The Family

As on all previous assignments, the instructor met the deadline with a “how’d it go? Need more time? Just keep working on it; I won’t get to grading for several more days”. Which I believe; he still hasn’t graded the assignment from the 18th.

So I won’t say that I was counting on this extension, but I was kind of expecting it. The rule following part of my is frustrated by this loose treatment of due dates; the perfectionist in me is super happy, and the part of me that just wants to get some sleep is rather perturbed. I mean – done or not, can’t it at least be over??

There is 1 remaining critical issue, and it’s pretty dang intractable. I have no idea what to try next.

1 issue that I figured out today, which turned out to be a super stupid 1-line snafu at the very beginning of the style sheet.

And 5 remaining issues that are critical to me, but don’t really break the page. If I’m trying to make it look like the target page, they’re important. If I just want it to be quasi-functional, they don’t matter.

So I’m still working on this project, but now with a looming but unknowable deadline.

This adult education thing has some serious drawbacks.

“If you can’t run, you walk, and if you can’t walk, you crawl, and if you can’t do that… you find someone to carry you.” – Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly

I’m somewhere between the walk and crawl break points for the project and the ranch.

Project – let’s say 5 hours left available, depending on how much of this I sneak in at work. Hey, they’re paying for me to take this class, so this is OK to do now & then.

And it is not inconceivable that I should finish what is most critically important to finish. It’s just that it’s reaching this point where things can’t go too terribly wrong; where a setback can’t be adjusted for. And I don’t like being at this point. Hard to believe I conducted most of my high school and all of my college projects at this uncomfortable horizon. Did I not have any time management skills back then?

And for the ranch … moved more furniture today. The list of heavy/awkward items keeps dwindling – I think it’s less than 10 big things still – but those big things still include a piano, refrigerator, and an anvil, so it’s not much comfort to think that there’s fewer than 10 items to haul out.

And the unending array of things that need to be stuffed in boxes continues to be unending. Today I hit some threshold and just started throwing things away. Perfectly functional 30 year old metal grease pot that I cannot get clean (I’ve been trying for months now) and will never use. Wrap in so many layers of paper and plastic so it doesn’t grease everything else in the box, so I can make the decision to get rid of it 5 years from now … or throw it away now?

I hate throwing these things away. But there’s a point where you just don’t know what else to do.

Well, there’s theoretically only 44 hours left till the project is due, assuming I don’t do anything like sleep or go to work. Realistically, I have 15 hours. And that is a terrifying thought that is making me re-scope the size of this project.

Though if I can just get the flippin header and footer and sidebar to work, the content areas should be relatively easy, and the work on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th pages will be so close to done anyway… but hey, 15 hours. Even if it’s only a matter of 2 more hours work, when the window closes it’s closed.

I say. This class is so loose in its deadlines I could probably keep plugging away on this till next weekend.

So I’ll get the first page in to say I got it in and then I might fill in those other pages for my own pleasure.

But then there’s this other deadline … closing date on his dad’s place.

If we are out there every free day, then we only have 7 days left to finish up. 11, if you count the additional days Joseph could possibly go. 18 days if you count all the days. But realistically, 9 days.

And in those 9 days, we need to clear the shed (including an anvil), the shop (so. many. tools.), the small house (deep freeze), and the house (piano, stove, entertainment center, dressers, no idea how much framed art, and surely eventually someday I’ll be done boxing up the kitchen).

I have the feeling that 20 days from now, Joseph and I will be looking at each other with this dazed expression saying ‘is it done? is it really done?’ and when we doubt we’ll just look at the floor to ceiling stack of furniture and boxes and tools accumulating in our garage and know that it is all real.

I wonder how many moves we will move before some of these kitchen boxes I’m boxing up now get unboxed.

Projects. Sigh.

Why is it so hard to get started? The blank sheet of paper; the empty file – it’s not just me; I know it’s a universal thing, but why?

Of course, I’m staring at the beginning of this project; have been all day. I have had the wonderful gift of an entire uninterrupted day to work on this, and all I did was get started. I moved from a blank document to a not-blank document.

No content. No mileposts. No discernible sketches of a final product. And it took all day to get this far. Part of it is that it has been fighting me all day long. Part of it is me, and getting started. And perhaps being too much of a perfectionist, though I certainly don’t feel like I’m aiming for perfection.

I have been on this strange run of podcast discovery. I’m not looking for them – actually, I’d rather not find them at all, it’s a bit vexing to have them all queuing up like this – but it seems the last several weeks have been filled with podcasts leaping out at me. Grammar Girl. A Way with Words. University of Oxford. The Uncertain Hour.

And once you open the door, it’s a neverending stream of things. Everything on NPR has a podcast. Serialized fiction. Probably a few educational things out there.

I’m listening to a books on tape series right now. Very well done; interesting and informative and all sorts of conversation fodder. And once again, I am reminded of how well I like listening to things like this in the car.

But it will finish – there is a finite number of CDs in this set (6, to be exact). So I look at all these eager podcasts, all clamoring for attention and promising to be interesting and informative and conversational as well.

And I really wish I could figure out how to connect all the dots between online feed, phone, and car speakers. I know people do it all the time and have done so for years and years, but I still have no idea how it is done.

We have a Looney Tunes DVD. We watched it. Eleanor’s very first encounter with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wiley Coyote … not all the characters, but a good core set.

It was fun watching her watch them. But the best one was Wiley Coyote.

