Category Archives: dealing with life

Do I really want to go hiking in freezing rain?

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Freezing rain was expected today. I didn’t sleep well last night. It would have been so easy to text one of my hiking buddies, saying I’m not feeling well.

I got out the door. I picked up the fellow hikers from my town. The drive was cold and wet, and I wondered what I was getting into at the rest stop when it was cold and rainy, and I retreated into the car to warm up again.

Then we arrived and it was not raining, not in the Frenchman’s Coulee (a coulee is a ravine, this one near the Columbia river). I found a geocache. We hiked up a wall of the ravine, onto the rib, and it starts to snow, big, fluffly flakes, and I find a second geocache.

Hiking up the rim, looking down into the coulee.

Hiking up the rim, looking down into the coulee.

Despite my worries, I am warm enough in my rain pants and long undies. We hike the rib, come back down to the road, return to our cars, then drive and hike out to the water fall, where I get to find a third geocache. Good hunting today!

View down to the snowy road from the rib trail.

View down to the snowy road from the rib trail.

The waterfall.

The waterfall.

On the way home, I get a driving lesson for inclement weather, continued as we took an alternate route through freezing rain and slush to pick up a missing cell phone. I should be more confident driving in wintry conditions after this.

Sometimes I don’t want to be bothered, and I think something will be uncomfortable, or maybe not that fun, but on the flip side, if I don’t go try new things I don’t get to see new things.

I’m glad I got myself out the door this morning.

Dogs and responsibilities and consequences

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I’ve been thinking about dogs today. About their owners/keepers. About my Dad.

I think the guy with the dog that ran into my fellow hiker, and who then was reluctant-at-best to leash the dog after she got injured is now removed from the hiking group. I think that’s just. He didn’t come back to help us carry her down. While I’m not a fan of leaving dogs in cars in Texas in the summertime, we aren’t in Texas. It was a cold day; carrying a person down the trail is a hard job even for a sizeable group of people, and the dog could have been left in the car.

That makes me think of my father and the dogs in his life. He had a lady friend with a Boston terrier. I think he liked her better than the dog, but maybe it was a toss up. The Boston had a rough childhood with older dogs that beat up on him, and his attitude toward the rest of the canine world was, “it’s me or you, and I’m getting my licks in first.” He’d attack any other dog without provocation.

Dad would still let him off leash. I know Dad paid several ~$500 vet bills because of “accidents”. He still couldn’t bear to keep the Boston on a leash.

Later, he had another friend with another two dogs, and Dad loved these dogs too, taking them for walks, and again, he couldn’t bear to keep them on a leash. Until one day one of them ran out into traffic, was hit by a car and killed. Dad was sorry, but sorry in the sense of saying so, not in the sense of doing something about it.

I loved my Dad, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t always respect my Dad or like my Dad. To this day, thinking about this makes me feel sick in my stomach. And sad, deeply sad, because I just don’t understand it.

Sad, too, because I realize that one of his legacies is that I have never had a man in my life who has had my back. When the going got tough, I took care of it. I took care of us. Or I took care of me. I shut up and dealt. I didn’t like it, but after all, in my world growing up, men are never responsible for anything. They may be “sorry”, but they aren’t sorry. If I don’t toe the line, if I complain, if I insist then I nag, and I become a harridan like my mother. Since that’s the last thing in the world I want to do, I put up with a hell of a lot of shit.

A hell of a lot of shit.

I wonder if there were good men in my life, and I didn’t recognize them at the time. Or if I picked the best of what I had available to me (after college, never exactly a glut of suitors).

I wonder if I’ll ever find someone again. If I do if I’ll find myself again putting up with a hell of a lot of shit. Whether I will tell it to take a hike. Whether I have finally changed enough that if I let him in my life, that it will be better. If I will ever again find anyone at all.

I try not to focus on loneliness. On feeling unloved. None of that gets you anywhere but a pity party. Focus on the love you want to give, not the love you want to get. It works better that way. But days, some days, today, all of this tastes like ashes, and I want what I wanted, what I still want, and I know I will never get it, and I will have to make do.

