Writing and Teeth

I feel like a new mom! My baby lost her first tooth. She has been cutting some new teeth for a while, but her puppy teeth were stubbornly staying put. We were playing with her new cloth Frisbee (her old one finally gave way). She let go of the Frisbee, looked up at me with the cutest and most pathetic face, and then she spit a tooth into my hand. It was so damned cute I wish I had filmed it.

Okay, so it looks like I am doing my report in linguistics on one of these writing systems:

1.  Hungarian Runes
2.  Thaana Script
3.  Santali alphabet (Ol Cemet')
4.  Pollard Miao alphabet
5.  Ogham

I proposed these to my instructor via e-mail this morning. We'll see what he says about them. He has shot down several proposals so far because the qualifying condition is that the writing system must be non-Roman and non-Greek based. Because I missed class last week to take my mother to the hospital, I missed out on "cool" choices like Hebrew and hieroglyphics.

We'll see.

Papers and Training (non interrelated)

Lia and I have jointly made the decision that formal puppy training is stupid. I know that Lia chimed in on this because when we left Carrvilla before we had attended the class, she was a lot happier to get in the car than she had been on the way to Carrvilla. She got in without me lifting her up and then licked the ever-living crap out of my face for several minutes thereafter. My part of the decision consisted of consideration of the following factors:

1) I have no money. I'm broke and don't want to borrow $85.00.

2) The dog trainer wanted us to go to adult "beginner" training instead of puppy training -- I don't think she's old enough for that.

3) The only dog I personally know who has been through formal training is a nut-job -- Tally

4) Did I mention that I don't have any money?

5) It is fucking hot in the training building and I have MS -- I am a bit sensitive to heat and haven't been able to see since I spent 1/2 hour in that building -- sitting down. I am still waiting for my eye to return to normal -- could be another day or so.

6) Lia is really, really smart and picks up everything I teach her almost immediately. Perfect example -- Doug taught us how to "heal." Yesterday. Today, she is still -- or now, depending on how progressively you think on dog training -- maintaining what she learned -- she heals very nicely.

7) The whole idea for training was Janelle's -- I love my sister (sometimes) and I do think she knows a lot about dogs -- but this is MY dog. I want to do this MY way. Lia trains well and quicly and is a generally good tempered dog. She gets along well with other dogs. She is firmly imprinted on me and this is really obvious -- only when it's me who gets mad at her does she listen -- she responds with it's ME teaching her stuff. She follows ME around the house. She waits by the door after I leave the house -- even though there is someone else with her if she's not in her crate. MY dog. I want to train her myself and I think I'm doing a pretty good job. She is now going to the door when she has to potty -- and it's only sort-of her fault that if someone doesn't get up to take her out immediately -- she messes by the door -- at least it's all centered on one spot :).

8) Oh yeah, I don't have any money.

So I'm thinking, now, on a topic for my biggie final paper in my Victorian Literature class. I loved, loved, LOVED Jane Eyre. Not because I loved the book -- but I love the way it leads to easy criticism. I wonder a lot about the little girl, Adele. I don't really understand her role in the book. So much of the criticism focuses on Bertha -- the "Madwoman in the Attic." Bertha is considered a minor "figure" in the novel -- not even, really, a character.

So why would the criticism virtually avoid dealing with some of the bigger players -- Adele, Miss Ingram, Mrs. Fairfax -- or even the two Reed sisters -- or, for that matter, the coincidence that Jane's new-found family at the end of the book (the "St. John's") are of the exact same makeup -- dead father, two girls and a boy, the "removed" boy, etc. -- as the Reed family. Rather cool, I think.

I thinking of looking at the recurrence of the "black" theme as a demonstration of racism -- Jane Eyre is a racist novel. Instead of attacking the book as an anti-imperalism text -- can I situate it in the criticism by looking at that way? Using it to illustrate that Victorians may have given lip-service to anti-imperialism/colonialism seems like it will work -- really, they were part of the problem, not the solution. Did Victorians understand the concept of racism and recognize that they were racists? Is the novel a good example of this? I think so -- now, can I prove it?

