Thursday

Things have been equally stressful and pleasant the past week. Tv good. Kids great. Rael is doing so much better in school. Car is dying. Denise is consistent only in her defiance of every court ordered visitation stipulation she demanded in the first place. Money isn't tight; it's completely non-existent.

Actually, when things are quiet the darkness really pushes on me a lot harder than the light. I think I'm drowning.

Rael Today (Multi-Posted)

Rael's teacher reports that his behavior issues are at their worst on Mondays and Thursdays, the days when he returns to school after visiting his mother. His behavior issues are also getting so bad that the trajectory he's on is going to see him expelled. For violence. From Kindergarten.

I don't know what to do anymore. I'm trying so hard to hold us all together after she tore us all apart, and just nothing seems to be working.

Rael Today

Today I got a call from Rael's principal because he stabbed another child with his pencil. He's apparently been acting out a lot these first three weeks of school. He had behavioral issues in Head Start and we were able to determine some commonalities between "good" days and "bad" (good days were when I dropped him off and reminded him of behavioral rules, bad days were when Denise dropped him off and paid no attention to such reminders). I worry that his current drop-off schedule is too chaotic for him to adjust at school properly.

We started him in professional counseling. He starts Wednesday.

Reality

I've grown to be extremely effing tired of a certain very-vocal very-minority having the need to share the opinion that my wife should have left me during the four years I wasn't working. Particularly as their opinion completely disregards a teensy detail we'll go ahead and call 'facts.'

Fact #1. For the first four years of our marriage Evan worked full time and went to school full time, even working graveyard shifts while going to school, while Denise remained happily unemployed as a full time student. This was followed by Evan working minimal part time while still going to school and being the primary caretaker of both his children and his foster children, while Denise finally worked full time. This brings us to the period of time we'll call 'fact #2.'

Fact #2. For the four year period of time these very-vocal very-minorities refer, Evan actually worked two, sometimes three, part-time school-year-long jobs while also going to school full time and receiving student aid & loans. During this time Denise worked a job she did not like and very vocally wanted out of it. Despite her and many other perceptions, Evan's income during these four years of "not working" was actually close to equal 40% of our annual income. It was just never given value as Evan wasn't working a 9-5 M-F job like Denise.

Fact #3. In order to accommodate Denise's 'need' to leave a job she didn't enjoy, but nonetheless a job that paid her 175% per hour what she makes now, Evan had to quit school with one semester left in his degree, which also cost him both of his campus jobs, and go back to the 'acceptable' form of work that would allow her to quit: a fast food paycheck supplemented by rent from a roommate she openly hated.

As Evan pointed out earlier, he is so effing tired of this opinion. So, if any very-vocal very-minorities should feel the urge in the future to voice this opinion, Evan is likely to be quite impolite with them in response.

Everyone else can have a nice day!

Higher Learning

In response to my last post, Travis asked:

Why don't you teach anymore? Maybe that could be a blog post or maybe there is one already that you can point me too. Knowing you and what you know and where your passions lie, I've often wondered why you don't teach.

The answer is relatively mundane. When I taught before it was as a graduate student. In order to maintain that job, I also had to maintain a minimum number of semester units myself. It eventually became pointless for me to continue paying for tuition when the few classes I remained needing for my degree kept getting canceled or not offered at all. With student loan debt increasing each year and my last class on eternal limbo, I couldn't rationalize continuing to go right now. My teaching job was contingent on my also being enrolled as a graduate student, and so no more teaching job.

As for traditional teaching, I need my Master's Degree completed (fastest way now) or a Teaching Credential (slowest way now), both requiring I return to school, which isn't fiscally possible right now.

Dead Again

Been a wee bit, first a reading update:

New family & friend photos.

50 Book Challenge #7: The Harlequin, by Laurell K. Hamilton. First off, holy shit am I reading slow this year. I need to seriously rededicate myself to my reading and unwind a little less with Guitar Hero II & III.

This was something like book #80 in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. I've lost count and the ambition to look up which book it actually is. Denise had to bribe me to start and finish this one, as I still have a few other books bucking to be read. She still has to finish bribing me.