And tomorrow I will wake up and make do better than anyone has ever made do before. But tonight, tonight, I am sad for all that was, and for all that is, and for all that will not be.

Wilderness Rescue

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One way to go about having adventures is to just go out and do things. I like to hike. It’s safer to hike with others. Sometimes the best way to learn about the local area is to go with others who know what they are doing. http://meetup.com is one online resource for finding people with similar interests, and it helped me find the group I hike with.

Yesterday, I was out with my hiking group. I think we were about 15 hikers, headed out on a canyon/ridge hike of 4+ miles and back the same. It was snowy and icy in spots, so all hikers were required to have ice traction like YakTrax or similar products.

We also had two dogs, one large one small. The large dog was not under good control, and slammed into a small woman’s calf. Her calf started cramping badly and wouldn’t quit. We thought she’d be able to hike down the trail, although slowly. Several people, including the leader of our group, stayed with her.

Some of us went ahead to see the view, obscured by fog, and to tell the dog’s owner to get the dog on a leash. Even after the accident and several requests he was reluctant to comply!

Great view when it's not so cloudy!

Great view when it’s not so cloudy!

When we got back to the group that stayed behind with the injured woman, we found she couldn’t walk because her leg was hurting so badly. It’s odd how things happen like that, but they do. Something seemingly minor happens and the next thing you know there’s a situation to be dealt with.

Here’s why I want to hike with a group, especially a group better prepared and more knowledgeable than I am. Someone had a portable cloth stretcher (as well as a first aid kit, warmers, etc.) We got her on it, grateful she was small, and with a subset of the group helping carry, we headed down the icy trail.

It took a few readjustments, and our patient, who was not exerting herself was getting very cold. We got some of the insta-warmers on her, and wrapped her in as many down jackets (including mine) as we could.

Icy trails. This is why we require ice traction on hikes. I had YakTrax.

Icy trails. This is why we require ice traction on hikes. I had YakTrax.

We had to switch people from lifting on one side to another, and switch people from carrying to resting to carrying again. I was willing to do more carrying, but ended up doing more resting. I could grip a lot longer with my right than with my left, but even so, I could only do so much before asking to be swapped. I think one of our strong guys was having some back issues after it was all over, and I wish he’d let us know so we could do more swapping around to help with that. I suspect some others might have done the same. Heck, I wanted to do the same, but I have limits.

We were glad when we finally got far enough down to find search and rescue and emergency personnel coming up for us. They we re glad our group was large and could help carry. Their plastic stretcher/backboard was a lot easier to carry than the cloth one was. There were still a lot of stops and starts, as people had to rest and change sides.

I was sorry someone got hurt, but, at the same time, I was glad to be there for the adventure. It was hard work; I am sore today, and I didn’t do all that much. I was glad to be able to contribute to the rescue even if just a little.

Dear Dad, Take 2

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Dear Dad,

I don’t have a letter I need to write you this week. No weaseling, no considering “maybe a postcard, because I’m so busy.” I just don’t have to get that done. Yet here one is.

We haven’t been able to talk over the phone in years. With your dementia and your hearing problems it was an exercise in frustration. That’s why I started sending you a letter (or a postcard) every week instead.

Why is it, then, that I felt a pang of loss walking home that I would never call you up and ask your advice again? Or hear you tell me about the weather and whatever was going on in your life, then have you ask me if I was okay (“Fine Dad”) and then you’d hang up?

I really haven’t been mourning, at least not beyond having a hard time maintaining my focus. Yet right now, there it is, in the middle of my chest, and I don’t know what to do with it.

Aside to write about it. Right here.

Mom died when I was so much younger. Was I 28 years old then? It seems a lifetime ago. There was so much unresolved in my relationship with her. I struggled with her death for months and months, letting go of my unspoken dream of talking her around somehow, having her become a parent instead of an alcoholic. Almost every interaction she and I had over the course of years was fraught with angst, anger and anxiety. In the years before her death there weren’t many of those as I sought to protect myself. I wanted to make her better, and when she died, I had to let go of that dream. It was so, so hard.

With you, I resolved all that. Let it go, on the most part, realized that it was my choice of who I wanted to be with you in our relationship. And I was that, imperfectly, but altogether doing a pretty good job of it.

