Moving On

Well folks, the day has finally come.  The new blog design is finally here.

What? You don’t notice anything different?

That’s because the new design is so much more than a new design.  It’s a new title.  And a new look.  And a new ideology.

Oh, and a new blog altogether.

You can now find me here: happyintheinbetween.blogspot.com.

Click on over there to find out way I felt like I needed a fresh start at blogging.

And be sure to check out the new site again tomorrow to see what Valentine’s surprise made Dave quote Joe Pesci to me.

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For the record, this will be the last post at Turning Pages.  I’ll leave the site up for a while to redirect visitors, but all my blogging will be done over at Happy in the in Between from here on out.  I’m excited about that; I hope you are, too.

Where I Am

When I was an undergraduate, I spent a semester of my junior year studying abroad in Cambridge, England.  It was four of the most amazing months of my life. Upon returning home, however, I was surprised to realize that everybody else’s lives – those of my friends and my family – had moved on without me.  Rather, I was surprised that I hadn’t realized that of course their lives were going on as usual.  I was so caught up in my once-in-a-lifetime experience that I forgot that things would have changed when I got back.  There were no drastic changes, but I had somehow failed to expect to need to catch up on their lives after my four-month absence.  Selfish?  Solipsistic?  Yes.  But there it was.

In the past 6 months or so, approximately 8,604 (more or less) of my friends have either given birth or announced their pregnancy.  Okay, maybe not that many.  But a lot.  Every time I turn around it seems like another friend is giving birth of announcing that she’s expecting.

And I am thrilled for them.  Absolutely, positively thrilled.

But.

The vast majority of these friends (of all of my friends, really) still live in Kentucky.  Or, at least, they don’t live in Tallahassee. And though Dave and I still have our fingers crossed that eventually we will get to move back to our home state, it’s definitely quite a ways off (if it were to happen at all).  In the meantime, the birth announcements of these friends reminds me that their lives are moving on without me being there. And that’s as it should be.  

Having my bubble bursted – that ridiculous bubble that says that everyone’s life will wait to move forward until I am able to be a part of it again – hurts just a little bit, but it’s also a very, very good thing.  It reminds me that I have to be in the here and now.  I want to be with my friends as they go through this amazing process – both the good and the bad parts of it.  But the reality of it is that I’m hundreds of miles away.

So though I can’t be there physically, I have to remember to be better at being there emotionally.  So I send cards.  And I call more often.  And I send emails with cool baby things I’ve found (I live, and procrastinate, vicariously).  And I pray that they know how ecstatic I am for them, even though I can’t offer them the hug they so deserve to prove it.

Today a friend told me some advice her major professor gave her regarding the process leading up to our comps: “You have to let people be where they are.”  For her it meant that you can’t force your committee to be more involved than they are. But for me, its significance is more literal.  I have to let myself be where I am and I have to live my life as it is now, not as my crossed fingers hope it will one day be.

And my life as it is now includes being thrilled that there will be so many babies waiting for me to play with the next time I visit Kentucky.

My Love

Do you love Adele?  Because I love Adele.  I first heard her when I downloaded “Chasing Pavements” as a free song on iTunes last June.  I loved the song and listened to it over and over.  But for some reason I never bought the full cd…until today.  And I am unconditionally obsessed.

So if you’re even later to the game than I am, listen to this.  I can’t imagine that you won’t be in awe.  And this isn’t even the best song on the cd; it’s just the one I can’t get out of my head.

So, enjoy.  And happy Friday.

Crafty

My brain has been revolting again my all-reading-all (or most)-of-the-time schedule by trying to convince me to make something crafty.  Craftiness is not something that comes naturally to me, but I love the idea of it.  Having a project.  Making something with my own two hands.  Completing the project and being able to cross something off of my to-do list.  It’s a lovely plan.  And my brain has been yearning for it.

Really I’ve been wanting to make this (it would so come in handy around here), but our local craft stores have been thwarting me by refusing (or maybe just not happening) to carry big enough magnets.

So instead I decided to make up my own project, which is way over my typical crafty threshold.  But when I visited my friend Amy just before Christmas, she had the most adorable way to store her earrings.  I have no idea where she got it (probably she was crafty enough to make it on her own, without stealing the idea), but I loved it and decided to recreate it.

Turns out it was super easy.

So here’s what I did to make my own Earring Frame (patent pending…just kidding).

I happened to have most of the items needed already on hand, including a black frame (I used 5X7 – it works best if you make sure the frame back comes off entirely rather than being on a hinge), a swatch of fabric, wire (I went with silver floral wire, though I considered using some white elastic band, too), a stapler and a hot glue gun.  The only thing I needed to buy was two sheets of felt.

