Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

Spring has finally come to northern Vermont. I am comfortably wearing short sleeves right now, and the early-flowering trees have that faint crimson or pale green haze just starting. Bobby uncovered the hillbilly hot tub yesterday; it had a big chunk of ice still floating in it, but an afternoon in the sun and it was gone. We put our vegetable seedlings out for a few hours to harden off for the first time yesterday, and Bobby got the garden beds uncovered and discovered that we had kale, leeks, carrots, and lettuce successfully overwinter under row covers, despite the fact that it got down to -30F/-34C this winter.

I freaking love this time of year.

Work continues to be exhausting, but that needs its own post. For now, I am going to waste some time before getting started on some SWG chores and do an m-thing that I stole from heartofoshun.

1. Have you ever driven an electric car? Nope.

2. Do you live in an area that is prone to tornadoes? Not anymore, thank goodness. However, Friday night, we were under a tornado watch for the first time since moving to Vermont. (And this is rare enough that it apparently made national news!) The wind was fierce: knocked over our lamp post. In Maryland, we lived in the strip just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains that was most prone to tornadoes in the area; we used to sometimes have multiple warnings in a day and had one touch down in our town while we lived there. Not Tornado Alley but quite enough for me, thank you!

3. How many closets does your house have? Four, none walk-in. We live in a single-wide trailer, so storage space is not a Thing. (However, we live in the sticks and have two sheds and a barn, so more than enough storage space.)

4. When was the last time you saw someone you went to high school with? I went to high school with Bobby and see him every day! Aside from him, I don't even remember. I went to a magnet school; we came from all corners of a large school district and ended up scattering to all corners of the Earth, and despite going to school with many brilliant people, somehow no one has figured out how to successfully host a reunion yet ... (Bobby and I have talked about hosting something here, it's so desperate!)

5. Have you ever eaten moussaka? I don't even know what it is!

6. What breed was the last dog you saw? I saw my two Golden Retrievers just a few minutes ago.

7. How long have your parents been together (or how long were they together if they no longer are)? Thirty-seven years, one year longer than I've been alive.

8. What has been your most epic cooking failure? I'm not sure. I don't cook a lot; that's Bobby's household job. I did make vanilla ice cream once and forget to put in the sugar ...

9. Do you read other people's survey answers on here? Totally! Let me know if you grab it from me; I'm terrible at following any social media these days.

10. What's your bedtime routine? I stop working on whatever at 10 o'clock. Bobby and I do something brainless and relaxing for an hour. In the winter, that's usually watching TV. In the summer, that's usually sitting on the deck or in the hillbilly hot tub with a drink and the stars.

11. Do you agree with the saying 'distance makes the heart grow fonder'? No. My unfortunate experience, after moving here, has been that distance makes me easier to forget about, at least based on the fact that I don't even seem to exist to my parents anymore.

12. Have you ever been to Mexico? No.

13. Do you have a bad temper? Not really. I have worked hard to wrest control of my emotions. It's essential for a teacher and especially for a teacher of emotionally disabled kids--who are usually Olympic-level button-pushers--which I was for five years. People often tell me how calm and patient I am, which is hilarious because it does not feel that way on the inside of my brainpan!

14. When was the last time it stormed where you live? Friday night we had our first thunderstorm of the year. There was thunder and lightning for about two hours, then the scary wind started.

15. Do you ever fact-check the things you read on the internet? Of course, all the time.

16. How long would it take you to walk to the nearest store? Probably about an hour to Thibault's in Orleans or an hour in the other direction to the Natural Market in Newport. Coventry is not a big enough town to have a store, and I live a good forty-five-minute walk outside of the village anyway.

17. What five words best describe your mother's personality? kind, generous, timid, accepting, nature lover

18. Do you know any transgender people? No.

19. What's your dream job? Exactly what I'm doing: teaching humanities in a school I love where my work serves a significant need.

