|
|
 |
 |
|
five more weeks of uni.
as much as i'm enjoying these classes- and i am, i really am- i'll be SO glad not to be obligated outside the house 7 days a week. i really really like being home.
that said, i'm getting itchy feet again. my spring is going to be devoted to getting my finances and my body in even better shape. i've been working and saving, and i'm proud of what i've accomplished, but now come my student loans to pay off and that's going to be a change. also, i've been eating MUCH better than i have in years and years (and i was eating pretty ok, the last 3-4 years) but it's time to get regular exercise, find out what's going on with this hip, and work on being fit and having decent stamina by my 60th birthday (god, am i going to be 60 in 2011? hand me that calendar, will you? *stares*).
i ALSO have a bunch of non-uni reading to do, a rather large storage of useful-but-no-longer-necessary-to-me things to go through and pass on (yes! freecycle.org) and a garden to get going on.
i ran into one of my favorite instructors from the nursing program today. it seems i will have the record of taking the longest- maybe second-longest -length of time to graduate from the RN-to-BSN program at my uni of any student in its history to date. she said today she REALLY wants me to invite her to my graduation. i've been on the fence about walking graduation, but something she said gives me the confidence to do it.
funny, how the right word from someone i respect and know cares about how i do can change everything.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
so sleepy today. two more nights of work for this week.
paper due tues on the border documentary as genre and as an expression of Chicano/Latino postmodernism, contrasting Chulas Fronteras (clips here and here) with El Mojado (The Wetback) (more information here ).
so.
will be either reading/taking notes, or sleeping, today, tomorrow, monday, and tues before class.
take care of yourselves.
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
ok. 8 weeks- no, 7 weeks, i think, of uni left. *whew*
class let out early today, so had the hip x-rays done. should find out within a week what's next, and if they show what's hurting. added fish oil and chondroitin/glucosamine/msm (which i now recall helping me with my knees some long years ago) (and thanks to ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) stormatdusk who reminded me of them), so we'll see.
in the meantime, the same-old same-old- work, uni, trying to get enough sleep. which i'm gonna go try and do right now. xoxo until later.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
MIA a bit because of reading for uni, and fighting off a sinus infection with sleep, hydration, nutrition, and Zicam. damn viruses.
however. by my count, 8 weeks of uni left, and the two papers for Critical Thinking (which, it seems, will just need to wait until i have two well-rested, not-arrogant brain cells to rub together), and, all other things being equal, i'll be able to graduate.
and then it's just all about getting healthy, as best i can. even better nutrition. appropriate exercise, as much as i can fit in around work and sleep. saving money, to cut down worry over travel and getting older. writing! oh, writing, and beading, and gardening! and sewing! and reading for fun!
so i DO have a plan. but for today, it's probably to finish work, go home, rinse my sinuses, have a nice hot bath, rinse my sinuses again, take my meds, and curl up in bed with the laptop and my uni reading until i crash.
and if I wake up in time and feel rested enough, catch the late (8:20 pm) show of Appaloosa before work at the lad's house tonight.
and that's the news from here. how are all y'all?
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
nearly caught up on sleep, and guess what? i can read my textbooks, they make sense, and i can take notes. amazing.
heading home in half an hour. two nights off; two chapters yet to read in native american studies (and NOT looking forward to getting the midterm back) and two for chicano/latino film studies. cautiously optimistic about that midterm.
catch you on the flip side.
2 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
well.
no, not in the debates- though i hear that Mr. McCain did not comport himself as well as one would expect.
but in myself. did NOT do well with the midterm for Native American studies class. partly because i'm just exhausted- i swear, if i don't get 8-10 hours straight, deep sleep within the next 24, i'm just gonna be a big bawling ball of baby- and partly because i didn't have the same rigorous kind of review that the film review forced on me in my other class.
so i think what i need to do is type up my notes within 24 hours of that class, and cross-ref them with the book Right Then. this poor class gets the short end of my energy and attention, and it's not fair to the class, to the teacher, or to me.
i now return you to your regular lives. i'll be here at work, trying to read coursework.
