Kitties and Claws

So, it turns out that cats get ingrown nails. I've never seen anything like it before. Ashley's dewclaw curved all the way around and pierced into the pad. It also got about 10 times as thick. It's supposed to take a couple months for something like that to happen but I trim claws about once an month and Ashley had been in the vet less than a month ago. I suppose that it's possibly related to the new insulin treatments.

In any case, I took Ashley to the vet who cut the claw out of his pad. There was a lot of clotted blood at the nail still looks pretty weird. They gave him an injection of antibiotics and one of a pain killer. We also put a pheromone collar on him. In theory collar should mellow him out. He's been getting aggressive with Thomas again and keeping me up at night pawing at doors. It is supposed to be like giving the cat a beer. I hope it works, if we can't get him mellowed out, we aren't going to be able to keep him.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

I picked up The Windup Girl  on a whim at an Ollies. I'd never heard of it, but it won a Nebula and a Hugo, so I felt it was a safe bet. It took me 11 days to read. I guess most people would think that's pretty quick  For me, that's almost glacially slow. I generally finish a book every other day or so. Even non-YA I tend to get through in about three days on average. 11 days is an eon for me. I got pretty frustrated about it too.

I almost put it down in favor of something I could get some momentum going on. I'm glad I stuck with it though. The Windup Girl is a grim look at what GMO companies like Monsanto could do to the world given a chance. The action is set in Thailand where isolationist policies have helped the country survive the collapse of the ecosystem, the melting of the ice caps, and a succession of bio-engineered plagues and blights. As in any setting like this, the balance of power is tenuous and political intrigue tends to be a key element of the plot.

The narrative follows several points of view. Anderson Lake is a calorie man which is something like an industrial spy for the for the big agricultural engineering corporations who wants to crack the secret to Thailand's food independence.  Hock Seng is a Chinese refugee from Malaya that works for Anderson Lake. He however has plans to regain what he lost in Malaya and he's not too pick about how he gets it. Emiko is a windup girl or artificially engineered and created human. She calls herself a new person and is genetically programmed towards obedience. Jaidee is an enthusiastic government official who believes in his duty and is ruthlessly honest. Kanya is Jaidee's subordinate...she has secrets.

None of these characters is a hero. Each is a fully imagined character with both admirable and sinister qualities. The way they are presented is almost clinical. It is almost like Bacigalupi doesn't intend the reader to feel any specific sympathy for any of them. This detachment allows the story to really be about what happens in the world as the precarious position of the Thai wobbles and then falls apart. While many of the characters do distasteful things, all the protagonists are given backstories rich enough to make their decisions believable.

It's a story filled with tension and anxiety. It's in the characters and it's in the setting itself. There is a constant threat of invasion or pandemic. While I'm happy to be done with it, I'm glad I made it all the way through. The resolution was worth the time I spent on it.

Calculation

Teacher Math.

If I can sleep 7 hours a night
and I have 7 hours of classes
that's 14 hours (still plenty of time)

Add to it 1 hour of school administrative odd jobs
and 3 hours of grading
1 hour for lesson prepping
1 hour for transportation
1 hour for cooking, preparing, and eating food

That leaves 3 hours of down time and family time.

It seems like it should all work doesn't it?

So why does it feel like I've been wringing an extra hour from each day and sleeping less than 5 hours a night?

Recovery

I admit to being a little frustrated with how slow my recovery from this stupid sinus infection is. I get that I was really sick, but I still feel like I should be back up to my old energy levels. I'm just not. I'm hoping one more good night of sleep will do it.

In other news, I've been reading the same book. . . for almost a whole week, and I'm only halfway through. I'm stuck in Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. This frustrates me too. It's a good book, I just can't seem to make progress. It's a grim sci fi set in Thailand after the ice caps melt and the planet's ecosystem has fallen apart. I really want to finish it, but I'm not used to it taking this long.

