The Passive Voice

How to Not Finish a Dissertation (or a quilt for that matter)

Recent job disappointment (i.e. I didn't get a job I was hoping I would) has forced me to think about my dissertation again.  I have never said, "I'm not going to do it," but I've had some serious doubts.  Part of the problem is that my dissertation feels more like a hobby.  It's that craft project that just never gets finished.  Every once in a while you find it on the shelf, take it down, spend an hour trying to figure out where you last left off, and then you add a few more rows or stitches.  You have good intentions to keep at it, but inevitably things get in the way and then it gets put back on the shelf.   

Obviously a dissertation should not resemble an unfinished quilt stuffed that's been stuffed in the closet. Rather than a hobby, it should be central to my life, my work.  But it's so easy to get away from, so easy to shelve.  When I'm in the midst of it, making some tiny progress, I enjoy it.  Or find it satisfying, at least. But then more seemingly pressing demands arise (kids, teaching, housework, TV shows, etc.) and then the energy to get my head back into "the zone" is pretty difficult.  It doesn't help that I'm not exactly what you'd call methodical or organized.

There is a book about writing your dissertation that suggests you can finish by working on it for fifteen minutes a day.  I've heard some negative feedback on it, but i suspect there is some value to the premise.  Fifteen minutes isn't much but it's enough to keep you from getting away from it, from putting it back on the shelf.   It's enough to make it a habit instead of a hobby.

Purging the Cute Kid Story File

So I've been a bit absent.  It's my usual deal.  3 weeks on and 3 months off.  In that time I've stored up some "aren't my kids cute?" stories, the kind that would seem perfect for a weblog mostly read by interested aunts and grandparents.  So here goes:

I. Speaking Scottish

Some new friends invited us to brunch.  The woman is Scottish.  When we got there, Doodle Boy commented that something smelled good, so our hostess asked him, "Do you like waffles? To which DB replied, "Ive never had those before!"  This was a surprise since frozen waffles are a staple at our house.  So I said, "What are you talking about?  You eat waffles all the time." "Yes, he said, "but I've never had Warrfules."  Our hostess was very good about it and explained that she had a funny accent because she was Scottish.  After she left the room DB asked me, "Can I still call them Warrfules even if I don't speak Scottish?"

II. The World (and I mean ALL of it) is HER Oyster

We were driving in the car.  I don't even know what conversation was going on or who Gadget Guy was speaking too, but he asked someone "How come?"  To which, Silly Sally emphatically screamed from the back seat, "No Daddy!  MY come!" 

III.   Gender Politics at 6

Doodle Boy and I were driving in the car, which apparently is the scene of our most interesting family discussions.  I had picked him up from school and we were heading to collect SS.  From the backseat he said, "I don't like girls."   
"Oh," I said, "Is that because you don't like what girls do or is it because you're a boy?"
To which he replied, "You choose."

Right now I'm really enjoy trying to follow the paths of Doodle Boy's reasoning.  Six is such an interesting combination of being both childlike (in all the best ways we use that word) AND a bit knowing.  Which is how i understand his "You choose" response. It reveals both a naive parroting of the things he hears at school at the same time it shows he is learning to deflect his mother's annoying habit of turning his questions back around on him.   (At least a year ago he started saying, "I asked the question first.")

Meanwhile Silly Sally is sooo two.  And her sense of ownership (which is large) and space (which is wide) means her clashes with the outside world and those who don't respect her position are many.  I admire her strong will and senes of entitlement, but oh, it does get tiresome?!

I think there's at least one more story about God and the devil and who would win a final battle that i could share, but three is probably enough.  I saw Steve Carrell on Conan O'Brien the other night and he made fun of parents and their "My kid" stories. He compared it to listening to someone talk about his/her golf game. And I do have a bit of similar disdain.  At the same time, your kids do surprise and amaze you and it's hard not to share that sometimes.