That sad, this was a refreshing near-return to the more non-pornographic books at the front of the series. Even when Anita was getting her ho on, it very kindly did not take 200 of 300 pages to get it done. Words can't express how very pleased I was to have sex scenes not spread themselves redundantly across multiple chapters (seriously, one book had a chapter devoted to negotiating the specifics of a threesome, then another to talking out the discomforting ideas about it, then another to foreplay, then another to rediscussing comfort and boundaries, then another to fucking and yet another to dealing with discomforted reactions and then sanctimonious bullshit and then storming out and then another to examining relations and then getting right back to screwing. Seriously).

One of my favourite characters, Edward, returns this book. His presence almost always guarantees a healthy amount of attention will be spent on the more interesting "vampire hunter" aspects of the series. Sadly, his presence felt extremely unnecessary by book's end, as if he was merely written in so that Hamilton could acknowledge Edward fans who'd been clamoring for him since his last appearance 40 books previous. He wasn't actually necessary, or all that useful, to any parts of the plot. Meh.

Moving on.

This week was devoted to spending a lot of work days in classes learning to be a better Burgerworld manager, so that I can then go to more classes to become an even better SpiffyWorldBurger manager and get some serious promotions going--at some vaguely defined and wholly undisclosed time in the future. The amount of avoidance of any real discussion of what they have planned promotion-wise for me and one of the others really irks me, as does other bs about promoting a couple minions and then deciding to hold off on promoting them for no real reason. Blech. My McMorale is down. At any rate, regarding classes--the last day was devoted to learning better customer service. Now I am one super customer servicing motherfucker already. So this day was really redundant, even remedial at times, for me. Necessary steps forward; I just have to keep telling myself that--and keeping one ear to the wind, seeking opportunities for change. Sadly, the wind hasn't been blowing much.

Kids' report cards came. Aeia is, as per usual, the perfect little student. So much her mother in training. Lash got not-so-great marks on social skills and excellent marks in academics, was made to feel bad enough about the former that by the time I was able to see his report card, he had no pride or happiness to express about the latter. That bummed me and I spent a while working to make him feel better about his accomplishments.

This week's Netflix highlight is Gone Baby Gone. After watching this, I've come to some conclusions, some cementing of previous beliefs:
1. Casey Affleck can express better emotional depth and range of character than Ben.
2. Ben should just direct from now on.
The movie was great, far better than I ever would have expected it to be. If that's an indicator of the directorial ability Affleck has in him, I'd be happy to never see him do another Reindeer Games or Kevin Smith movie.

Standard Lines

Tomorrow, the kids return to school. Aeia is much more excited about starting 2nd grade than Lash is about starting 5th. I'm hoping a new teacher will prove more attentive and helpful to his recurring bully problems. Me, I'm looking forward to having a couple weeks of relative calm in the mornings while the kids are in school.

Denise and I have done some significant talking and things are better.

Nerdly updates: last weekend in Brian's Deadlands game, my harrowed Mormon blessed character reached the clearing at the end of the path when I miscalculated the blast radius on some dynamite I used to save the party from some Confederate tanks. Ah well, I did it for the lulz. My new character is going to be a blatant homage to Jake Chambers from Dark Tower. I haven't played a straight-up gunslinger in a while.

Yesterday was the end run on Denise's epic level campaign. We won, systems of government were restructured, oppressive slaving regimes were quashed, etc. and etc.

I've completed all of the main & faction quests in Elder Scrolls IV. Once I get in the video game mood again, I'll probably start exploring Gun and see if I can learn to love the 1st person shooter if it's set in the western genre. Cross them fingers.

Rael is becoming more and more kid and less and less baby. He's fun. Witness and participation in many kids' lightsaber duels now has him going up to people, lightly smacking them and squaking "die." When in the pool, if he can splash you, which he loves, he'll bop his head from side to side and let out a very teasing laugh-song.

I have three more months of DC comics to catch up on before I have to decide if I'm really going to wait until Denise recommences Drawing of the Three before I recommence Order of the Phoenix. Let's all devote a little energy to hoping she'll buckle before I have to consider going back on my resolve.

Is it weird that I'm really looking forward to the release of the straight-to-DVD White Noise 2, starring Nathan Fillion when I hated Keaton's White Noise 1 so very much? The sequel looks a lot better organized, and I greatly prefer Fillion's acting. Not that Keaton's bad, just not my preference. After watching all of Wonderfalls last week, I'm really jonesing for a big influx of writers, directors or actors I most love for their previous association with Joss Whedon projects.