From a pragmatic standpoint, everything else is in pretty good shape, but I can't get rid of the anxiety that I've fallen behind. I'm a little behind in grading but no where near as badly as some years. I just can't seem to get settled. Too many changes I guess.

Apologies, Blog Delayed on Account of the Plague

It  all started two weeks ago. Heading into 12 week grades and the drama production, I started having a hard time sleeping and worked 13 and 14 hour days between school tasks and home. The department head stuff isn't too much really, it is all just very very new to me and therefore a source of stress. On top of it all, I tried to revive my daily writing habit, which in hindsight was frightfully bad timing.

As a result of all that, by the time I hit the very long day that was the Drama show, I was already very worn down. That was a 15 hour day and we finally made it home around 9 PM. The next morning, I felt like I was under a wet wool blanket all day long. I woke up with a stuffy nose, but that's not unusual after so little sleep. By Wednesday I was still feeling fatigued and I thought I might have a cold. Come Thursday lunchtime, I was hearing everything like it was underwater, my muscles all ached, and I had sharp shooting pains in my right ear. Oh, and I was so dizzy that I had to concentrate to walk a straight line.

So, not being an idiot, I went to an urgent care. It took all of about 10 minutes for the doctor to decide I had a minor sinus infection and an infected right ear. It was all deemed relatively minor because I had no fever. Aside from the dizziness, I could have gone back to work. But, because of the dizziness I found myself on steroids, antibiotics and an over the counter decongestant. I had every intention of resting up Thursday night and heading back into school for Friday.

Well, best laid plans and all that. I woke up in the middle of the night Thursday shivering and cold under three blankets. I was so dizzy the room was spinning laying down. When I took my temperature around 2 AM, it had shot up to 103. Clearly, I wasn't going in to the school on Friday. (If I tried, I think Mom was planning to sit on me).

I spent Friday in a weird stupor watching T.V. The time passed weirdly and I think that I dozed on and off. Saturday was better, but I'd developed a rattling cough and I was tired. I tried to get things done, but kept finding myself sitting down and staring off into the middle distance. Today, I am on the mend officially. The cough is still with me, but it's productive now and I don't feel quite so weighed down. I probably should, still take it easy, but I feel up to getting things crossed off my various lists.

It's been so long since I've been truly sick that I'd kind of forgotten what it was like.  The last time I was this sick was before Thomas was born...so about five years ago. Generally I get a cold and I shake it in a couple days without medicines.

Anyway, with all that going on, I simply forgot about writing the blog and I'll have to restart the daily writing project again as things calm down some.

Pollen

I'm beginning to think I have seasonal allergies. I didn't when I came down to Atlanta. At that point the only things I was allergic to was rodents and leaf mold. However, today I'm absolutely stuffed. I suppose it's possible that I have a cold. I'm not sure which is better.

Exhaustion

I am exhausted. I am also really proud of my kids right now. Both shows came off brilliantly last night. The actors performed at a level we've never seen in rehearsals and as a result, both shows really popped. "Digging Up the Boys" had me cringing in all the right places and audience members in tears. "Appropriate Audience Behavior" had the audience laughing their butts off.

Of course, there were things that didn't happen quite right or things that didn't quite work, but it hardly matters at this moment. It is done and they did a good job.

It's days like this that I remember why I love my job. I also remember how exhausting it can be.

Last Day of Rehersals

It was the last day of rehearsals
and all through the theater
not a student was stirring,
not even the diva.
The curtains were hung
on the casters with care
in hopes that the theater gods
would smile there.

Good Night

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

An "antihero" is a central character/protagonist in a book or movie who is devoid of all the usual characteristics of a hero. One of Pratchett's main characters, Rincewind, is an antihero. Rincewind is a self-proclaimed coward. He's refined running away to the level of a sport. As a wizard, he's abysmal. The closest thing to a heroic skill he's got is a natural facility for learning different languages. Every book with Rincewind in it involves a lot of running away and ending up in the right place anyway.

