of searching out other bloggers - find people with our own fetishes and pecurlarities so we feel a bit more normal. Or look for something so different from us that it's like exploring a new country. Or just because we found it, started reading it and can't stop...like a bad soap opera.
The following are some blogs and sites I often read but you might not. Some make no sense if you know me, like the first two, while others are pretty obvious. Don't feel offended if yours is not included. If you make the occasional comment on my blog, I figure other people can track you down that way.
A warning: I have a tendency to recommend sites or start reading blogs only to have them stop posting after I've become invested in them so this list might be the kiss of death for some of them.
Tulipgirl: An intelligent, former expat with an ecclectic variety of topics about things like faith, the Ukraine, food and parenting. Really I used to follow her husband's before it got hacked repeatedly. I'm thinking Red's Head and Because I Like Hearing would enjoy it.
Owlhaven: Mother of nine who has some connections with Ethiopia. She is also giving away a couple of copies of One if you leave her a comment or make a pitch on your own blog about it (thus, this entry). Parenting, homeschooling etc. I found it through Gretchen but Beegracious might also like it.
The Bored-Again Christian: I've only linked his blog/blahg here since I my internet is too slow for anything else but it is a great site if you need material for pretending you know something about music (or at least that's why I use it). I know Jake reads it but does Ben or Barry?
Paris and Seattle Daily Photo Blogs: Just what they say they are. Also a great starting point for finding a city of your choosing or if you want to start your own daily city blog. John?
African Adventures: Again, read the title. She's the type of person we would have been friends with in college, even if she is...Canadian. Lisa?
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Too cheap to pay for a full subscription, I just read the headlines and the free stuff like the First Person columns. It's just like being on faculty only without the students, office, classes to teach or meetings to attend. (I don't know who'd like this other than Barry and I.)
Those are just some of them. My others are mostly Campus House people. Some I occasionally find by fluke like Chris Genders (no link since I don't know if he'd want it out there) or comments they make on other friends' blogs. It's amazing who you can find just by following links or comments.
I also read some by people with my name since I think it's odd that there are lives being led by people using my name that I have nothing to do with. Or I'll search out my city or country or some passing interest.
Who are you reading that I should be?
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Number of posts = number of things about me
I read on Owlhaven’s site that a blogging tradition is that you have to write 100 things about yourself once you have made a hundred posts.
Here are mine. Skim at will.
1. This will actually mark my 107th post, thus 107 entries.
2. I don’t know when I last wrote my middle name. It is Brooks.
3. I think I do a pretty good time living in the moment. But I am also scared a lot of the time. A contradiction?
4. I used to fall in love with people and ideas quite easily. Now I just love people and ideas.
5. I used to not like that people think I look like my dad. Now I realize that he’s lucky.
6. I got new glasses just before we moved here two months ago. Now they slip off my face too easily.
7. Another thing I share with my dad – we lose weight from our faces first.
8. I can remember the phone number we had when I was 3 through 10 years old.
9. My leg has a metal rod through it from falling from a tree when I was 31 years old - twenty three years afte I first fell from a tree and broke my leg.
10. I love getting lost in strange cities, preferably while riding a bike.
11. I was 23 before I visited another country.
12. Since I was 23 I have spent about half my life living out of the US.
13. My mother-in-law may be the gutsiest woman I know. She had never left the country before she visited us in Africa two years ago and then she did it on her own.
14. We had a pinball machine growing up. It still didn’t make us the coolest family in the neighborhood – they had an Atari. (The second coolest family only had a Colekovision – sp? – but since their dad worked at a chocolate factory, they were close.)
15. The second girl I had a crush on was from Egypt but I don’t know if it was the younger or older sister that I liked.
16. I have very forgetable eye and hair color. Both are very in between.
17. I can watch gratuitous violence in movies and not have it bother me as much as one person having an affair.
18. I owned a poster of Heather Thomas.
19. Hillary Snodgrass (not joking) is the first girl I remember kissing me. In the gym. During kickball or something involving bases.
20. I wish I hadn’t left all our art in the US. We need to get something other than whiteboards and photo collages for our walls.
21. I own a vehicle in Africa in a country that I don’t know I would be allowed back in to. Anyone need a Galloper?
22. There is a store I go to where I only buy icecream and soda. They deliver gas and drinking water to our house.
23. I want to see the ruins in Greece.
24. When sharing a hotel room with people I’m not related to, I would rather sleep on the floor than share a bed.
25. I am a hotel snob and once missed the last available hotel for something like six hours while driving from Virginia to Illinois.
26. Redbird Arena is where I saw Chicago in concert when I was in high school.
27. I have seen Bob Dylan in concert as well as Peter, Paul and Mary and Paul Simon.
28. I was not impressed seeing Sting in concert. It was near the end of the tour and he seemed tired and unenthusiastic.
29. I once heard They Might Be Giants attempt a rendition of Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville
30. Christian writers impress me less when they were Christians before they became writers versus those good writers who later became Christian.
