What Now?

On writing, money, and counting hours

As far as Samuel Johnson was concerned, "no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." I don't know whether he's right about that or not; I've certainly rarely been paid for my writing, but then again I am perhaps a huge blockhead.

But the good news is that I AM being paid to write this FGS history! This is a good thing indeed, although it also brings in a new level of complexity, perhaps just because this is a new realm for me.

I mentioned in my last post that there's a real group emphasis in this project, and part of that emphasis is the collective effort to get this book paid for, to get money both for the time to write it and for the publication of it. The business guy of the school has been very clear that there is no money in the operating budget for this project, and of course a high school doesn't have a budget for research support like a college would, so every dollar has to come from donors. (One of the many things I've found interesting about teaching at an independent school is that I'm so much more aware of the financial aspects of the institution than I ever was at a college, even a small college such as St. Martyr's.)

Unfortunately, the donor part of things isn't yet worked out. The head of school and the director of development are going around this summer to get some alumnae to cough up some major money. My Co-Author and I put together an outline and initial description of the book for them to take to a couple of richy-rich alums, and the hope is that they'll make a big gift. Then, once the head of school has a big chunk of money and the book is clearly a going concern, it should be easier to get smaller gifts of support from other alums and parents.

The hope is that they'll raise enough money this summer to give me a course release for next year, so that I would be teaching only three courses and then writing in that release time. (My Co-Author teaches only part-time, so she's hoping to get actual money rather than release time for her part of the writing.) We've also told the head of school that, ideally, she'd also be giving us money to write over the summer. She's totally supportive of that idea and is 100% convinced that she'll be able to get the money ... but she also was clear that she couldn't promise us anything until she had the actual financial wherewithal. So at this point I'm scheduled to teach four courses next year, and any change to that will happen only when she's got a financial donation in hand. I'm glad to say that there has been no suggestion at all that we should do this without compensation, which is a good thing.

So here's what Co-Author and I decided a month or so ago: Given that summer is really the best time to get started on a writing project, and given that we trust the school, we are going ahead and taking the risk of starting work this summer, on the assumption that the school will eventually compensate us for this time. We were very clear with the rest of the committee that we were not doing this as a charitable act but rather expected to get paid at some point for it. What was cool is that the head of school was blown away by this move on our part; she took it as a huge statement of confidence in the project (which it is), and it clearly had an electrifying effect and motivated her even further in her fund-raising efforts for this summer. So we have high hopes.

I've been clear with Co-Author that I'm feeling no pressure or guilt about how much we do or don't get written this summer. After all, we're not actually getting paid yet (even though I'm sure we will get paid in the long run), so I figure that we use this summer to get our feet wet in this project and see how the co-authoring is going to work and what adjustments we might want to make. Having said that, my private goal is to get an initial ugly draft of the first chapter before classes start in fall. 

So here's the question/challenge I'm having this summer (in addition to, you know, actually drafting that first chapter): I'm keeping track of my hours so that I can eventually either get paid for the summer or count these hours as part of an eventual course release. Right now I'm counting research/writing hours and writing/revising hours separately, and I'm also keeping notes about where I was (home/school archive/etc.) when I worked those hours. I'm not sure if those distinctions are necessary, but I thought I'd rather have more info than less.

My worry is that, in keeping track of hours, I'm going to start double-guessing myself about how fast or slow I am as a reader and a writer. And I worry that it will seem like I spend too long reading background stuff, which I think is actually one of my strong suits as a writer (a professor once tolded me that I "hoovered up sources" like no one he'd ever seen) but which may seem like wasting time to other folks, especially folks who aren't themselves writers. And I think that my Co-Author may track hours differently, that she may not count her preparatory work but only her writing hours; this is something I'm going to talk with her about this Thursday when we get together to interview a former faculty member (which of course is the sort of thing that I totally think we should count hours for). It's going to be maybe good but definitely hard to have a Co-Author also keeping track of her hours -- it's so easy to make the comparisons between us, and it's going to perhaps seem obvious who's being more efficient with her time, although the quality of what we produce is not going to be as easily count-able.