This might be the best Rincewind novel so far out of the six I've read. I like Rincewind any way. I didn't when I was a teenager, Rincewind is one of those characters that requires the reader to have a certain amount of life experience before he can be appreciated.

At the end of last novel, Interesting Times, Rincewind washed up on the hypothetical/lost continent of Ecksecksecksecks (also written XXXX). This continent is the Discworld corollary to Australia. As it turns out, Rincewind's bizarre life and exposure to large amounts of magical energy has left him with a personal field that tends to warp reality a little around him. In this case, because he washed up in Ecksecksecksecks in the present, he causes something to happen far back in the past at the creation of the continent that he now has to fix. He's told this by a giant anthropomorphized kangaroo. Rincewind responds by running away. Of course, he accidentally runs in the direction he needs to go in order to fix it anyway, so no worries.

In the meantime, the Librarian of the Unseen University is very sick and the wizards need to know his name in order help him. However, as an orangutan he can't tell them and no one seems to have it written down. Because Rincewind used to be the Librarian's assistant, the wizards figure they need to find Rincewind. In the process the wizards get themselves stranded on Mono Island in the distant past and meet the God of Evolution who is the only god on the disc that doesn't require believers to exist.

Pratchett also plays with aboriginal dreamtime and I spotted a reference to Crocodile Dundee in there. As always, I'm sure I missed as many references as I caught. However, I really enjoyed this one and would generally recommend it to Pratchett fans.

Journal Vs. Diary

During the 17th and 18th centuries a bunch of journals and diaries were published England. It was a crazy time for London. There were multiple plague outbreaks and fire that gutted the city. The "Diary of Samuel Pepys" is in most high school Brit Lit textbooks as at least an excerpt. It became such a popular format that people like Defoe picked it up as a fictional format and some of the earliest adventure stories and sci fi are written as fictional journals in whole or in part.

I just got through teaching that unit to my seniors. This sparked an entire discussion on the practical differences between a journal and a diary. Both words are rooted in the language for "day" as in an account written on a daily basis. As such there is a lot of overlap between these closely related formats. On a practical level a diary tends to focus inward on the internal life of the writer. It tends to be filled with the minutia of daily life, emotional venting, as well as personal reaction and reflection to external events. Journal tend to focus outward on what is happening to or around the writer. While personal reflection and reaction is still a necessary part of the format, the focus should be more objective and spend more time on the recording/description of events.

For most people, it doesn't really matter what they call their collection of personal writing. The terms can be considered mostly interchangeable. For me though, while I would consider picking up a random person's journal and reading it, I would never read someone's diary. There's an implied expectation of privacy in the word "diary."

Lately, in an effort to keep up with daily posting, I've been straying closer to diary when this blog is intended to be more of a journal. I apologize for that. My personal natterings are probably really only interesting to me. I'll get it back on track.

So....

Apparently, sometimes I do better dealing when stressed when I haven't slept. I had a great day, for the most part. Mostly upbeat and I got a reasonable amount done even though I didn't sleep but an hour or so last night.

I wonder if the exhaustion strips out the extra mental cycles so in a weird way I'm more focused. I don't know... it's odd anyway. I expected to have a really challenging day, but instead I had a good one....yay.

Time for sleep now. As good a day as it was...eventually the crash cometh.

http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1079

In Need of a Good Skull...

So the thing no one tells you when you get involved with drama productions is that you are going to be in the position of having to find some truly bizarre stuff. I'm in the position of having to find a skull, pickaxes, shovels (one of which foam), fake flowers, and a set of crowns.

There's just so much stuff involved in drama, I don't think people who aren't involved realize just how much stuff is necessary. Once you have it, what do you do with it. It's not like we need a skull for every production but who wants to find a skull twice. We may need it again and it would suck to know we got rid of it. So we store it...right. Well sure, but we have almost no space to store things. So here we are...looking for a skull. Again.