Our dishwasher broke so Lash and I had some shared quality chore time today as I washed and he dried. Chores yippee. And I tackled some of the ever-encroaching clutter in the living room.

Chris returned from the Army last Thursday for the unforseeable future and Chrissy was nice enough to let us hang out with him early, Saturday past instead of Saturday next. I'm glad of it. Thanks Chrissy. It was nice to get to catch up and see him.

I need to decide what I want for my next tattoo in the next week. Probably something not too large or elaborate this time. I need to set myself up with an exercise schedule. I need to redouble job search efforts lest I end up a 33 year old crew member at McDonald's. I need to see about taking another leave of absence and hopefully saving enough moolah to get back to, and finish, my Master's Degree in the spring semester.

Surely I'm forgetting things, but I'm tired and you're forgiving.

Dreams

Last night I dreamt that I'm going to have to drop out of school. I qualify that as a nightmare. How frustrating would that be to be just one class and one exam away from your Master's degree and then something happen to make you drop out? That was a rhetorical question. The dream has already put me in a mood that I only hope I'll be able to overcome at some point throughout the day.

Argh.

I really have no clue how I would be able to deal with life if that were to actually happen. So much time and effort has been put towards this degree.

I hate dreaming.

Champagne From a Paper Cup

And this shall be the post of happiness. . .

Yesterday was my final final of the semester, for my poetry forms class (wherein we did almost zero poetry form study and too much "writers saying the same things, i.e. not much, about writing" reading--I mean, when discussion on every book went exactly the same, it was an obvious exercise in pointlessness). We met in the secret room on campus, shared food and beverage and read aloud our Ars Poetica final projects. The final went on an hour longer than it was supposed to, but still proved to be my favorite class session of the semester.

For the first time in like four or five semesters, I finished grading papers (barring any further late papers, like the one that trickled in this a.m.) on time (and before finishing my own finals, even). It feels nice to finally meet a deadline on this.

I expect to now get flamed by some people, except Aimee, but just how refreshing is it that Melinda Doolittle got voted off the island last night on American Idol? I will happily give you that she was definitely the most talented vocally this season, but man was she the queen of picking boring songs to sing boringly. And the faux modesty? Blech. I'm still surprised my man Blake made it this far and fully expect Jordin will beat him come next week

We midwifed again today and got to hear mystery child #4's heartbeat. Sounds good. Some things are still a little up in the air. Maybe.

Du Hasst

So I finally have the results of my foreign language proficiency exam, via e-mail:

Okay, Evan.

The grader for your exam wrote: “I am passing this largely based on the difficulty of the passage and the fact that, while there are a few important errors in the translation, the translator has a basic understanding of what is happening in the passage.”

Typically, two graders evaluate each translation, but because of the “difficulty of the passage” I have opted to let his assessment stand. If you would prefer, I will be happy to send your translation to a second reader. If that reader disagrees with the first, I will submit it to a third for a final decision. As it stands now, however, I am accepting your exam as a “Pass.”

Thank you for your work. Congratulations.

Seeing as I haven't done any formal studying of German in fifteen years, I'm more than happy to take the pass. The language came back very easily, but yeah, the passage I had to translate was crazy difficult.

What's left:

1. Take & pass English Subject GRE.
2. Enroll in "Master's Thesis" course and get my project done.
3. Hang degree on wall as it won't be doing me much good anyway. What exactly was I thinking when I decided an English degree was the sensible way to go?

What's Up?

At the moment I'm riding on a neighbour's wireless connection because something's wrong with mine and I can't figure it out... as this isn't secure, I won't be on for too long.

So, some of you have noted (here and in e-mail) that I somewhat off-handedly mentioned Denise being pregnant in my previous post. There hasn't been a more in-depth or formal announcement because there's a decent amount of stress involved with it right now. We're superstitious people and that calls for us not sharing pregnancy until after the first trimester is over. The friday prior to my last post was our first appointment with the midwife--expecting that we were then just 12 weeks along we were surprised to learn that Denise's last period was a fake one brought about by hormone fluctuations from the ending of her birth control pill usage and that she, at the time, was actually a full 4 or 5 weeks further along than we expected. This is stressful because that means that the baby was exposed to New Year's Eve celebrations and a full month of meds prescribed for her rheumatoid arthritis that happen to not be ideal for babies. In the next two weeks we'll be having various tests to check on the baby and make sure the stress is needless (as our midwife suspects, but still we worry). As I write this, Denise is half-way through the pregnancy and the baby's due in early October. More information, as we deem it appropriate to share, coming later. I'm in waiting and hoping mode for this.

