Thursday, April 9, 2015

20150409.0704

The weather around Sherwood Cottage confuses me. It stands far away from water; there are no rivers in town, and the thing the locals call a lake is more of a pond, really, created by a dam and on no axis so broad that its opposite side cannot be seen. The sea is a state away, at least, and one of the largest, at that. Yet somehow, the humidity here is high and has been for days, provoking a needed rain and therefore welcome in that regard, but not so desirable for being out and about--or being in when the place in which one is is so open to the elements as Sherwood Cottage is. The walls are hollow, the windows thin, and the doors do not seal, and so the outside is slowed but not stopped from making its way in.

Amid such interesting meteorological circumstances, work continues. I have a stack of grading waiting for me, and it will be joined by another stack of grading tomorrow; I probably ought to attend to it today, lest I have multiple sets at once, which is never desirable. Freelance work continues, although presently with smaller jobs that I should be able to push through in haste yet well. Other writing continues to beckon, and that will entail additional reading that I have done but not for some time, so that I need to refresh myself. And preparations for conferences in Kalamazoo and Nashville should be further underway than they currently are. The situation seems fairly normal, therefore.

Ms. 8 continues to develop. In addition to having begun to walk (although she still does a fair bit of crawling), she is beginning to make words. "Hi" seems to be frequent, as does "Mama." ("Dada" does not happen often, if at all, and I confess to being saddened by it.) I am pretty sure I heard her exclaim "Cheese!" while I was feeding some to her yesterday, a piece of string cheese given to her in bits while she was on my lap in the early evening. "Kitty," I am reasonably certain I have heard from her, as well, and I think she asked for "up" yesterday when she woke up from a nap. Many older parents have told me to be thankful for the quiet I have had from her, for when she begins to talk, she will not stop, but I find it frustrating to guess at her problems, and her acquiring language should help reduce that frustration.

I find many things frustrating. The world is not as I would have it be, after all. (Clearly not, or I would already have tenure somewhere--or I would have won the lottery one of the few times I played it, and employment would not be a problem.) I do what I can to order things to my liking, taking advantage of the space that is mine and working to convince those who share other spaces with me to align them as I would. (The latter is only partially successful; needs differ.) Still, what I can do is not as much as needs to be done, and I am not sure how to do more.

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