I think you got off easy compared to Mom. Your crimes were crimes of omission, unlike her active malice an dysfunction. It was easier for you to evade blame with that shrug of your shoulders and the “I didn’t know.” And apologies without action, far after the fact. It was your job to know. It was your responsibility to know. Although I forgive you; although I forgave you years ago, that burden rests on you nevertheless. It makes me sad, thinking about it.

I’m at peace with that. There is, there was no way for me to fix it. Maybe that’s what makes this easier than with Mom. Or maybe grief is waiting around the corner to come after me. I don’t know. I think there will be many corners for me to turn in these next months, and I will see as it happens.

I’m thinking about you, Dad.

I love you, Dad.

I miss you, Dad.

Dear Dad

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Dear Dad,

I should have written you earlier this week, and I’ve been reminding myself and carrying a card around for a few days looking for time. Turns out it really wouldn’t have mattered if I got that letter out first thing Monday or not; you died this morning or last night — I’m not quite sure which. I hope it was quietly in your sleep without fear or pain or stress.

That letter that I didn’t write would have been in transit during the holiday season. I can’t quite imagine that it would have gotten to you yesterday, and I am sure it would have made my sister sad to see it arrive tomorrow. Maybe it is all just as well.

I feel numb today. Stunned. Even though I expected this; there’s a time when you know it is coming because someone keeps getting ill, and that’s been you these past few months. I am glad you hung on so that I could visit you one last time before the holidays. I sent you a holiday card right before Christmas — surely that arrived within the past few days.

This has been the strangest New Year’s Day. Walking in a dream. Between the reality that was yesterday, and the one I face tomorrow.

Losing a parent is hard. With the second one, you know you are looking mortality right in the face, and it smirks at you and says, “You’re next.” I can’t even muster a reaction to that today.

Goodbye, Dad. You will always be my Dad. And I will always love you because you’re my Dad. Now that you are gone, I can look back at what was the last good day, maybe a year and a half ago or longer, in the spring, when you were awake and lively and talkative, and I took you out into the garden. I remember the next day you were conked out and I couldn’t wake you to eat lunch or even say goodbye to me. I realized that moment was precious when it happened. I hoped there would be another. We are out of moments.

And I am sad.

I love you Dad.

What do you want?

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The gift-giving holidays are wrapping up (pun!), the new year is approaching. What do you want is a common question for this season, and one that’s been on my mind.

Stuff is easy, at least the smaller every-day items. I can purchase anything I truly want for myself. It was nice to have some Barnes and Noble gift cards on my account for a while; buying ebooks took less decision making, but truly, it doesn’t matter. If I want it, I can buy it. If I’m not sure I want it that much, I can investigate the options in the library. Stuff is hard if your goal is to have less of it. Acquisition is so much easier than decluttering.

It’s the bigger questions of who I want to be and how I want to live my life that weigh more heavily. I’ve been reading the Power of Habit by Charles Duggin (I think I’ve read this before). It reminds me that when we are in major life transitions, those are the easiest times for our habits to change — for good or ill. So be mindful and pay attention to how you line yourself up.

I hope to move into a more permanent residence this next year, and that’s one subject of my musings. I have learned that I would rather be out doing things, or even in doing things, but cleaning and yard work are not very high on the list of things I enjoy doing. I would like to minimize my investments here. A place that is easier to take care of, enough money left to pay for help, are ways to accomplish this. I can hire help where I am, but I am not so sure that I can find a lower maintenance place than what I had before.

I also need to work on my habits, as mentioned above. I don’t have a good way to deal with all the paperwork that comes into my place through the mail; it stacks up. Finding a better habit and way with this would help. I am not awful with dishes (my current place does not have a dishwasher), though undoubtedly I could improve. I think my biggest problem is that there are many times when I get home, or on weekends, that I just collapse into a chair, doing nothing productive. Perhaps, as Duggin suggests, my willpower is worn out for the time being. Perhaps I need to work on my willpower muscle to grow some more. I don’t like those long unproductive stretches.