31. I visited something like 75 colleges while traveling with EIU’s Speech team.
32. Basketball was fun for me until I realized I needed to practice if I was going be any good. When everyone else got taller, I didn’t really know how to dribble, pass or shot from the outside.
33. I have never seen a John Travolta movie that I really liked.
34. The sound of rain may be my favorite.
35. Onomatopoeia is my favorite English word.
36. I can eat an entire bag, box or container of multiserving snack food – chips, cookies, candy – in one sitting. I still sometimes do.
37. I loved our foam mattress in Africa. I wake up from this one with a sore back.
38. My wife and I slept on bunkbeds for a month while we went to school in Seattle.
39. I drink tea, not coffee, with sugar but not milk unless I’m having chai.
40. My favorite authors you probably have not read are Colson Whitehead (The Intuitionist and John Henry Days) and Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans).
41. I have not read a Truman Capote novel but should.
42. My wife looks amazing when she is intently watching something simple like the spider who lived in our yard or the kids flying kites across the street.
43. Ethiopian food gives me heartburn but I really like it.
44. I have ridden on a camel and an elephant.
45. I do not know my address or phone number from memory but I keep them in my wallet just in case.
46. The sound of two metal eating utensils scraping against each other make my teeth hurt.
47. I have given up counting the number of cavities I have.
48. I will soon give up counting the number of crowns.
49. Pajama pants are fine to wear to sleep in but only with t-shirts or sweatshirts. Pajama shirts never fit right.
50. I left all my pajama shirts in Africa.
51. I have kept in touch with nobody I graduated high school with.
52. I hardly ever sleep on airplanes or sit down in airports.
53. I scored a touchdown during the one season I played football in high school. It was in the rain, we had kicked off and I recovered the ball after a couple of fumbles. I happened to be in the right endzone.
54. My biggest acting role was as Thorin Oakenshield in a musical version of The Hobbit. That and pretending I have the least bit of a clue as to where my future is leading me...
55. I played Dungeons and Dragons while in junior high and don’t think it was a tool of the devil.
56. I own fewer tools than I would like to (like a power saw).
57. My pinewood derby car won the local tourney by going down backwards.
58. Working in the jewelry department of Walmart was my favorite part time job. I was the first in our store allowed to pierce cartilage.
59. While working at the reserve desk at Eastern’s library (that entryway with the really high ceiling with the clock), we would tilt the fan upwards and blow bubbles.
60. I once spent the night in the library and avoided detection until my way out the next morning. I just kept walking.
61. I don’t ever feel at home until I have books on a bookshelf.
62. I have won writing awards in subjects dealing with “Democracy, the Vanguard for Freedom,” cultural diversity and woman’s advocacy. I am an antiwar, white male. “I’m not a (liberal, democrat, etc or) feminist…per se…”
63. Also while in college, I sent in a series of letters to a newspaper using a pen name. They were all critical of a writer name Cassie Simpson. They were mean and petty done in the name of being funny and as a way to get attention. I shouldn’t have written them.
64. Years earlier, I got hate mail in response to a letter I wrote the Pantagraph condemning our involvement in Panama.
65. I used to really like shooting a bow and arrow at two bales of hay we set up by the tree line. I lost more arrows in the trees and the yard than made it into the hay.
66. My wife and I used to fish for bluegill in a pond so small you could throw a tennis ball across it.
67. I once rollerbladed 22 miles during the middle of the night. (To the Moore House and back from Campus House). Dumb.
68. Vegetables are only appealing to me when I’m limited in choices of what to eat and when I’ve exerted a ridiculous amount of energy and/or sweat. (Vegetarian: primative word for "can't hunt".)
69. I have friends that I worry about nearly every day because they live in tough places to be young in. Not that there are many places where it is easy to be young in...
70. I am an introvert occasionally pretending to be outgoing.
71. When done right, there are few things better than a Montecristo sandwich. The restaurant that was once EL Crackers serves a great one, batter-dipped in something sweet and sprinkled with powdered sugar.
72. I come from an amazing family filled with people who are doing great things with pretty normal lives.
73. I have had at least one solid concussion as the result of a bike accident. I may have had more but can’t recall.
74. I don’t email or write or call individuals often enough. I communicate en masse.
75. I have largely given up remembering birthdays or anniversaries. I forget too often then feel guilty about it. I want to just send random packages to people when it hits me or when I see something they’d like. But I haven’t done that yet.
76. When I had a job as a pizza delivery guy, one of my biggest fears was that I might hit a kid while delivering in one of the trailer parks that was in our area.
77. I was always good enough in track to run in the big qualifier meets but never good enough to win them.
78. When I was in top physical form, I could run a mile in under five minutes. I can’t now.
79. During my last membership at a gym, I actually gained weight even though I worked out three days a week.
80. Baby-back ribs often make me ill but I order them anyway because I love their taste and I think something primitive in me likes eating meat from a bone that I hold in my fingers.
