Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

In Katherine’s new teething stage she’s taken a liking not only to spoons, but to books.  She’s lunged after Sydney library hardcovers more than once, and he’s starting to get worried about this new fascination–particularly when combined with her developing motor skills. When she starts to crawl, are we going to be in real trouble?

Everyone’s getting into Halloween around here, but my interest is in Sunday, not Saturday: November 1st is the deadline for nearly all of the jobs I’m considering.

Erin

Katherine has kept us from sleep for the past week.  As in, waking up crying every two hours or less.  We have gotten pretty sunken-eyed and I started wondering whether she was deliberately trying to hijack my job applications (all due this week).  But we think we may have finally established that she’s cutting her first tooth (white bump in the front of her mouth, anyone?), so we’ll cut her some slack.  Poor thing.  She’s perfectly happy the rest of the day, although her favorite toy is decidedly spoons–the sharp end, rather than the bowl.  Not interested in teething toys, but her mother’s wedding silverware works quite nicely.

Erin

Today was the first day of teaching Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury to my freshmen.  It’s the most challenging book I’ve ever read (I think, though Joyce’s Ulysses comes close), so you might have some pity for my freshmen.  But I think they will eventually find themselves appreciating all that they’ve gleaned from the book through their hard work.  Fascinating book, and one that I think very nicely gets my hurried students to slow down and be sensitive to subtleties for which they may not normally make time.

I’ve forgotten how many sensitive subjects come up when teaching Faulkner: how to refer appropriately to someone with severe mental and physical handicaps, race relations in the South in 1928, class issues, and sexual mores.  All in the first three pages of the book!

Erin

The following things have happened to me in the past week:

– The professor in charge of reading over my application materials strongly suggested I publish something.  Yes, I’ll remedy that in the next week!

– After having two professors, Sydney, and me read over my dissertation abstract I looked at it once more just before sending it off . . . only to realize that I’d misspelled a character’s name.  As in, I spelled it correctly elsewhere in the paragraph and then misspelled it later in the same paragraph.  You wouldn’t have had to read the book to catch that one.  And we all missed it.  Scary!

– The internet service I’m required to use to send off all of my materials insists on “converting” all of the pdfs I upload . . . and it messes up the format.  So now, each time I submit a new pdf I have to sit there, combing over it one letter at a time, making sure there isn’t another bug in the system.

Grey hair before I’m thirty . . .

Erin

Here’s how we established whose girl Katherine is:

Yes, that’s a big chunk of beet that she’s chewing on. She really liked it. I’m really proud of her.

Sydney

If one waited to takes pictures of one’s child until the child had 1) gotten over the cold 2) stopped scratching herself 3) refrained from drooling all over the shirt–and until Ithaca gave us some good light to work with–one would never get pictures taken.  That means that you will see Katherine with scratches on her face (yes, I trim her fingernails, but it doesn’t seem to matter) and whatever new body part she’s discovered: yesterday it was ears, and today it’s her feet.  Can’t say I’m looking forward to those times down the road when she’ll have given herself a good black eye on some piece of furniture or other and I’ll have to brave the glares of other moms in public.  What fun!

Erin

Although it seems like we’re at the height of busy times around here we took things a bit easier this weekend, carving out some down time.  We’ve been in triage mode for almost two months now, racing from one deadline to the next, and we all needed some time to recover before we return to the application process.  We also used the time to try to shake the colds that have been plaguing us all for the past month or so.  I had a sinus infection, Sydney a recurring cough, and Katherine the sniffles.  Quite the house!  But we’re all on the road to recovery and feeling much better.  We’ve loaded up on orange juice and peppermint tea in hopes that we can fend off any more germs that come our way.

Erin

This morning I took my students to the university museum, which is hosting an exhibit of works by the Bloomsbury Group, the group of friends, painters, and writers of which Virginia Woolf was a member.  The goal was to get my students to come at the Woolf novel we’re reading with an eye to the painterly aspects of the book that they may have too-readily dismissed as just “filler” material in the novel.  And I hoped that by showing them the group’s contribution to major changes in the art world they’d be in a better position to appreciate the changes Woolf and her fellow writers made to the literary one.  Although I would have loved to spend more time at the exhibit I think it went over well with my students.  And I had a great time working with the museum staff to come up with a direction for the class and exercises for my students.  Although I’m generally reluctant to take time away from the discussion of literature and writing (I mean, there’s enough trouble right there, right?), in a class that’s all about finding new ways of looking at a book I think it was worth it.

In other news, it seems Ithaca’s beginning its winter weather.  Threats of snow (enough to stick!) for later this week.  It’s been pretty wintry since the beginning of the month, so I have to wonder if this means we’re in for a “real” Ithaca winter for once.

Erin