I'm mostly trying not to worry about this and just to count the hours for the work I actually do and trust that the quality of what I produce will be so obviously good that no one will be able to doubt the wisdom of my process. But I've never tracked hours before except as a private method of accountability, so it's all making me a little nervous.

But, in the main, I'm so excited about this project that I'm taking these little nerve-wracking elements in stride. I got started this week with a trip to the school archives on Tuesday, but I also was recovering from my nieces' visit and dealt with a handyman and yesterday had my fibroid surgery (which went well but took the entire day, and today has been kind of a recovery day), so I haven't done much since then. But next week I'm getting serious about the book; D. is going to be gone to the Episcopal Church's General Convention, so I have the whole week to concentrate on the book and make some real headway (including that interview with the retired faculty member, which I'm looking forward to and is another new experience for me as a writer). After next week, my time is not my own in the same way: I'm heading out of town for a week of professional development and then am teaching in a three-week summer program (so I'll be able to read/write in the afternoons a little but will also be teaching over four hours a day). So next week is my big work week -- and I'm so jazzed about it!

A new writing project

Yesterday, as I was warming up to write this post, I reread the "Writing Life" thread in my archives for the last couple of years and was interested to see my ongoing dithering about my writing identity, especially the question of whether I still was a writer, and if so what I should be writing. After I got scooped last summer on the biography project that I'd been pretty half-hearted about in the first place, I basically took a year off from worrying about these questions. Indeed, this blog post I'm writing right now is the first "Writing Life" post I've written in almost a year. That break from all of the dithering and identity-wrestling has been quite pleasant!

And there's no need for such identity-wrestling at the moment anyway, because I have a new writing project!

You know how FGS has such a venerable, interesting history? Well, if not, you will in a few years, because I'm working on a history of the school! Yay! This is a project that I first proposed to the head of school back in 2009, and we all agreed that there was no hurry but that it was totally something that we should do at some point. (A previous English teacher wrote a history of the school back in the 1970s, and it's terrible! So badly written -- embarrassing, really.) Then, this spring, out of the blue (at least for me), she called a meeting of several folks to talk about getting started. There's an anniversary coming up in four years, and her thought was that we could aim to have the book published for that date.

All of this language of "we" is a real change from anything I've done before, of course; this is definitely a group project, which feels simultaneously cool and weird. I've never had so many other people invested in a project I'm working on, and I've certainly never had so many committee meetings before I even started working! But it's actually been great to talk about this project with the director of development and the archivist and the communications director and the head of school, all of whom not only have a stake in how things turn out but also are committing their time and resources to making it a success. It's been especially interesting to have frank discussions about funding for the project and about whether it's possible to break even on the book -- all much more pragmatic than anything I've tackled before, but I like that we're actually thinking a lot about audience for the project -- for whom are we writing and what do we hope to accomplish?

The very biggest "we" part of all of this, however, is something I feel great trepidation about: I'm co-writing this book. Yep, another English teacher is writing this with me. She was in publishing before she went into teaching, has now been teaching at FGS for years and years, and about 10 years ago proposed writing a history of the school, but this was to a head of school who was completely uninterested in the school's history (and who kept insisting, for example, that there was no reason for the school library to even include an archive, because we should be looking to the future and not the past), so the idea went nowhere.

So both of us have written and published, have a real investment in FGS and its history, and are logical choices to author this book.

Both of us are also strong-willed, opinionated, occasionally cranky, and not always great at compromising with others. So I foresee some challenges on the horizon.

This spring the head of school informally interviewed both of us for the job of writing the book, but I think she ultimately didn't know how to choose between us and, even if she had, couldn't think of a way to select one of us without causing tensions within the English department, so she kind of copped out and gave the job to both of us. I really didn't want to co-author, but I also didn't want to walk away from the project and hand it over to my colleague, so I'm trying to make the best of the situation, knowing that there will be real frustrations but that I also could learn a lot from working with my co-author, who seems to approach writing and research differently. (This will be good exercise for my ongoing discipline of trying not to equate "different" and "wrong.")