I doubled up the felt so that, essentially, there were four sheets of felt layered on top of the cardboard insert that comes with the frame.

Then I wrapped the fabric around the felt and cardboard.  My fabric was a little thin, so I doubled it up.  I initially simply stapled the ends of the fabric to the back of the cardboard.  When I had the fabric positioned so that it was straight and smooth, I hot glued the fabric down to ensure it would stay still.

Next I wrapped the wire around the padded insert to make rows (I went with four, but actually wish I had done five; you can do as many as you like).  I did one continuous wrap so that there was only two ends of wire.  When that was positioned, I hot glued the ends of the wire to the cardboard.

Finally, I placed the now padded and upholstered insert back into the frame.  I left the glass behind the insert, in case I ever choose to use the frame as a, well, picture frame, but you don’t have to.

Then, voila! My very own Earring Frame:

I purposefully chose not to trim the fabric swatch at all so that if my earring collection grows to be too much for a 5×7 frame, I can upgrade to an 8×10.

Last but not least, I hung the frame in my bathroom:

Ta. Da.  How cool is that?  Useful and decorative.

Not too shabby for someone who isn’t good at crafts, eh?

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By the way, for those who have asked, the blog re-design is still on.  Look for it in the next week or two.  Have patience!  Genius takes a while.

Is That James Lipton Calling?

Beth at So the Fish Said decided to interview some of her readers à la Inside the Actor’s Studio, so I took her up on the offer.  Here it goes:

1.  Remember the movie Brewster’s Millions? That happens to you, except on a smaller scale.  You receive a million dollars that you must spend in 30 days.  However, you cannot have any assets to show for the money at the end of the month (and you can’t buy something and then destroy it), you cannot waste the money, you cannot give it away, and you cannot tell anyone what you are doing.  How do you ditch the dough in a month or less?

This one is easy (and oh so idyllic).  I would start by paying off all of my dreaded student loans, making me a much more happy, carefree Catherine.  

After that, The Hubs and I would travel until we ran out of dough.  We’d start in the UK, so I could introduce Hubs to Nancy & Arthur (my English mom & dad) and show him my favorite haunts.  We’d explore all of Cambridge (and maybe give a nod to Oxford), go to New Lanark for some family history, the lake district to relax, Edinburgh for the ghost tours, and Bath for one of my favorite restaurants.  We’d stay in London for a while to see the shows, take our time with the museums, and whatever else we felt like doing.

When we’re satisfied with Great Britain, we’d take turns choosing the destination – The Hubs would send us to the Pyrenees Mountains, I’d ship us to Paris (for a redo, quite frankly).  We’d both agree on Italy and Greece.  I would want to see India, Morocco, and Madrid.  Hubs would want to explore Africa more thoroughly and return to Spain.

We’d end back in the States and try to see all 50.

I am practically salivating just thinking about it.

2.  You are locked in a toy store overnight, with no way out until it reopens in the morning.  What do you play with all night?

I would alternate between Legos and Barbies.  Maybe I’d build a rockin’ Barbie’s Dream House with Legos.  And then I would play all of the Wii games I have wanted to play but refuse to the spend the money on.

Oh, and I hope they would have one of the keyboards on the floor like in Big.  I’d play on that, too.

3.  If you could have a dinner party with any three famous people, living or dead, you would be wasting your supernatural powers on hosting dinner parties.  What would you do instead?

I have to say, I think I’d stick with the dinner party thing (if it has to involve meeting with famous people).  I just want to hear Hemingway and Fitzgerald have a conversation, listen to Billie Holiday sing live, introduce Barack Obama to JFK, convince J.K. Rowling to write me into Harry Potter, things like that.  But it wouldn’t be a drab dinner party.  Oh no no no.  That would not do.

If my supernatural powers do not have to be used to meet famous folks, I would totally magic myself a PhD. Oh, and maybe a published book, too; plus a tenured job at the school of my choice.

Can you tell I’m growing weary of studying for comps?

4.  What’s the best thing since sliced bread?  Now, sliced bread ain’t all that impressive, so what’s the best mediocre, hum-drum improvement or advancement that has made modern life just ever so slightly more convenient for humanity, along the lines of saving yourself five seconds every time you want a piece of bread.

Practically, I’m going to say the refrigerator.  The Hubs and I are horrible at cooking for two people and always have lots of food leftover.  I can’t imagine having to throw all of that away every time we ate.  Plus, it grossed me out that my English host-parents didn’t keep their eggs in the fridge.  Yuck.