This past Friday was my foreign language proficiency exam. It's a requirement for all students in the Master's program at Chico State's English Department. I could go a long way to explaining why you have to master foreign languages as an English major, but that'll be another day. I wasn't able to test in the language I've been working the past few years (Portuguese) due to time constraints/grader availabilities so I had to test in my next-best language: German. It's only been ten years since I last studied the language. I think I did ok, then I read the most recent published statistics on the exam--52% of exam takers fail this exam the first time through, and 76% of those fail the second try (which is also the final try), so I'm in waiting and hoping mode for that too.

No improvement on the vehicle front; no new news on the trial front. The kids are all doing splendidly and I'm one stressed-out mofo.

Evs.

(I'd Rather Be a) Rockstar

50 Book Challenge #9: Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft by Tony Hoagland.

I'll just start off by saying that I first encountered Hoagland by reading his book of poetry, What Narcissism Means to Me in my writer's workshop last Fall. I really enjoyed his poetry. There is a lot of fun and irreverence in tone in his work, which I dig.

You get a good smattering of that in here too, but usually just in essay titling. There's still some of his poetic tone present, but in many places it's subsumed by the typical serious tone of the literary critic (which makes sense when realizing these essays all had been previously published in various scholarly journals).

As for content, he does really well in discussing some matters of style, metaphor, poetic obsession, etc. but I don't feel, walking away from it, that as a student of the craft I really found it at all instructive.

Personal Jesus

I can't find the first paper on the laptop, so I'll check the desktop later. Here's paper #2, equally loved and graded by my professor. I don't know how well my copy-pasting from MS Word is going to format, though.

Misreadings in Exclusion and Acceptance

I look through our readings of the past weeks and I can see why Matthew Arnold can so readily be seen, accurately or not, as more than a tad bit elitist. I agree that his discussion of the newspaper article about Ms. Wragg ultimately proves itself a sympathetic text, but there’s a sense of patronization in his tone that also makes him an easy target for those elitist barbs he keeps snagging upon. What I wondered more, however, was how exactly did Thomas Aquinas get let off the hook for what, with a little research, proves itself elitist in the Summa Theologica.

What catches my ire towards Aquinas is that, with even the most rudimentary knowledge of the cultural anthropology of Europe in the Dark and Middle Ages, and of the history of the Bible in translation, anyone reading Aquinas as someone truly lauding poetic forms in the Bible for their ability to make the Bible comprehensible to the masses should realize that he was likely full of the proverbial crap.

To get a truly informed reading of Aquinas’ articles, you should first look at the important pre-Reformation historical contexts that held sway over Biblical studies of the time. During the years of 600AD through 1,400AD the Catholic Church, the only organized and recognized church of that time, forbade the scripture to be available in any language other than Latin. As priests were the only people widely educated in Latin during that era, it allowed for the Catholic Church the power to rule without question, to deceive the people, to extort money from the masses all because the lack of Latin proficiency in the masses made it nigh impossible to question Biblical teachings as they were taught them by the priests. Anyone found in possession of a non-Latin Bible during the Dark Ages could, and regularly would, be executed. It wasn’t until the advent of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press in 1436 (completed in 1440) that it was even possible to realistically make a non-Latin translation available to the masses, which would be crucial to the success of the Reformation; and it wouldn’t be until Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation in 1517 that people would press forward more ardently with translating the Bible out of Latin. As he was canonized a saint in 1323, more than a hundred years before the printing press and nearly two hundred before the Reformation, it would be difficult to accuse Aquinas of being anything other than a good Catholic.

When all of this is put forward, where exactly does it leave Aquinas? When he writes “that spiritual truths be expounded by means of figures taken from corporeal things, in order that thereby even the simple who are unable by themselves to grasp intellectual things may be able to understand it” (p. 244), who exactly are the “simple” people who are benefiting from the metaphors he defends in the Bible. If the Bible was taught only in Latin and those who spoke Latin were primarily limited to the priests and the highly educated, it would be fair to say Aquinas’ “simple” people would be easily likened to the C-average Harvard Graduates, the George W. Bushes of his world and not the common man.

