Pomp and Circumstance.

This was definitely not a normal morning commute - there were too many suit coats and shiny shoes getting off the train at Harvard Square, and too many families. Usually it's just me and the other Harvard employees getting off the train, but, because today is Commencement Day at Harvard, things are changed. My library is open essentially as a bathroom for the crowds of people who are already swarming the Yard. See?
Maybe I'm okay with us being the campus bathroom for the day (or at least until noon, when the morning exercises are over and the circ desk opens and we are a functioning library again). It gives me an excuse to be here, witnessing the first (of many?) Harvard graduations. It will likely be a quiet day, at least in here, so I can get some work done. And I can also reflect, fondly and perhaps not-so-fondly, on my own college commencements.

I had written "college commencement" above, but then I remembered that I have two degrees, went to two commencement ceremonies, and went through those rituals twice. I always forget about my Simmons experience. It's somewhat fitting that the Simmons College t-shirt that I put into my quilt didn't fit, and that I had to truncate it down to say simply "Simmon." That's kind of fitting for my memories of the place; truncated and incomplete. That's a part of my life that has not really been branded into my mind. Was it a difficult time? Hard? Confusing? I'm not sure. In many ways I think I really liked that time of my life. I felt like an adult, whatever that means. But whatever I was thinking or feeling or experiencing during that time of my life (which is now seven years ago) it was not the schooling that left an impression.

Which leads me to wonder what these graduates are thinking and feeling today as they march to their seats that fill the Yard. Do they have jobs? Do they have career paths? Do they think that they do but then will discover that what they thought they were all about really isn't true, and will change their mind sometime in their late twenties when they realize that life really isn't what they thought it was after all? Perhaps that last question was a little too insightful, a little too telling about what my own experience was post-college. When I graduated from UCONN, now ten years ago almost to the day, I could not have told you what I wanted to do with my life. Job? Career? Had no clue, and I knew I had no clue. But I could have told you what I wanted to feel in my life. I wanted a worry-free future. Something exciting, yet also very stable. I would have told you that I was going to travel to Europe each year, find a job that would allow me to incorporate my interest in and ability wth French, and I would move far away from my hometown. I would be a cosmopolitan jetsetter. I would live the life of a Lonely Planet author, exploring fun places and writing about then for all to read. I would be like Anna Wintour, amazingly chic and sure of myself. Business-like. I would wear great clothes to work, take care of my appearance, have the career and the family and the hobbies and the life that women dream of, and do something that everyone - everyone - would know about. That's what I would have told you then.

If I were graduating now, what would I tell you about my hopes and dreams? Isn't that what graduations are for? For thinking about the future? You're done with one part of your life, and now move on to the next. Can life be segmented like that? Am I different than the person I was when I wore my cap and gown in Gampel Pavillion those ten years ago, or when I marched alongside my fellow librarians at the Boston Convention Center five years ago? Who knows. Maybe. In ways, yes. But not in other ways. I still can't tell you what I want to do for a career, but I am closer to being able to tell you that. And I know that I can have that Lonely Planet lifestyle, but I have to have some kind of means to support that lifestyle and it can't be my parents. Anna Wintour's life is still very intriguing, but so is coming home to my little house and my little yard and seeing Doug and petting the cats and sitting at the table in my dining room to eat my dinner and read my book. So there are things that I know now that I did not know then, at either graduation day.

So I guess you don't learn it all in college. I guess school doesn't teach you everything. When these graduates leave the Yard and go out into the real world they will still be learning. They will still be exploring their life. Maybe Harvard has set them up for great success in that. I hope so. But for now, today, they can come into my library and use our bathrooms and think about that thing called the future after the ceremonies and fanfare. Let them enjoy their day.

Redecorating.

Almost more than I love getting new (to me) pieces of furniture, I love to move existing furniture around. I find that simply by moving a piece from one location to another you can completely recreate the feel of a room. Case in point: when we went to Brimfield last Saturday, we got a bunch of chairs. Five were for the dining room table, but two were rocking chairs that we really had no idea where we'd put, and we knew that we'd have to move something in order to get them to go someplace. Here's what we've decided to do with them:

The one that Doug picked out, a very modern kind of chair that reminds me very much of IKEA (but more grown-up IKEA), is now in the sunroom/library, where the green cabinet used to be. This means that we have moved the green cabinet, and so far we have put it in the dining room, to act as a mini buffet kind of thing, to hold kitchen-y kind of things that we don't have room for in our tiny kitchen. So far it's holding nothing but our fake sunflower and the vase that we got from a cousin for our wedding, but I'll think of something to put there soon. Maybe it can be our wine cabinet. You know, for all the wine that we drink.

