Rhubarb Pie

You Read My Mind

Well, actually, you read my backchannel communication about us being done.  Thanks for the collaboration, friend.  See you around....

And to all the readers who've made me think and laugh and feel, all these years?  Thanks for sharing a little bit of yourself back.  It's been really rewarding.   

What's Up With Me

Hi, friend. 

It's the end of the school year -- exam week.  Student appointments have dropped way off, although the level of anxiety in any particular appointment is much, much higher.  I have room to think about the year, how I do what I do and how I might be able to do it better next year. 

NBT and I had a friend date with a couple we don't know very well but we think might be promising pals.  It was so great that since then I've been feeling a little insecure.  Their life sparkles with creativity, art, projects, plans.  It left me a little less satisfied with our own life.

All I can really report that I've been doing faithfully is reading.  Thanks to my new index card system I don't have to rely on my memory to tell you what I've been reading.  It's a strange list, with chick lit books cheek by jowl with classics and dry nonfiction titles, but that's that.  Below is the list of books I've read in 2010, with any remarks I jotted down on the card.  Not listed in chronological order -- I haven't been dating the cards (should I?), just shoving them willy-nilly into the box. I'm torn between the desire to explain away some of the trashier books and just shrugging and saying, yep, I like trash.  I think that's the right choice.  I like trash.   

Are You Sure You're Good At Your Job?

I worry a lot that I am bad at my job.  I really, really want to be good at my job, but it's hard to tell.  I work with smart kids, and they get fascinating jobs and internships and get admitted to fabulous graduate programs, but I can't take credit for that -- they probably would do all those things without me.  And of course they also get rejected from fantastic jobs and programs, and it doesn't occur to them or to me to blame me, but maybe it should.  Maybe if I were better they would all succeed all the time.  

(Just kidding. That would be a terrible fate, anyway, because one thing that's hard for these young people is that they haven't had much experience with failure yet and are paralyzed by fear of it.  I know what that feels like, and wish I could take it away from them.) 

Anyway, usually I feel like I'm reasonably good at my job, and trying to get better at it is really fun and motivating and hard.  I have a bulletin board full of thank you cards from students who seem to think I helped, and I get more secrets confessed to me than my colleagues, which seems like a good sign.  Students tell me I've helped.  But still, I'm not sure.  So I read a lot of the other advice out there in the world -- all the other "experts" giving career advice to young people -- to see what I can learn.  Some of it makes me so mad.  I don't know why inane career advice uttered confidently by slick self-promoters makes me furious. Glib smugness is pretty widespread in the world and it doesn't usually bother me.  Maybe this kind gets at me because I worry I don't have so much to offer; I fear being glibly smug and imagining myself indispensable.  Maybe it gets under my skin because I'm afraid my students will fall for it and feel bad about themselves when they are pushed by these experts into narrow boxes.  

But what kind of advice is really good?  This article says information is the best kind of advice -- better than recommendations for or against a decision, which I tend to avoid, and better even than advice about how to go about making a decision.  I've been thinking about that.  The truth is I think the best kind of help I offer students isn't any of those four.  I help them articulate the decisions they've already made, but they aren't yet sure they've decided.  I listen pretty well, and maybe I'm good at asking useful questions, and I imagine that I'm good at noticing when they are really engaged with something and when they are talking themselves into it.    

The best advice I get is thoughtful and provocative questions from smart friends that shines a light on my assumptions, and the feeling that they will accept any answer I give, as long as it is truthful.  That's the way I try to advise. But I have no idea if I'm any good, or if it's the right way.    

What I Did This Weekend

I dragged NBT down to Boston, where we attended ComicCon.  We went on Sunday, which was Costume Day.  If you're going to attend a comic convention, I think it's important to go on the day when there's a costume contest.      

One of the things I liked was the fact that the same hotel hosting it was also hosting a big convention of retinal and cataract surgeons.  So the lobby was a mix of expensively dressed pharmaceutical reps and eye surgeons and practice management salespeople, plus the occasional young woman in a pleather suit wearing a blue wig, or a big guy dressed like Hellboy or the three Ghostbusters.  I think I enjoyed looking across at the busy lobby Starbucks and seeing all of that almost as much as anything else. 

But I liked a lot of other things, too.  There was a lot of floor space, allocated about evenly between vendors selling comic books (and, to a smaller degree, other objects like T shirts or plush figures or shot glasses or statuettes) and artists.  I spent most of my time walking around talking to the artists, asking questions that were probably stupid or impertinent, about how they do their work.  Like, how much information is in the script you get with the story that the writer has written?  It depends, I learned.  The script tells an artist what appears in which panel -- that was one of my questions, who breaks a story into panels, the writer or the artist.  Sometimes a script specifies how a scene should look -- e.g. an overhead view of the hero sitting at the table, rain visible in the window in the background.  Sometimes it'll specify things like what kind of shirt the hero is wearing, and exactly what objects are on the table.  Other times it'll just say a mood, or a few important things about the view, and the artist decides how to depict it.  Fascinating.  And then there's a colorist, who decides how to color the pictures that the artist drew.  Some people do all three, but other times there's a big team of people who have never met one another working on a project together.   

