Edubabble and other Blither

Now I know why people who wash walls and curtains and windows do so in the spring-- you don't have time to clean in the summer when you're working outside. I guess when I used to do my spring-cleaning in the summer, I really didn't have much to do outside. I didn't have a garden, and we still had the previous owners' landscaping, which looked good enough.

This spring I couldn't do housecleaning because my dad was diagnosed with cancer and died six weeks later. Shudder. Pause for one-minute breakdown. When I returned to school, I had to grade papers and get caught-up with the winding down of the school year. When school let out, I taught summer school for two weeks and began facilitating an online class for teachers. That's still going on. A week and a half to go.

I had planned to take the entire summer off and had the perfect reason. Sorry, I can't help you. My dad died, you see. It's an even better reason than the over-used, Sorry. I can't help you. I have kids. But..... someone was needed for 8th grade summer school, and I always enjoyed it. It was a great opportunity to try out something wild or off the wall, something I didn't get time to do during the regular school year. It's only two weeks, I thought. Then I was offered the online class. Well, I did train to facilitate online courses. Might as well see what it's like. Two weeks from now I teach a one-week graduate course for teachers. I already had that scheduled before Dad got sick, I thought....by August I'll be ready to do it. But then summer school and the online class happened, and by the time I teach that one-week class, I will have had very little summer.

I know, I know. If I had any readers who worked in the real world (besides Tripper) they'd understandably have little to no sympathy for me. That's okay. You see, my dad died, and I can feel as sorry for myself as I want. Seriously, though, it's almost August, and it feels like I've done nothing but sit in front of the computer, grading assignements, reading posts, and reassuring Boomer online course novices that, yes, four hours a day is really too much time to be spending on the class.

I've traveled, too, of course, to sunny Rust Belt Town to empty my dad's house. I've spent several days traipsing up and down dusty stairs to sift through dusty items in dusty, dog-haired rooms. My dad was never a neat freak, but as he became unable to go upstairs and therefore lived downstairs 24/7 and THEN quickly became so, so sick, he wasn't able to do much in the way of housekeeping.

Here's what we found:

• my grandmother's entire household. This didn't amount to much monetarily, of course. I can't understand, though, why he consented to storing her pots, pans, clothing, purses, jewelry boxes, reams of receipts and checking account statements from 1989... She's not coming out of the nursing home. She won't need them again. She's like the prisoners who can't make it on the outside. She has no desire to ever see the outside again.
• every card Vic and I ever gave him, and one strangely disturbing card-- a Father's Day card to him from me, but in his handwriting. I never missed Father's Day, no matter what-- at least I'm 98% sure.
• 12 irons
• the newspaper picture of my 15th class reunion
• a DVD for Miss Gabor, my niece, labeled For Miss Gabor, From Pap Pap. I love you! It was the Wizard of Oz. "Why didn't he give it to her?" Vic whispered.
• journals that Vic and I started to read. I stopped. He never would have wanted us to read about how he just had to get used to the fact that his daughters didn't care about him. (The next page sang our praises.) He would not have wanted us to know about fights he and my mother had about sex. In February 2001 he wrote that the guilt over leaving my mother the way he did (for someone else rather than just because he had to) was killing him. I figure I have between 7 and 13 years left. Probably closer to 7, the way things are going. I think I've left my mark on the world. I have two wonderful daughters who help people.
• notes for books he wanted to write, plans for workshops he wanted to build
• pages upon pages of: toll-free phone numbers for this and that, warranties, articles Uncle Wayne gave him about back problems, genealogy research
• a machine-shop pin from high-school, a 15-year watchband from work
• the blue-plaid shirt he wore around the house a lot when we were the Mulvaneys
• shirts, shorts, pants Vic and I bought him, tags still on
• everything my sister owned prior to 1995 (God, Tripper said. He manned the dumpster in the yard-- dumpster number two, I might add-- making sure that everything we threw out the upstairs window hit its target. She threw out more clothing than you and I own right now.)
• the wooden Chrissy and Vicki's Beat the Witch game he made for us, which was the neighborhood obsession for a couple of afternoons in 1978
• wooden card holders he made for us so we could play Uno (Our hands were too small to hold all the cards.)
• The former Saint Belinda's belongings: boxes, no, rooms of Weight Watchers kits, decorations, clothes, knick-knacks, QVC doo-dads, jewelry, bank statements, bankruptcy forms (blank), NSF check notifications, collection agency letters
• some of my dad's coin collection wrapped up in Rhonda's clothes in boxes in the basement
• paperwork showing at least $3500 Dad paid to Rhonda to get her out of trouble. He had told several people that the amount was more like $12,000. (Her stuff all went to Goodwill or the dumpster after that, except for a few personal items I plan to ship to her: her high school diploma, family photo albums, a tea set she asked us to keep an eye out for.)
• a homemade cat gas chamber (This was Uncle Wayne's. Oh, yeah, he drawled, weedily though he doesn't smoke anything anymore, I made that for a friend. Her cat was sick, and she couldn't afford to take it to the vet to have it put to sleep, so I rigged this up. Yeah. It consisted of a cardboard box, two-chambered, attached to a hose. Duct tape sealed up the edges and corners of the box. Yeah.)