81. I am adept at using chopsticks.
82. I have read the Bible, Torah, Book of the Jain, the Koran and the Bagvad Gita and believe I am better for it.
83. Sometimes I’m not sure that I am driven to God as much as I am driven away from all the alternatives.
84. I do better on written tests than on oral ones.
85. I will read nearly anything that is made available to me.
86. I prefer owning books to borrowing books.
87. I can’t explain how to do things on the computer very well. Usually it is easier for me to move a person aside and try a bunch of different solutions.
88. I don’t like guns but I do like shooting things on video games.
89. I have never taken a cruise and don’t really like boats all that much.
90. I no longer own dress shoes. All my shoes are brown and range from sandals to hiking boots.
91. I do, however, own a pair of white gym shoes that I have yet to wear since coming to Asia.
92. The only dress pants I wear are khaki.
93. I have never owned a motorcycle but will buy one within the next year.
94. Money only gets me nervous when other people talk about it. (Which is why I was writing this at 3 am.)
95. Empathy is the trait I feel I most clearly got from my mom and I hope it is the trait I pass down most clearly to my son.
96. I want to like tofu but really have a hard time with the texture of it. Even when eating fried tofu, I think about the texture of unfried tofu.
97. I wish we owned a charcoal grill and had a place where we could buy charcoal.
98. The right side of my body creaks more than the left side.
99. I get quieter, not louder, when I get more emotional – this is true with anger but also when I’m expressing positive emotions.
100. I sometimes write during sermons but rarely do I outline what is being said.
101. My voice was lower in high school than it is now.
102. For seven years, my locker was in between Kara Macy’s and Mary Mueller’s.
104. I don’t tell my family how much I love them nearly enough
105. I want to be a good man.
106. I can’t imagine what life would be like without my wife and son.
107. God is good to me. Always.
Here are mine. Skim at will.
1. This will actually mark my 107th post, thus 107 entries.
2. I don’t know when I last wrote my middle name. It is Brooks.
3. I think I do a pretty good time living in the moment. But I am also scared a lot of the time. A contradiction?
4. I used to fall in love with people and ideas quite easily. Now I just love people and ideas.
5. I used to not like that people think I look like my dad. Now I realize that he’s lucky.
6. I got new glasses just before we moved here two months ago. Now they slip off my face too easily.
7. Another thing I share with my dad – we lose weight from our faces first.
8. I can remember the phone number we had when I was 3 through 10 years old.
9. My leg has a metal rod through it from falling from a tree when I was 31 years old - twenty three years afte I first fell from a tree and broke my leg.
10. I love getting lost in strange cities, preferably while riding a bike.
11. I was 23 before I visited another country.
12. Since I was 23 I have spent about half my life living out of the US.
13. My mother-in-law may be the gutsiest woman I know. She had never left the country before she visited us in Africa two years ago and then she did it on her own.
14. We had a pinball machine growing up. It still didn’t make us the coolest family in the neighborhood – they had an Atari. (The second coolest family only had a Colekovision – sp? – but since their dad worked at a chocolate factory, they were close.)
15. The second girl I had a crush on was from Egypt but I don’t know if it was the younger or older sister that I liked.
16. I have very forgetable eye and hair color. Both are very in between.
17. I can watch gratuitous violence in movies and not have it bother me as much as one person having an affair.
18. I owned a poster of Heather Thomas.
19. Hillary Snodgrass (not joking) is the first girl I remember kissing me. In the gym. During kickball or something involving bases.
20. I wish I hadn’t left all our art in the US. We need to get something other than whiteboards and photo collages for our walls.
21. I own a vehicle in Africa in a country that I don’t know I would be allowed back in to. Anyone need a Galloper?
22. There is a store I go to where I only buy icecream and soda. They deliver gas and drinking water to our house.
23. I want to see the ruins in Greece.
24. When sharing a hotel room with people I’m not related to, I would rather sleep on the floor than share a bed.
25. I am a hotel snob and once missed the last available hotel for something like six hours while driving from Virginia to Illinois.
26. Redbird Arena is where I saw Chicago in concert when I was in high school.
27. I have seen Bob Dylan in concert as well as Peter, Paul and Mary and Paul Simon.
28. I was not impressed seeing Sting in concert. It was near the end of the tour and he seemed tired and unenthusiastic.
29. I once heard They Might Be Giants attempt a rendition of Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville
30. Christian writers impress me less when they were Christians before they became writers versus those good writers who later became Christian.
31. I visited something like 75 colleges while traveling with EIU’s Speech team.
32. Basketball was fun for me until I realized I needed to practice if I was going be any good. When everyone else got taller, I didn’t really know how to dribble, pass or shot from the outside.
33. I have never seen a John Travolta movie that I really liked.
34. The sound of rain may be my favorite.
35. Onomatopoeia is my favorite English word.
36. I can eat an entire bag, box or container of multiserving snack food – chips, cookies, candy – in one sitting. I still sometimes do.