I learned some technical things, about the kinds of pages people use to make comic books, for example.  I saw a lot of really cool things.  The most interesting was getting to see Kody Chamberlain's notebook, where he sketches out ideas and mocks up pages and keeps lists -- his idea journal, I guess -- and asking him questions about how he thinks about his projects.  I met the illustrator of this book, and bought it very excitedly.  It was one of the few non-narrative, non-fiction projects there that I saw.

I also bought books from a couple of other artists I talked to.  One of them I bought because I thought his drawing style was different from most everyone else's, and he had a really smiley girlfriend sitting in the booth with him, and I liked her.  (When I got the book home I realized that those were bad reasons to buy a comic book.)  One of them I bought because its writer was SOOO excited to be there, and he stopped me as I was walking by and talked at rapid and enthusiastic length to me about the plot of his forthcoming comic book (it's almost done) and the next one he wants to write, and how great it is to be sitting there at a ComicCon as an artist instead of as a fan, and how he met all these people he's been working on these projects with through a particular website, and so many other things that I felt like he had taught me a ton.  Also, his girlfriend was sitting beside him, and although she wasn't smiley, she WAS in costume, and I am pretty sure she was dressed up as the main character in his comic book, and I thought that was pretty cool.  When I bought the book he excitedly offered to sign it for me.  And those, it turns out, were really good reasons to buy a comic book.      

Who's In?

Thanks to the clue from Greg, I have learned the name of the coveted mug.  It is a "Spokane Barrel Mug."  

I have also learned where I can buy such a mug.  Hurrah!  Unfortunately, I have to buy at least 36 of them in order to place an order.  

I'm happy to keep 4, and I'm going to have to send a couple to Megan just to make sure she learns what she has been missing.  But what am I going to do with the rest of them?  Would any of you guys like one or two?

What I'm talking about, apparently, is a limited edition Rhubarb Pie mug.  It looks like $10 to $13 would cover everything, including me schlepping it to the post office to ship it to you.    

Also, since an imprint is included, it seems silly not to put something on the sides of these babies.  

I could draw a picture of Dick Cheney's face?  Or a diagram of the brain?  Or a cartoon of Megan lifting weights with the words "BE STRONG"?  I suppose a little sketch of a pie would be obvious.  Or some kind of clever in-joke?  I am not very good at these things.  (In truth, I was thinking of asking them to give me the Pittsburgh Regional Traffic Management Center logo pictured, because that would make me smile every day -- except it's more than one single color, which isn't so great.)

[The alternative to this plan is I go over to the college bookstore and start lobbying that they order some of these, or at least request some free samples.  Which I am quite prepared to do.]

A Recent Tragedy

This photograph contains three of my favorite things.  There's the phrenology head, which is part of my brain project and is the best Valentine's day present I've ever gotten.  There's the wind up kitchen timer, which is in the background behind the head, and is how I get myself through chores or tear myself away from absorbing and wonderful frivolous activities, and also how I remember that the rice is cooking downstairs.    

And the third wonderful thing is my favorite coffee mug, which recently fell to its death on a patio stone in our backyard.  Note the graceful curves, the plain black ceramic finish with a hint of festive yellow glaze peeking out from the inside.  Note that it is the perfect shape and size -- a little bit larger than your average coffee cup, and curved inward to be both pleasant to hold and also to retain a little bit more heat.  

Before I found this picture I was trying to describe the mug to a colleague and I drew this picture to try to explain what I need: 

Do you know how hard it is to search online for a mug that is the right shape and size, to replace this beloved treasure?  I don't even know how to describe the shape.  I don't care what color it is, or whether it has a witty saying on it.  I don't care if it is handmade by a local artist using only the purest organic clay or if it is mass produced by child laborers and stamped with the face of Dick Cheney, as long as it is ceramic, the right shape and size, and can be purchased for immediate delivery.  

I've already looked at Target.com, www.mugheaven.com, crateandbarrel.com, and Pier 1, without any luck at all.  I got the originals at some cheapo place like that.  Edgecomb Potters makes the closest thing I've been able to find, and if I need to I guess I can shell out $38, but it seems kind of precious to me.  Got any ideas?  

(Ideas that involve me trying to consider using a different shape mug will be rejected as absurd.  I mean *real* ideas.) 

Hmmmmmm

I was all set to log in here and agree with you, and then I made the mistake of reading all those kind comments, and my heart softened a little bit.  I've been blogging since 2003, met my husband this way, not to mention you, my fine friend, and I'm *still* caught off guard at the kind, authentic connections that are possible when you share your thoughts with the world.   