Anyway, but then that left us with the second rocking chair that we got, the one that we plan to refinish sometime this summer or fall but that so far looks just fine the way it is (though I do plan to have my mother reupholster the cushion, to put that reupholstering class that she took to good use). We decided to put it where the plaid armchair used to be before we moved it out into the sunroom to create our library. And now we don't have any more room for additional furniture. This is bad, bad news for people who are addicted to collecting cool stuff from Brimfield.

But, maybe we can content ourselves with taking drives to really fun places, like Storrs, Connecticut, to visit with the cows and take in the scenery. Look at this: Tell me what there is not to love about that scene. Certainly not the green grass, the rolling hill, or all the cows. Say what you want about Storrs being sleepy and a tad boring, but I loved being there for college. Any place that has animals with this much personality is a place for me.

This happens every month.

Once a month I have a bout of insomnia. One night where I can't fall asleep, and then the next day I'm completely useless. Guess what. That's tonight, and that will be tomorrow. Lucky Doug and his mother and father. We're visiting the Siskos tomorrow and I'll be in fine form for them.

But, the good thing about insomnia is that I get a lot of Internetting done. I spent, oh, I don't know, three hours redesigning a blog from the past and thinking what its new theme could be (the old theme, complaining about work and how I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, seems somehow tiresome. I feel like I've been there and done that. Please remind me not to do it anymore.) I also have URLs at two new blog sites, Wordpress and Tumblr, in case I ever want to develop blogs there, too. One can never have too many blogs, I guess.

Except for me, who can't even keep up with one. I haven't posted in about ten days. Guess that means I'm having a really great time, right? Well, actually, yes. If I have time to blog that means I'm not spending my time doing other things. If I don't have time to blog, that means I'm spending my time doing other (hopefully more productive things). So let's recount how I've been spending my time.

Reading
As usual, I am reading. Reading lots of things. My magazines and a book. I have a book club to go to on June 3rd, and our book club read is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. All 613 pages of it. I'm on page 249. It's not a quick read, and there are parts that I am having trouble getting through (anything to do with war), but overall it's been a very productive and valuable use of my time.

As has Brimfield.
Doug, my mother, my brother, and I met up at Brimfield this past Saturday. Doug and I were in the market for some replacement dining room chairs. We figured that it was time to get rid of the IKEA ones. My mother and brother joined us for advice and also for the use of their mini-van so that we could transport anything we purchased back to our house. After we loaded the van with all of our finds we put the chairs around the table and moved the old IKEA ones up to the attic. All except the one that you see in the above photo. That's the last of the IKEA chairs. We looked at so many chairs at Brimfield, but we didn't find a 6th for the table. And that's fine, because this gives us an excuse to go back in September. We'll look for at least one more chair and whatever else strikes us. There's always something to find there. We are quickly becoming Brimfield addicts.

Exterior Work
Doug and I have decided on a company to paint our house. They will do the job in August. Now we have to figure out if we want to keep the same color scheme or change things up a bit. Maybe more of a greenish gray with off-white trim and red accents? Or maybe we do something warmer, like a soft green, with a gray trim and natural wood accents. I'm voting for changing things up a bit, but I'm also not good at making these kinds of decisions. How many times did I repaint my bedroom before I landed on the current color? I've painted the kitchen twice since living here (that's twice in three years) and have paint swatches all over the dining room walls because we're thinking about getting rid of the purple. If we don't like the color of the house after it's painted, we can't just change it. It will be like that for (I hope) eight years. I can't think in eight-year increments. This is too much pressure. I wish our house were sided and I didn't have to think about it.

Meg has joined me at the table here. She's purring. She's needing me. And, of course, it's right when this happens that I'm ready to go to bed. Poor Meg. I'll post this photo of her, taken from Doug's most recent cat photo essay, so that everyone can see what a lovable kitty she is. She's especially lovable at 3am when she's clawing at my head, so needy for attention. She can't ask for love at any other time of day, it seems. I guess that's her special charm, just like mine is neglecting my blog.