37. I loved our foam mattress in Africa. I wake up from this one with a sore back.
38. My wife and I slept on bunkbeds for a month while we went to school in Seattle.
39. I drink tea, not coffee, with sugar but not milk unless I’m having chai.
40. My favorite authors you probably have not read are Colson Whitehead (The Intuitionist and John Henry Days) and Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans).
41. I have not read a Truman Capote novel but should.
42. My wife looks amazing when she is intently watching something simple like the spider who lived in our yard or the kids flying kites across the street.
43. Ethiopian food gives me heartburn but I really like it.
44. I have ridden on a camel and an elephant.
45. I do not know my address or phone number from memory but I keep them in my wallet just in case.
46. The sound of two metal eating utensils scraping against each other make my teeth hurt.
47. I have given up counting the number of cavities I have.
48. I will soon give up counting the number of crowns.
49. Pajama pants are fine to wear to sleep in but only with t-shirts or sweatshirts. Pajama shirts never fit right.
50. I left all my pajama shirts in Africa.
51. I have kept in touch with nobody I graduated high school with.
52. I hardly ever sleep on airplanes or sit down in airports.
53. I scored a touchdown during the one season I played football in high school. It was in the rain, we had kicked off and I recovered the ball after a couple of fumbles. I happened to be in the right endzone.
54. My biggest acting role was as Thorin Oakenshield in a musical version of The Hobbit. That and pretending I have the least bit of a clue as to where my future is leading me...
55. I played Dungeons and Dragons while in junior high and don’t think it was a tool of the devil.
56. I own fewer tools than I would like to (like a power saw).
57. My pinewood derby car won the local tourney by going down backwards.
58. Working in the jewelry department of Walmart was my favorite part time job. I was the first in our store allowed to pierce cartilage.
59. While working at the reserve desk at Eastern’s library (that entryway with the really high ceiling with the clock), we would tilt the fan upwards and blow bubbles.
60. I once spent the night in the library and avoided detection until my way out the next morning. I just kept walking.
61. I don’t ever feel at home until I have books on a bookshelf.
62. I have won writing awards in subjects dealing with “Democracy, the Vanguard for Freedom,” cultural diversity and woman’s advocacy. I am an antiwar, white male. “I’m not a (liberal, democrat, etc or) feminist…per se…”
63. Also while in college, I sent in a series of letters to a newspaper using a pen name. They were all critical of a writer name Cassie Simpson. They were mean and petty done in the name of being funny and as a way to get attention. I shouldn’t have written them.
64. Years earlier, I got hate mail in response to a letter I wrote the Pantagraph condemning our involvement in Panama.
65. I used to really like shooting a bow and arrow at two bales of hay we set up by the tree line. I lost more arrows in the trees and the yard than made it into the hay.
66. My wife and I used to fish for bluegill in a pond so small you could throw a tennis ball across it.
67. I once rollerbladed 22 miles during the middle of the night. (To the Moore House and back from Campus House). Dumb.
68. Vegetables are only appealing to me when I’m limited in choices of what to eat and when I’ve exerted a ridiculous amount of energy and/or sweat. (Vegetarian: primative word for "can't hunt".)
69. I have friends that I worry about nearly every day because they live in tough places to be young in. Not that there are many places where it is easy to be young in...
70. I am an introvert occasionally pretending to be outgoing.
71. When done right, there are few things better than a Montecristo sandwich. The restaurant that was once EL Crackers serves a great one, batter-dipped in something sweet and sprinkled with powdered sugar.
72. I come from an amazing family filled with people who are doing great things with pretty normal lives.
73. I have had at least one solid concussion as the result of a bike accident. I may have had more but can’t recall.
74. I don’t email or write or call individuals often enough. I communicate en masse.
75. I have largely given up remembering birthdays or anniversaries. I forget too often then feel guilty about it. I want to just send random packages to people when it hits me or when I see something they’d like. But I haven’t done that yet.
76. When I had a job as a pizza delivery guy, one of my biggest fears was that I might hit a kid while delivering in one of the trailer parks that was in our area.
77. I was always good enough in track to run in the big qualifier meets but never good enough to win them.
78. When I was in top physical form, I could run a mile in under five minutes. I can’t now.
79. During my last membership at a gym, I actually gained weight even though I worked out three days a week.
80. Baby-back ribs often make me ill but I order them anyway because I love their taste and I think something primitive in me likes eating meat from a bone that I hold in my fingers.
81. I am adept at using chopsticks.
82. I have read the Bible, Torah, Book of the Jain, the Koran and the Bagvad Gita and believe I am better for it.
83. Sometimes I’m not sure that I am driven to God as much as I am driven away from all the alternatives.
84. I do better on written tests than on oral ones.
85. I will read nearly anything that is made available to me.
86. I prefer owning books to borrowing books.
87. I can’t explain how to do things on the computer very well. Usually it is easier for me to move a person aside and try a bunch of different solutions.