Sigh

I will be relived when the show is over.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

In a vague way, I've been trying to find more literature from non American or British authors. Over time I've been picking at African literature, but I haven't had a ton of success. I greatly like Chinua Achebe, but then who doesn't. I believe strongly that reading widely and on a variety of cultures is a way of developing insight. It is also highly enjoyable. When I heard about Akata Witch I had to read it.

I tripped across Akata Witch on Book Riot. It appears on many of their lists and is billed as an African Harry Potter which I think diminishes both Harry Potter and Akata Witch. There are certainly some similarities. Both books start with very young protagonists who discover that not only magic exists but also that they can do it. Additionally, they then start training in magic and eventually run against some sort of big bad that they have to confront even though they are just children. So, yes, in the broad strokes they are similar ideas. That's where it ends though.

Akata Witch is set in Nigeria and Sunny, the main character, is an American born Nigerian. She's also an albino which is a very mystical thing. The whole magic culture described is based on African juju, although the existence of other magical traditions is accounted for. The values are different and the environment is wild, colorful, and lively. Instead of one big magical school. The four students study with a master. Education is more hands on and figure it out on your own. Which all makes for a much different feel.

I liked the veneration of knowledge for its own sake and the attitude about the important things in life. Don't get me wrong, I love the Harry Potter books and they will always be special to me. Akata Witch is just different and special in its own way.

It's really hard to describe why this book is so amazing without ruining some of the joy of discovery. I'm thrilled to have a copy in my classroom library and I was so enthusiastic about my description of it this morning that a student already has it checked out. I'm looked forward to talking with him about his impressions of it.

End of a Break

Thus ends another spring break. It was a good break. I spent a lot of time with Thomas and my family. We spent a lot of time idly working on on potty training which is going along well. It did seem like he was awfully cranky and we realized yesterday that he probably had an ear infection. We took him to the urgent care today and sure enough, he has a double ear infection. Poor kid. So now he's on amoxicillin. Hopefully this time it doesn't completely wreck his stomach.

Also this break we hit all my favorite grocery stores. I know it's probably strange to most people that I don't have one, but four favorites. We usually go to our local Publix and Sprouts and I do very much like my local stores. Publix is a pretty good all around store. I like Sprouts for the bulk bins and the occasional excellent deal on produce and meat. On a day to day basis, these two keep us supplied. However, I love going to the Dekalb Farmer's Market for produce. I like wandering their fish market and meat counters. It is also where I get my giant 2 liter tins of olive oil which does us for about six months. For the more exotic ingredients, I stock up at the Buford Highway Farmers Market. The produce is excellent, of course, but I can get fresh tofu, kimchi, and rice cakes there. I also shop there for dried mushrooms, seaweed, various specialty oils, and frozen udon and wonton wrappers. I particularly love going there on a weekday afternoon when they often have veggies bagged up in giant bags for clearance prices. I once got about five pounds of eggplants for about $2. Good stuff.

I also got a chance to wander around the Super H Mart which is another Asian grocery. I spotted some good prices on pork belly - yum!

We took Thomas to the zoo with my mom and dad. Or rather, my dad took us all. It was a great trip. Thomas has really started to enjoy looking at the animals and trying to find the more shy ones. He was ultimately more interested in the various playground areas but still it was a much better trip than last time when it was all crying and horrible hijinks with sun block. The tiger and lions were very active and I really love the primate exhibits.

I didn't get a lot of my work tasks done and I'm feeling a little stressed about that, but I think we really needed the family time.

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

I admit to being slightly fascinated to find this other side of Terry Pratchett. I'm so used to associating him with  Discworld that these YAs are an interesting change. While less all out zany, there is still a surfeit of tongue-in-cheek humor in Pratchett's YAs.

Dodger is what Pratchett calls a historical fantasy. It is set in early Victorian England when conditions for the poor in London was scarily awful. The Dodger is a sort of sewer scavenger called a tosher albeit one who is unusually clever and quick thinking. Things change for him when during a storm he hears a woman's screams and rushes to her rescue. Successfully, I might add.

The woman ends up being more than she seems, of course, and things get complicated.