Finding that calling.

It's no secret to those of you who regularly read this little blog that I have been somewhat dissatisfied with and directionless in my career. I think that maybe I missed the boat when I didn't go to Boston College for a Masters in French because I didn't know what I'd do with it, and didn't think that I wanted to teach. Oh, Hindsight, how cruel you are! At this point I would give my right arm to immerse myself in French, even if it meant simply helping private school kids conjugate their irregular verbs. Instead, I turned Boston College down, worked for another year in two little public libraries in Connecticut, and applied to library schools to get a degree in archives, so that I could pursue another interest of mine (history and historical stuff) in a practical way (you know, because archives are so practical). And now here I am, starting my library career over in an academic library in access services, and while I try to psych myself out every day to get enthusiastic about the job I find myself dreaming of being somewhere (sometimes anywhere) else. I find myself fantasizing about cleaning teeth as a dental hygienist. I find myself dreaming about taking blood pressures and weights and giving shots as a nurse in a doctor office. I find myself wishing that I had followed through with either of my fleeting, more scientific goals, and become either that pharmacist or that speech pathologist that I once thought I would be. Anything. Anything but what I am doing now, because I left one gray and dreary job for this job, which I had hoped would be sunny and yellow, but instead the clouds have collected and are hovering above me. Maybe today's particularly bad. But maybe not.

On Monday I worked the 12-8am shift. I got to watch the dawn break outside the window of my office. I felt like I was doing something interesting and worthwhile, working for a library that had overnight hours and that was an important spot on campus for the students to come and learn. But today, after being told that one of my best staff is going to be taken from me and my team and put to work in another library and I have no say in the matter, well, I'm feeling a lot less positive.

Is this what working is all about? Being told what to do without being consulted? Working for a place that has so many layers of management that there is clear confusion about who does what, what is expected of whom, and how communication should happen between all necessary parties? Really, I really feel like I'd rather be cleaning teeth. There would be no one to answer to except the dentist and the patient. I'd be clocking in, scraping off plaque, cleaning instruments, asking about flavor preferences, poking at loose fillings... all of that sounds so very appealing. I'm struggling now with where I fit in my work environment, and where I see myself making my way. I was looking for a community of people from whom I could learn, and instead I find myself facing a wall of people whom at times I wonder if I can trust. I feel like this wasn't what I signed up for, but maybe it was and I just signed up for the wrong thing way back when I took out all those loans to combine my passions with my practicality. I loved to read. I loved history. I saw my logical, employed path as that of a librarian. Little did I know then that I could have read just as much as I do now if I had been a dental hygienist. I'd have had much less debt and I'd be helping people in a much more practical way than I do now. And gingivitis doesn't give me bad dreams the way people management does. Maybe dental hygiene is my calling. Maybe I have no calling. But I can tell you that these days I have not been feeling that I'm working my calling and it's really, really, really disappointing.

Spring is springing.

It's Cinco de Mayo. To celebrate, I went to the dermatologist (who looked like a 12 year-old boy and kept telling me how much he loved his iPad, but of course still loved the "idea" of the library). Better than a margarita?

Anyway, it's spring. It's officially real spring, with green grass, magnolia trees that you can smell from a block away, daffodils and tulips, the sounds of lawnmowers in the distance, and drastic temperature shifts. Spring is the season of dressing in layers, and also the season of bright and colorful flowers. Look at what we saw on Nantucket: I have never seen window boxes as beautiful as those that I saw in Nantucket. Nantucket was rife with flowers, mostly daffodils planted in random locations, but such color against the gray! One couldn't help but stop and get off one's scooter and take a photo. And one couldn't help but be inspired by the color, so when we got home from Nantucket we took a trip to Mahoney's and started to get our planting on. This is as far as we got: A good start, indeed, but more, please! I'm waiting for the house to be painted before I plant the window boxes, but we are actively thinking about plantings in the many bare spots around the yard. Nantucket and the smell of spring in the air inspired us.