I know I want to live in a place that has clean, uncluttered lines. Places to work that are ready for work when you need them. I want a certain Zen-chic, that leads towards peaceful thoughts and a peaceful mind. I am sure I will have to fight against even my tendencies towards acquisition and clutter. I am sure I need work on the paperwork demons.

I hope I can use my transition to create better habits. As with the ε>0 exercise plan, one step at a time. I hope I am mindful and aware of what’s going so that I can actually decide what changes to make, rather than having them made for me by default.

Mothers

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I found myself trying to explain my mother to a new friend today.

My mother was toxic. To so many of us. But how to capture that in words.

I remember a few (two?) nights when the whole family was up into the wee hours with threats with a knife and arguments and upset. I remember the last night I spent at home, when she was crying in the bathroom and my Dad told me she threatened him with a gun. I remember Dad coming to visit me at college with bruises that she gave him.

I remember wanting to kill myself when I was a young teen. Thinking I was crazy because things happened in my family that apparently only I saw or thought was wrong. I remember her being angry when I asked for a bra, because some other girls teased me and told me I needed one. I remember I don’t think I ever had one that fit.

So many other things, I shouldn’t start with this. I shouldn’t try to catalog them all, like a litany of complaints. Or should I try to write it down, so that I have a coherent picture for myself of what it was, both good and bad?

On the good side, I remember that she’d take us to all sorts of different parks in the area; they had names, usually with an animal. The Lion Park, the Turtle Park. I remember her taking us swimming every day in the summer, often meeting my cousins.

I spent years wanting to save my mother. When she died, I spent months grieving that I never would. I’ve spent many more years trying to understand where she was coming from, and trying to be a better person than she was. Trying to see the good things. Trying to make peace with the rest.

I am left with more questions than answers. Including about myself. I am 45 now, and I will never have children. So I don’t know whether I would have been a good mother, or whether all the negative things I saw modeled would come out of me under stress. I’ve seen them come out, sometimes; I’ve felt them want to come out in others. Moments of stopping myself and realizing that thought is a completely wrong thing to think and a worse thing to do.

Does everyone feel like this about their childhood, or is this a legacy for those of us who grew up in permanent insecurity? It makes you who you are, either by default, or by explicit choice to do something different. When you can see and understand what was happening. Because you don’t always see or understand; it sometimes takes years of mistakes before you get it.

That little niggling fear, toward the back of my brain. Am I really better? Really healthier? Really more wholesome for the other people in my life? I think so; I hope so. Or have I just been lucky to avoid the stresses that she succumbed to?

And this, Mom, is your legacy. I don’t think this is what you would have chosen, had you realized you had a choice. I hope it is not. For your sake. For mine.

And still struggling

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I think of the teaching award that I won last spring, and I think the universe must be laughing right now to see me struggle with my graduate class.

Homework is due at noon. Homework is due at noon because a few weeks ago, when homework was due at midnight, I had a student demand that I make time help him that afternoon. I didn’t have office hours scheduled, and I did have several other things that I had to do. I was angry enough to let my anger show. That’s not a productive situation.

One student has been having a hard time getting his homework in on time; even with a midnight deadline, things would come in at 3 am. I warned him in a comment on his last assignment that this should not continue. Guess who has his computer open in class today? “What are you doing with the computer?” I asked. “Working on my homework,” he replied. “No you aren’t. You need to pay attention in class. Put it away,” I said. He did (fortunately). I turned back to my lesson and got a few more sentences out. Then I sat down to talk about what just happened. And the related issue that none of my four students takes notes in class, and there have been several times when they missed something done in class that was relevant to homework or exam material. I don’t think I won that battle.

After class guess who asked for an extension on the homework. My short answer was “NO.” “Do you know why the answer is no?” The student looked puzzled. “Two reasons. One, there is a late policy for this class, which requires you to ask 12 hours ahead of the due date for an extension. You didn’t follow it. Two, you were just very disrespectful in class. And that adds up to a NO.”

And there I am. I know I need to do something to change things, one of which is to start expecting things like this to happen so that they don’t rankle me as much. I also have to figure out how to reeducate this group. I never expected to have to go through this with a graduate class; that’s certainly one of the challenges — I am fighting my own frame of reference as well as dealing with the behavior.