88. I don’t like guns but I do like shooting things on video games.
89. I have never taken a cruise and don’t really like boats all that much.
90. I no longer own dress shoes. All my shoes are brown and range from sandals to hiking boots.
91. I do, however, own a pair of white gym shoes that I have yet to wear since coming to Asia.
92. The only dress pants I wear are khaki.
93. I have never owned a motorcycle but will buy one within the next year.
94. Money only gets me nervous when other people talk about it. (Which is why I was writing this at 3 am.)
95. Empathy is the trait I feel I most clearly got from my mom and I hope it is the trait I pass down most clearly to my son.
96. I want to like tofu but really have a hard time with the texture of it. Even when eating fried tofu, I think about the texture of unfried tofu.
97. I wish we owned a charcoal grill and had a place where we could buy charcoal.
98. The right side of my body creaks more than the left side.
99. I get quieter, not louder, when I get more emotional – this is true with anger but also when I’m expressing positive emotions.
100. I sometimes write during sermons but rarely do I outline what is being said.
101. My voice was lower in high school than it is now.
102. For seven years, my locker was in between Kara Macy’s and Mary Mueller’s.
104. I don’t tell my family how much I love them nearly enough
105. I want to be a good man.
106. I can’t imagine what life would be like without my wife and son.
107. God is good to me. Always.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Come cathars with me
I used to love that word "cathartic" (I've taken to simply creating my own verbs recently - thus "cathars"). The definition we would use in literature classes would normally include something like "the emotional purge...". As I remember it, the word is basically the relief one feels at the end of a series of tragic events (think the end of Hamlet when everyone is dead, "Thank God it can't get any worse").
So I want to enlist you in my own cathartic rush: What is your breaking point? What is the one thing that pushes you - or has pushed you - over the edge? The AC/DC playing at the neighbor's house at 2am? The inability of your boss to spell your name correctly? The spouse who can't seem to get the plates clean when he offers to wash the dishes? The tenth call for a glass of water from a child who should be sleeping?
Things are better. The schedule seems a bit more duable. Last night I got nearly seven hours of sleep. My wife continues to be a rock. Not exactly cheerful yet but God is good and in control. Always.
So I want to enlist you in my own cathartic rush: What is your breaking point? What is the one thing that pushes you - or has pushed you - over the edge? The AC/DC playing at the neighbor's house at 2am? The inability of your boss to spell your name correctly? The spouse who can't seem to get the plates clean when he offers to wash the dishes? The tenth call for a glass of water from a child who should be sleeping?
Things are better. The schedule seems a bit more duable. Last night I got nearly seven hours of sleep. My wife continues to be a rock. Not exactly cheerful yet but God is good and in control. Always.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Beyond Broken
Last night/this morning I reached a point of brokeness that I havn't felt since college. Exhausted and overwhelmed I simply stopped being able to function. I couldn't work on a project facing an impending deadline but I also couldn't turn my mind off enough to get a bit more sleep which might otherwise allow the work to continue. Six hours of sleep over three days is just not enough no matter how much caffiene you pump into your system. I'm shaking even now and more than a bit jumpy.
And let me remind you that I have been thrown out of a country. Imagine having several million people tell you you're not welcome. It's like being voted off American Idol without the benefit of Paula's condescending praise. I've been confined to a wheelchair even as Amanda was going through 36 hours of labor. I've taught freshman English. I've even had to endure "the scenic route" home from childhood vacations. This was beyond all that.
Between things that need to get done around the house (for example: the doorknob count is a 5 not including recoring the locks on a couple, adding a lockable latch to the workroom door in the garage and not having touched the latch that allows the second half of the front door to open wide), @'s last week of tantrumming that may not be completely over, a new language unit which appears even more time consuming than the first, backedup correspondence I should take care of, a diet consisting of ever greater quanities of hot tea and the realization that I really don't talk to anyone I'm not in school with or buying something from...it was simply too much.
Thankfully Amanda was there to talk me out of my tree. Despite her own backbreaking schedule (she spent yesterday morning trying to find a cane for me after I sprined my ankle walking to school), she woke last night from her much needed sleep to pray with me and talk me down. I can't imagine how single men get through times like this, with the expectations that they be strong and, unlike women, no way to just let it all out beyond bar fights, basketball or booze. I guess I'm just lucky that I have someone who knows me so well that she can help me find some relief when it seems beyond my grasp.
I'll pray for some guidance today, talk to some wise people and make some decisions about how to best get the things done that must be done and still keep my sanity.
It's funny but on a rational, logical level I see what is happening. Culture shock and the stress of everday life is simply creating a crisis point. I'm going through the storming phase of cultural adjustment. The lack of sleep adds to this, making otherwise minor problems - such as the phone line being down yesterday, making it impossible to send out the project I'm trying to finish - into major problems. I'm sad. Maybe I'm still mourning Vonnegut's death. Maybe not.