Code Switching at Six

Lately I've been finding myself trying to teach Doodle Boy the difference between well and good.  It's a family legacy.  My own mother, a middle school English teacher, corrected my sister and me for years.   "You didn't do good," she'd say, "You did well." 

And so the other day when DB said, "I played good," I was there to say, "No, you're a good player, but you play well."  Gadget Guy was there to back me up. Doodle Boy wanted to know why it mattered.  GG launched (rather bravely I thought) into an explanation about the difference between an adjective and an adverb. As I was leaving the room, I heard Doodle Boy say, " Okay.  I guess it matters.  Or at least when Mom's around."

Smart kid.

For Joe

Yesterday I learned that a friend from school had committed suicide.  I hadn't seen him in over ten years, maybe more, but it still left me feeling incredibly sad.  My memories of him are only good: that he was a smart, funny, decent guy. 

In Grade 9, he joined our small French immersion class that had been together for two years.  (At that time junior high went from grades 7-9).  We were ready for fresh blood, and as the "new guy,"  he didn't disappoint. He showed up with an earring, an impish smile, and an open personality.  He was cool, and we were all immediately wooed. He quickly became friends with all the right guys and all of us girls developed crushes on him.  Having moved from Toronto to our backwater city, he had whiffs of knowledge and experience well beyond ours.  We knew it, but he never flaunted it.  Of course, that only made us like him more.

I learned of his death on Facebook. It was posted on a group site. Soon emails were being exchanged between many of us, former classmates and friends, most of whom hadn't seen him or each other in years and years. Memories started to flow:  the girls who kissed him, the way he wore his jeans, his rather unconventional middle name.  It was a good conversation, and I truly appreciated being part of it.  Although distant and far-flung across North America, we could share memories and mourn and celebrate this guy together.  It made my sadness feel less lonely and strange. I thought about what a tribute it was to him, that after twenty years,  people still remember him so vividly, so fondly.

Of course, our memories are of him as a 15 year-old.  Our knowledge of his life, for the most part, doesn't go beyond high school graduation.  We have no idea what demons he battled, what brought him to make this decision.  It's difficult to reconcile this ending with the winning adolescent of our memories who seemed destined for good things.  Life is hard.  LIfe is unfair.  And things don't always work out okay. And those are terrible things to have to learn over and over again.

But I hope Joe has found some peace.

On the Many Annes

I've been making my way through the Anne of Green Gable series for a chapter of my dissertation. It's sort of a slow process, and I'm still figuring out to what extent I will work with the whole series.  But reading it in its entirety feels important right now.

This week I managed to finish Anne of Windy Poplars and Anne's House of Dreams.  The first (and last) time I read them was back when I was 12 or so and I did like either very much.  They were a letdown after Anne of the Island, which includes Anne's university years and the resolution of her romance with Gilbert. But after that, once she became school principal and then a wife and mother, I found the Anne character rather boring. And there is a shift as the adventures become less Anne's, and instead become those of characters whom Anne gets to know or helps.  But at least she still has some life. By the time she's the mother of six in Anne of Ingleside, she ceases to be more than a wise woman with twinkling grey eyes and red hair.  The unspoken message of the Anne series seems to be there is life after marriage and motherhood, but not much. 

Apparently there is a prequel to Anne of Green Gables coming out.  When I first heard of it, the idea filled me with dread, but then I figured it wasn't such a big deal.  Other classics have survived such treatment.  The Gone with the Wind prequel created a big brouhaha a few years back, but now seems to have faded away. And poor Jane Austen's characters are revived (or re-imagined) all the time.  So whatever the initial outcome, I'm sure the Anne Shirley many of us know and love will be just fine.

 

Talking Bout my 'Hood

I've been meaning to write a post about my neighbourhood for a while.  I think there's at least three false starts clogging up the draft area of my account .  Usually they're trying to address my love/hate affair with my well-manicured, family-friendly, "let's pretend it's the 1950s and all be good neighbours" area.  I complain a lot about my 'hood, but I don't usually consider it dangerous. Nevertheless, a few days ago it was the scene of a car chase and shooting.   