When I am geocaching and can’t find a cache, it is often because I am functionally fixed on how I think the cache should be hidden. This causes me to be blind to however it actually is hidden. When I am in that state, I know I need to think differently, but the problem is, I don’t know how. Sometimes it takes several trips back to a place before I have the insight. Sometimes I’ve had to get some help from someone else to show me the hiding spot to break me out of the fixed thinking patterns. I feel like that is exactly where I am at with this class right now.

Still Struggling

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I am still struggling with my graduate class. It is amazing that a class of four people could make me so miserable. Although many people would claim that we make ourselves miserable.

How am I making myself miserable?

  1. I am giving them my hard work, that they do not appreciate.
  2. I assign them what seem to me to be meaningful (and often nontrivial tasks), which they do not appreciate or like.
  3. I don’t give high grades when I see poor work, and I have to deal with the arguments.

I could simply

  1. Not try as hard. Can I restructure class so that I’m not working so hard for it?
  2. Give easier assignments.
  3. Give high grades all the time.

The first of those seems like a reasonable course of action, but I think my integrity has arguments with the next two.

I need to care less about what they do, what they think, and how they complain. Maybe if I can manage to not react to it, it will drop off. And think carefully about what the learning objectives should be, given the level and disinterest of the students. What can I make stick given who I am working with?

You can’t make everyone happy. And being in a group of really unhappy people can definitely rub off. Insulate myself better. And detach, detach, detach.

Starting over and making mistakes

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I really thought I’d mostly had the teaching gig figured out when I was at TAMU.

Then I come somewhere new, and man, I am back at square one again.

It has been a frustrating and difficult quarter.

I have made so many mistakes. I didn’t assess what my students already knew. I found I had many assumptions about what they knew that were not true. I had many assumptions about how classes like the ones I am teaching were structured that were not true. I had assumptions about the advice I was given that were not true.

And this has all hurt my students and me, much to my frustration.

Still. I have managed to turn things around in my calculus classes. I am doing a lot better at knowing what to do and how to do it, and how to reach these students. I am still worried that I did them a big disservice at the beginning of the quarter, but there isn’t anything I can do about that now. Or, rather, I have been doing what I can in consistently assigning review problems on that material, so that it wouldn’t get forgotten, and might be improved. (I think there are some problems that I have assigned 2 or three times now … they should be getting better at those … right? 🙂 )

One consistent source of extreme frustration for me has been my graduate class. It is small. And the aura of bad attitude (mine and theirs) has come to permeate that class. I don’t want to go, and I arrive in our classroom with only a few minutes to spare. I notice that students are consistently late. Students don’t take notes (and haven’t from the first — easier to take pictures of the board when I was using the whiteboard; now I use a tablet), and I’ve even had several borrowing pencils in class when I have asked them to do something. The homework is too hard, and it takes too long to do. Etc. etc.

I know that me being negative isn’t going to turn this around, but oh my gosh, am I ever having a problem not going straight into anger and sarcasm. WTF, students, coming to class without a pencil and not fixing that problem right at the beginning? WTF, not taking notes? I’m not wondering why you are having difficulties retaining then information later, and even the recollection that the information was discussed.

I know their expectations of graduate school are probably also being challenged, just as my expectation of graduate students are being challenged. It’s not a continuation of undergrad. There are hard things to be done, and faculty expect that you are going to suck it up and get it done. If you are missing pieces that you need to succeed in a class, well, you are responsible for finding them out and getting the help you need. Or to go back and take a prerequisite course and then take the class over. We expect you to start your work early enough to come ask us questions if you are confused or cannot do it. And we don’t expect you to be pestering us late in the day it is due or insisting that we have to help you because something is due this day.

I dread having to teach that group again next quarter, but there it is. I have to. And so I have to work on figuring out how to help us all get happier. I have to also think about teaching this class in future quarters and how better to prepare students for the rigors ahead.

Meanwhile, I’m tired. The 5 day a week teaching thing has its advantages, but it also has its downsides. I never feel quite ready for what comes next. I know I will get through this. I know it will get easier. But here and now, it’s tough and I am frustrated.

That said, one thing I am glad of. And that is that I made time to write tonight.