More frivolously, I love that I can hook  my iPod directly into my car.  No more shuffling through cds.  Heck, no more need to burn cds when I buy music on iTunes.  Love it.

5.  What’s your best quality?  The response to this question must be a simple declarative statement.  You may elaborate on that statement, provided that your elaboration does not include the words “but,” “however,” or “although,” or any other hedging, equivocating, back-sliding, gerrymandering (which is not at all appropriate in this context, but I think it should be, don’t you?) or any other type of backing down from the simple declarative statement with which you began your response.

I am surprisingly perceptive.  Though it has taken The Hubs nine years to admit the truth of this statement, he will now back me up.  I am just enough of a realist that I can look at a situation and recognize what will probably happen versus what should happen.  

For instance, two of my friends that are also studying for comps keep telling me that they can’t believe how calm I am.  And though I have my own little freak outs, for the most part they’re right.  It’s not because I’m that confident in my intellect (ha!).  It’s that I know that freaking out does me no good.  I’m going to have to take the exam one way or the other, so I might as well deal with it.  I also know that, though the idea of comps is scary, my committee is supportive and wants me to succeed, so I’m not panicking over the sneak attacks some students have to watch out for.

My perceptivity also includes the ability to be a fairly decent judge of character.  Or so I am told.

Unfortunately, this attribute is not always appreciated by others.  But it’s served me well, so I’m stickin’ with it.

The end.

Would you like to be interviewed? (Think of the blog fodder!)  If so, here’s the rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I’ll email you five questions of my choosing.
3. You update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. They will answer these questions. If they don’t, you can post embarrassing information or humiliating photos of them on the internet.

Or, if you want, you can just answer Beth’s questions, but do tell me you’re doing so in the comments so I can steal your ideas for the next time.

So, who’s next?

Pursuing Potential

This has been a hectic and frustrating week, made all the more so by the fact that it should have been a normal, run-of-the-mill week with no major deadlines, projects, or events. And while in many ways I have hit the majority of the productivity marks I have set for myself, there have also been substantial setbacks.  The latter revolves primarily around the fact that, after having approved my comps’ reading list more than two months ago, one of my committee members decided to triple (!) the poetry section less than two months before I sit for the exam.

Awesome.

The email giving me the “suggestions” felt like a punch in the gut and, almost instantly, turned what had been a good day into an emotional FAIL.

And yet, despite the emotional roller-coaster I have been on (and assume I will stay on until April 07), last night I found myself mulling over the week’s events with a sense of hope and surprising optimism.  Regardless of the ups and downs, the one thing that seems to stand out to me is the realization that people have a surprising amount of confidence…in me.

Maybe that seems like a strange realization to you, especially if you know me and consider me to be a fairly confident, assured person. And in some ways I am.  But I almost the woman who constantly doubts that people will remember me.  If I see you out and about and don’t communicate with you on any kind of semi-regular basis – even if we were absolute best friends in the world until 8th grade – there’s a good chance I won’t strike up a conversation out of the fear that you won’t know who I am. (It’s not you, it’s me – really).  I hesitate to “add”  high school friends (who I haven’t kept in touch with) on Facebook, convinced that their reaction to seeing my name will be, “Who?”  And I am always, always surprised when someone from my past adds me on Facebook. They remember me, they really remember me!

I feel the same sense of shock when I realize that someone – especially someone I respect – professes confidence in me.  My committee members, bless their hearts, are constantly telling me that of course I’ll do just fine on the ridiculous, 12-hour, mind-numbing comprehensive exam they are subjecting me to.  Of course.  They laugh at my doubts as though I’m a toddler stumbling as I try to walk.  And while I appreciate their confidence (it’s certainly better than having your mentors doubt your ability!), I have trouble believing in them believing in me.  But how do they know I’ll do well?

After I finished (and passed) my MA oral exam, I told The Hubs that I thought I had tricked the committee into thinking I was smart enough for the degree.  I truly thought it may have been my personality that passed rather than my intellect. Hubs, always having confidence in me by the barrel-full, slapped down my negativity and reassured me, repeatedly, that I deserved it.

Then yesterday after I got done teaching, I was talking to some of my students after class.  I initially had the same reaction I always do when students take me seriously (suckers!), and then I had an epiphany – they have no reason not to have confidence in me. To them, as to my committee, I am trustworthy and capable until proven otherwise, not the other way around.  

I have (for the most part) never proven to be inept in my scholastic pursuits, so why do I always assume that ineptitude is the default position? Why not believe in my past performances and assume that I am, in fact, capable of these things.

What a novel idea.

Maybe I’ll even start adding people on Facebook.

Nah, probably not.