It happened around noon about three blocks from my house.  Right in the middle of our quaint shopping district which features everything you might expect to find on Main St. circa 1955. (Including a dime store.)  But yesterday, when Doodle Boy and I headed out to get some lunch at the family dining establishment, we found ourselves in the midst of a crime scene.  Yellow police tape cordoned off a huge area of the main drag where about 49 police officers (give or take a few) were working the scene.  The two smashed cars were still there.

Our waitress saw the whole thing happen and I was able to get the play-by-play while she was filling in the table next to ours.  There was a high-speed car chase.  Then one car crashed into an innocent driver coming in the opposite direction.  The other car took off up a side street and driver in the crash got out of his car and fired shots up the street after the other car.  Up a street where apparently people were walking.  No one was hurt and the shooter was arrested.

This is the second shooting which has been in one of our regular haunts.  Last year, a disgruntled former employee shot and killed people at at our nearby Target.   On top of that, at one of the colleges where I teach, there's a "What to do in case of a shooting" protocol listed in the staff room.  I find it all a bit surreal, which I guess is what keeps me from being too scared.   

There's really no easy way to make sense of it.  Or to explain it to a six year-old.  Doodle Boy is still wondering why there would be bad guys shooting at each other.  It's a good question, but I don't know what to tell him.   

A Turn to Poetry

On Thursday evening, I attended a poetry reading by Natasha Trethewey.  One of the schools where I teach sponsors a reading series and so this is the fourth such event I've been to this year.  Partially I go because it's easy. I'm there, I see the fliers, and sometimes I arrange for my students to go, too.  But it's more than that because lately I find, after years of avoiding the literary form, I am drawn more and more to verse. I enjoy poetry now.

For most of my life poetry mystified me. Or, to be more honest , it scared me.  I couldn't "get" it.  The meaning eluded me.  I was so busy trying to figure it out, I missed the beauty.  I was that reader Billy Collins describes in "Introduction to Poetry" who wants to "tie the poem to a chair with rope/ and torture a confession out of it."

Once a guy, who I guess was wooing me, wrote me a poem.  I don't remember anything about it, because as he was reading it to me,  I was too panicked to listen.  When he finished, I don't even think I thanked him. Instead I probably said something dismissive.  He later claimed I singlehandedly killed his career as a poet. (Which in terms of earning potential, he might be glad of now.)  My discomfort with poetry is a bit ironic, since it is part of my field of knowledge.  It seems like I should know something about it. But most of my studies have been centered on the novel.  And, for the past 30 years or so, poetry has been somewhat out of fashion in literary studies. My one and only introduction to prosody was in grade 12 English.  It never came up again.

So why poetry now?  It probably helps that I'm older, and have more experience in the world. As in life, often things are not very simple in a poem.  And I guess I'm OK now with understanding some of it, and finding some of it too obscure.   I also think it's an inevitable occupational hazard.  When so much reading is required of my teaching and studies, the powerful, but condensed form of the poem holds undeniable appeal.   In a relatively short amount of time, I'm confronted with something beautiful, or mysterious, or playful, or complex, or true.  I appreciate poetry's efficiency.

Instead of adding a poem, I'll link to Poetry Daily, which is often where I go when I need a little jolt.

I thought i had till she was 13 before i would become a know-nothing.

Since receiving a tea set for her birthday, Silly Sally and I have been having more than  few picnics.  But there's a problem.  They inevitably end with her crying in rage. Turns out I can't pretend to eat a  plastic pink cupcake to save my life.

I've tried nibbling, licking chewing, munching, and gobbling (pretend-style).  None have met with approval. What then is the proper way to pretend to eat a cupcake?  Seriously, I need help. Or I need to make those cupcakes disappear.  (Fortunately so far, my pretend cookie eating skills are just fine.)