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
so, it is autumn, even here, even in northern coastal-ish california, where there are still tomatoes on the vine and i have the temerity to start bok choy and peas, in case i can get a crop in before the real chill comes.
but it is autumn. the days are shorter, the nights darker-feeling. our election less than a month away, and it seems it will be a battle (i made phone calls for Obama last night).
still, i have hope. there are figs ripening on the trees at uni, and apples, and i have found two persimmon trees there as well; uni itself, the coursework, goes as well as it can, and the reading and movies continue to be both interesting and food for thought.
i know the economy world-wide is ricocheting off people's lives with little care for individuals. in my own mind, this is the 60-year cost-come-home for maintaining nuclear arsenals and living as consumers rather than producers, as creatures of habit and want instead of partners with nature and each other- but i find that, once i've used those ideas as a way to settle my own thoughts, i have to step back from them or i become arrogant, and judge, and i have no extra energy to devote to being right or condemnatory. i need to focus on keeping my personal economy honest and functioning as best i can, not giving my life energy over to this latest round of bread and circuses and sleight-of-hand.
i've mentioned it before, but i shall yet again: the ideas and practices in Your Money or Your Life have given me a way to live in this world and be of it, and yet not be completely at the mercy of prevailing winds of woe and upset. it's easy to find the book on www.alibris.com, used, for not very much- and support independent booksellers by buying it there- and it's worth the reading and taking your time but doing, eventually, the steps it takes to reach financial intelligence, financial integrity, and financial independence.
so. time for a nap before uni. then native american studies, come home for a bit, study, perhaps nap again, then work tonight at the lads.
be well, be gracious, be kind, be blessed. be excellent to one another.
ETA: The Kindness Offensive in London. *G*
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
have abut 80 pages of Native American Studies reading to finish by next Saturday. Means I must concentrate on this.
Car needs to be smogged (for my EU/UK friends- have its biennial government-mandated check-up and [pray] pass California's emissions standards). This is going to take a bit of finagling of both time (I can't get to work without a car) and money (please, please let it pass without needing major work, or worse).
I really have to not spend too much time with news of politics, the economy, and world events. It's too easy to fall from 'have to get the car taken care of' to 'I'll be homeless living on twigs' if I read from the debates to the bail-out to Zimbabwe. That's false reasoning (or no reasoning, really), doesn't illuminate anything, steals energy I need to do the actual problem-solving required to be a good citizen, and prevents me from having any real understanding of just how dire things are in other places, like Zimbabwe. Not that that couldn't happen here- history proves anything can happen anywhere, as the very good book for Native American Studies is proving (well-researched and well-written, Indians in American History by Hoxie and Iverson). But it's not happening right-this-minute. I do not need to buy up 50 gallons of water and 10 gallons of gasoline (all I have storage for, myself) and curse myself for not drying 100lbs of apples this fall and burying nuts for winter. That's insane.
So, not too much of the 'news' (or as it should be more accurately called, bread and circuses). Concentrate on finishing uni, on staying (getting more) healthy, on saving money for summer.
Back to the book while my girl is still sleeping. She continues to slowly slip; progressive diseases are unforgiving. But her family loves her, and I'm amazed that it's two years I've been working here with them. It's an honor.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
may not have 'net at the lad's house for a bit (that'd affect Weds nights/Thurs mornings, and Sun nights/Mon mornings). no way to know until i get there, but his family's having a spot of bother with the bills, so...
anyway. will do uni reading if no 'net there. always a bright side, eh? text if you need me, i'll have the cell.
1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Well. This has definitely been a challenge. I don't suppose it counts, the couple of days I posted more than once on that day, evening out the ones I missed.
I'm going to cheat, a bit, and post the film review paper I've written for my Chicano/Latino Film Studies class. I know it has flaws, both from a film review technique point of view, and as a piece of writing, but this is as far as I got before I just couldn't write anymore on it. And you know? I have a little place of pride for it. It's been a long time since I wrote a paper for school that used what I know as a nurse in a non-nursing class in a way that actually seems like it works.
Anyway. on with the show. and thanks for reading this month, and keeping me company. Blessings on your heads.
~~( Real Women Have Curves )
4 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
making progress on the paper for Latina/Chicana film studies. thank goodness. of course, a good deal of it will have to be scrapped and rewritten as a film review and not a nursing research paper (maniacal laugh) but at least it's being written!
i could live without this constant low-grade sinus headache. ah. sonoma county, allergy capital of the world. (or so we style ourselves.) *makes note to get more sinus rinse at market*
am i the only person who has, in their fat bottom, the equivalent of at least ten car-tanks of petrol stored? one of the great freedoms of not being in uni will be having time to walk to the market and shop. *nods*
nothing else atm- am at work, plugging away at paper, and mulling over larger issues such as why it's so hard to define what nurses do and have it be reimbursed well. (not me, but in general, in the world.)