Spring is also the season of first communions, and our niece, Miss Maria, had her first communion on Saturday. Doug and I spent the day with the latest little bride of Christ. Doesn't she look so happy to finally get to eat the wafer and be absolved of her sins? She told my sister that the "wafer didn't taste good," and I concur! Apparently, when Catholics take communion they are not eating a paper-thin wafer of water and flour and absolutely no flavor, but instead the body and blood and very essence of Jesus himself. It's the myth (belief?) of transubstantiation at work. I think I knew this, I must have once known this, but hearing about it on Saturday blew me away. Why do we have to eat the actual blood, body and essence of Jesus? Why can't we simply eat something that symbolizes the blood, body and essence of Jesus? To me, if we were really eating Jesus it would taste a whole lot better. Jesus was a special kind of guy. The church should perform communion with peanut butter cups. They're sweet and salty and completely wonderful, and isn't that what Jesus is supposed to be?

Who knows. Who knows what Jesus is supposed to be. I'm realizing that I'm a pretty bad Christian, because I have such a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of Jesus. There is just so much that I have to take as truth and fact that the church cannot define or explain, and I need explanation, definition, and concrete evidence. My mind is a little more scientific than I think the church would like. And that's why I gravitate towards crafts like sewing and quilting and needlepoint and those kinds of concrete crafts where I can touch and hold things and shape them and put them together to create something tangible and real. My quilt, which I have finished, by the way (yesterday! It's done and on the bed!), is something that I can think about and touch and understand. I cut pieces of material, sew them together, sew larger pieces of material together, bind it, and call it a day. Done.

And, like I said, done it is. It has taken me about two months to bind the quilt. I started working on the binding back in February. First I cut the pieces of binding and then sewed them all together into one big strip. Then I pinned the binding to the quilt and sewed it onto the front of the quilt. Once the front part was sewn on, I folded the binding around the rough edge of the quilt and sewed it onto the back. I have no photos of sewing the binding to the back of the quilt, because it involved me hand-sewing, which is a lot less interesting than me using the sewing machine. But, the end result was this: The binding sewn onto the front and the binding sewn onto the back. And now the quilt is washed (and did not fall apart in the washing machine! I consider that a great achievement) and on our bed. This quilt is no professional job, that's for sure, but that is the whole point. It's homemade, looks homemade, and serves its purpose well. I already have several t-shirts waiting to be put to good use in another quilt. Seems I'm a glutton for punishment!

Nantucket.

I’m not sure what it is about Nantucket that I love so much. I just identify myself with it. I identify my past with it. I associate fond memories with the island, with the landscape, the look and feel of the island, and with the history. I associate the good parts of my childhood with Nantucket. But in truth, very little of my childhood was actually spent there, and my identity as one who vacationed there as a child is really based more on my sister’s memories, and my mother’s memories, than of my own.

My sister and mother talk often of Nantucket and of their memories there. They stayed at 2 Ash Street, and they would go back with my uncle Barry on extended visits during my sister’s youth. I myself recall being there only two or three times as a young person, meaning pre-college, and I have been back only three times post-college. While that may seem like quite a few times to go to the same vacation spot, it’s not, really, not if you compare it to how many times I have been to Crystal Lake in New Hampshire, or how many times I have been to Cape Cod. Yet somehow I feel like Nantucket is a piece of me, or that I am a piece of it, and I hold my own vague and foggy memories of the island, along with the stories that my sister and mother tell, close to me. Doug asked me what my family does when we are on Nantucket, as he wanted to relive the family experience, and I answered him with things that my family has done, but not necessarily things that I have done, and so these things are not necessarily my traditions. It’s my sister who raves about the cheese soup and curly fries at the Brotherhood, yet we went here in search of those foods (only the fries are still on the menu) in order to recreate this supposed family tradition. It’s my mother who talks of the house at 2 Ash Street, and of the memories there; I never was inside, was not even born when there was any tangible connection to the house. Yet I stood outside it this weekend and Doug took my photo, capturing for us this family tradition, this link to the family past, that I was never a part of.

