The wettest June

This June, the weatherman said, has been the wettest on record for our area. And I believe it. Everything around me is soaked and humid and muddy. Ugh.

According to the newscast, it's rained for 18 days this June, and so far this year has dumped more than 28 inches of water on us. Of course, we have nothing to complain about compared to all those other areas here in Ohio and beyond where there has been severe and tragic flooding. But both my husband and I are rather tired of this gringo version of Macondo.

In our house in the tiny city, the rain has meant a lot of corre corre to prevent a leak that we can't seem to plug up in the basement. It's not a major problem except when the rains become tropical storm-like (which has been the case with the recent storms that have passed by), and then we have a small catarata.

I called a basement water-proofing service and they said they don't deal with those kinds of leaks and that the only thing we could do was caulk the hell out of it and, if that didn't work, pour a new set of concrete stairs outside the house (from where the leak originates). That was helpful (can you hear the sarcasm dripping?).

Here at the little apartment in the woods at my small college on the hill, wetness means more creepy creatures trying to make their home inside my home. Tonight I evicted the fifth or sixth "house centipede," a tiny monster whose looks are pretty awful but which (thankfully) doesn't fly.


Still, I keep my Buddhist pledge, and despite being the bug psycho that I am, I manage to get them into my insect-eviction jar and out of the apartment as soon as I catch them. Recently, I also evicted an insect that looked like a cross between a wasp and a fly, which appeared to be carrying something in its jaws. When I got it into the trusty jar, it dropped its baggage and I saw that it was a dead spider. I felt bad about depriving it of its hard-won meal but it shouldn't have thought about making a life here in my apartment in the first place.

So far I haven't had to kill anything but that doesn't mean I won't. There was a huge (about an inch and a half big) mosquito-looking thing (except it was brown, not black) flying around a few nights ago and I chased it with the escoba until I lost it. I found it a few days later cowering on one of the legs of the kitchen table and, deciding to spare it, got it into my trusty jar and out of the apartment.

It's been hard keeping to my Buddhist creed, especially when every morning some type of spider falls on my head when I open the back or the front doors. The feeling of having something alive and multi-limbed scrambling around in my curly hair is pretty disgusting so you can imagine my alarm each and every morning this happens. I'm guessing the spiders (mostly "Daddy Longlegs") are seeking refuge from the wetness and are going to the top of the door frames for warmth.

I'm sure hoping this wet spell ends soon and we get some real summer, except I hesitate to wish for that since in Ohio that means we'll go from floods to drought in a matter of minutes. Like Toni Morrison says, seasons in Ohio are "theatrical." Each one is decidedly a prima donna.

This is the last week of the summer program and the weatherman is forecasting rain again for the weekend. I hope July doesn't become a carbon copy of June, and that summer finally decides to grace us with its presence.

(Tonight I have the heat on -- yes, the heat -- because the temperature is expected to plummet to the low 50s).

Sigh. That's all I have to say about that.

Tranquila

The Ruster Buster is doing fine, gracias a Dios, sans his bolitas bolitas. The surgery went well earlier this week and on Tuesday my husband brought the two old mutts to rejoin me in the little apartment in the woods at the small college on the hill. It's been getting back to business as usual since then.

Rusty wasn't very enthusiastic about his walks yesterday but he took to them with a little bit of his usual glee today, tail wagging high in the air, a grin on his old, graying face, and a bit of a bounce on his step. He seems somewhat mellower and a little less cranky than he was before being neutered, but that may still be that he's recovering from having been completely doped up before and during the surgery.