Further readings in Aquinas’ article seem more supportive, then, of the Catholic Church’s usage of Latin to keep truths from the masses. Passages such as “hiding the truth in figures is useful for the exercise of thoughtful minds [read: the clergy and the educated], and as defense against the ridicule of the impious” and “because thereby divine truths are the better hidden from the unworthy” (p. 244), when taken into historical context, does not read as a defense of poetic form in the Bible for its ability to illuminate scripture to the masses, but rather as a defense of poetic form in the Bible for its ability to illuminate scripture to the educate and to veil the truth of scripture from the masses.

I marvel at how a person so revered and characteristic of the Catholic Church of his time, one known now for being too esoteric and corrupt, a person as obedient to the Church as he was can get away with what seems clearly to favor an educated, pious few over the simple masses while another critic, one who perhaps had a bit of a patronization problem, who seems generally sincere in his calls for equality in education and representation can be so widely reviled.

Error Operator

My printer is not working properly and I have a paper to turn in this evening. Argh.

Enjoy the Silence

It's spring break for me and, lucky me, I have papers to grade. So, if you e-mail me or check in here, I might be busy. I'm going to try and have a light presence here anyway, but you know how that goes.

In the meanwhile, watch some Black Donnellys, the Riches and Prisonbreak and let me know what you think.

ABC

50 Book Challenge, books number 5 and 6: Twentieth Century Pleasures by Robert Hass and A Faithful Existence by Forrest Gander. Both of these were books by poets writing criticisms of other poets, their own personal writing strategies, etc. Hass' book seemed pretty swayed by biases, but was ultimately more engaging and coherent. Gander's book dealt a lot with translation, a subject of importance for me, which I really liked, but the preponderence of this book is a bit esoteric and beyond my patience threshold.

Where'd You Go?

Not much to say right now. Have spent good amounts of the last week sick again. Sigh.

This weekend was filled with HeroClix pre-release tournaments (more on that later) and nerdgaming (also more later, including the all-new Deadlands group).

Just want y'all to know we're alive and well, and I'll be posting tomorrow or so.

Manic Monday

I'm bogged down by homework (and CSU, Chico doesn't give us today's holiday off) but wanted to do a posting drive-by to assure anyone who cares that the bad mood isn't so bad anymore (mostly that I'm not pissed at everything and nothing at once).

Also, found out this weekend that Kenn married Ellie and want to extend my heartfelt cyber congratulations their way.

Oh, and did anyone catch the Legion of Super Heroes this weekend? It focuses on the Legion of Substitute Heroes and was sweet.

My Week Thus Far

Drew recently mentioned some 50 book challenge on his blog, and I've decided to give it a go--reading 50 books in a year. If Dubya can do it, anyone can, and I've practiced too much illiteracy over the past couple years. So far, I'm off to a slow start, having only completed two books (both of 'em trashy "beach reads"): Going down in la la land by Andy Zeffer and Hard by I forget who. The former was pretty boring, the latter was engaging but nothing special.

Speaking of special--Amazon is having a 50-60% off sale on TV shows on DVD right now, making me wish I had more money. If you jones for tv on dvd, check it out.

School began this week. I'm in a Theory of Literary Criticism class that I need to finally complete my MA (hopefully in the fall) and Poetry: Form and Practice. With them I've decided to take up jogging on my walks home. Last night was a real bitch of it.

The winter holiday went off fairly well. The kids all had a grand old time and I was able to get Denise her laptop for her Yule-slash-anniversary present. Which after that, bills and tuition, my grant is gone and I'm broke-ish again--I couldn't get my PS3 (this is me pouting a lot). And of course, the van picked after this to decide to let us know it was dying, so I don't know what I'm going to do along that end. Hmph.

I went with Chrissy last week to drop Chris off for basic. It was really hard (moreso for her, natch) and we're all already really missing him.

Ain't it cool news: Rael is really working hard at communicating. He still makes no sense most of the time, but he's got "mom, Lash, bye-bye and night night" down, and earlier this week I told him "I love you" and he replied with "I love (pause) too." That was cool.

It ain't cool news: They're offering Bryan a deal--10 years (probation in 8.5) and two strikes; if he turns it down it'll go to trial and he could get life, but that would mean Lash will have to testify after-all, which wasn't the case when the trial was still in our county. Hmph. I don't like the downsides to either option; I want him there forever without putting Lash through it all again.

More news later, folks!