The good news is we're still not done. We do, however, have a few leads on buyers. Uncle Wayne, who has been staying there since Dad got sick, has been accepted at a downtown hotel/apartment building, so that's good. When all his stuff is gone, Vic and I will do the rest.

So maybe I didn't get my own house cleaned this summer. Eh. There's always next year, right? Maybe, maybe not. That's one thing I've learned this year. As a result, I conducted some personal housecleaning and elected to become an inactive instructor for the graduate courses I've been trying to teach for the past five years. It's a great opportunity, and the money's good but only if people actually sign up.

That's been the problem, you see. For five years I've played the game-- schedule classes, hand out fliers, make arrangments, shuffle my schedule, go to corporate meetings where we are cheered on as well as admonished to market, market, market, to make sure we hold classes for the correct number of hours, to hold participants to high standards, this is a graduate course, you know, to increase numbers, to market, market, market, my numbers are in my hands, to teach the course as it is written, to be consistent with other instructors, to market, to market, to buy a fat pig... all that to get 8 people in most cases.

I knew that it could take time. It was kind of like building a business. Eventually it would pay off, I reasoned. It hasn't, really. After five years, my friend and colleague Elaine and I still struggle to fill classes, even though we train to teach the newest classes, the ones no one else in the area teaches. It doesn't matter. Maybe it's us. Maybe it's Tom, the graduate-course-god in these parts. Tom consistently fills his classes, has a waiting list even. Tom has never given a B in over 25 years of teaching for the company. Tom doesn't seem to get the same memos we get, the ones that say participants can't hand in portfolios on the last day of a one-week course. Tom lets participants do their assignments in class and gives "working lunches" so they can get out early. Tom looks over their portfolios during lunch on the last day and has grades for participants before they leave.

Wow. I sound bitter. No wonder no one takes my classes. Please know that I think Tom is a wonderful man. He's helpful, he's kind, he's knowledgeable. I've taken several courses from him myself, and I gained much from them. For the past couple years, he hasn't even scheduled classes in Dogpatch, hoping that Elaine and I could gain a following. No cigar. He's given us advice: confirm the class immediately. People prefer registering for a class knowing it's going to run. Didn't matter.

When my dad left my mother, his father had just died. Dad was 38, almost the same age I am now. If I've got only 24 years left to live, I want to be happy, he said. I've been thinking along the same lines. If I have only 18 years left to live, how do I want to spend that time?

I want to spend it going to difficult family weddings with Professor Girl, I want to spend it shooting with Tripper, traveling, having my nieces and nephews over for sleepovers, quilting and ripping out stitches and swearing, reading, playing in the dirt, teaching middle school, stretching, going shopping with my mentor, Judy. Blogging. And, yes, cleaning my house.