There are obviously different models for co-authoring, and what we decided to try -- over some strong misgivings on my part -- is that we'll each take primary drafting responsibility for half of the chapters and will be the initial reader/reviser for the other's chapters. So we'll write alone but will revise together. And once we've done rounds of revision ourselves, we'll hand chapters over to the archivist, to the head librarian (who's serving as the project coordinator), and to the communications director, who will read the drafts variously for issues such as historical accuracy and consistency of voice (the latter of which is a huge concern for all of us except my co-author, who seems not to think it will be a problem at all). As I said, it's quite the group project!

Of course, Co-Author and I immediately ran into our first challenge when we divvied up the chapters. I got my first choice for my first chapter to write, but then my second choice was her first choice. And she claimed two chapters in that initial selection (for legitimate reasons, because there is a strong tie between those particular two chapters), and so I'm already feeling like she's jockeying for position and that I'm somehow losing out. Indeed, once we were officially co-authors, we made a presentation as such to the committee, and I could tell that we were both sort of jockeying for position, worrying that the other was going to somehow come out ahead, and even such details as who was going to say which part of the presentation had to be worked out as a compromise.

Er, have I mentioned that I'm feeling some trepidation about this co-author business? A former colleague who is friends with both of us said to me, "WN, you are both going to have to check your egos at the door for this project to work." And she is so right. The question is whether we'll be able to. I guess that remains to be seen.

Today, Co-Author and I met in the library with the librarian and the archivist and did some more collective planning, and then we separated to do our own thing. And once I was hanging out alone with the files of student and teacher letters from the era of the school's founding, all of the co-authoring tension faded away and I was just so happy! I know that there's going to be a lot that is not fun about this project, because that's just the way of all writing projects, but it was a really fun day of doing research and thinking about writing this book. Yay for a great new project!

Success!

We pretty much rocked Aunty Camp this year. Hurrah! And I genuinely had fun with the girls and was much less stressed out and tired out than last year.

Those of you who pointed out that the girls' being a year older would make a huge difference were absolutley right, especially in the case of Elder Niece, who is the one who just wiped me out last summer. She just turned 11, and either she was much easier to deal with this summer or I was much better at dealing with her, or both, and so it was all around an easier week.

Also, of course, we all knew what to expect this time around, which I think made things better for me and for the girls. We now have certain traditions that we were forging last summer but took as a matter of course this summer, such as the family reading at night. We choose a book on our first day together and then at night, after tooth-brushing and getting ready for bed, we all pile into D's and my bed and take turns reading out loud from the book. And then the girls would retire to their own beds and had a separate book that they were reading on their own. The rule at Aunty Camp is pretty much that you can stay up reading as late as you want -- they tended to turn out the light after one or two chapters, so I didn't worry about their abusing the rule in the ways that I did when I was in elementary school!

I also was perhaps more relaxed and more understanding that every moment didn't have to be a fabulous, enriching experience. I let them play with the Wii pretty much as much as they wanted -- which was a huge help in managing EN's (undiagnosed) ADHD-ish tendencies -- with the only requirement being that they had to balance out sedentary games with active games. And I took them both to the craft store early on so that they could each purchase (with their own money) a craft project, which means that I got to teach Younger Niece how to needlepoint.

Another huge help -- games! I followed Jackie's recommendation and bought the card game Dweebies for EN for her birthday, and while I was at it I bought another Gamewright game, Zeus on the Loose, to do double-duty as niece entertainment and as time-killer ... er, I mean, educational enrichment ... for my "Percy Jackson and Greek Mythology" middle school class that I'm teaching later this summer. (Jackie, you were absolutely right that Dweebies is a great game, and I think your girls might like this other game as well.) It was great to have a go-to source of entertainment, especially one that was flexible and that the girls could play with each other but could also expand to include D or me.