So last night when Amanda was telling me that I needed to lay down and rest I knew she was right. When she told me I needed to wash my face and calm down, I knew she was right. But I simply coudn't settle down. I knew that without sleep I couldn't function and yet I couldn't. This is what @ has been doing - only without a blog to vent on.
Things will get better. They will get resolved. I will adjust.
And let me remind you that I have been thrown out of a country. Imagine having several million people tell you you're not welcome. It's like being voted off American Idol without the benefit of Paula's condescending praise. I've been confined to a wheelchair even as Amanda was going through 36 hours of labor. I've taught freshman English. I've even had to endure "the scenic route" home from childhood vacations. This was beyond all that.
Between things that need to get done around the house (for example: the doorknob count is a 5 not including recoring the locks on a couple, adding a lockable latch to the workroom door in the garage and not having touched the latch that allows the second half of the front door to open wide), @'s last week of tantrumming that may not be completely over, a new language unit which appears even more time consuming than the first, backedup correspondence I should take care of, a diet consisting of ever greater quanities of hot tea and the realization that I really don't talk to anyone I'm not in school with or buying something from...it was simply too much.
Thankfully Amanda was there to talk me out of my tree. Despite her own backbreaking schedule (she spent yesterday morning trying to find a cane for me after I sprined my ankle walking to school), she woke last night from her much needed sleep to pray with me and talk me down. I can't imagine how single men get through times like this, with the expectations that they be strong and, unlike women, no way to just let it all out beyond bar fights, basketball or booze. I guess I'm just lucky that I have someone who knows me so well that she can help me find some relief when it seems beyond my grasp.
I'll pray for some guidance today, talk to some wise people and make some decisions about how to best get the things done that must be done and still keep my sanity.
It's funny but on a rational, logical level I see what is happening. Culture shock and the stress of everday life is simply creating a crisis point. I'm going through the storming phase of cultural adjustment. The lack of sleep adds to this, making otherwise minor problems - such as the phone line being down yesterday, making it impossible to send out the project I'm trying to finish - into major problems. I'm sad. Maybe I'm still mourning Vonnegut's death. Maybe not.
So last night when Amanda was telling me that I needed to lay down and rest I knew she was right. When she told me I needed to wash my face and calm down, I knew she was right. But I simply coudn't settle down. I knew that without sleep I couldn't function and yet I couldn't. This is what @ has been doing - only without a blog to vent on.
Things will get better. They will get resolved. I will adjust.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Finally Home
After more than a month and a half, we are finally home. Sure, it's the same rental villa we've live in since moving to the Island but it finally has a place where I can sit comfortably and read. There's finally a place to put my book when I'm done. There's a place where I can curl up with both Amanda and @ to watch a movie. Amanda and I can even watch a movie there with worrying about waking @ at night.
Sure, Amanda wasn't initially thrilled by the color of the couch cushions and until it arrived she wasn't sure what the bookshelf looked like - she had been too busy trying to corral a two-year-old when were were shopping on Easter weekend. But overall, we're both happy with the new acquisitions. What's best is that once we move down the mountain next year, we won't have as much to buy - even if we move into an unfurnished home.
Now if I could just find a velvet Elvis or picture of poker-playing pooches for the wall behind the couch...
Home is a bookshelf. Now if we just had more than four books to put on it...
Not a great picture of the couch but @ has started referring to the new coffee table as his.
Sure, Amanda wasn't initially thrilled by the color of the couch cushions and until it arrived she wasn't sure what the bookshelf looked like - she had been too busy trying to corral a two-year-old when were were shopping on Easter weekend. But overall, we're both happy with the new acquisitions. What's best is that once we move down the mountain next year, we won't have as much to buy - even if we move into an unfurnished home.
Now if I could just find a velvet Elvis or picture of poker-playing pooches for the wall behind the couch...
Home is a bookshelf. Now if we just had more than four books to put on it...
Not a great picture of the couch but @ has started referring to the new coffee table as his. Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
A JP-worthy conversation
I take a bus to center of town somewhere around three times a week. Sometimes to get groceries but more often than not, it is to visit the hardware store to buy yet another tool or some minor home repair item. (Yesterday I bought a doorhandle for what was my fourth replacement since moving in just over a month ago. How many doorknobs have you had to replace in a lifetime? Only five more sets and I will have completed every door in the house.)
What made a recent bus trip JP-worthy was meeting a young man in edgier than the usual Japenese-black outfit. When he said his name was Ramone (not a common name here) I exclaimed "Ah the Ramones!" with little expectation that the word would mean anything. Instead he started rattling off bands like The Smiths, The Pogues, Morrisey, and some more obscure that I would have to go back to 1988 and ask Gary Poppe about. He talked about either a record store or a concert he'd gone to in the country's capital some years ago. (Does anyone know if The Ramones over had an Asian tour that include some of the less popular destinations?)
This was a conversation that I could have bluffed my way through in the US but what made it more remarkable was that most of it was in the local language. And I followed most of it!