That's the problem, I think.  You and I have our own backchannel, so we don't need this place to know one another, and neither you nor I use this place to discover our own thinking so much.  The best writing I do is when I'm perplexed or vulnerable or confused, and writing helps me get clearer.  And I don't do that here very often.  I'm not quite sure why.  Maybe getting married and loving my job has taken away some of the sources of confusion, or maybe I'm no less confused but my interest in talking about it has changed.  I'm still confused -- a person I admire doesn't seem to like me and it hurts my feelings and makes me wonder why; being married and pulled into a whole new family dynamic is fascinating.  I wonder a lot about the process of self-discovery as I work with college students who are thinking through their own ambitions.  I wonder if what I'm saying to them is helpful, or true, or which parts of it they hear and which they ignore.  I pay a lot of attention to the difference between the way life feels when you are twenty -- the sense of urgency on some decisions, the shorter time horizon, the things that matter and the things that don't -- and the way it feels at 37, and I think hard about how to communicate well across that gap.  But I don't seem to want or need to write about it here.  

Is this a problem that can be solved with goals, or homework?  Two posts a week, each? One photo and one text?  I would like to send you a photo of our drowned state -- three days of rain on saturated soil, grey skies and a flat 39 degrees -- so you'll know what spring really means.  Is this a problem that needs to be solved?  Is this even a problem?  All these nice people want us to keep talking here, in public, even though you and I seem to have lost interest.  Maybe we should try harder for a couple of months -- say until June -- and then decide.

Update: Fun

Sorry I've been quiet around here.  I've been quiet everywhere else, too.  One reason is that my throat is still sore from the dratted cold that lingers and lingers, so talking hurts.  Another reason is work life has been taking my full attention.  A therapist friend of mine told me that in their profession there's a term of the trade called "compassion fatigue".  Aha. In my world I think it is curiosity fatigue, or extraversion fatigue.  So many interesting conversations during the day that I'd rather listen, or read, or watch a movie, or nuzzle with the dog in the hours when I'm not working.  

But I wanted to show you something I did that was fun.  I made these custom sun visor covers for a guy in my carpool.  It's kind of a long story, but maybe that's part of the fun.  One of our carpoolers has an older little Honda, and his sun visor has gotten all ratty and tattered.  So I schemed up this ridiculous idea, that we should crochet him a visor cover.  And I ganged up with a couple of other carpoolers and we just played with the idea, making it more ridiculous.  We decided the visor covers should be reversible, and silly.  We decided they should have a means of displaying offensive bumper stickers, because that's a topic of conversation in the carpool from time to time.  We went on a field trip to the fabric store and we chose four fabrics that we thought were funny.  We sent one of our carpoolies to our victim's car to measure his visor covertly.  We met for a day of sewing on a Saturday morning -- I brought bagels, another person brought notions: fringe, colored buttons.  We all contributed funny bumper stickers and sewed in different sized clear pockets (made of ziploc bags) on the visor covers so you could insert a baseball card or a bumper sticker or a business card if you wanted.  And we made lots and lots of them, so not only our original recipient but everyone in the carpool could have one if we wanted. We all met for lunch in the campus dining hall and presented them in a big ceremonious box to our mystified carpool friend.  

The whole thing was fun. It was a secret, and it was silly, and it was social, and it was a little bit of a prank.  It was elaborate, and it required excursions: to the fabric store (have you been to a fabric store lately? What an interesting place) and to a carpool member's house for a sewing breakfast.  It involved making something, and I now have this funny reminder on my sun visor of the oddball people in my carpool and the bizarre conversations we have on our commutes. As I've been thinking about Fun these are factors that I've noticed are rewarding and novel.  So I'm kind of proud of this little sun visor project.      

 

Thoughts About Books

I declared 2009 the Year of Planned Reading, but that was a failure too.  I didn't plan my reading, and what I did instead (set wildly ambitious goals, binge on armloads of books from the college library) just kind of set me up to feel like a failure.  I had a good reading year in 2009, but I completely failed at even the most basic thing: I didn't keep track of the books I read.  To tell you what I read I would have to rely on my memory, which we know to be lousy, and my interest in going back to recreate a list, which sounds really boring to me.  I read a lot of books, good and bad. I probably read more books last year than I have in previous years, but it would be impossible to confirm that, since I haven't been keeping track.   

So the Year of Planned Reading was mostly a bust.  But I did get a few things out of it, which are below.  I'm most excited about my new tracking system for 2010.    

How To Get Girls

Well, hmmmm.  We have another reader looking for some specific advice.  This one is a 25 year old fellow named S., who has never had a girlfriend, and has only mustered up the courage to ask women out a very few times, always with disappointing results.  What's the trick, he wonders. 

I used to write quite a lot about dating and my own theories about it. I wrote about how to decide whether to confess a crush, and how to tell whether you're undateable (in 3 parts!).  I wrote about chemistry, and how much that matters.  Since I've been with NBT these last three and a half years, I've stopped paying attention to all the signals you have to decode to figure out whether a romantic relationship is possible with someone, so I expect Megan will have better advice than me.  But ignorance has never stopped me before, so I'll charge in. 

There are three things that I used to ask myself when evaluating a guy. We'll take each of them in turn. 

1) Do I like, enjoy, and admire him as a human being?

2) Do I want to smooch him? Is he attractive/exciting?

3) Does he make me feel good about myself?