| The 10 women poets meme |
[10 Oct 2009|12:01am] |
... because why not?
Sappho (sorry, I have to! my cat is named after her!)
Na Castelloza
Marie de France
Louise Labe
Pernette Du Guillet
Gaspara Stampa
Anne Bradstreet
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
Adrienne Rich
Anne Hebert
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| GIP |
[17 Jul 2009|03:43pm] |
A new icon after a long hiatus! It's an illustration of Jeanne d'Arc from Antoine Dufour, Vies des femmes celebres, c. 1505 (an intriguing text in its own right). I can't believe how easy it is to make icons now on LJ. I hadn't made one in about a million years, and now all you have to do is click a few times and voila. Wow.
Which reminds me, I made an account on Dreamwidth thanks to the generosity of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kirbyfest, but have done nothing with it, and probably won't for a long while, due to overpowering inertia. And, um, if there is anyone in the universe who still wants dreamwidth invites, now I have them. Whee.
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| Happy new year and all that |
[06 Jan 2009|04:39pm] |
Charlie has returned to nursery today, but have I returned to work? No, not really.
I have had lovely holidays but was having a really glum day today. Then I remembered that an LJ angel gave me a VERY LAVISH amazon gift certificate for my birthday. And I went online and ordered loads of new books. Now I feel cheerful indeed. Thank you LJ angel.
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| Happy |
[24 Dec 2008|01:06am] |
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Too tired to make a proper post, despite many posts-inside-my-head. However, I am happy. I have had a very happy day.
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| I am having a real work day |
[20 Nov 2008|03:10pm] |
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Charlie is in nursery for the full day today and I have to say, IT IS SO NICE. I have been with him so much lately and I am so enjoying having a work day all to myself. I have given tutorials, I have had a proper lunch in college and talked to colleagues, I have gotten some work done, all without tearing around from place to place like a madwoman the way I usually do. Ahhhh. Bliss.
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| Happy to see the end of an interminable week |
[14 Nov 2008|08:55pm] |
It happened - yesterday I came down with Charlie's stomach virus. It was like a 24-hour detox. I couldn't keep anything down, not even water. Yuk. And lying around feeling like death when you have a child bouncing up and down on you saying, "Play with me! Play!" ... well, it wasn't one of the happier days of my life.
I knew I had to cancel today's teaching - four separate classes! -, but when I finally got Charlie to bed last night, I felt too sick to turn on my computer and send the necessary emails. When I woke up, I felt weak but much much better; the good thing to be said about this virus is that it's short. So I did last-minute triage: canceled the two tutorials that involved one student each, and managed to show up at the two classes that involved ten students each, because believe me, trying to reschedule a class of ten people is an absolute nightmare. Charlie returned to nursery with much protest and we both survived the day.
It does seem that as soon as M left, everything started going to pieces. Although I know it's pure coincidence that we happened to get sick this week. These maladies all come from nursery, where the kids are currently, in the words of one staff member today, "dropping like flies". The coming days aren't going to be fun either, because I have a pile of writing samples to mark for college admissions, and I have four extra hours of make-up teaching next week.
For the moment, though, I'm just enjoying being online and feeling human again. I have visions of going to London on a holiday shopping trip when M gets back, provided that his Canada money comes through before Christmas. Maybe we should go as a family, or maybe M and I should take a day off and go while Charlie's at nursery. We're in desperate need of new work clothes; M's wardrobe is especially shabby. Banana Republic opened in London fairly recently and I want to check it out (is that just Chicago nostalgia?). We could each pick a couple of things for ourselves and those could be our Christmas presents... I don't want a SURPRISE, dammit, I want a new outfit.
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| I tempted the Fates... |
[12 Nov 2008|10:43pm] |
... by complaining yesterday when I didn't really have that much to complain about. During the night Charlie proved to have some evil stomach ailment and repeatedly woke up vomiting. The poor boy. So - no nursery for him today, and no nursery tomorrow either.