as you were. enjoy your saturday.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
have missed some more, i think. damn night shift. or lack of organization. or laziness. something.
first: paper for Chicana/o //Latina/o Film Studies: analysis of Real Women Have Curves using historical context and concentrating on the soundtrack used in the film. which might be crazy. but the songs
1. Chica Dificil (Aterciopelados)
2. No Le Hace (Banda Llaneros)
3. Que Rico El Mambo (PiRez Prado)
4. Voy A Quitarme El Anillo Norteqo (Marisela)
5. Perdida (Trio Los Panchos)
6. Si En Un Final (Eliades Ochoa)
7. La Niqa (Lila Downs)
8. Luto (Aterciopelados)
9. Aqui No Sera
10. Tenemos La Culpa (Banda Llaneros)
11. Vuelta De Hoja (Grupo Caricias)
12. Felicidades (Jose Zamora,Manuel Edgar Lujan)
seem to me important somehow. I need to ground my review of the movie in the era of the late 80's early 90's, and something about Latina/Chicana feminism and fat acceptance/weight issues/eating disorders at that time... i need more time, more focus, and less curiosity *(keep reading when i need to be taking notes, compiling, winnowing down)* second: keep reading Native American Studies coursework [mid-term is on chapters 1-10 of our primary text, luckily very interesting book that is giving me a new perspective about pre-contact Native culture, ecology, economies, and religions and how that changed post-contact (or post-rolling-waves-of-contact-influence, including diseases, non-native plants and animals, and world-economies)]. third: keep working on paper for Critical Thinking- have finally separated out the original student's sentences into trains of thought, now must find the arguments in them and diagram and analyze same. then respond to those in my own diagrammed and analyzed paper. hell. all i need to do is do NOTHING ELSE for two days out of every 7 for the next 12 weeks, and i should be ok. *keeps chipping away at the weeks to get the damn 2 days in one place instead of in an hour here and two there and never at the same time each week*
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
I have a new tentative plan.
Since Monday and Thursday seem to be "lost days", in that I can either stay up Monday morning, but then lose sleep and study time, or go to bed Monday as soon as I get home, but lose on-line time and, if I'm woken up before getting at least 6 hours sleep, lose sleep too- and Thursday seems to work out more-or-less the same, except that I'm even more tired Thursday mornings than Monday mornings- anyway, since they seem to be "lost days" I'm thinking to "take them out of the week" for expectation-of-socializing-and-getting-things-done purposes.
Instead, I'll count them as "doing things in bits and pieces" days, with sleep and study interspersed as is possible. Give this a month or so, see how it works.
Hell, the semester's only got 12 more weeks in it.
And then on Tuesday nights, like tonight, or, I guess, Early Wednesday Morning (tm), if I can't sleep, I'll put laptop and cord, portable heater, and school-book/notes in my cloth grocery bag and, in slippers and robe, trundle downstairs to the kitchen table and set up down there where there's space and light and study there instead of trying to do it in bed (not enough space for papers, etc.) or at my poor desk (which is, at the moment, not usable due to the amount of stuff being sorted on and in front of it).
*sigh*. how can 6 units of uni and 40 hours of work be so damn complicated? is it really this messy to live mostly in one rented room and get things done? Or am I even more dramatic than I've been accused of by my family? tune in next week (though I doubt there will be any real answers... lol!!)
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
So the deadline for the HHS resolution about changing access to birth control/abortion by changing the rules re: requiring providers to prescribe/dispense comes up on September 25th. That means there are only a few more days to contact your Congress or Senate people, or contact Health and Human Services yourself, and make your point of view known.
I don't really care for having the government- any government, be it local, state, or federal- in my business. I'd much rather practices affecting the common health be made by the commonwealth- by the educated, practiced judgment of my fellow citizens and peers.
But this decision relates to collected, pooled tax money that is used to pay for and support our collective, pooled health- and it's being proposed without the kind of large-scale, in-depth, educated national conversation that I feel is crucial to maintaining a healthy nation.
Maybe it's true. Maybe abstinence is the best method of birth control, taking into account physical, emotional, and spiritual health of all concerned. Then in that case, isn't the conversation about why everyone- everyone- should be practicing abstinence if they're not up for supporting and raising (well) the child of any act of intercourse that leads to conception?
I can never quite get my thoughts to go in a straight enough line to have this all make sense in a post- but I do feel it's a hugely important subject, one that gets a lot of inflammatory energy thrown at it but not much deep, reasoned, compassionate thought.