Okay, Here it is

Albina has been bugging me for a long time to start writing down some of my stories. Joe just got off the phone after talking to my grandmother (Nana). I'm sure all who read this know of her eccentricities (the nicest word I can think of to say that Nana is a fucking lunatic). Joe turned down her "kind" invitation to the casino for breakfast this coming Sunday. Instead, she is going to call Doug and ask him to come and get some stuff she has gathered from her "things" (nice word for mildew-smelling, antique garbage) for his new house. Um-hm.

Let me explain my feelings about Nana's things. About 5 years ago, my friend, Stephanie, and I, went to visit Nana in her home in scenic Joliet. After forcing us to go to the casino for yet another crab leg buffet (where retrieving the crab meat requires not a special fork, but a magnifying glass), she took us back to her house and proceeded to bring several (probably a dozen or so) artifacts from around her home to show to Stephanie. It is important, at this point of the story, to understand that Stephanie was born and raised in Germany. English is her second language, and though she speaks English better than most of the high school students with whom I have had contact, she sometimes has trouble pinpointing the exact word to express her thoughts.

Nana had wandered off to put some of the "treasures" away and said to Stephanie in parting, "Oh, they are going to have such fun going through here when I die." I leaned over and whispered to Stephanie that when she dies, we are going to go through there with a gallon of gasoline and a match.

Stephanie had the good grace to looked shocked while she tried not to laugh. She said, "Oh, Kristen. There's a word for that!" I said, "Yeah. It's 'arson'." Stephanie was then quiet for some 3 hours while she tried to figure out the word she really wanted to say. By that time, we had met my parents and brothers at Garcia's for dinner and drinks. During a brief pause in the dinner table conversation, Stephanie blurted out: "MORBID!" The whole family just looked at her and I explained, "We were at Nana's."

The family just nodded in understanding and the conversation continued as though uninterupted by Stephanie's pronouncement.

I imagine that Doug will graciously load his truck with all of Nana's stuff, drive off waving happily, and then he will stop at the nearest dumpster, back up, and unload the said cargo. If he's smart, he will anyway. Otherwise, his new house that currently smells of fresh sawdust, lumber and paint, will soon smell like the inside of Aldi's after a good rainstorm.

My surfing puppy

Here are some pics of Lia -- my true lab.

Sometimes, NIU's student server goes down (actually, pretty often) and then, I can't access my webpage -- or the pics -- if there are little blocks here instead of pics, this is what happened. If the pictures are too big -- go to the actual page at http://www.students.niu.edu/~z111902/eportfolio/mypics.html

Again, it will only work if the blasted student server is working that day. As of right now, it is not.

****OOPS****

So, I had the pics on here -- and they worked and looked great. Only problem ... they were fucking huge. So I took them off. Use the link above because it takes you to a hidden page on my e-portfolio for school. They look good there, but I am going to rearrange them and start putting in a lot more of them -- and other pics, for that matter. Maybe I'll even make a cool background! Not like it's hard, so I may as well.

I learned new words today (that I will probably spell wrong): Phoneme and allophone -- Nifty and shit, eh?

I still don't care for this linguistics thing.

Good news on student loan [insert dripping sarcastic sneer here] -- they may actually deposit by next Thursday, if I'm lucky. Bastards. They should have deposited last Tuesday, dammit, Note to self: offhand comments to financial aid department personnel at NIU -- not good. Next time, keep *brilliant ideas* to get more money to self.