She kept inching closer and closer to the TV. She was so focused. And then she started talking, very softly – I had to really pay attention to hear. He’d outline a plan; she’d whisper ‘no .. that won’t work..’ Over and over and over.

Then he fell off a cliff for about the 2nd or 3rd time. And with this slight air of resignation, she says ‘and he’s squished.’ Off the cliff – ‘(sigh) and he’s squished’. Opening ACME package .. ‘no ..that won’t work’. Exploding anvil – ‘and he’s squished’. Fake tunnel on cliff face – ‘that won’t work’. over and over.

The last time he fell off the cliff, after the cliff cracks off under him and with the anvil and probably something explosive to boot, she reached her hands out to the TV to catch him, and lowered him down to the ground. The she stepped back and the watched the cliff and the anvil and the TNT hit and said ‘and he’s squished.’

I am, of course, just about dying laughing. And loving my sweet girl.

She wasn’t devastated by the constant squishing. I think it was more the frustration that he kept trying things that she could already tell wouldn’t work.

Ah; this weekend.

Long weekend, I thought. I will get so much done. I will get ahead in my class so I can really relax next weekend.

Friday we have to go into San Antonio to meet with the tax prep guy. Saturday is the birthday party. Sunday we’re out at the ranch. Monday we’re out at the ranch.

Class work? It is to laugh. House work? Well, we did almost clear the table and almost clean the kitchen, so sure. House work is done.

I wouldn’t choose to not do any of the things we did do; they were all either really fun or necessary. All of which is important. It’s just .. I really, really wanted to get ahead in the class. I’ve finally figured which website to do for my project, just not how I want to go about it, and it’s a massive project to consider for a single weekend. Sigh.

So …. today’s report.

Mary & Betty came to ranch with us. Eleanor latched onto them as if they were the only two people who ever interact with her. I was shoo’d away and shush’d so many times today – she wanted to have them all to herself. She knows what she wants, and has this purity in how she expresses it. It’s all utterly transparent.

Not like she used to be. She has discovered guile, and subterfuge, and disappointment. She doesn’t have that absolute openness of her infancy. But she’s still so straightforward about everything, and so confident in the result of a clearly expressed opinion. It is a lovely thing to watch. Even when the thing being watched – the request being expressed – is that I shoo.

Eleanor was invited to a birthday party, which was today.

I’m so wrapped up in this class and Joseph is so wrapped up in selling the ranch (less than a month to clear everything – crunch time!) that we didn’t do birthday shopping till today. Then we came home and collapsed.

An hour before we had to leave for the party, Eleanor is absolutely crashed out, we’re both tired and hungry and antisocial, and we just do not want to leave the house. It’s a place we’ve never been, we have no idea who else will be there but I expect it will all be much older kids … we were dragging so hard.

And then we had an absolutely delightful time.

The place was great – it’s going to be another go-to place for Eleanor to romp in the future. The crowd was very mixed in age – everything from 1 to 12, I’d guess. Eleanor romped hard for well over two hours. It was relaxed, it was fun … it felt like the best part of belonging to a community.

And we said, oh, won’t Eleanor sleep well tonight. So of course, she’s quietly puttering around in her room, a full hour after the go-to-bed routine, being good and quiet and in no way asleep. It makes no sense. She should be either throwing a full out exhaustion tantrum or she should be collapsed in a heap.

All of our predictions about tonight were wrong.

Much of the early part of the class I’m taking was spent in talking about the growth mindset, and how vital that is to life-long learning. Which makes sense for a class targeted to professionals who are reinventing themselves.

Growth mindset in a nutshell: People’s theories about their own intelligence have a significant impact on their motivation, effort, and approach to challenges. Those who believe their abilities are malleable are more likely to embrace challenges and persist despite failure. The book – the website – the TED talk

And yes, I said all the right things, because I know the right things to say about growth mindset and fixed mindset and all that … but honestly, the whole thing seems like just another set of buzz words. I mean, what am I going to say? Yes, I avoid challenges and do not value learning new things?

But then I read the recommended article – Carol Dweck Revisits the ‘Growth Mindset, and I’ve got to say, it changed my mind on some things.

Made me think I should go read the original book, for one thing, instead of getting all the internet re-interpretations of what growth mindset is. Also, the article is well written, so it’s likely a well written book.

But mostly it was this paragraph:

A growth mindset isn’t just about effort. Perhaps the most common misconception is simply equating the growth mindset with effort. (…) We need to remember that effort is a means to an end to the goal of learning and improving. Too often nowadays, praise is given to students who are putting forth effort, but not learning, in order to make them feel good in the moment: “Great effort! You tried your best!” It’s good that the students tried, but it’s not good that they’re not learning.

Because that is exactly my objection to the “yay, good effort!” mentality that growth mindset seems to encourage, though I’d never phrased it so succinctly.

So I might be giving growth mindset a fresh look. Probably not a bad thing to do as Eleanor gets closer and closer to school age.

You know how married couples affect each other’s preferences over time? Joseph and I must have hit some critical threshold for that, because I kind of want this statue.

“Zombie Liberty” Limited Edition Art Souvenir! Stands approx. 10″ tall. She’s even holding up a Brain!
http://www.hypnotroniccomics.com/HypnoImages/zombieLiberty2.jpg

If I’d ever been to New York, absolutely. If I were considering going to New York, almost definitely. I haven’t, and I’m not, and yet …

If you come over to our house some day, and there’s a zombie liberty back in the game room somewhere, don’t be surprised.

I mean, she’s holding up a brain …