A Professor Above Others

There's a professor at my school of whom I am fond. She's brilliant in her field (she's a social psychologist who has been treating first responders from 9/11 for the last decade) and loves to teach (she's been a professor at my school for 36 years). She did my independent study over the summer and allowed me to do another one this semester on trauma since the school isn't currently offering any classes. She then changed our senior seminar to incorporate aspects of trauma...and she did that for me. She asked me to TA for her as well.

Today, this professor sat me down and told me she had breast cancer. Prognosis is good - it's stage 1. No other students know and only 2 faculty. She is taking a month of medical leave at some point for radiation and surgery and wants me to keep the class moving along at the correct pace while she's gone. 


A few hours ago, she sent an email thanking me for being available to her and reminding me to slow down so I won't get sick and burn out. With everything she's dealing with today, she took the time out to do that.


I am honored by this woman's trust and attention. In class, she puts a lot of effort into truly preparing students for the aspects of this field they're interested in (social work, clinical, etc) and will help students out. She knows this is not a challenging curriculum for me and works to find other ways to make this engaging. There are teachers you never forget - this is one of them.

Such a nice day

Had lovely lunch today with Angel. It was so beautiful that we had our salads outside. She then took me shopping where we found some beautiful things for me and a few for Kyle. We then got an iced coffee from Starbucks. It was, in short, a wonderful afternoon.

Turkey is in the oven for dinner tonight. There will be dressing (at Kyle's request) and green beans - a mini Thanksgiving! I'm going to try to get the house cleaned up tonight so that I can spend all of tomorrow at the DMV if necessary. But, at the end of it, I should have Virginia plates and it will be one less thing to do when I move down.

Mom and Dad will get tomorrow night late and be here for the weekend. Sadly, Mom lost her dog Sasha, who they believe was eaten by a coyote. Heartbreaking. We're all sad but hopefully our dogs will do their part to cheer her up. We're looking forward to a fun weekend with them and introducing them to Va Beach and the family here. Very excited!

But is it censorship?

I was wandering through Barnes and Noble today, looking for a book to read in the hurricane. As often happens, I wandered into the pregnancy section. And as it nearly always the case, there was one practical book on adoption, one narrative from an adopted person now grown and nothing, not a single book on surrogacy. 500 versions of the Bible and nothing on surrogacy. One book on adoption.

It's frustrating. Not everyone is going to be a parent in the traditional way. So why not offer books that cover a variety of options? I'm not saying to cut down on the pregnancy books, they're needed and sell like crazy. But why not offer more on other options? There are 14,000 options about adoption and 450 on surrogacy on Amazon. The books are out there. Why isn't anyone selling them?

Bring it, Irene.

It's my first hurricane! I've been in tornadoes, earthquakes, monsoons and blizzards, but never a hurricane. Very excited!

I'm in Va Beach, since Irene plans to visit New York on her East Coast tour and I'd rather be where the people have experience and I have people. Slightly depressing concept, but it's only 9 more months. School has canceled move in and the first day of class. Right now we're scheduled to have class on Tuesday, so I should be back in NY for that. Hopefully I won't be going home to surprises.

We have groceries, water, candles and batteries. We're smoking a chicken and a pork butt now and I'm going to make some chili. Tonight's dinner is all the leftovers that won't keep if we lose electricity. We've got wine and liquor, board games and books. We are, in a word, set.

What the Summer Taught Me

I have recently been coming to grips with the fact that I will not be able to function at the speed and productivity level that I am accustomed to. This isn't new or sudden, however I'm starting to accept it rather than fight it. Fighting it leads to exhaustion and more bad days, as well as constant frustration about not meeting goals and deadlines. This summer has been a lesson in acceptance and it's been a hard one. I'm still not all the way there and I hate every single minute of it. One of the things I have always prided myself on is my high productivity level and my ability to turn out very good work in very short time. I can still do that, just not at the rate I used to.

I have had to accept that I will probably never be able to return to a 60 hour work week. I will not be able to function for several days on a few hours of sleep and expect to get out mostly unscathed. That kind of behavior lands me in bed for 2 days. I won't be able to do a lot of the things the way I have done them and the way that I would prefer to do them.

This has not been an easy process and I'm still not sold. It hurts my feeling when people tell me I won't make a self-imposed deadline or laugh off my plans because they don't think my health will hold. Even though their attitudes are thoughtless, they are not necessarily wrong and it's very frustrating. I spent years covering my illnesses and finding ways to hide my bad days. I can't do that as easily anymore and it has changed my interactions with some people in a way that is humbling...and I hate it. It's hard not to resent the good days because they are so often followed by a much worse day. It breaks my heart as I change my plans for the future to accommodate an unreliable body and even worse to see the "I knew it" look from people who doubted my ability to make those plans happen in the first place.

Someday, I hope that I will not longer resent my body for failing me. I pray that I will no longer hate every time I have to say "I can't do that today" because I can't move my legs. Someday, I hope to accept the new order of my world and find the joy in it despite the loss of so much.

But that day is not here yet.

Olfactory Memories

Apparently, our olfactory memories, i.e. memories that are attached to our sense of smell, are strongest. While driving up to Richmond last night, I got hit with two different, but very potent memories.

First, when I went over the river, the scent of the river and a hot night reminded me of the summer that my youth group in California stayed on house boats on a river. The boats were grounded on one side and the terrain was desert. We spent the week on speedboats and other water sports. I have a bunch of pictures from the time and it was the time in my youth that I felt closest to my childhood crush (who I did later date for the summer after high school and who I miss terribly to this day).

Shortly after, I got the whiff of honeysuckle, which always makes me think of Oklahoma since we had it growing on every fence. While I'm not entirely nostalgic about it (not in small part because I go back often), there is something about the air in the summer there that is breathtaking. It's humid and hot and thick with the smell of honeysuckle and other flowers and mints. I got a sample of it last night and I missed it some.

Eiland Reunion

I've been looking through the Eiland family reunion pictures that people have been posting on the Facebook page from reunions years past. First, I'm really tiny in some of them. There's a lot of familiar faces, some of which have associated names, and a lot of people I don't know or remember. I was a child when we went, so I mostly ignored the non-important adults, which includes everyone other than my parts, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather. I got a few spare aunts in the memory bank, but mostly, there's a lot missing. And unlike a lot of my family, we lived far away so we didn't also see each other for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.

The reunion in is October every year and I haven't been in ages. I really want to go, though I'm not sure I'll be able to swing it. Looking at the pictures made me realize how much I've missed that family. I managed to reconnect with the cousins who are about my age via Facebook and I met up with Holly a few times while she was living in Va Beach, but it's not quite the same.