I was eager to take Doug out to ‘Sconset, to roam that more remote part of the island, but I have no real memories of being there, not until that one early January day in 1998 when my mother, brother, uncle, and I flew to Nantucket, just for the day, and stood on the windy ‘Sconset beach, staring out at the winter ocean. I think we stayed out near ‘Sconset once when I was young, in a house rented by my uncle, the whole brood of us, cousins and all. All that I remember of that trip was someone wearing a jersey nightgown with blue piping around the hems, blue whales on a white background blowing red waterspouts. And of eating popcorn before dinner, my first real introduction to appetizers. And of there being a pond near the rented house, and of there being a path we would walk down, lined with prickly sea grass and beach roses, to get to the ocean, which was bitterly, bitterly cold. Of course, I could be confusing this path with the path that we would walk to get to the beach at my aunt’s Connecticut cottage on the Long Island Sound; there were roses along that path, too. But these memories I associate with Nantucket, so to me they are the Island. And now, I have to somehow fit Doug into these memories.

This time on Nantucket Doug and I saw the Sankaty lighthouse, which was never part of the Nantucket of my memory. We rode Vinos along Milestone Drive and Polpis Road, two roads that meant nothing to me before this trip. Two mornings I woke up early and jogged out to Brant Point and walked along the small beach there, watching the fog veil the harbor; jogging and Brant Point were never parts of my Nantucket history. Neither was staying at the Sherburne Inn. Neither was dining at American Seasons. Not renting scooters, the Old Mill, the Quaker Burial Ground, or going to Easter service at the Congregational Church, either. These were new experiences, adult experiences, that now I have to somehow mix with the picture of Nantucket that I have had in my mind, that of my youth, my family’s past, my life without Doug. What does Nantucket mean now? How do I now relate to this place? I’m still not sure what to think, or, more importantly, what to feel. But at least these memories are all mine now. Whatever experiences I have now I share with Doug, and I won't be able to confuse them with stories from my mother or stories from my sister. They are our experiences and our memories, and Nantucket can be our place now, too.

Pale Avacado.

Dear Blog,

It's not you, it's me. I've strayed from you for the violin. What free time I had before to take photos and write insipid posts I now spend screeching away at the violin. But I have only three more lessons left, and once I am only practicing for myself and not for the show of my teacher I will neglect this new interest and will come back to you again. This phase will pass, but with time.

In the meantime, let me catch you up on some of the things going on around here. Like our newly stained window. And our newly painted kitchen. And our newly painted hallway.

Because we had to stain the new window in the kitchen, I thought this might be a good opportunity to trade in the strawberry-pink walls for something a little more vegetable. Less sugar, more fat. So goodbye pink kitchen, hello green kicthen (and hello stained window).

Before (or during):


After:


Note the window in those two photos. Let me tell you how dangerous stain is. It gets everywhere. And it stains stuff. It's a horrid product to use - effective, but effective in the way that petroleum is effective to power our cars or heat our houses. My poor mother had window-staining duty, and she was like Flipper flipping about in the water, splashing everything with brown fingerprints. It was not her fault; I did it, too, when I arrogantly thought that I could be neater. Stain is just not your friend, even if the end result looks pretty darn good.

And then there was the hallway. My mother cannot tell the difference in the colors, the before and after, but I can. It's a subtle difference, very subtle, but such an important difference.

Look closely at the before photo. If you focus around the light switch, you may be able to better see the shading on the wall. The brighter color is the before. The calmer color is the after.



When done, the walls looked so creamy. The new look inspired me to switch up our art, so now the harbor scene from my uncle Peter is in the hall, the ocean scene from my parents (by way of Uncle Barry) is in the guest room, and the Guinness girl, who was once in the hall, is sitting on the floor in the guest room (sorry, no photo!). We haven't dealt with her yet. Give us time. We'll figure out a good home for her. I'm thinking the basement. Beer and girls and basements go together somehow.

But, lest you think that the only thing that my industrious family and I did that weekend was prime and paint the kitchen and vestibule, paint the hallway, and stain the kitchen window, let me set you straight. My brother, Brother Bunyan, did me and Doug an enormous favor by cutting down the shrubs that were growing along the side of the house along the driveway. Goodbye shrubs. Hello fresh start and painted house. Soon. We still have to figure out what we are going to plant in place of those shrubs (and the shrubs that we took down last summer in the front of the house), and we also have to still come up with a color to paint the house (or maybe just keep it the same?), but we'll get there. Soon. Things just take time around here. We're like the giant tortoise exhibit at the zoo. We get to where we want to go eventually, but it sure does take us a while.

Until next time, my neglected friend.

Sincerely,
Roadielocks