We also had a play date, which was a new addition for the summer and a lot of fun. One of my dearest friends at school has a daughter the same age as EN, and so one day we all got together and went to the beach (i.e., a local lake that has a beach area); the girls played together happily, and my friend and I got to just hang out and talk for three hours -- fun for the whole family! And the girls all clamored that we must do this again next summer when they visit again, so that will be a great new tradition.

Also, in some ways things were easier this year because D was off at field ed during the weekdays. She loves our nieces very much, but she is less patient than I am with noise and chaos and disruption, and I think that last year I worried a lot about keeping her happy while keeping the girls happy, which at times felt like incompatible goals. This year, on the other hand, D would head off in the morning, and I would try to have the girls pretty much tired out by the time she got home in the evening. And then we could all have a very pleasant evening together. This scenario did make me feel kind of like a 1950s housewife -- except, you know, without the domestic skills -- and it was difficult because I pretty much wanted to go to bed right after the girls did, which meant that D and I didn't talk with each other as much as we usually do, but maybe this is just one of the challenges of having children around? And it's probably the sort of thing that one would get better at if one had children around constantly.

But we don't, and the girls headed home last night ... although not without another adventure; their plane was massively delayed, which meant that I got to keep them amused in the airport for almost 6 hours. They handled the frustration really well, but it was exhausting. I slept in this morning until almost 10:00 -- wonderful luxury!

So it feels like today is basically the first day of my summer. My goal is to not accomplish much of anything this weekend and then on Monday to start working on the new writing project that I will tell you about in my next blog post. In the meantime, I'm just basking in the glow of a successful Aunty Camp.

A week of full-time aunty-ing

One reason that I was trying to get the house cleaned this week is that our nieces arrived last night for a week of "aunty camp."

Or at least they should have arrived last night but instead arrived in the wee hours of the morning! Their plane was delayed for four hours, so instead of getting in at 8:20 last night, they arrived after midnight. On our end, that meant that I actually finished all of the cleaning and that D. and I had some quiet time together before the whirlwind of aunty-ness begins, but I felt bad for my sister-in-law, who was stuck in their home airport with the girls, trying to keep them amused for so many hours. The girls were amazingly chipper when we picked them up, but they happily crept into bed immediately, and we all agreed that everyone would sleep as long as possible this morning.

Of course, I then couldn't sleep past 7:30 this morning and so have a tired day ahead of me, but the others are following through on the deal and are all still completely sacked out at 10:00. This is all to the good, since we have a fun afternoon planned -- one of those Adventure City activities that is apparently tons of fun and that D. and I ourselves have never done. So we have high hopes for the afternoon, but obviously all will go better if no one is cranky.

We did this week of "aunty camp" last summer and found it simultaneously fabulous and exhausting. Our big resolve after last summer was that there was no way we were going to do it for a full week, that we needed to arrange shorter visits ... but in the end I chickened out and couldn't bring myself to say this to my sister-in-law, so we have the girls for a full week again. But I actually think that things will go more smoothly this summer than last (not that things didn't go well last time; I just found it really tiring). Partly, I have a much better sense of what to expect. I also did better food planning ahead of time, and I've planned one activity for each day (with flexibility built in for weather, etc., of course) -- hiking, swimming, kayaking, a playdate with a friend of mine who has daughters of comparable ages, a trip to a museum, etc. I think that this schedule will give the week a sense of structure, at least for me, but still allow plenty of downtime. It turns out that Elder Niece played flag football this spring, so we might stop at the sports store and get a football for general tossing around (not that I have much experience with this sort of thing, but she can teach me), and we'll pump up the basketball that we do have so that Younger Niece can play with the basketball hoop.

Oops, EN is stirring now -- time to get this aunty show on the road!

... and this is why my house will never be clean

So I had only one real project this week, and that was to clean the house. It was in a sad state, what with the end of school and all, but it had been all spic and span (at least the public areas) within the last couple of months, so I thought that it wouldn't be too bad to clean it up.

