The Walrus and the Carpenter

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

--Through the Looking Glass

Oysters. These are our newest love affair.

I have eschewed oysters for years for many reasons:

• I tried a fried oyster before and it was terrible. It was fishy and slimy and awful. I'm pretty sure I gagged.
• Oysters look like the flu.
• Sand. (Bonus: Pearls!...?) *generally not eaten by people, I guess
• The work you have to put into them to even get the good stuff.
• Fried oyster take for.ev.er to chew. Like cud. 
• Note: Aphrodisiacs--unbridled love! This was intriguing but not enough to overcome the other points stacked against them.

Recently, we met up with a friend and his girlfriend at the lovely restaurant The Parish. This place...I sent my dad a message and told him "Next time you're in town, we're going here." His response: "Yes, we are!"  The cocktails are amazing and if you fancy something a bit mellower, they had Breakside Pale on tap or Abita(!) in bottles. I don't even remember the name of the drink I had, but it was bubbly and pomegranatey, and it went down waaaayyyy too fast.

The menu is a lovely twist on some classic Cajun and Southern food dishes--crawfish pie, etouffee, muffaletta, catfish. There are also some interesting items that do not appear on the online menu, like rabbit gumbo and frog loegs, and that I was, admittedly, too nervous about them to try:

As a friend asked: If you eat them, do you gain their powers? Like the speed of a rabbit?

 Next time, though, I'm the queen of hearts on this matter. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

What we did learn from this lovely visit was that we do, in fact, love raw oysters on the half shell. Since the friends were fairly new to the oyster thing, we let the very kind and helpful waiter give us a hand on the selection. We went with four different varieties, some farmed, some wild:  Yaquina Bay, Netarts, Olympias, and some kind from Maine, which were referred to as the Corvette of oysters. Each was its own unique take on the shelled delicacy, and delicacies they were.  Briny, slippery, topped with lemon juice and Tabasco, they were perfection. I could have skipped the softshell crab sandwich (also very good) and just eaten more oysters.

We fell so much in love, that when we made our stop for meat last week at the Flying Fish Co., we grabbed some Netarts to take home and shuck ourselves. Scott had that one figured out, luckily; I had no luck getting them open. The ones he took off my hands to open had bits of shell in them. Shucked, set out on ice, topped with lemon juice and Tabasco, and again, they were quite the toothsome morsels.

      "But answer came there none —

And this was scarcely odd, because

      They'd eaten every one."

 

We are converts.

Associated guilt

Let me tell you about my day(s) because I often write about the particular quirks of our life, but it can be difficult for people to really understand. Hell, it's hard for me to understand. I'm going to try to quantify this, but it's really tough since it is a revolving amount; some weeks I am slamming busy and others I am not.

I took in sixteen final research projects last week, totaling 15-20 pages each; with these, I also collected sixteen job portfolios with cover letters, résumés, and work samples with a page total of 4-6 pages.  On the low end, that's 304 pages that have to be graded and reported.

I also have a 36 question exam (due by March 31) to write followed by a 41 question exam due in April. These both require research of source materials and then revisions if necessary once my editor returns them.

Add in three ungraded discussions plus a paper from 80 students (two sections, four classes total) following closely on the heels of these midterms exams and another paper, and catching up on discussions, a long paper, and three short papers for another online writing class of 10 students (this class has continued to drop away throughout the term).  There are also around 50 papers with another school waiting for me to get to and comment on.

On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday last week I taught for at least two hours/day and hold office hours. This week, I launch a new class, grading to wrap up two classes, and begin prepping for a class that begins next week.

I have completed additional copywriting projects in between these as well. I do not know how many ads that actually comes to. A lot.

Sandwiched between all of this is my own writing and frantic typing. Plus this blogpost (which is completely a guilty pleasure).

Ah, I just remembered that I am also in the throes of an online class as a student, too.

Okay,  now you have an idea of that stuff. Here is how a typical day goes today:

Wake up at 10:30 or 11:00 (because I went to bed at 2:00 when I could no longer really work on my project because I was crosseyed and then read for 30 minutes until my eyes forced themselves closed on me) and get that wonderful, life giving coffee machine powered on and heating. As it grumbles to life, I'm stumbling over the computer and pulling up my current project. As I'm working on it, researching and writing, I'm also conducting my office hours for one of my schools. At this point, I have not showered nor dressed for the day.

Project in--1.5 hours on it total--office hours over, and on to the shower. Out, dressed, more coffee, peek in on Asher wherever she may have landed for the night and move her into a bath (I realize this makes no sense to people who don't know her, and for that I apologize, but that bizarre statement is pretty normal for us--we do have a dinosaur after all), talk about Scott's plans for the day, and then head off to my office with my computer to teach for however long. Throw in a break for a bowl of cereal and more coffee and internet surfing, and then another hour teaching. Squeeze in a few words on my own work-in-progress (that 500 words/day and I are still reconciling a balance), read about others navigating living odd lives like this to alleviate some of my anxiety and weird guilt, check some email, avoid other email.

The evening consists of more grading (always more!) and writing. Throw dinner in there somewhere that one of us will handle and both of us will eat, wrestling Asher into eat something which means force feeding her leaves so she eats something other than the sweets (mango and grapes this week), and I will do the tiniest of exercise routines in between different activities (waiting for dinner to cook and brushing my teeth moments) because taking a full hour plus to go to the gym, workout, shower, and come home feels like too much time away. Going to the gym is a decadence that leaves me feeling guilty when I don't go and guilty when I do. So to make up for it and assuage that guilt, I do tiny exercises and drink wine because wine feels healthier than beer.