Fitting in with the Fam

Lia really fits in. Everyone yells at her all the time just like they do with other family members. There's nothing but yelling in this house. What's nice about Lia is that now, there is a lot less yelling at each other and more yelling at Lia. Poor baby. She loves Uncle Michael the best. I can tell because she has eaten or chewed more of his stuff than anyone else's stuff -- including mine. Michael is down a pack of cigarettes (icky, Lia) and a pair of shoes -- I suppose we should be glad it wasn't more. Of course, Michael is only here for a few days every few weeks and has only been here for a total of 3 days since I got Lia. So proportionately, his stuff has suffered a lot more than the rest of ours.

Lia surfs. I'm really not kidding about this. I have no doubt that if we lived in Cali -- she would be tethered to a surf board and hitting the waves. I will put a picture up as soon as I can. We have these floating foam mats covered in vinyl. She loves the pool so much, we had to figure out a way she could relax IN the pool. So we taught her (which took less than 5 minutes) how to get on the mat and ride around the pool. If I coud get her to lay down on the mat, it would be better, but she does balance really well and occasionally sits on the mat.

Janelle sent me an e-mail with a link to the funniest damned site on dogs I've ever seen. Chris would enjoy this because first, it is written somewhat phonetically and second, it is written "by" a greyhound.

http://www.savemouse.com/

At first, I didn't think it was so funny. But then I went through the part that said "Cleek hir 2 si 9 viry skirry theengs thatt yew shul kip awwiy frem yor dag!" (For those interested, it is in the top few paragraphs of the "Hum" [Home] page). I was crying by the end of it. It is so perfect! Those people are geniuses.

I really enjoy this sense of humor. More people need to appreciate pet-owner humor.

I'm off to SparkNote (thanks again, Chris) the rest of Mansfield Park because I would rather burn myself to death at the stake than to read the rest of that dry-ass shit.

I've put some pictures on my website, but I accidently put them in the wrong image file. I will fix it tomorrow at school and post them then.

Privacy Rules

For the first time since I moved home, I am going to have the house all to myself. Dad and the boys, including Michael, are going to someplace in Wisconsin to play golf and poker all weekend. I guess, technically, the house is not ALL to myself, but Mom never leaves her room so it will feel like I'm alone. I can wander around in my underwear, play my music, control the remote for the television and not have to pick up after my brothers for two whole days. Yeah.

Unfortunately, this weekend of freedom is marred by several exercises for my linguistics class and the remainder of Mansfield Park. Thank God for SparkNotes.

What was I thinking?

All kidding aside, Chris. This is not fun. 500 words is a lot to translate! I have probably spent about 4 hours on this so far and I'm maybe half done. Yes, it's getting easier and faster, so I should only be another hour or so -- but that's an hour I should have spent finishing off Mansfield Park (by the way -- sorry, Christine, but if this is Austen? I don't like her).

Linguistics? Yech.

The IPA, Chris says, is cool. Not. I have some 500 words to write out in the International Phonetic Alphabet by Thursday. I also have 3 chapters to read.

What really bugged me, though, is that I have complained that all I know about linguistics concerns monkeys and feces. So what did we do for over an hour today? We watched the old Nova program about the freaking chimp and the damned shit. Great.

I heard a great quote today about writing. Flannery O'Connor (a woman I don't much like, personally, but whose stories I enjoy -- particularly, "A Good Man is Hard to Find") said something to the effect that if you survive childhood, you have enough material to write about for the rest of your life. I need to find the actual quote, but in the meantime, I intend to use this with my own students.

Speaking of my own students, I probably need to finish that syllabus for the fall -- and I need to order an instructor's manual for the book I chose, though I haven't ever used one before. I guess I think it would just be nice to have -- and they're free! Free books of any kind make me happy. Wasn't it Erasmus who claimed that whenever he got paid, he bought books and if there was any left over, he would buy food and clothes. Or maybe it was Michael Jackson.

4,000; 15; 4; 8

So what's with the numbers? I'm sorry, I can't help it. I always break all of my big tasks down into numerical equivalents. Rather odd, I guess, for someone with an English degree. But 4,000 is approximately how many pages I have to read this summer for 19th Century British Novel. 15 is the number of pages required for my term paper. 4 is the number of pages I have to write for my final exam in that course and 8 is the number of weeks I have to get everything done ... without taking into consideration that I have another class this summer.