Next bus trip, I'll keep my eyes open to see if I can find a Parrot Head.
Today's language lesson: The local word for rock musician or band is "rocker."
What made a recent bus trip JP-worthy was meeting a young man in edgier than the usual Japenese-black outfit. When he said his name was Ramone (not a common name here) I exclaimed "Ah the Ramones!" with little expectation that the word would mean anything. Instead he started rattling off bands like The Smiths, The Pogues, Morrisey, and some more obscure that I would have to go back to 1988 and ask Gary Poppe about. He talked about either a record store or a concert he'd gone to in the country's capital some years ago. (Does anyone know if The Ramones over had an Asian tour that include some of the less popular destinations?)
This was a conversation that I could have bluffed my way through in the US but what made it more remarkable was that most of it was in the local language. And I followed most of it!
Next bus trip, I'll keep my eyes open to see if I can find a Parrot Head.
Today's language lesson: The local word for rock musician or band is "rocker."
Thursday, April 12, 2007
“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”
It is 1:00 in the afternoon and I find myself crying over a man I never met, never really liked and never thought would die.Back in highschool and college I read Vonnegut with a passion. The cynicism and satire tossed in with the profanity and science fiction helped me bask in, rather than resent, the alienation I felt. Vonnegut gave justification for the "otherness" I was going through; those emotions that almost all teenagers go through.
I could, and still can quote, passages from his books. "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly, man got to tell himself 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land, man got to tell himself he understand."
Words like Bokonism (a fictional religion that I claimed to have adopted for a time), foma, wampeters and grandfalloons entered my vocabulary. I chewed on ideas about religion, government, death and the environment, love and community. He made me want to write and read and think big, angry thoughts.
And I think that is why I stopped reading him. He never offered me hope. There were rants and challenges and easy escapes but never answers. He often recyled his own ideas. Fans might say this was because of their importance or value or universal appeal. I thought it was because he banked on nobody reading more than "Salughterhouse-Five" and maybe one more before getting bored, frustrated and/or suicidal.
I remember an English professor of mine, Stephen Swords, saying that Vonnegut was a lot like REM; at first you think "Wow, this is really profound!" And then you learn better.
And yet his writing was unique and thought-provoking and timely. At times he did offer a voice of conscience. His humor was dark but poignant. Understanding as much as a teenager could, he made me feel smart. He's one of those authors who made me want to teach English or write novels or change things.
And Vonnegut was friend to a lonely kid stuck in a farmhouse in Heyworth, a town the boy felt too small for his angst or his potential.
I'm sure our houseworker wonders why I'm crying. @ offered me his green blanket for comfort. I could blame it on the late nights or cultural adjustment but I think it is just the realization that one of the reasons I believe in God today is because of Kurt Vonnegut, jr. His bitterness forced me to choose what perspective on life I really wanted to carry with me - I had to hope that it wasn't as bad as he made it out to be and that it is getting better.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Took the bait
Recently a friend who has been an amazing asset both in terms of translation help and local knowledge, noticed that the legs of @'s bed were resting on several wooden slats rather than directly on the floor. This was our attempt to stop the metal from marking up the tile floor. He suggested that with "a little ingenuity" I could modify some rubber feet he'd found.
Certainly I possess a "little ingenuity" so after cutting the ends of them to make them fit, I attempted, with the "help" of @ alternately shining the flashlight in my eyes then his, to put this plan into action. I failed - at least temporarily. After twenty minutes of sweat and the type of language that stretches the defintion of appropriate, I had put on exactly none of the little rubber nubs.
You see @'s bed is actually a waterbed frame held up by what seems like a 40-50 lb. soldered metal support structure (I suspect it was originally used to hold up small trucks or the bleachers at state fairs throughout the midwest). And I was attempting to add the feet without turning over the bed.
On the positive side, my fingers are uncrushed. As is my son.
Certainly I possess a "little ingenuity" so after cutting the ends of them to make them fit, I attempted, with the "help" of @ alternately shining the flashlight in my eyes then his, to put this plan into action. I failed - at least temporarily. After twenty minutes of sweat and the type of language that stretches the defintion of appropriate, I had put on exactly none of the little rubber nubs.
You see @'s bed is actually a waterbed frame held up by what seems like a 40-50 lb. soldered metal support structure (I suspect it was originally used to hold up small trucks or the bleachers at state fairs throughout the midwest). And I was attempting to add the feet without turning over the bed.
On the positive side, my fingers are uncrushed. As is my son.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Tropical Travel
The good news is that the three of us have been invited to some Easter festivities off the mountain. Given a recent bout of language burnout and having reached the "storming" phase of cultural adjustment, this is a much needed break. A chance to shop in a big city (compare it from living in Charleston and getting to go to Champaign or Peoria), visit with friends, explore a city we don't know well...all great. Except for the fact that we have to pack.