Another Post about Gadget Guy and that thing called a Telephone

Last night I was reading stories with Doodle Boy in his room.  The phone started to ring and I really, really hoped Gadget Guy would answer it.  He usually doesn't, and it drives me bananas. It rang once, twice, three times, four times. Finally between the fifth and sixth ring, I heard him pick it up.  When I came downstairs later, he said it had been my friend K. and she'd call me again in the morning.

So today I talked to K.  She said, "you're husband is so funny."  No kidding.  Apparently their conversation last night went something like this:

K.  Did  I wake you up? (She thought that's why it took so long for someone to answer.)

GG: No.  I was just hoping someone else would get the phone. (Hmmm....I wonder who that would be?)

K: Oh. What's Passive Voice doing?

GG:  She's reading stories with DB.

K: Oh...?

I realized after writing my last GG phone story, that for people who don't know him, that might be seen as evidence that he has a fear of technology. That, in fact, his blog nickname is meant to be ironic. Nothing could be further from the truth.  GG is the gadgiest guy I know.  He gets excited when Best Buy commercials come on and our basement is littered with gadgets gone wrong. I like to tell people we have a computer for every room of the house.  They think I'm exaggerating, which of course I am, but unfortunately not by much. 

Rather I think the point is that GG hates the phone. He talks on it some, but not much.  And he hates to answer it and obviously, doesn't like checking messages much either. It's not the technology that bothers him, it's the communication.  I can appreciate this to a certain extent since talking on the phone can make me nervous.  In most cases, I prefer email communication.  But unlike GG, I am nosey.  So I want to know who is calling me and why.  It's unthinkable to me to leave voicemail unchecked.  But he has no such curiosity.   

One of my running jokes is that GG dreams of living off the grid. (The thought of it makes me giggle every time.)  It would be more appropriate to say he would like to find the biggest grid there is and then live right in the middle of it.  He'd be in technology heaven.  Just don't bother calling him, because no matter how kickass the phone service might be in this grid-to-end-all-grids, he won't answer.      

Being Bloggable

A few years ago NPR profiled a woman who had created a scrapbook page for every single day of her then five year-old daughter's life.  At the time of the story, she was pregnant (unexpectedly, I assume) with her second child and was in a real dilemma.  Recording every day of her child's existence was an important undertaking for her.  And yet, she was certain she would not have the time, energy, or creativity to chronicle the daily lives of two children.  And so, she was distraught about what to do.  Should she stop altogether?  Focus on the new baby?  Create a joint scrapbook.  It was unclear how she would proceed.

I'm sure it's been more than four years since that story aired, but it has stuck with me.  For someone who rarely manages to take her children's picture and is woefully behind in filling out their baby books, the idea of creating a scrapbook for every day of a child's life is pretty mind boggling.  I might go far as as to call it um... a bit crazy.    At first I wondered how you could find something worth commemorating about every. single. day.  But then I realized, making sure you had something to scrapbook would always be on your mind.  It might even dictate how you lived.  You wouldn't necessarily think, "let's go to jazz story time today."  Instead you'd think, "what a great scrapbook page I can make if we go to jazz story time."  Before you even got there,you might be picturing musical note accents, and framing the kind of picture you'd want to capture. In a weird way, you could end up living your life to fit a scrapbook.

This woman and her scrapbooking came to mind again now that I'm trying to blog, because I've realized, in a way, blogging has the same potential.  I'm wondering, to what extent, I'm turning my life into bloggable posts.  So today, when I dropped off Silly Sally in her new classroom at daycare, I left thinking, "ooohhh, I wonder if her first day in the two year old room will give me something to write about."  And that just seems kind of weird. Obviously I am not blogging enough to make every day of our lives poignant, or amusing, or thought-provoking.  And I'm not really seeing this blog as a record of our lives, even though I know mostly family reads it and are interested to know how the children are doing.  In many ways, I'm still working this thing out, figuring out what purpose I want it to serve.   And maybe I just have to keep working at it to get a better idea of what that purpose might be. 

(For the record, Sally loved her new classroom.  And there's not much more to the story than that.)