Which, now, I'm going to go and try to give it more of, while I do my coursework for Native American Studies (in which I finally nail down the shameful role of some Quakers in the destruction of Native American family life through boarding schools, and find my shame is not deep enough, yet, to help me formulate some action that can, in some way, help me try to put things right at this late hour).
Blessings on your heads.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
amazing. month's half gone. how does that happen?
Anyway.
Film analysis paper due in two weeks. I will be doing mine on Real Women Have Curves, because I enjoyed it AND I think it will do me good to look at it again, not from the point of view of having been 'the fat girl' or 'the rebellious one' or whatever, but trying to get out of my white privilege corner and see what I can be taught by, learn from, this movie, these characters, this life.
Also, I am finding it interesting to be one of the people on the edge in this odd financial world. I don't know if it's really clear, but Your Money or Your Life notwithstanding, when I finish uni at the end of this term (god willing, saints providing, rain don't fall, creek don't rise, etc. etc. etc.) I will have about $46,000 in student loans due. Just exactly how I'm going to pay all that off, being as how I'm already 57 years old and not exactly earning at the top of my profession (that 10% cut I came home to in July? Still in effect. *sigh* and not exactly clear how/if/when the California budget situation will affect that). What I do know is, I'm getting healthier each week, night shift notwithstanding, and more intelligent about my money and my life energy and my fulfillment curve, and so the uproar about financial markets and disaster relief and war and all the rest of it, while it brings me cause for unhappiness and sorrow and compassion, does not make me crazy-with-worry like it would have before I started working with YMOYL.
Am going to try growing watercress. I like it, it's supposed to be fairly simple, something I can grow inside even, maybe, and it'll be a fun project.
So that's today's post- I'm glad I've put all this time and effort into finishing uni, old as I am, and by god, I propose to enjoy the heck out of life for the rest of my years, watching movies and traveling and growing vegetables here and there in whatever yard I've got access to, and just being alive.
3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
this is harder than it looks.
it would be so easy if there weren't so much i want to talk about, and if my brain would stay awake long enough to actually help me make coherent posts.
1) tammy212 has better posts than I about the Health and Human Services "conscience rule". Deadline for HHS to decide is 10 days away now; Planned Parenthood Petition is here.
2) I love it when one sentence in a book opens the world tenfold for me. From The Wild Swan (my find from San Francisco last week) these sentences- just a bit of background information setting up Andersen's first round of travels as an adult: The Germany of independent states through which Andersen passed on his first visit was to be transformed within his lifetime. The Holy Roman Empire with its three hundred and ninety-six principalities, ecclesiastical states and free towns had been completely reorganized by Napoleon in 1806. After his defeat it was found impossible to restore the old order[...]
Which both reinforces that even in the known and incomplete history of the North American continent (about which, between Native American studies and Chicano/Latino Cinema, I am being given new points of view) there are orders and orders which came and went before Europe came; some of which is recorded, still, in the oral histories of the people still surviving and some, did we have eyes to see, in the geography and ecology of the continent itself.
3) I bought Miss Sarajevo. For a lot of reasons- because I have a good friend who is becoming a director of documentaries. Because people I admire and respect are involved in bringing his bookFools Rush In to the screen.
A lot of things about this film have made deep impressions on me, but the one that I'll mention here is the sight of the Bosnian National Library burning after being bombed, and Bill saying that '...with it burned basically all the history of Bosnia because Bosnia is a country with a lot of history written by monks and and clerics and whatnot and it pretty much is gone and that's a problem today because now you have a country with no real written history which can lead problems because it allows people to make up their own history and that is a problem in Bosnia today.' (quoted from the DVD.)
4) There are all kinds of ways history rewrites itself. Sometimes it's because one person pulls together threads and odds and ends of impressions and sees the pattern formerly woven that has been hidden from view by misdirection, by forgetting, by not-wanting-to-know.
My uncle, my father's oldest brother, was a bomber pilot in World War 2. I met him once. Over the years, in scraps of information from my father, I learned my uncle been shot down and captured at some point, came home very ill, and died young of cirrhosis caused both by starvation while he was a prisoner of war and partly by his drinking after he got home.
What I've put together since is this: he bombed Heroya, Hamburg, Paris, in 1943. He was shot down in France. He was held in one of the concentration camps, I don't know which one. I've walked in places that are changed forever because, before I was born, my father's older brother was dropping bombs on them.