For those who are normally inclined to be as mathematically impaired as I -- that's about 72 page per day of boring-ass, Dickensianly dry, tedious reading. 72 PER DAY! Fuck. Why am I an English major again? Oh yeah -- I think my excuse was that I "love to read" and "want to share my love of literature with students." Um, yeah. In the mean time, I'm teaching composition -- not literature. Whatever.

First up, Mansfield Park. I haven't ever rented the movie because I thought it would be boring and now I have to read it, instead.

Oh, and for those of you commenting on my voice mail stating that I was either in the library or in class -- this is now the truth! (Or sort of, anyway ... maybe not the library, as such, but because I still haven't fully quit smoking, I may be at Denny's again a lot this summer).

Back to School

I start my classes, tomorrow. For the first time in years, I'm not really looking forward to a semester. Linguistics -- what was I thinking? And 19th Century British Novel? Shit.

Lia is learning to swim, now. Right. LEARNING. Who am I kidding? She's a lab. The only one learning anything is me -- stay out of her way when she's swimming. For instance, Doug went to the far end of the pool and threw the Frisbee towards the shallow end (FYI -- a bit of research discovered that Frisbee is always capitalized -- as is "Kleenex"). Lia launched off the top step and got the Frisbee right away. Herein lies the problem: because the Frisbee got pushed further down in the water while she was grabbing it -- I panicked. I mean, here is my four-month old puppy DIVING to the floor of the pool to get a Frisbee -- now she can't pick the damned things up off the floor of the family room because she can't get her mouth under the lip when it is face down. So I envisioned her drowning trying to get the stupid thing up. I tried to pull her up (and, in fact, I did pull her up) and she scratched me about 30 times in the process. She really wanted the Frisbee.

Back to the "Frisbee"/"Kleenex" thing. I am a little perturbed about this. I mean -- what else would you call a Frisbee? "A flying disc?" I think not. And how often (at least in Chicagoland) do you hear someone ask for a "tissue" versus a "Kleenex." Rarely, if ever.

And even though "Kong" has other names (the really cool dog toy that I put peanut butter in for Lia), it is still "Kong" to most dog lovers.

Linguistics, indeed. Absofuckinglutely. Unfuckingbelievable. And that's a whole 'nother story (P.S. Heard this said on television the other day -- I thought it was just me that infixed that expression -- Chris -- can I use that as a verb? And I still maintain that "to repercuss" is a legitimate verb).

The Mill on the What?

My friend, Linda, sent me an e-mail to advise me that the reading list changed from the time I checked YESTERDAY. Instead of reading Middlemarch, we are now reading The Mill on the Floss. What the hell is a floss? And how did they get a mill on it?

Yeah, I know the Floss is supposedly a river (in England, I have to guess). But I didn't like George Eliot so much when I read her the first time! Now I have to read it again.

Thanks a lot, Linda! Is shooting the messenger still a viable option? I don't even have a copy of that one -- and I found all but one of the other books in my own collection. Looks like I will be spending some time at Denny's this summer after all.

Lia is on my feet playing with that stupid soccer ball again.

She is starting to change color -- and she's going through that gawky, adolescent phase. She has a black streak on her nose that while it is totally darned adorable, makes her look like she's been digging in dirt. She also has developed a yellow streak down her back and on her tail. This is also adorable. I'm starting to wonder, though, if I feed her enough. I am giving her about 2 cups in the morning and 2 at night. Maybe a little less -- but about. I wish she'd stop growing -- she was so cute as a puppy. I do love big dogs, though, and she is going to be beautiful. We start to train on the 28th. 6 weeks of puppy training only runs about $85 so this is very reasonable.