Still, a friend was telling me today how her dog completely changed after he was snipped. That he became more affectionate and lost all his aggressiveness. I'm going to feel real stupid if this dog becomes more normal after he's been neutered since we could've (and should've) done this more than a decade ago. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, I'm nearing the end of the second week of my blitzkrieg not-a-second-to-spare summer program and, while I'm having a lot of fun with the students and my team teacher (who turned a very young 40 yesterday), I'm always playing catch-up. I didn't much enjoy that part of it last year, and it's been no different this time around since it means that almost every minute of my day, from the moment I awake at 6:20 a.m. to the time the dogs and I retire around 11 p.m. is taken up with something that must get done. Don't get me wrong, there are lulls here and there (like right now), and in the end, the experience is totally worth it, of course. And I'm even a little ashamed of whining since that's the way many people (especially those with children) live their lives.

But I'm totally looking forward, after next week is over, to the break that July will bring. Then there will be not only no dissertation, but also no teaching and no doing much of anything important or relevant, except spending time with my husband, my kitties and my old mutts. And finally starting on the new translation of War and Peace! Time will stretch ahead of me, open and pliable, like it hasn't been since we moved here seven years ago.

Shortly before I left my office today, after another full day of teaching and office hours and planning and grading, I was told that a letter on college letterhead is on its way, confirming me as Assistant Professor of English. I almost feel like pinching myself because I worked so long and so hard for this, and when it's finally here it somehow doesn't feel real. Oh, but it is. And that's the funnest part of it all.

As this day comes to a close, the Ruster Buster is snoozing placidly on the living room rug, while Geni snores loudly in the kitchen. A storm has just moved through and the rumbles of thunder are distant and quiet enough that they don't disturb the dogs or me. The pat-pat-pat of the rain outside is soothing. All is tranquilo with my loved ones, human and furry ones alike, gracias a Dios. All is tranquilo in my little world tonight, thanks be to God.

Rains and storms

Today I watched a squirrel use its tail as an umbrella. The driving rain from an incoming storm was pelting it so hard that it squinted its onyx beads of eyes, but it didn't stop eating.

The winds whipped and disheveled it, but it didn't stop eating. This was one purposeful squirrel and I spent a few minutes sitting in our dining room, watching it relish the seed I'd put out on the deck after I noticed that it seemed to be frantically searching for food, even between the floorboards.

Last night, the dogs and I came up to our house in the little city after a long day first of teaching and then of attending the Festival Latino with the students and program colleagues. My husband and I have gone in previous years and I've always enjoyed beelining it to the Puerto Rican kiosk to feed my eternal hunger for alcapurrias, pastelillos, and tostones. I rarely eat those even when I'm in Puerto Rico, so the festival provides a once-a-year reason to break my otherwise strict dietary rules.

This year, however, to the dismay and opposition of Latin@ leaders in Ohio, organizers decided to downsize the festival and charge $1 for admission. The 20 or so booths of food, which used to include Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Colombian, Mexican, Venezuelan, Salvadorean and even Spanish fare (there used to be these fabulous churros), were drastically pared down to only four. When we finally made it into the reduced area allocated to the festival, which was already overflowing with people, the lines in front of the food kiosks were 50-bodies long.

My poor husband, who's a vegetarian, had to content himself with a $5 fruit cup that included half a lime he wasn't sure what to do with and some mango slices that looked quite unripe. I spent almost $20 for my coveted alcapurrias, pastelillos and tostones and for some mango/lemon Italian ice. Not the most balanced of meals, I know, and I'll have to workout hard next week to undo the caloric damage I did in one evening.

When I asked one of the program coordinators today whether she'd enjoyed herself at the festival, she said that by the time they made it through the line to get food from one kiosk, the Health Department shut it down. They apparently told the kiosk owners that they either had to stop preparing one of the items they were serving or shut down and the owners opted for the latter. I guess you don't mess around with the Health Department.

"Which kiosk was that?" I asked, with a premonition.

"You're going to be upset," she said.

"The Puerto Rican kiosk!" I guessed.

I didn't get sick from what I ate (everything seemed to be cooked just right, as it has been in past years at the exact same kiosk) but I was not surprised about what happened since this festival was a total disappointment. Some of the students, who didn't get a chance to buy any food at the festival, had to stop at a fast-food place to get something to eat before returning to the small college on the hill.