Unlike a visit to Florida or Hawaii, cluture norms dictate long pants and button-down shirts. Still, it's 90+ degrees out. So this means multiple changes of clothes. Additionally, we're bring both diapers and @'s potty chair. Oh, and we need some movies for @. There's also been a request that we bring our laptop with us. Chargers for the camera, computer and phone. And due to my bout with insomnia/waking up in anticipation of either the call to prayer or @ wanting to sleep with us, I feel the need to bring Barack Obama's book (always puts me to sleep).
In all, it looks like we'll have one suitcase, a carryon, and two backpacks. Looking at it that way, it doesn't seem too bad. We are three people. At least we don't have to bring winter coats with us.
The real question is "What will we bring back?"...
Unlike a visit to Florida or Hawaii, cluture norms dictate long pants and button-down shirts. Still, it's 90+ degrees out. So this means multiple changes of clothes. Additionally, we're bring both diapers and @'s potty chair. Oh, and we need some movies for @. There's also been a request that we bring our laptop with us. Chargers for the camera, computer and phone. And due to my bout with insomnia/waking up in anticipation of either the call to prayer or @ wanting to sleep with us, I feel the need to bring Barack Obama's book (always puts me to sleep).
In all, it looks like we'll have one suitcase, a carryon, and two backpacks. Looking at it that way, it doesn't seem too bad. We are three people. At least we don't have to bring winter coats with us.
The real question is "What will we bring back?"...
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Self-reliant enough to be dependent
So I've been fighting my Americaness a lot recently. Some of it is based around volume and learning style and wanting to eat using both my left and right hand. But mostly I'm trying hard to stop being so self-reliant.
I'm not talking about something deeply spiritual here, like knowing that I can do nothing without God. I'm talking about going to other people for help with things that I know I can, or "should," do on my own.
You see, culturally, a person is viewed as stingy or pigheaded if s/he doesn't use a "professional" for things most Americans wouldn't consider asking a relative to help with, much less paying someone to help with.
An example: We have a patch of grass roughly two feet long and six feet wide along with a couple of fruit trees and some bushy plants. Certainly not lawn mower needed and certainly no need for a gardener. So I figured I go out and buy a hand sythe (tough to describe, maybe a picture later) and pair of bush clippers and do the work myself. Absolutely not, say my expat friends. Apparently, such a task requires a skilled laborer. If I don't find somebody to do it, I risk insulting the whole neighborhood.
I guess a friend needed to install a new program on his computer and had to take it to a computer shop to have it done. Four days later and it's still being worked on.
You'd think that the laziness inherent in the stereotypical American would have no problem with embracing this "why do it yourself when you can have somebody else do it for you?" mentality. But maybe I can't shake Dad's "I spent summers ripping out cast iron, coal furnaces, why would you consider spending your summers working at Wal-mart?" work ethic.
So, I'll let my houseworker iron all my clothes - including my socks and underwear. I'll let the furniture guy carry in @'s plastic chair. I'll submit to having the bus copilot carry my bag of groceries from the store to the parking lot. I guess the days of shaving my own head may be over. The things I do to blend in...
Bonus Cultural Lesson: Here in the land of motorcycles, the term they use for motor scooter/Vespa translates to "motor duck" (because of the sound).
I'm not talking about something deeply spiritual here, like knowing that I can do nothing without God. I'm talking about going to other people for help with things that I know I can, or "should," do on my own.
You see, culturally, a person is viewed as stingy or pigheaded if s/he doesn't use a "professional" for things most Americans wouldn't consider asking a relative to help with, much less paying someone to help with.
An example: We have a patch of grass roughly two feet long and six feet wide along with a couple of fruit trees and some bushy plants. Certainly not lawn mower needed and certainly no need for a gardener. So I figured I go out and buy a hand sythe (tough to describe, maybe a picture later) and pair of bush clippers and do the work myself. Absolutely not, say my expat friends. Apparently, such a task requires a skilled laborer. If I don't find somebody to do it, I risk insulting the whole neighborhood.
I guess a friend needed to install a new program on his computer and had to take it to a computer shop to have it done. Four days later and it's still being worked on.
You'd think that the laziness inherent in the stereotypical American would have no problem with embracing this "why do it yourself when you can have somebody else do it for you?" mentality. But maybe I can't shake Dad's "I spent summers ripping out cast iron, coal furnaces, why would you consider spending your summers working at Wal-mart?" work ethic.
So, I'll let my houseworker iron all my clothes - including my socks and underwear. I'll let the furniture guy carry in @'s plastic chair. I'll submit to having the bus copilot carry my bag of groceries from the store to the parking lot. I guess the days of shaving my own head may be over. The things I do to blend in...
Bonus Cultural Lesson: Here in the land of motorcycles, the term they use for motor scooter/Vespa translates to "motor duck" (because of the sound).
To You All Know Who You Are...
...but probably aren't reading this:
UPDATE YOUR BLOG!
Thanks,
A culture-shocked blog junkie
UPDATE YOUR BLOG!
Thanks,
A culture-shocked blog junkie
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