20. How old were you when you got your first smartphone? I was in my early thirties. I had no interest when they were expensive, but once they came down in price, it made sense to have one. I am not against smartphones, just have very little interest in much of what they can do and tend to use mine relatively little.

21. Have you ever had a parrot sit on your shoulder? Not a full-sized parrot, no, but I've had many budgies scramble around on my shoulders.

22. In the morning, do you eat breakfast first or brush your teeth first? Teeth! I do not feel fully human until I have clean teeth.

23. What's something you had to learn the hard way? What I loved and valued. I was a bright kid with my head on wrong. I thought that success was having an impressive job and money. I realized in college that I didn't love the work I was expecting to do, and since my family didn't offer a lot of support in my education, I kind of blundered through, into an unsatisfying job, and only once my hand was forced there, went back to school for my teaching license and found that, beyond subsistence, money and especially prestige don't offer me a lot. I sometimes wish I'd realized this younger, but I'm happy in my life now, so who knows that this would have been a better road.

24. What sort of window coverings do you have in your living room? Curtains on the big windows and these accordion-looking blinds on the small.

25. Has anyone in your life ever treated you abusively? Bobby and I broke up for seven months when we were nineteen, and I had a relationship with a man who was emotionally abusive. This was also when I had my major depressive episode and all that came with it.

26. What's the weather like right now? It's warm (upper 60s), overcast, and finally not windy!

27. How long has it been since your last breakup? Well, it was the emotionally abusive guy when I was 19-20, so that would have been sixteen years ago.

28. Can you concentrate well while listening to music, or do you find it distracting? I love instrumental music on in the background when I'm doing anything that requires creativity or deep thinking. Popular/Vocal music is a distraction, especially if I'm trying to write. If I'm doing menial or tedious work, I like music that can engage me imaginatively and make the task less dull.

29. What's the name of the amusement park closest to your house? I don't even know! I think there is a theme park in Montreal; if so, that would probably be it.

30. Do you like The Rolling Stones? Some of their songs, yes.

31. What was the last single item you spent over $100 on? Jeez, I don't even know! I have very little interest in buying things. I'm more likely to spend money on an outing or a trip or even a really good meal. Most of what I buy (books, seeds/plants, the occasional item of clothing) are very small-ticket items. Possibly it was Sherman, my used Jeep, last fall?

32. What's something you've been struggling with lately? This past week, I had terrible insomnia on Sunday night and so spent the rest of the week fighting exhaustion. Exhaustion is probably A-number-one. I get exhausted to the point of pain sometimes and struggle too with feeling like I'm failing in other areas of my life that I don't have time or energy for, like writing, calligraphy, fandom ...

33. What was the last caffeinated drink you had? I had a cup of coffee with breakfast this morning.

As seen at Oshun's LJ and apparently done by half of everyone ... I have been working hard during the day to get ready for the school year but all work and no play makes Dawn a dull girl, right?

Pick the number(s) of the questions you'd like me to answer about my writing. (Like Oshun, I love talking about writing. Most writers do, I think!)

I will try to likewise be good about striking off numbers as I answer them.

1) is there a story you're holding off on writing for some reason?

2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favourite scenes first? something else?

( The rest ... )

As seen at Oshun and Rhapsody ...

( A clean house is a sign of a wasted life ... )

heartofoshun gave me the letter S for this here M-type thing. If you would like a letter, please ask!

I started this on the train to Stowe, and it took two full days to finish it. Wow.

Something I hate: Stop sign shenanigans! By which I mean the people who, upon arriving at a four-way stop, dispense with the rules of right-of-way that are designed to keep traffic moving and decide to be all "helpful" and wave other cars through ahead of them. All this does is hold people up! No one wants to plunge to their death into the intersection, so everyone ends up staring at everyone else, trying to figure out who is waving the most sincerely and is therefore least likely to say "fuck it" and just gun it through the stop sign. It drives me crazy. Just follow the right-of-way rules and let everyone be on their way as quickly as possible. That's why someone bothered to come up with the rules in the first place! If they didn't mean for them to be followed, we would just leave four-way stops a matter of etiquette, like holding open doors. The only thing worse is people who do the same thing in traffic circles. Horror.