But for some reason I decided that the first thing I should do in cleaning the house was to take everything out of the hall closet so that I could repaint the section of the ceiling and wall that had gotten discolored when we had a roof leak a couple of years ago. Yes, it's true, the discoloration is all in the back corner of the closet, where pretty much no one ever looks -- it's not like there's even a light in the closet in case someone DID want to have a good look at it -- but I notice it regularly and it bugs me every time; somehow it's a badge of "what a bad home-owner I am, because I had a roof leak," even though I've tried telling myself that it should be a badge of "what a great home-owner I am, because I got that roof leak fixed." Anyway, I decided that I needed to repaint it.

Which meant that I primed it one day, then painted it the next day, then put a second coat on the day after that, then realized that I'd never painted the inside of the closet door, which was a sickly gray color, so I got out the glossy paint to do that and then decided I should re-do the outside of the closet door while I was at it, but of course that took two different days because there's not a lot of space to maneuver in our entryway, so the inside of the door was one day and the outside was another day. And, as all of these days passed, all of the junk from the closet was strewn about the living room, which of course meant that I couldn't really be cleaning the living room until the closet project was finished.

Once all of the painting was done, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to finally hang hooks up in the closet (for umbrellas and scarves and the like) as I've been meaning to do for pretty much the entire four years we've been living in this house. And I even went to Home Depot and got the hooks. But then I realized that I should drill small starter holes to hang up the hooks, and I knew where the drill was but couldn't find the drill bits, at which point I fell into some despair about my ongoing inability to be an organized home-owner. So this morning I gave up and put everything back into the closet and simply tucked the hooks up on the shelf in the closet with the promise that I would hang them up later this summer.

While all of this was going on, the other project I tackled was my bookcase in the study (D and I each have one bookcase in that room), which was kind of a disaster -- no order at all, and hadn't been dusted in a year, probably. So that wound up taking pretty much a day, a very grimy, sneezy sort of day. And in the end, it looks almost the same, sans the dust, although there is more rhyme and reason to it now. The problem is that we simply don't have enough bookcases for all of our books, so creating order in the study just meant adding more to the disorder of the bookshelves in the basement, but at least those are out of the public view. When I was a single gal, my books were always impeccably organized, alphabetically by author and divided by genre, but life with D is a life without much order, and after all of these years I've mostly made my peace with this, except for the ways in which I still haven't.

So now I've spent the entire week "cleaning," and what I've really managed to accomplish is painting the hall closet -- something that no one else will even notice -- and dusting one bookcase.

And this is why my house will never be clean.

Goodbye, preacher man

So, my beloved minister is leaving, to go back to the city where he used to live and become the minister of an urban congregation there. This was a very unexpected turn of events when he announced it earlier this spring. I cried when I got the news, and I know that I wasn't alone in that response. Other people were and still are really angry at him, feeling betrayed by his departure, but he's been there five years, so I think it's reasonable that he is taking this other opportunity, one that he clearly thinks is going to be good for himself and his family. They are urban people, and I think that this church was their experiment in suburban living, which they thought was going to be better for raising a family but which seems to have driven them pretty crazy. So going back to an inner-city church seems like a good fit for them, and I'm happy for them.

And, in a way, I'm happy for me too, because his departure gives me some freedom. Today is his last Sunday, and so the freedom begins now.

Two weeks before his big announcement this spring, I actually slipped out of church mid-service because it was making me so crazy. It was a week in which he wasn't there (in fact, it turns out he was having his big try-out at this new church that day), and I'm not a fan of any of the other ministers (one is a nice buy but I don't care for his preaching, and the others I actively dislike), and it was communion Sunday, and I really don't like the way that this congregation does communion and really all liturgy, and suddenly I had just had it. I slipped out during a hymn, went straight home, and started plotting how I was going to be able to stay at this church that was driving me so crazy.