What a letdown, indeed. I had talked it all up to the students and to everyone who hadn't been there before, so I ended up feeling rather foolish. Still, almost any excuse to be around a huge crowd of Latin@s in this barren Latin@-less state is a good one in my book, so I'm glad we supported it.

Tomorrow, I go back to the small college on the hill sans the dogs, because Rusty is getting neutered (after 14 years of "intactness"!) on Monday. He's developed a hard-to-cure prostate infection, which might require eventual surgery and rather than taking him repeatedly to the vet, which is traumatic for him each and every time, we opted to do what might ultimately turn out to be the necessary treatment to cure the infection: neutering. We should've done it before, I know, and I hope that even at this late date it will help calm down his anxious-aggressive nature.

Still, I'm worried that because he's such an old dog he might not survive the surgery so I'm going to pray and hope for the best. The old viejolo is my most faithful peludo partner so I'll pray hard that all will go well and that, later that day, I'll be able to come down to get him and Geni, and take them back with me to our little apartment in the woods at the small college on the hill. Once there, I hope they'll each go to their favorite bed and snooze happily away, as they do each and every day we're there.

Like that squirrel I saw today, my plan for Monday is to squint against the driving rain and pretend that the storm isn't raging around me while I do what I have to do.

Isn't it ironic?

There is a certain irony, a colleague remarked today, in the fact that while I got a Ph.D. partly so that my teaching schedule wasn't as grueling as when I taught high school, my first teaching job after the doctorate has me teaching, at least for these next three weeks, an exhausting 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule every single weekday (except Fridays, when I don't hold office hours in the afternoon).

Although my team teacher and I end the day con la lengua por fuera, as we say in Puerto Rico, we're both equally pleased because we have a great group of students, and each day has gone by quickly and rewardingly.

While I wasn't too excited about teaching again since I didn't get much of a break after defending, getting the Monster approved, and thereby becoming Dr. G, the moment I walked into the classroom once more, and got my show on the road, I felt como pez en el agua. Teaching is what I was born to do, there's absolutely no doubt about that.

To honor the fact that I've graduated in more ways than one from novice and apprentice to scholar and doctor of letters (well, of philosophy, of which I don't know much, actually), I've decided to wean myself from being such a control-freak this summer and instead of exhausting myself further with prep work for a class I've already taught, and a text (Beloved), which I pretty much know inside and out, I'm making notes on what I think it's important to discuss and letting the energy and the synergy of the classroom (along with what my excellent team teacher contributes) do the trick.

So far, so good. The strategy is working very well and I'm really enjoying the experience, especially since I know that once these three weeks are over I finally get a real break. That's when I'll have more than a month to tackle War and Peace, to watch Oprah and all the movies I've missed, to write a short story that I've been mulling over, and to make plans for fall.

Sometimes ironies are necessary reminders that what we have and what we want are often the very same thing.

Water is a good sign

That's what my wonderful advisor said when I told him that the forecast for the day of the defense called for stormy weather. And while the storms didn't come that day, they did hit yesterday.

In the afternoon, after I'd returned from the university to bask in the realization that I was DONE, all hell broke loose, and I'm hoping it was all a good sign. With winds that seemed to be close to hurricane level, with more than 330 strikes of lighting in less than an hour, the Storm of the Century came our way and it sounded like the sky was going to fall on us.

Thankfully, apart from the rattling of windows every time the thunder thundered and the anxiety of seeing it hail for a few minutes (I have it ingrained in my mind that the synonym for hail is tornado) nothing much happened until there was a sudden sound very much like the Titanic when it sank in the movie. It was like the whale-like whine that an immovable object makes when meeting an irresistible force. And the lights went out.