In a way the appeal to this book for me, an adult, is how it works on a meta level. Pratchett uses a large number of real historical figures in his narrative. One of these figures is Charles Dickens. This leads one to the natural connection from this Dodger to the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist. Of course, this is all pure fiction, but it's amazing who knowing that influences the read of the story even for me who's never actually read the Dickens novel.

Also present is Queen Victoria (of course), Prince Albert, Sir Robert Peel, Henry Mayhew, and Benjamin Disraeli among others. While Pratchett is pretty clear about what is and is not historically based, his writing is so natural and convincing that it's easy to take it all as historical. I find that I want to read more on this age of British history.

Writing 2

I finished a short story draft today! I know it doesn't seem like much but it has been forever since I've completed any kind of draft. I'm a big one for ideas, but I'm really working on follow through.

Of course, I'm putting off a lot of other things. My procrastination is in overdrive everywhere else. I guess I'll have to really buckle down over the next couple of days.

Patina by Jason Reynolds

So, these middle reader series are just too easy to eat up. This is book two in the Track series and follows Patina who is the only girl of the four newbies to join the Defenders track team.

Patina, goes by Patty, has one of the more unusual family situations. She and her younger sister, Maddy, have been adopted by a white woman and her husband. Patty and Maddy are black, so there is some background friction about that which shows up initially in the first book Ghost. The friction isn't because her adopted mom is white, it's because Patty seems to feel like she needs to defend it. Her bio mom isn't out of the picture.

Her mother, Beverly Jones, is still alive and still involved in Patty's life but because she's a diabetic double amputee, she can't take care of herself and two little girls. That's where the adopted family comes in. They are actually Patty and Maddy's uncle and aunt who adopted them when things started to get out of hand. Like I said, unusual in fiction, but probably pretty common in real life.

So, while this is still about the running, this volume comes out a little more like a family drama. Patty's got a lot of choked down rage and anger. She's going to a predominantly white prep school and she's got a lot of static in her head about it. Strangely, while Patty feels out of place at the school, it doesn't seem like it's really a race issue. It feels more like a socioeconomic division which while it does often break along race lines, skin color doesn't really seem to be at the core of the alienation.

Clearly, there are more race themes in this book. While Ghost is definitely black, in his book it was really more about being in poverty than any kind of class friction. Patina is definitely struggling with some internalized friction.

I think Ghost was a more compelling character, but Patina is a good book too. I guess I just get tired of girl drama and there's no way to write this without girl drama.

Writing 1

So if my goal for April is to start back writing, I've made a good start of it. I've only managed about 700 words a day, but still it's a place to begin from. My bigger issue is how long it's taking to get those words out. I suppose I shouldn't be impatient with myself. I'm pretty seriously rusty after all, but still I remember being able to bang out 1000 words in a bout 20 minutes.

I'll keep working at it.

Ghost by Jason Reynolds

I actually met Jason Reynolds at a NCTE conference about a year and a half ago. I had one of those weird experiences for a reader where listening to the author made me believe that I would love his book...and I did. I passed it around all my friends and they loved it too. One of them loved it so much, in fact, that they walked off with it and we had to replace it. Jason Reynolds is officially on my watch list, so I was very excited to see a series coming out from him.

The Track series, of which Ghost is the first, is about four friends of about middle school/high school age who are members of a track team. Four books are scheduled and each book follows a different one of the four.

Ghost kicks it off with Castle Crenshaw, known to himself as Ghost. Ghost is a poster child for tragic and damaged. His father is in jail for shooting a gun at he and his mom. So now his mom works hard in a hospital cafeteria during the day and studies to be a nurse at night. She works hard for him and Ghost knows it.

However, knowing something like that doesn't mean that it's easy or even possible to be the perfect kid. In fact, that's almost a recipe for a lot of internal turmoil and conflict. Ghost struggles and he has a temper. He gets in trouble at school a lot mainly because he hates a bully and he hates a showboat. This intolerance for a showboat sparks him into racing a hot shot sprinter on the team and one thing leads to another.