Maybe I'd just find another church to "cheat" with on the first Sunday of every month? Did I just need to go back to the Episcopal Church for good liturgy and try my best to ignore the bishops (which is how many Episcopalians I know handle things)? Or should I go the opposite route and give the Quakers another try, even though I have no natural aptitude for sitting in silence? Or, given my lack of proper Trinitarianism, should I try another experiment with Judaism? Or was all of this too dramatic and I should just try another UCC congregation?

But, in the midst of all of those questions, what I kept coming back to is that I love this particular minister, so whatever I was thinking about adding to my church repetoire, it wasn't going to replace this particular congregation because I was unwilling not to hear him preach on Sundays. So I was thinking about just "cheating" once a month and going someplace else, or about finding a worshiping community that met sometime other than Sunday morning so that I could still hear him.

And then came the announcement that he was leaving. And after I wept, I realized that there was then nothing holding me to this community and that I was free to go where I wanted and explore as I wish.

Of course, as soon as I made that decision, I started realizing that there are people I care about in the congregation ... but honestly, not all that many. In fact, surprisingly few, considering I've been there for over two years. It's just such a big congregation, and it's also very country-clubby, very white and rich and superior, and I've never felt as though I fit in that well. There are good people there, of course, and a few might miss me a bit, but for the most part I think that any hole that my absence creates will be smoothed over almost immediately.

So I've been telling all of this to the few folks who I think might actually miss me or at least notice my absence; it seems rude to just disappear without a word. On one committee I'm on, we had a great conversation several weeks ago about how we were all feeling in response to the minister's impending departure; people spoke of their anger, their sorrow, their fears for the future -- it was a really personal and honest discussion. And I told them that I didn't know what I was going to do but that I was feeling free now to start looking around and maybe going elsewhere. They were very supportive ... although I did think it was funny that all of them seemed to think I was over-thinking the entire question. Um, yeah, that's what I do.

Then, on Maundy Thursday, I wrote a lovely letter (if I do say so myself) to the minister, telling him all that he had done for me and what I thought his great attributes were and how much I hoped that his new church was going to be a great experience for him. I deliberately put this all in writing, both because it's nice for all of us to have those "keeper" texts about how great we are that we can reread later on and because I'd been realizing that other people were dumping their anger and sense of betrayal on him. I think he's had a really rough spring since making the announcement, and I didn't know if it might be useful to him to have some written proof that not everyone was mad!

Today is his last Sunday, and so perhaps I'll get to say some of this to him again in person. And then after church is the annual picnic, which is the sort of thing I normally ignore, but I think I'll go this time because I still haven't told the head of the deacons, whom I'm friendly with, that I may be leaving. (I keep saying "may be" because I really don't know what I'll decide to do.) I feel like I need to tell her in person, but there hasn't been the opportunity. She's going to be upset, partly because she likes me and partly because her job as head of deacons is to try to keep things from falling apart in the interim between ministers, and one of her fears is that people will leave.

And then tomorrow night is the last meeting of the season of another committee I'm on, and I'll tell them at that point. I'm not looking forward to that discussion, because these are the people I have most in common with at the church, but it's important to tell them, not least because I guess I have to officially resign from the committee so that someone new can take my place on it.

But the fact that these good-bye conversations feel awkward but not sad to me tells me that leaving is a fine decision to be making. Not necessarily the only right decision, but certainly not the wrong one, if you see what I mean.

I'm trying to be entirely okay with not knowing what I'm going to do next, church-wise. I think I've about made my peace with the fact that religion is always going to be a struggle for me. Jacob wrestling with the angel is now my go-to spiritual image, and I'm at least sporadically fine with that.