I don't know what to do with that, really, or what it means, except that just as these two classes this term are giving me opportunities to re-view and re-learn, more globally, the smattering of history I've had in the past, so too this more personal connection to place, people, and history gives me opportunity to appreciate, to not take so much for granted, everything I have in my life.
Including my right to consider my body my own: not pre-or-post-pregnant, not a tool of the state or church or a man, but mine. I remember before Roe vs. Wade, before Planned Parenthood; I remember the thalidomide scandal and the deep shame that a man in our Friends Meeting, a physician who had prescribed thalidomide to mothers, felt as the facts came out, as he confronted what it meant to have been an unknowing part of that, and as he worked out how he, as a doctor, had to change his relationship to 'who owns the woman's body'.
This was in the 1950's. It was shocking and progressive and unusual that he spoke so, but I didn't know that- I thought it was part of some larger national conversation about how to be healthier, more intelligent, more compassionate, less insane.
And so here endeth PETDM # 14- with my (rambling, incoherent) plea to look again at what is being done in your name. I understand about conscience, I do- I could not give lethal injection. I have argued with surgeons about keeping some patients alive and allowing others to die. I recognize that there is indeed something precious and sacred about new life, and I'm not in a position to absolutely, categorically state when that life begins.
But taking away from the woman carrying the baby the right to determine her own health- that bothers me. Not developing the national conversation about the obligation of men to prevent unwanted pregnancy, to support the health and safety of communities, of mothers, of daughters- that bothers me.
So please. Go. Read. Take a stand, and stand behind it. You never know when, with the swipe of a pen or the pressing of a button, your life and all the lives you know are changed, irrevocably, and all you have left is how you've lived up until this moment.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
well, that's sad.
i have two things, longer posts, unfinished, that meant to be the 12th, but they're not up where y'all can see them so they don't really count. i meant to be working on them and get them up, but work and uni and sleeplessness and sleep kind of stole the time from me.
moving on, hello, there.
been enjoying all the good interviews and photos to come out of the Toronto Film Festival. Also, found that I can watch Man of La Mancha uninterrupted on FanCast, which is, to me, amazing.
have almost caught up on sleep from the days in San Francisco. not on studying, mind you, although i did get very much more clear in my mind what we know of the interwoven and parallel time-lines of different Native American populations around the continent and how those relate to the time-lines of British, French, Spanish and Russian colonization with which I was somewhat more familiar.
I spent a lot of time here, at the University of California's Traditions of the Sun site. this is one of the things that thrills me about the 'net- that all these bits and pieces of people's experience and knowledge and so forth are not only in one place, but where i can (even if it's only online, even if it's only in a little QuickTime movie) learn from them.
life's complicated, innit? how we're all someway or another interconnected, even if we don't know about it?
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Oops, missed yesterday.
Otoh sleep is good.
So, the upside of no laptop at work is- am getting uni reading done.
Downside of no laptop at home is- no internets in bed. woe. lol.
Tonight off so that I can go to San Francisco tomorrow and meet up with Mom and Sister who are staying at son's. They took the train into town- how fun is that? I'll take the bus down, get a ride back up on Tues.
Then back to it on Tuesday- Chicano/Latino Cinema Tues, Native American Studies and work on Wed.
Am really enjoying the texts for these classes, which is such a lovely change. A well written text is a joy.
Write to your congresspeople about the HHS proposed changes. Even if what we need (and we might, we might, I dunno) is something that allows practitioners to opt out of prescribing birth control, redefining birth control as abortion is not the way to go about it.
With that, back to bed. Sleeping in my own bed, in the dark and quiet night: priceless.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
Off to work at the girl's.
Laptop is DEFFO getting a tune-up and make-over on Tues- last night it slipped off the arm of the huge over-sized recliner in the lad's room two times, and now there's a dvd lodged in the slot and no little hole to put a paperclip in through to manually unlock it.
ah well, it needed the apostrophe key fixed anyway.
*sigh*
still 150 pages of reading for class to do. no papers yet for these classes, and made some small progress on Critical Thinking. (which would NOT be so damn hard if i were not so damn just-tired-enough-not-to-be-able-to-trudge-through-the-sludge-easily.)
anyway.
A month ago i wasn't sure I'd be working full-time, and by this time next week i should have my benefits back. life is good. essentially, yes. my life is good. *nods* i still have beloveds, i have plans, i have skills and talents and can use them, and aside from being tired am in pretty good health.
catch you on the flipside.
Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link
|
|
|