I will probably have watched a few movie trailers because I really enjoy love watching movie trailers (when Scott is gone sometimes, I just watch the trailers to a lot of things and skip a full length movie altogether). I have also bunnytrailed (new verb, guys!) and read several articles about navigating race, diversity, sexuality, and gender in Hollywood and fiction. My Pinterest board and Scrivener notes dedicated to this are growing quickly. I also read a lot of articles from Salon, apparently.

I'm going to throw in some dishwashing as procrastination, too, because maybe writing this blogpost hasn't been enough.  I would have made some cookies but I forgot to get eggs at the store yesterday when I made a short escape.

Geez, this is why I don't quantify this. I'm a mess, my schedule is a mess, and somehow I still manage to be (kind of somewhat) productive in all of this.  It has taken the time since we moved to Portland to come to grips with the guilt I feel about sleeping in late and keeping such an odd lifestyle. I remind myself that I asked for this, in that tiny comment I made years ago to a friend in grad school with "All I really want to do is get a job that lets me work from home." Yep, the cosmos answered in that jolly way they have of taking our words and spinning them into some wild, barely-there semblance of what we meant (ask me about wishing for a beach some time).

The cake fork goes above

I'm going to let you in a little bit of my brain: I, like most of others who write, I suppose, write to figure things out. It is a way to process what I'm working through or thinking through. Unfortunately, words are often lacking and simply can't quite nail what it is that I'm feeling. And, let's just be honest here, blogging is a way to write and others can see it. We write publicly. I expect others are reading this, although, admittedly, I am always surprised when someone tells me that they are, in fact, reading this or still reading this (thank you).

I'm not always prone to sentimentality (despite what some of these blog posts suggest). I don't really collect tchotchkes, but I do appreciate small aesthetic objects and things that make me laugh. We do collect rocks and books, though. I'm not particularly fond of hugging, but I will hug; I grew up in an affectionate family, Scott gives hugs freely, and a number of our friends are huggers. I am, as I explained to Joey years ago, a converted hugger, or a hugger by default.  I don't like the smell of other people on me, whether it be perfume, cologne, or body odor; it is this scent-based reaction more than the physicality of touch.  I don't like inhaling people I don't know. The just-met-you hug is misery (stop doing this, people). There are also certain colognes that are still being worn (I'm looking at you anything CK brand, and I'm not smiling) that assault my physical senses and my memories (it is the smell of bad, angsty dates that usually occurred in some awful chain restaurant and too close cars). And getting back to the point I was making at the beginning of this paragraph, I do realize, however, as you have noticed if you have read any of this blog, that I have perhaps an unhealthy need for introspection that may lead to misdirected and misguided nostalgia, which isn't a lot of our nostalgia misdirected and misguided?

I was sitting this evening (just joking--this post has been sitting in my drafts and worked over for weeks now), working on a project and reading, and I found myself mulling over strange paths in life--specifically the "what led me to this point," Sliding Doors, fork in the road path that I took to get here.  Nobody's road is straight; they are winding, twisted, motion-sickness inducing roads. Sometimes people get to the crossroads and sell their souls to the devil, and I completely understand this compulsion or need now. I sometimes wish there had been signposts for these moments in my life: "Road closed: Terrible weather ahead" like this sign (a favorite and too appropriate at times):

 

What are those tire marks doing?!

 I can think of a few times (specifically two, possibly three) when I actually stood at the crossroads and realized that one way would lead to a certain way and the other a different way. And in the silly way I had (may/probably still have) of facing down the scary things in life, I ran away, and took the path that confounded those around me. "But I thought this was what you wanted/worked so hard for," they would say. And I would wail in reply, "Me toooo!" all the while stubbornly plowing down that path I never intended to take. I've turned out okay even though I've blundered around directionless at times. I have worked hard to get where I am without a map or good sense of navigation and direction. I still look back and wonder and then look forward and wonder, too.

Anyway, all of this to say that there are strange things afoot, and I'm a bit frightened and hoping I'm making the right moves.  2014, I have decided, is the year I do things and meet some pretty hefty goals. Last March was a mess, I was a mess, and I let things just tumble into a panicky, vast darkness within me, but last March also shifted a direction in my life, if a bit smaller than those crossroads moments. I can't tell that it saved me from more student debt, from years of tears and a happy misery, and set me on a new path, but I'd like to think that some good came out of it. Last spring I was barely keeping my head above water, but 2014? This year I'm swimming the effing ocean, punching sharks as they come my way*.


*Just kidding. No animals have been or will be harmed in the making of this new year.

Ancestral revelations and sighs of relief

My dad's side of the family has been active in genealogy work trying to follow the tangled web of our roots. My uncle even sent his cheek swab DNA sample off for testing. A while back, I tracked down some information on the internet and sent it along to my dad using his mother's maiden name. He hadn't seen a lot of the information before or known of some of the family connections. What I discovered was that my family was in Salem, Massachusetts in the 1600s and then moved off to various other places around the US. My little brain began whirring, and I wondered if they had been around during the witch trials, but I left it as one of those unsolvable mysteries. The timing might have been right, but who knew? And there was this terrible little fear that they had been part of that whole mess, believing overly emotional and repressed teenaged girls (bad idea, ancestral people), getting caught up in the hysteria, and killing people.

However, this was not an unsolvable mystery it turns out; it just took time. My sister did an ancestry project for school recently, and my mom sent along a copy of the ancestry report. These have been compiled through various people, but the history tracks my family back to 1564 in Warwickshire, England and--wait for it--Salem in the 1630s. What is more amazing, though, is this little gem:

 

Apparently, I wasn't the only one seeking the information that "not everyone was caught up in the hysteria epidemic."