Something I love: The sea. When I first read Tolkien, I absolutely understood the concepts of the sea-longing and of hearing the Great Music in the sound of water. There is no place where I am happier and more inspired than on the seashore. I haven't seen the ocean for almost three months now, and the sea-longing is upon me. (Bobby knows it: We'll be going to Ocean City the first weekend that Liberty is closed.) The closest I have to the numinous is on the edge of the ocean, hearing and touching the water. (Next is the forest. I feel a part of something larger in those places, both insignificant and timeless.)

Somewhere I've been: Scotland, twice, while visiting my sister and her wife in the north of England. My favorites of the places we've been were Stirling and Edinburgh, in that order. Bobby was researching his thesis (on the Scottish Wars of Independence) when we were in Stirling, and we were on and off the little tourism bus going to different historical sites so much that the driver got to know us and waved us goodbye when he saw us walking to the train station to leave. Edinburgh was beautiful and a very knowledgeable server in a whiskey bar we went to turned me on to Quinta Ruban Scotch, for which I remain extremely grateful!

Somewhere I'd like to go: This was the hardest one to answer. Let's go with Sweden here. I'm interested in medieval Germanic literature and history. It's as good a place as any to geek over that kind of thing.

Someone I know: Sharon/ssotknapsack, my sister and second best friend in the world. I am so happy that she found such a wonderful wife and has such great in-laws but I do miss her every day!

A film I like: I'm going to kind of cheat and say short films. Because I am a short film addict. I use short films a lot of times when teaching literary concepts to my students, and this is a time-consuming undertaking for me because I end up on a short film archive and watching things that I know really won't work for the lesson but that I find interesting. Last weekend, Bobby and I went to the Majestic in Gettysburg to see the nominees for the live action short film category at the Oscars. OMFG. I loved every last one of them and managed to go from feeling like I was being punched repeated in the solar plexus from the inside and maybe even crying JUST A LITTLE don't think I'm going all soft now to laughing so hard it hurt. Okay, since I'm kind of cheating in this category, I'll recommend one for the letter S: I use the darkly humorous Spin to teach theme to my students; it's one of my favorites and they always love it too. I've watched it twenty times now if I've watched it once, and it never gets old.

A book I love: The Silmarillion--a no-brainer here! This has been the book that has had without a doubt the biggest impact on my life. It knocked me out of my narrow little literary world and made me realize I wanted to devote my life's work to literature and writing. Besides, association with the Silm fandom has kept me entertained for over ten years now and made me many wonderful friends.

Other life-changing books: The Scarlet Letter was the book I read in eleventh grade that made me realize I was allowed to like the books we read in school. I think I was the only person in my class who liked it, and I think I had something of a literary crush on the Reverend Dimmesdale in all his angst. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was the first work I read that made think I might want to learn more about and study medieval literature. It is still my favorite work to teach (yes, even more than Beowulf!) and the only work I've taught to my students where we reached the end of an assigned section and they begged to keep reading.

An Author: Stephen King. I haven't read him in forever and am not sure how I would feel about him now, but he was one of the authors that first coaxed me from the YA to the Adult section of the library. (Which probably partly explains my proclivities as an adult reader and writer!) I remember seeing a TV ad for a collection of his books; the ad described his books as terrifying, which was all I needed to hear to know that I wanted to read them. I'd worked my way through the R.L. Stine Fear Street series and everything written by Christopher Pike and Lois Duncan, and I was ready for an upgrade. Some of his books that are considered classics didn't do much for me (Carrie, Pet Sematary, Cujo), but others stuck with my for years, and I probably read them a dozen times (It and The Stand, as well as the novellas The Long Walk, The Body, and The Mist). He wrote interesting characters (including young people) who transcended the popular-nerdy-quirky triumvarate of stock characters familiar from the YA fiction I'd been reading. Go figure, his characters attracted me the most.