The D update

Well, D. had her meeting this morning, and it was in fact an ambush. But she felt she acquitted herself pretty well. The ombuds has been wonderful, and she actually called D at home on Tuesday night so that they could role-play; the ombuds would say the kinds of horrible things that the awful MSW people keep saying, and D. would respond calmly and without emotion. Of course, one of the things that was brought up in today's meeting as a serious black mark against D. is that she had called the ombuds in the first place, which apparently is being interpreted as a sign that D. clearly is a horrible person who doesn't belong in this grad program. Fortunately, the ombuds is *pissed* about that, and I would think that one would not want to piss off the ombuds; the ombuds is a new position at this school, and apparently the MSW folks think that it's a toothless position; we must just hope that this isn't actually the case at this university. Of course, they also said a few things that are basically lawsuit-on-a-stick; it's no wonder that they keep getting sued. (I found out this afternoon that the wife of a colleague of mine worked until recently at this university's office of General Counsel, and she said that this university gets sued all the time. So apparently this is just the way they do business, but I find it very strange.)

These inquisitions are basically a no-win situation; they say false things about D. (that she turned in work late, for example, or didn't fulfill a requirement), and when she provides evidence to the contrary, proving that the work was in on time or the requirement was in fact fulfilled, she is called "argumentative" and told that she has problems accepting feedback; but of course if she doesn't provide evidence to the contrary, then the lie is determined to be "fact." And unfortunately the way this program seems to work is that Lie X, for example, is repeated regularly, with her providing evidence to the contrary each time, and then after two or three times she's told that "there's a pattern of people saying X," which means that there's a problem even if she's shown each time that X is a lie. So it's all a pretty big nightmare. And kind of crazy-making, because it's so fucked-up and hard to believe; Kafka-esque but without the big bug.

If recent history is any indication, in a couple of weeks she'll receive a write-up of this meeting, and they'll give her a requirement or two to fulfill, all of which she'd have to be fulfilling anyway as part of the program; her last requirement was that she had to succeed in her next field ed placement, which of course she's doing ... but that didn't stop her from getting hauled into this latest meeting anyway. And her field ed supervisor was there to attest that she's doing wonderful work in this position, but that didn't seem to account for much with her inquisitors, even though it's the very thing that they'd specified she had to do last time.

So here's our thought of the afternoon: This kind of inquisition has been a bi- or tri-monthly feature of her entire first year ... but she's still a student in good standing in the program. And the program is only two years long. So if she can treat this as an endurance test and manage to withstand two to three more of these, she'll be in her last term. And at that point, it seems unlikely that they would kick her out. Now, the inquisitions are escalating in intensity -- for example, this was the first time that this particular muckity-muck had been involved -- and perhaps the requirements/penalties they impose on her will also escalate, so she may not get the option of just enduring and carrying on with the work of the program. But if she can hang in there, and if the school continues its systematic harrassment of her but doesn't actually kick her out, then she's home free by next year at this time.

Now, I don't know that I could do this -- I've been having St. Martyr's flashbacks in a PTSD-ish sort of way for the last week -- but D. is developing a thick skin and is trying to let the insanity roll right off her, keeping her eyes on the prize. The advice she got from one of the faculty who does like her and whom she respects was to treat the degree as simply getting her passport stamped; once she's got those letters after her name, all kinds of doors are opened to her, and all she needs is two or three folks to serve as references, so future employers need never know what a horrible time she had because of these assholes.

So that's the D update. And she gets to sleep in tomorrow and recover from the trials of today. This is all an exercise in living in the moment, taking one day at a time, and not borrowing trouble by worrying too much about the future -- none of which I have any talent for, but maybe I can grow a little as she survives one more year of this nightmare.

Not such a good week

This is the post-graduation week at FGS, filled only with various faculty and department meetings, so the living should be easy. And yet, it has not been a good week at all.

On Monday morning, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and had to go to the bathroom. No sooner had I sat down on the toilet (I know, TMI, but this will be relevant) then I broke out into a full-body cold sweat and thought I was going to throw up. And I had felt fine just moments before in bed. And then the next thing I knew, I was face-down on the bathroom floor. Now, if one is going to pass out for the second time this spring, there's something to be said for being seated in a relatively small space. (See, I said that info would be relevant.) The good news is that, although I did a face-plant, I landed on my left eyebrow rather than on my face, so I didn't break my nose, which could easily have happened. The bad news is that I banged the hell out of that eyebrow, and I now have a black eye, although one that's not all that noticeable behind my glasses. Plus, now I get nervous when I'm going to bed for fear that I'll have to go to the bathroom in the night.