While this means that I have a lot of work to postpone/reschedule, I feel philosophical about it. At the moment, at least. We just lounged around the house all day and cuddled a lot and mopped up unmentionable bodily fluids, and watched C-Beebies and DVDs until we were heartily tired of both. It was a nice change from my normal frenetic pace. It was also somewhat comical to watch a three-year-old dealing with a sore tummy. Whenever his tummy stopped hurting, he would return to his normal (or near-normal) high-energy mode. Jumping on the bed: "I need to exercise, Mummy! Watch me exercise! It's a little bit cheeky!" (Don't ask me where he got that line, but the word "cheeky" IS used approximately 5,000 times more frequently in this country than in my country of origin.) And then collapsing five minutes later: "Ooooh my tummy is sick! I need more cuddles!"
Fingers crossed that he stays in relatively good spirits, and can go back to nursery on Friday, and I don't come down with whatever it is he has...
Incidentally, M has discovered a branch of Chipotle in Toronto and is in heaven. No, it's not gourmet cuisine, but compared to the Mexican food available in Oxford it's like manna. Also, I keep telling M that he is insane to be in the same city as the extraordinary chickenfeet2003 and lemur_catta and not attempt to meet up with them, but he swears he is working day and night and has no free time whatsoever. (Where are his priorities, I ask?!) He hasn't even managed to get in touch yet with the close friend who arranged the Toronto work for him, though, so I almost believe him. At least North American fast food is brightening his life.
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| Whinging. Again. |
[11 Nov 2008|10:20pm] |
So M has gone to Toronto for two weeks, to teach a seminar and earn heaps of money (which we plan to use to fund a spring trip to Australia). I've hardly ever been on my own with Charlie before, apart from a spell during the first weeks of his life (due to the deportation saga). And it's just not easy. I've said before and I say again, my admiration for single parents and military spouses knows no bounds.
We're three days into the separation and Charlie's not being particularly difficult, although he does miss his dad a lot. He is clingier than usual, which is understandable. And he won't talk to M on the phone, which is interesting because normally he loves to say hello to his dad on the phone. Tonight I held the phone to his ear; M said, "I love you, Charlie" and Charlie shouted, "I DON'T luz you!" Tonight he also had a short crying episode in bed and insisted on getting out of bed and going downstairs in order to see for himself whether M was there in his usual position on the sofa. Strangely, this calmed him down. ("Oh, I see. Daddy not here.")
What's really getting me down is trying to shop for food and cook meals and keep the house reasonably tidy and get Charlie to and from nursery and do my teaching prep and teach, without all the help I normally get from M on the domestic and childcare fronts. Tonight I got home with Charlie and he was clinging to me and the house was a mess and the mere thought of trying to make something for dinner made me feel infinitely weary. I ended up reheating daal and Charlie refused to eat any because it was "mummy daal" as opposed to "Charlie daal" (which comes from the local Indian restaurant and is indeed delicious - it also probably contains about 500 times more salt and butter than my version). Many games and stories and protests and potty accidents later, he finally falls asleep and I come downstairs to squalor, whereas normally M would have the washing up done by the time I get Charlie down. And now I have to decide whether to attack aforesaid squalor or do teaching prep, despite a strong preference to do neither, and have a hot bath followed by early bed.
This is a very boring post. However, I must remind myself to be more appreciative of M when he gets back.
Oh god 10 more days how will I cope?
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| Raising a toast... |
[05 Nov 2008|04:16am] |
... to Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of the USA.
I still can't believe a man with a name like that got elected.
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| In an unspeakable mood |
[04 Nov 2008|12:11pm] |
It's morning in America. From New York to Chicago to my own home state of California, people are waking up. From Florida to Ohio to Missouri.
I was up late last night watching Obama video after Obama video and crying my eyes out. I know it's sappy but I don't care. Now reading my friends list is making me cry again.
What I wouldn't give to be in America today.
Please God let him win. Please God let him be as good or even half as good as we hope.