I am notably not listing Shakespeare for this one. Kick me out of the profession of teaching English if you must! Shakespeare is enjoyable but hasn't impacted me in the way that many other authors have. At the school where I student-taught, the English faculty fought each year over who would teach "Brit lit" the following year because everyone wanted to teach Shakespeare and Jane Austen. I would have had a dog in that fight but because I would have wanted to teach Beowulf and the Middle English poets!

So there is this m-type thing going around everywhere (EVERYWHERE!!1! okay, I'm being melodramatic a bit ...) that asks you to post the first line of your last 21 stories. This seems interesting and also mindless enough to do after spending the afternoon out in the sun digging in the dirt. (Which is better than out in the dirt digging in the sun.)

I'm just going with Silmfic because I'm honestly too tired right now to figure out how anything original I might have written would fit into this chronology. I'm sure there's original stuff in there. (I know there is.)

( 21 First Lines! )

Before I call it quits for the night, I want to wish a very happy Mother's Day to the moms on my flist! I'm not a mom (being a pet owner and teacher don't count, even though well-meaning people try to bring me into the Mother's Day umbrella for both!) and have no intention of being one because y'all do a job that I am just not cut out for doing. So I admire what you do and send a shout out to all the smart, creative, and cool moms reading this! :) I hope you were generously treated today.

We got some of the snow from the storm to the south of us, just enough that schools were two hours delayed this morning. This meant that I missed teaching first and second periods, which were fully planned. Tomorrow is a half-day, so I only have to teach first and second periods. Which means that this is one of those rare moments in my life when I have no immediate planning to do.

So I'm going to do this writerly m-type thing that I've seen ... well, everywhere.

( Read more... )

I got this m-word-thing from heartofoshun. Here's how to play:

1. Reply to this post with "UNICORNS", and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

( My Five, Chosen by Oshun )

I have about half of my student teaching application done! Woohoo! So I am taking a break from schoolwork to gak this alphabet m-word thing from heartofoshun.

( ABC M-word Thing )

Wot? Dawn making three posts in a week?? Yes indeedy, but don't get too excited; this was my whole week off between semesters so I have time for this. Online university is awesome in that you can sit on your duff in pink and yellow plaid PJs and leopard-print slippers while drinking wassail and "attending class" (not that I've ever done that *ahem*), but less awesome in that there are no holidays, no breaks; the professors might be nice enough to bump back assignment due dates for biggies like Christmas but not necessarily. (None of my undergrad professors did last year; most of my grad professors did this year. Weird.) So I'm living it up this week because, come Monday, it's back to breakneck pace.

Anyway, I got the last of my grades back today and *drumrrrrroll* I would make my namesake Hermione proud. I got a 100% in Educational Psychology. (Which I damn sight should have gotten since my BA is in psychology! Anything less would be an embarrassment.) I did a bit poorer in Intro to Curriculum and Instruction and Secondary Teaching Strategies: only a 99.8% in those classes. I must work harder next semester.

The only thing irksome about this is that the only non-A grade I've gotten at my current university was an A- in ... the Tolkien class I took last fall. I'm still pissed about that because it had nothing to do with what I knew or how much effort I put in (quite a bit on the former and scads on the latter) but with tricksey gotcha! grading. The professor himself said of my writing, "This is graduate-level work!" (It was an undergraduate class.) And then gave me an A- based on a true-false exam where several of his own questions he answered incorrectly. Fark.

I don't usually pay much mind to LJ's Writer's Block since it is little more than an excuse to push more ads on those of us who have Basic accounts, but today's was actually pretty decent, so what the hell. I am living it up this week and haven't done an m-word in hella days.

( Has anyone ever unfriended you without explanation? Did you ask why? Have you ever deleted someone from your friend list without saying why? )