I'm not actually all that worried about this fainting, although it was certainly unpleasant, because I already had scheduled a minor surgery for three weeks from now that will eliminate a large portion of the uterine fibroid that's been causing the extra-heavy periods that have in turn been causing the anemia that seems to be at the root of this fainting business. So addressing this fainting issue is already in the works. But the black eye and bruised eyebrow are unpleasant in the meantime.

And then today something so much worse happened, not to me but in my school community. When we all arrived this morning in our department meeting, we were met by the terrible news about a senior administrator, one we all totally love. She's been on maternity leave with twins that were born this spring, and last night one of the babies died -- no explanation yet, seems to be one of those horrible SIDS deaths. Just devastating. We all just sat there in stunned silence. The head of school came around and talked to every single department meeting, and at lunch she made a point of stopping by tables to check in and make sure that folks were okay. Not that she was okay -- she cried when talking to us about it -- but she wanted to reinforce the idea that we should be taking care of each other in the face of this terrible news. All of this reminded me again what a good and caring place FGS is to work, at least for those who are seen as central to the school; I don't know that there would be identical outpourings for those considered more peripheral, although I will say that all of the employees of the school are always informed of major events, good and bad, that happen to all other employees, from the dining hall staff to the faculty to the buildings & grounds folks.

We almost just didn't even have a department meeting, because it seemed so stupid and pointless to talk about any of the things on our agenda in the face of life and death ... but then we ended up talking about the major items on our agenda, and we actually had a great discussion about something important, and it was good to be doing normal school stuff. So for the rest of the day, we went about our business, mostly doing things normally, but then we'd regularly get caught up short by something that reminded us of this terrible loss suffered by one of our community. I'd be getting my lunch or checking books out of the library, and then would suddenly think, "that baby has died," and it would all seem surreal that I could even be bothering to get lunch or check out books. And yet I'd go ahead and eat or take my books anyway.

And all of that emotion from the day is making it all the harder for me to calmly anticipate D's ordeal tomorrow. The nightmare that is her MSW program may get even worse, as she has a meeting with a big muckity-muck tomorrow, one that she was last week pretty rudely ordered to attend. It could be the chance to set everything straight and have a great second year, and it could be an ambush -- she's been preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. Given my pessimism and increasing battle-weariness, I'm pretty much assuming it will be the worst. But the ombuds is on her side and says that the program is following neither its own rules nor the university's. And D. just had her midterm evaluation in her field ed program, and it was totally glowing, and her field ed supervisor is going with her to the meeting tomorrow. So, as the ombuds has said, nothing final will happen tomorrow; there are higher muckity-mucks than the person who called this meeting, and there are also the university attorneys, who are getting tired of the school's getting sued by disgruntled students of this particular program.

At one point today, I was putting tomorrow's meeting in the perspective brought about by the horrible news of the baby's death -- whatever happens tomorrow, we're healthy and we have each other and that's what matters -- but tonight I've lost that perspective and am instead wallowing in the sense that everything is horrible and ends tragically. I think this is mostly pent-up emotion from the day and that tomorrow I'll probably just be a nervous wreck all morning but won't have this same sense of doom.

Here's my battle plan for the morning: I'm painting the front hall closet, and then I'm getting my hair cut, all before heading to campus for a mid-day meeting, by which time I should have heard from D about how the meeting went. And I'm heading to bed now to read a bit and then go to sleep, and I think I'll take a 1/4 pill of the sleeping pill/ anti-anxiety medication that my doctor gave me for the South Africa trip, so I should be able to sleep.

Not a good week. I'm hoping that tomorrow sees things get a little better.