Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Today the kids told me their roles for the church Christmas play, and they couldn’t understand why I kept dissolving into giggles.  My fiercely independent, occasionally bossy girl as a sheep?  And the boy who came home from school this week with a shiner and a green knot on his forehead because he was running with toys, the same boy who roared at me when I told him no at breakfast: he’s to play an angel?  I’m going to be laughing all the way to Christmas.

On the other hand, what else could they play?  All the roles require docility and obedience (Herod-the-tyrant is not invited to the play), and it’s fun watching them stifle their desire to squirm and try to muster up the requisite attributes during practice.  By all means, play angel and let your parents stay to watch!

Erin

Erin

The excitement at Cornell these days surrounds a big flower we have on campus. A very big flower. And a stinky one. Hence the name “Wee Stinky.” The flower has its own blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed, live webcam, etc. It’s a titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum — I’ll let you figure out what the Latin name means). The bud was over six feet tall before it finally started opening last night. So this morning before my first class I trekked three quarters of a mile to the other end of campus to go have a look for myself. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me, but here’s a picture I found online from the last time it flowered a few years ago:

Two interesting facts about titan arums:

• They don’t just have a generic corpse aroma (and, yes, the smell is very strong and can be smelled from far away). Titan arums smell like rotting fish with, to my nose at least, a bit of old, sweaty sock smell thrown in. There is another arum species, however, that smells like rotting rats rather than rotting fish.
• The smell distribution is aided by heat. The plant heats the inside of the flower to over a 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Where do robbers live?  Why don’t we ever see robbers?”

Nathaniel launches this one at me while I’m getting ready for school.  He seems a bit dismayed that he knows about something that he’s never had a chance to see and hug.  I’m not!

As you might have guessed from my recent posts, one of my favorite things about having kids is the things they say.  I’ll be carrying this little speech to school with me today, and I’m assuming it will make me laugh to myself several times before I come home again.

Erin

Sydney comes home tonight so that our whole family can be reunited for the first time in a month.  Both he and I had conferences (Berlin for him, Pittsburgh for me), and we’re looking forward to some quiet time as a family this weekend.  I don’t think we’ve even talked about what we’ll be doing, probably since we know that it’s all too easy to heap too much into what is best thought of as a few days in which to share a house and time and childcare and, if we’re ambitious, fill the fridge with food.

Thanks to my mom’s efforts on her recent visit, the kids are properly outfitted for the cold spell that the country is experiencing.  My students are shivering as they come into class in the mornings (and then nodding off under their sweaters and the building’s new heating system), but thanks to Nathaniel, I’m both awake and all warmed up for the day.  He’s been scootering to school with me in his mittens, hat, and coat, and pedestrians we pass seem tickled to see a striped, plaid, and grinning little man go whizzing by them.

We don’t have any large trees in our yard, but our neighbors do, so we’ll be doing some raking in the weeks to come.  Katherine really enjoyed the leaf piles recently:

Oh, and our cats are clearly enjoying each other’s company:

We’re really enjoying them.

Erin

I went to a panel this morning on literature of the First World War (specifically, visual representations of broken, absent, and reconstructed bodies), and as the panel started we suddenly heard a drum corps warm up.  A major Veteran’s Day parade was going by our downtown-Pittsburgh conference hotel . . . and continued to go by for a full hour.  I was not the only one to be astonished by the irony of such an event: Veteran’s Day drums nearly drowning out scholars of history and literature who were attempting to discuss the interactions of nationalism, propaganda, patriotism, and violence during WWI.  Our speakers occasionally stopped to say, “Wow.  I mean, this is really something.”

I’ve had a great time at the conference, but by now I’m ready to come home.  I heard a child in the hallway outside my door and it was all I could do to keep from stepping out to request a hug from said child.  So, I’ll be heading back to KY tomorrow.

Erin

This morning Sydney humored me by agreeing to walk from his apartment to his office in Ithaca.  On the map this looks simple, since they’re only a mile to a mile-and-a-half apart.  But there is an altitude change of a few hundred feet in that mile!  So, despite the fact that it was in the forties this morning, I found myself walking up the hill in a t-shirt, yoga pants, and sneakers.  I may happily flit around Asbury all day in a sheath dress and heeled sandals, but in Ithaca I start reaching for Eccos with tread, workout gear, and hiking fleeces.

Still, amused as I am to find my fashion tanking on my vacation, I’m glad to be back to my first real home as an adult.  My parents are (very generously!) taking care of the kids in Kentucky while I spend a few days with Sydney before driving back down to Pittsburgh for a conference at the end of the week–and then home to resume work and family in Kentucky.

Erin

Now, I’ll grant you, this book is a bit short on literary merit (lots of repetition, no variety in syntax, and limited character development), but I was thrilled.  Kindergarten is awesome.

Erin

I answered the door to a man who greeted me with “I’m not a politician.”  He then said he was with Directv, and he asked who our cable provider was.  I said, “We don’t have a TV,” an answer that got me thirty seconds of flabbergasted silence from the last guy who asked (over the phone, in England).  This guy, though, was unflappable: “That’s okay.  I’d say about 10% of households in Wilmore don’t have it.  Kind of an unusual town.  Thanks for your day!”

Aww, that was nice.  Make me feel less of an anomaly–by telling me my whole town is strange!

Erin

“I have a good name for the cats,” Nathaniel tells me.  This, despite the fact that our cats have been firmly named for weeks.

“Goat cheese.”

“Pepperhead.”  Katherine wants to play, too.

“Pumpkinhead.”

“Zoohead.”

“Scrumptious.”

“Fancy.”

“Flowerhead.”

“Pastahead.”

“Pajamahead.”

Okay, it’s definitely time for bed.

Erin