That was about 7 p.m. and the storm raged on for another hour or so. By the time it was done, my husband walked out and returned to report that the storm had pulled a large tree by its roots in front of a nearby house, and the tree had fallen across the road and on top of someone's parked car. In falling, the tree took down several power lines, and that must've been the sound we heard. Police cars arrived with their red and blue lights blinking, and we were sure that the electric company would follow shortly. But 10:30 p.m. came and there was no sign that we'd have electricity so we went to bed.

Gone were my hopes of spending my first night of DONE parked in front of the TV watching the finale of "Top Chef" and any and every rerun I could find that was mindless.

We awoke around 7 a.m. still without electricity and the electric company trucks didn't arrive until about 10 a.m., by which time we knew that everything in the freezer that was perishable had to be cooked and that most things in the refrigerator were now the same temperature as the inside of the house. When it was all said and done, the electricity came back around noon, just in time for me to rush out to go get my haircut (in honor of my doctorate and of summer, I've had my long hair chopped off short).

When I returned after running a few errands, the electricity was still on but the cable wasn't working. So my hopes of spending the first day after being DONE watching the finale of "Top Chef" and any rerun of anything that looked remotely brainless were also dashed.

Tomorrow, the dogs and I go back to the little apartment in the woods at my small college on the hill for a three-week intensive summer program that I'm co-teaching with a colleague. We meet the students on Sunday so we're getting together tomorrow to finalize the syllabus, etc. The TV at the little apartment in the woods only has basic cable (which means no Bravo) so my hope of catching the "Top Chef" ending will remain only a hope for the foreseeable future.

While I'm looking forward to teaching again, I would've preferred a more mellow two days before going up there. But hopefully the weekend in the woods will be much quieter and more peaceful than these past two days have been here in my little city.

I'm official!

Well, if I thought the defense was the second hardest part of this process, after writing the Monster, I was wrong. The last two days have seen me sweat the details, but the Monster was finally approved by the graduate school today, so I'm now official, for real.

Of course, doctoral candidates no longer turn in the dissertation as a Word document. No, that would be too darned easy. We have to turn it into a PDF file and then we have to upload it to OhioLink and then we have to wait to have it approved by the graduate school.

Well, out of 349 pages in that dissertation, a grad school official found that I'd spelled out Three, as in, Chapter Three, instead of writing Chapter 3, like the instructions for preparing the document say. Thus, I was told via e-mail this morning that I had to make the correction and resubmit.

That's after having spent about an hour yesterday with my recently PhDed friend, Dr. C, who was kind enough to take time from her packing and getting ready to move, to help me PDF my Monster. And that was after waiting in line for about 20 minutes at the graduate school to turn in the final forms that say I'm official.

But nothing would make me official for real until the Monster received the grad school's stamp of approval, and I had to wait until about 9 this morning to find out that Three was, indeed, the charm.

Thus, I rushed shortly thereafter to the university to work in the department's computer lab to fix the style error and re-PDF the whole darned thing. I only had until tomorrow for the end-of-quarter deadline, and missing that would've meant that I'd have to register and pay about $900-plus to enroll in summer quarter, which is precisely what I'd set out to avoid when I planned the whole dissertation calendar year a year ago. Needless to say, I was a little concerned.

Still, correcting that "mistake" gave me the chance to airbrush it here and there, and make my Monster more presentable, so I got it PDFed again and resubmitted, and after having lunch with my lovely pregnant friend, KG, I checked my Inbox and found an e-mail from the grad school waiting for me with the one word I wanted to see: "Congratulations!"

Now I feel official. Now, like the actual Monster told Victor Frankenstein, I can "Rest, Victor, rest."

The deed is done

Yesterday, my lovely pregnant friend, KG, sent me flowers and so did my wonderful sister-in-law, so I asked my husband to capture them for posterity at the peak of their radiant and loving beauty.

To paraphrase Lady Macbeth, who said it best (though not, in her case, about an auspicious occasion):

"The deed is done, and can't be undone."

I am finally, improbably yet surely, Dr. G.