A cat for your weekend

to me, she looks like a muppet kitty. but maybe you have to know her. she's all of two pounds. she moves like a muppet. kindy of scary looking but very sweet.

Work Realization - Hypocrisy

So, I accepted finally that I'm a hypocrite!

I'm supervising a person (first time supervising). In my head I've expected her to come to me if she has issues.

I'm being supervised (of course). In my head I've expected her to touch base with me to see if I have issues.

So, I begin to rectify both situations.

When Rock Climbers Marry

The Cockroach Story

My boyfriend at the time and I spent a year together in Zimbabwe teaching. We were supposed to be placed in a rural school, but at the last minute were relocated to a school for disabled refugees and excombatants (refugees from S. Africa, Mozambiqe, and Namibia, and excombatants from Zimbabwe) just outside of Harare, the capital city. We had a nice place to live - with a real bathroom, electricity, and even a small fridge! Much more hoity toity than it would have been in a rural school.

Now, we certainly had cockroaches in our kitchen area. It SUCKED when big flying ones came in (screams abounded from me), but luckily they didn't appear too often. Smaller, nonflying ones did however appear frequently on the counters or on the top of the fridge. Whenever we'd come home at night, one of use would have a newspaper, and the other would stay by the light switch by the door. The one with the newspaper would move stealthfully to the kitchen area, the light would be turned on, and BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! We would kill as many cockroaches as we could before they skittered away into nooks and crannies.

But we lived with them.

One weekend we went to visit some friends who were starting a school in Harare. They had been cleaning up the building, and it was empty except for them. We had dinner and stayed overnight. As we were cooking dinner, I noticed there was some powder on the floor along the walls, and asked what it was for. "Oh, we have a small problem with cockroaches." I think I made some kind of smart-assed comment, like, what, you afraid of a few cockroaches, and forgot about it.

Getting ready for bed, we were shown a room with a mattress on the floor. I think I asked about the cockroaches and we were told, oh, it's fine, they don't climb up on things. Ok, fine.

Turned off the light, and went to sleep. We were fast asleep on the mattress and suddenly my boyfriend jumped up with a start. Turned on the light and saw the cockroaches scattering for the nooks and crannies in the room. We looked at each other, not daring to say anything out loud, but finally he said that he thought a cockroach ran across his face. !!!

Very quickly we decided to leave the light on to keep the cockroaches away, and to take turns sleeping. Since he had had a cockroach run across his face, I offered to take first shift. And he fell asleep. And I was left in the silence alone with the cockroaches.

All of them.

At first the light kept them away - they stayed in their nooks and crannies.

Then they became bold and started coming out, even though the light was on. At first when I waved my hand, they'd skitter back to their hiding places.

But then that technique started to not work as well. So I lifted my pillow and waved that - bigger is better. And that worked for a little bit.

Finally they didn't care what I was waving - they knew they weren't going to die. And they slowly came out, not caring that I was there since they'd survive a nuclear war and I wouldn't, their antennae moving around, their tiny little brains thinking - how can I best get onto that mattress and crawl all over their bodies?

Needless to say, I was reaching my limit. And to keep my mind off the cockroaches, I started peeling skin off my recently-sunburned arms. Got one good piece, rolled it up, and threw it across the room.

A cockroach ran over, picked up the ball of flesh in its mouth, and started eating.

I lost it.

Hysterical and exhausted, I woke up my boyfriend and blabbered that we could NOT stay in that room. I was so hysterical that I think he actually had to slap me in the face (not too hard) to calm down enough to be willing to walk across the room and open the door. We knew that there was a room across the hall that had tables and a chair, and we thought we would sleep sitting up in that room, since we had been told cockroaches don't climb up on things.

Closing Scene: Light from our room falls onto the door of the room across the hall. My boyfriend opens the door, and the light falls upon the closest chair, upon which a cockroach sits. [cue WeeWeeWee Hitchcock music]

We slept outside on the ground.
And it rained on us.
And I got some sleep.
And no cockroaches on my face.

Postscript: The next care package my oldest brother sent included rubber cockroaches. Of course.

Arrived today via email

OF COURSE I DON'T LOOK BUSY... I DID IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME


ALL STRESSED OUT AND NO ONE TO CHOKE


BEHIND EVERY SUCCESSFUL WOMAN IS HERSELF


I HAVE YET TO HEAR A MAN ASK FOR ADVICE ON HOW TO COMBINE MARRIAGE AND A CAREER

Songcatcher

On the way to skydiving I like to play relaxing music. This weekend, I listened to old country songs until the station wouldn't come in anymore (including Kenny Rogers' - "And she belieeeeeves in me. I'll never know just what she seeeeeees in me. I told her someday, if she was my girl, I could change the world with my little song...")

Then I popped in the soundtrack to Songcatcher. I don't remember how I stumbled on this movie, but I watched it many years ago. If you like mountain music, you should see it - it's about a woman who goes into the mountains in the late 1800's/early 1900's to capture old songs and trace where they came from. I remember it being surprisingly good, since I hadn't really heard of the movie. But the soundtrack is great. Has people like Rosanne Cash, Emmy Rossum, Emmylou Harris, Hazel Dickens, Dolly Parton...

Here's the summary: (yeah, it's got a love story, but it's still good)

After being denied a promotion at the university where she teaches, Doctor Lily Penleric, a brilliant musicologist, impulsively visits her sister who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There she stumbles upon the discovery of her life--a treasure trove of ancient Scots-Irish ballads, songs that have been handed down from generation to generation, preserved intact by the seclusion of the mountains. With the goal of securing her promotion, Lily ventures into the most isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs and finds herself increasingly enchanted--not only by the rugged purity of the music, but also by the raw courage and endurance of the local people as they carve out meaningful lives against the harshest conditions. It is not, however, until she meets Tom--a handsome, hardened war veteran and talented musician--that she's forced to examine her motivations. Is the "Songcatcher," as Tom insists, no better than the men who exploit the people and extort their land?

Leadership, Confidence, Fear

I woke up early early this morning, and couldn't get back to sleep because I had made some realizations and couldn't get them out of my head. I was too lazy to get up and type them on the computer, so I finally had to write them down. Seems all the expletives yesterday came out for a reason.

Realization 1: Leadership and confidence

If I'm going to be doing something challenging, and be taught how to do it, I need to have faith, trust, confidence in the people teaching me. I need them to be leaders who inspire and instill confidence. I can forgive some mistakes, like when someone calls me Denise instead of my real name, because he really does know what he's doing, but others I can't. One of the instructors yesterday not only bounced me around in freefall unnecessarily, but also couldn't get me seated in the right spot on the plane without an issue. Sorry, I'm not going to trust my life with you. Two strikes and you are out. If they try and have him be my one instructor, I'll walk away without a backwards glance. I realize there are two, maybe three, people at this place that I'll go forward with alone from hereonin. (because in the next stages, you only have one instructor)

Realization 2: Fear

I hate the exit from the plane. Not because of jumping, but because of the disorientation. I need to find some way to deal with it better, and will work with instructors (and perhaps the Gnome has suggestions) to deal with it better.