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| This eternal twilight |
[02 Nov 2008|04:24pm] |
I don't know how people managed to flourish in this country in previous centuries. It's so dark and damp and sunless. I took Charlie out to the natural history museum this morning, and the light (or lack thereof) felt like late afternoon. I'm actually grateful for all of the absurdly early Christmas merchandise in the shops, because it is bright and SHINY. Now I'm trying to muster up the energy to go out into the greyness for a run. However, by the time I finish this post it will probably be pitch-black outside and I will have abandoned the idea.
In other news, I started paying attention to my facebook for the first time, and have been wasting lots of time on it (due to the novelty factor, I think; I like LJ much better as a mode of communication). There is very little overlap between my LJ list and my facebook friends. The people on facebook are mostly academics I know from work, and - gasp! - members of my family (read 'rabid McCain supporters'). Having my family on LJ is the last thing I would ever want, but on facebook I don't really mind.
Halloween still hasn't really caught on in the UK, which is fine with me. Only two groups of kids rang our bell all evening. The first was a trio of small Muslim girls from around the corner. They were wearing their usual long black headscarves along with the added novelty of vampire teeth, and trust me, the effect was incongruous. They asked for treats but then seemed extremely surprised when the treats materialized (I think they had already knocked on a couple of other doors without success) and when I poured some sweets into their cupped hands (Christmas candy! on sale in the shops already!), they said, "Oh no, you are giving us too many!" I think they are from the same family who brought plates of food to our door the night of the Eid celebration at the end of Ramadan.
We then went along to a neighbor's Halloween party (I had to twist M's arm to come, but he came). Her parties are legendary on our street - she is a hippee-Goth-earth mother type with an enormous collection of ghoulish accessories, which she digs out every Halloween - and half the neighborhood turns up. She invited us last year too. M and I were the only people there not in costume ("fancy dress") and I was a bit embarrassed not to have made more of an effort. I did manage homemade cookies though - snickerdoodles, which I hadn't made in years - and they disappeared with gratifying speed. Charlie dressed as Greg Wiggle (it's safe to say no one at the party had the faintest clue who he was meant to be, since the Wiggles aren't big in the UK) and had the time of his life, dancing around with glowsticks and entertaining everyone. He was the youngest person there and the teenagers made a huge fuss of him. I felt all warm and full of love for the universe.
Tuesday night we are having a big election party - well, big if you consider the size of our front room, but also select, in the sense that everyone coming is completely obsessed with the American elections and completely head-over-heels in love with Obama. No half-heartedness or naysaying allowed. I have rescheduled all of Wednesday's teaching, as I don't expect to be in fit condition to teach in the morning.
Hope everyone else has had a good weekend!
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| The usual mishmash of an update |
[29 Oct 2008|10:22am] |
I've been quiet on here for awhile because I have been working so damn hard, not just when Charlie's at nursery, but late into every night. Of course, if I managed to do a bit more teaching prep BEFORE the start of term, I wouldn't flail so much once term actually started... but never mind. My teaching hours are flexible in number, depending on how many students want to study medieval/Renaissance in a given term, but I'm supposed to teach an average of 6 hours a week. Last week, due to a mixture of coincidence and saying yes to too many people, I had to teach for 14 HOURS. When you take into account that nearly every hour is on a different topic, and that every one hour requires about two more hours of prep and marking time, well, that adds up to 42 HOURS. And Charlie isn't in nursery full-time. So it's obvious why I was floundering like mad, even with M stepping in to give me some extra Charlie help. Friday looked like this: the Chanson of Roland, followed by Old French language, followed by lunch (sandwich at desk accompanied by marking), followed by 16th-century French poetry, followed by Rabelais, followed by advanced French-to-English translation. I am pretty sure my teaching performance got steadily worse as the day wore on.
Thanks for listening to all of that "woe poor me". The rest of the term should be far easier - only 9 hours/week. And the terms here are so short - two weeks down, six to go. And the teaching itself is precisely, exactly what I love to be doing - I mean, sitting one-on-one with a very bright student and talking about Rabelais for a hour: how much better can a job get? Nevertheless, yesterday when one of my students didn't show up, and another one postponed her tutorial, I was so happy it was pathetic.