Ghost is good. Like really good. I gulped down the whole thing in about three and a half hours. It is a short book but the conversational tone of the writing and the pacing really gripped me hard. I was just watching this kid, who could easily be a kid that I teach, making all of these totally obvious mistakes and instead of getting annoyed with him, I really worried for him. Reynolds did a great job of capturing Ghost's voice.

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

Upon further thought, Terry Prachett must have been a delightful irritating person to know. It must have been jokes and puns non-stop. I know people like that. They can be exhausting.

"Jingo" is one of those words that I think most people in my generation and after have lost track of. It means "a vociferous supporter of policy favoring war, especially in the name of patriotism." It is derogatory and has a weird etymological derivation. Originally it appeared in that sort of street magician patois. As in, "By jingo, I conjure thee. Abracadabra! Bwahahaha." (I added the "bwahahaha" but I really feel it belongs there) So, all together there is a sense of the ridiculous contained in the word. It makes me picture puffed up men in uniforms with ridiculous sideburns and stinky cigars who bellow about the sorry state of foreign national interests, there ought to be a war to straighten it all out. It is also a kind of chilling word since most people don't seem to see this as ridiculous.

Accordingly, Jingo is about a war in Discworld that began for no particular reason other than a bunch of puffed up idiots getting the idea in their heads. An island appears in the sea between Ankh-Morpork and the desert nation of Klatch. Conflict over whose island it is sparks political maneuvering and an assassination attempt. Of course, it really appears that the politicians involved were already looking for an excuse because that's just how these things work.

Commander Vimes, as commander of the watch, is immediately involved to investigate the assassination attempt which predictably and far too obviously leads back to the Klatchians. In the meantime, the city prepares for war.

I think I was just in the mood, but once I started Jingo I couldn't put it down. It's part of the Watchmen sub series and so it follows some of my favorite characters including Carrot and Angua. Also, and unusually, Lord Vetinari featured more prominently as a character which doesn't happen often. While, I figured out the sense of how things would have to wrap up, the specifics eluded me until the very end and there were some excellently twisty bits of intrigue involved.

Why Mess With a Good Thing . . . A List For April

As it turns out, these lists are working for me again, so here's a new list for April. If you want to see how March went, I updated the post as I completed it. Check it out here. I think I'm going to have to up the number a little to 10 non-YA and 20 YA. March was a very good month for reading but I ended up feeling restricted by the 20th because I'd already finished half the list.

I will probably slow down some in April as I turn more of my focus towards writing.

Non-YA

1. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (The Windup Universe) (Finished 4/25/2018)
2. Grammar to Get Things Done by Darren Crovitz and Michelle Devereaux
3. Mini-Lessons For Literature Circles by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke (Finished 4/30/2018)
4. Christian Mythmakers by Rolland Hein
5. Native Tongue by Carl Hiaassen
6. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
7. 1984 by George Orwell
8. Jingo by Terry Pratchett (Finished 4/3/2018)
9. The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett (Finished 4/14/2018)
10. Richard II by William Shakespeare

YA

1. City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments)
2. One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke
3. The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson
4. Angel Isle by Peter Dickinson
5. Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes 
6. The Returning by Christine Hinwood
7. The First Part Last by Angela Johnson
8. The Revenge of Seven by Pitticus Lore (Lorian Legacies) 
9. The Fate of Ten by Pitticus Lore (Lorian Legacies)
10. A Step from Heaven by An Na
11. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (Finished 7/9/2018)
12. Dodger by Terry Pratchett (Finished 4/7/2018)
13. Ghost by Jason Reynolds (Track Series) (Finished 4/3/2018)
14. Patina by Jason Reynolds (Track Series) (Finished 4/4/2018)
15. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
16. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan Series)
17. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (Fifth Wave Series)
18. The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey (Fifth Wave Series)
19. The Last Star by Rick Yancey (Fifth Wave Series)
20. The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey (Monstrumologist Series)