In the meantime, she is still sitting, laying down, playing "bang," giving "paw," and doing "1 time around." The problem is that she is starting to confuse hand signals -- especially when I try to teach "stay." I will ask Janelle about the "stay" hand signal and the fact that she is confusing signals. I also have to try to do the "tricks" in a different order -- she may be just running the routine without understanding the difference between each command.

She had a bath today and actually stayed in the tub for most of the bath. I didn't break out at all this time, either -- probably because she wasn't crazily trying to get out of the tub and scratching me while she did.

Now for the BIG NEWS! LIA GOES TO THE DOOR, NOW, WHEN SHE HAS TO POTTY! :)
(okay -- sometimes).

My Brother is an Ass

Joe threw up several days (maybe even a week) ago and, I guess, cleaned up some of it so that it wasn't readily noticible. Lia has a tendency to follow me into the bathroom -- she kept going for this same spot behind the toilet -- I didn't know what the hell she was going after.

Well I finally got around to cleaning the family room floor and I figured it would be a good time, since I had a mop and bucket out anyway, to wash the bathroom floor -- it stunk in there -- and guess what I discovered -- yep -- left over vomit!

Now I don't know if he was sick because he ate one of his disgusting concocotions or if it was some kind of drunken stupor -- but either way -- why do I have to live like this?

I have made some horrible decisions in my life in the name of earning "X" degree. I am one year short of my Master's and now I am saddled with some $50,000 in debt and a potentially useless degree, not to mention that I have had to subject myself to indentured servitude at my parents' home where my brothers run the show. Doug's house will be done, soon. Hopefully, anyway. Supposedly the occupancy inspection is next week. Hmm. Yeah.

Joe is currently snoring so loud on the sofa that he woke Lia up and drove me into going outside -- a place where I am not thrilled being right now -- it's hot.

I love laptops. I love the screened-in porch at my Mom's. I love this whole wireless Internet-thing.

I really think Joe's an ass. I love him -- but as bad as I think I am -- I think he's worse. What I mean is that he's really depressed -- really in a rut -- he has gained a lot of weight -- he eats horribly -- the doctor put him on high blood pressure medication and a cholesterol-lowering med (his cholesterol was almost 300 -- I guess that is really high?). I wish I could do something for him but right now, I am in such a pickle -- I cannot take care of my mother, this house, my health, my dog and Joe. And this house and my dog consume a lot of time.

I still need to finish my syllabus for the fall -- I promised to get it on my website by the end of June. Thus, I must write the darned thing. I found my reading list for one of my summer classes -- it's something else:

Jane Eyre
Emma
Wuthering Heights
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Jude the Obscure
Middlemarch
Bleak House
Dracula

Eight novels in eight weeks -- do-able? Probably. I have already read Middlemarch, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Just gotta get on it, I guess.

The other class is Linguistics. I am taking this for two reasons. First, although I took Linguistics at Aurora University during my undergrad -- I think I may have had the stupidest teacher alive (with a PhD, anyway). All I know about linguistics involves monkeys and feces. Not kidding -- I know all of my friends have heard this story. Sorry. But this seemed a good reason to take linguistics again. The second reason I am taking this is that Chris is so into this stuff, it would be nice to know a little something about it -- it's only fair -- he had to suffer through several literature courses and he can "empathize" (did I spell that right?) with me in this realm. I should at least know a little about what he is studying.

There is one ancillary reason ... okay, okay -- it pretty much comes down to this: the English department had a horrible selection of courses for the summer. I wanted to be full time so as not to screw with either my financial aid or my health insurance -- linguistics it was. All noble reasons aside -- yeah, it came down to $$.

Lia found a mini soccer ball that squeeks in the bottom of Dutch's toy box (don't worry -- he doesn't care -- he hasn't played with those toys in probably 6 years). She likes the soccer ball. A lot. I have to go in, now. I think she may be annoying the neighbors with the constant "squeek."