Rather than using the teaching-free time to catch up on marking, I caught up on my friends-list. Finally. I did that thing where I visited everyone's page - not that I commented necessarily, but I managed to get a sense of how everyone is going. (Yes, I procrastinate AND am a perfectionist - great combo of qualities.) So if anyone is wondering why they got a random comment on a post 3 months old, well, that would be why.
In other news, OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA! He was my favorite candidate from the start. What's happening now just seems too good to be true. Every time I think about it, I feel tears welling up.
Now back to the marking. Also, Charlie is invited to a birthday party this afternoon somewhere in the far-flung outskirts of Oxford, at a bouncy-activity place called Jambino's, and I have to figure out how to get there without a car. I could cycle, but I fear it might involve crossing motorways, so I need to investigate buses. Bleh.
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| Belated birthday wishes |
[08 Oct 2008|11:24am] |
The combination of the start of term and a nasty NEW family cold (when I hadn't quite recovered from the old one) made me go incommunicado again. But I want to hail the now-past birthdays of curtana - woman and mother exemplaire - and oursin - woman and scholar exemplaire.
I wish I could spend an hour on the internet right now but that will have to wait until I have met with a horde of freshers and determined what to ask them to do for next week.
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| Oxford is horrible oh noez! |
[02 Oct 2008|04:20pm] |
The secret is finally out: The University of Oxford is a horrible place where all the people are miserable. So says Tanya Gold in today's G2.
This is just the kind of publicity that Oxford doesn't need, in its attempts to recruit students from more diverse backgrounds. Feh.
I don't doubt Ms Gold's word that she had a terrible time at Oxford, but to infer from her own experience that everyone else had a terrible time at Oxford too is to make a bit of a leap. (Not the sort of argumentative strategy that would win you points in a tutorial essay, no.)
OK, she was at Merton, which *is* one of the conservative old boys' colleges. And it was some years ago, so things were probably stuffier then. And I'm no fan of the Vice-Chancellor's recent statements about university fees and university access. But surely one's experience as an Oxford student varies greatly depending on which college one is in, which subject one is studying, which tutors one ends up with and so forth (leaving aside the question of the student's individual psychology and background). To generalize like this is unhelpful and absurd.
There are a lot of problematic things about this institution, but I've taught in a few of the colleges here, and had interviews for jobs in a few more, and everyone, no but EVERYONE, talked to me about the 'pastoral care' of students: about watching for signs of students not coping (in what is admittedly a stressful and high-pressure environment) and pointing them in the direction of help when they're not. Compared to other universities worldwide, this place has an extremely high retention rate. The students here have access to resources: not just academic and material, but psychological and personal. (Gold's article laments the prevalence of counselling - remind me how student access to counselling is a BAD thing exactly? When I was an undergrad at Cambridge, a free university counsellor - someone more perceptive than any other therapist I've seen since - essentially saved my life.) Like it or not, Gold did her studies in a place of privilege. And ended up a journalist for a major newspaper. Humph.
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| Return |
[12 Sep 2008|04:19pm] |
We came back from Paris on the Eurostar yesterday, only to find out that we had narrowly missed a fire in the Channel Tunnel that has left thousands of passengers stranded. Our train left Paris at noon British time, so we must have gone through the tunnel at about 1pm, and the fire broke out shortly before 2. Ours must have been one of the last trains to make it through. It is strange to see media coverage from the Gare du Nord and St Pancras when I was there such a short time ago. Those poor people. It's ironic when the great thing about the Eurostar is that it normally goes like clockwork; the trains in my experience have never been late.
To our delight, nay rapture, Paris had good weather, so the holiday really felt like a holiday. Charlie woke up this morning, looked out the window and asked, "Where did the sun go?" Quite.
I need to do some housework (amazingly, when you leave a messy house and come back to it five days later, it is still messy. With all the additional mess of overflowing luggage). But I feel groggy and lethargic. I can haz mor sun plz?
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