This morning I attended the writing program’s all-staff meeting, which actually turned out to be a rather encouraging experience.  Andrea Lundsford, who directs rhetoric and composition studies at Stanford and also wrote the St. Martin’s Handbook I use with my classes,  discussed projects her students had done that both engaged them with the community and asked them to explore issues about which they felt passionly.  I found her to be quite inspiring–an attractive elderly woman with white hair coiled in barrettes above each ear.  The bottom line is this–she communicated a care and concern for her students that moved me and reminded me why I am teaching in the first place.  I felt affirmed.

I have yet another meeting here in the next 30 minutes to strategize further about our “Evening with the Mountain Keepers” event scheduled for early April.  I don’t feel like attending today.  I’d rather head home and blog from bed.  I just returned to campus from home, where I let the dogs out to go potty and cleaned out litter boxes.  I wish I hadn’t had to come back to school. But, alas, I’m here, willing and able to do what’s needed.

S. is in her Frankfort office this afternoon, hating what remains of her job more with each hour she’s forced to spend there.  I’m not exactly sure what she dislikes so vehemently.  I suspect it’s having to be there when her heart has returned to disaster response.  Once she has made up her mind it is difficult for her to wait, which, in fact, I  understand.  I sure as hell don’t want to be here at the University of Kentucky this semester.  I want these changes to hurry up and happen.

In conclusion, I must mention my concern that this blog is degenerating into mundane reports about daily events.  No one wants to read a simple catalogue of “I did this” and “I did that.”  Boring!  I’m not sure what the solution is, since not much is actually happening.  If I had more time, I’d be able to take the details of daily life and make them interesting.  Blah, blah, blah.  I should stop while I’m ahead.  Enough of this nonsense.

Good news!  I got on the scales this morning and discovered I have lost 3 pounds in the last week.  This motivates me.  However, I know I will not continue to lose at that rate for long.  Inevitably the early pounds come off more easily than the latter.  But, God, if I could average 2 pounds a week instead of 1, I would be able to get the excess weight off in half the time, with a good portion of it gone by the time I leave for Thailand in May.  This makes me feel more optimistic.

Similarly fortuitous is the fact that the travel section of today’s New York Times features an article about Phuket.  S. and I consider this a good omen.  We spent almost a week there in March of 2007–six days of lounging on the beach, soaking up the sun, and swimming in the warm, blue waters of the Andaman Sea.  One day we visited sites that were rebuilt after the Tsunami of 2004, and another we rented a scooter and explored the island.  By far, however, I preferred walking the shore in search of shells and coral and rocks–most of which I brought home to the states.  At any rate, Phuket is an especially magical place for us–one I’ve often thought of when fantasizing about a return to Thailand.  So its feature in this morning’s New York  Times suggests to us on some level that we are on the right page in our plans regarding Thailand.  It makes me feel affirmed–embraced by the universe.

In the midst of dreaming about Bangkok and about what life there might be like, I must get to work on school stuff this afternoon, preparing my first major essay assignment of the semester and entering student names in my grade book–not terribly tedious tasks but ones that must be done.  In the meantime, S. is cooking Indian food in the kitchen.  I realize am hungry–gotta run get lunch.

It seems we have actually found someone who wants to live in our house for the next year.  Our potential person, a fellow faculty member from the English department, wants to think about things for a few days before finalizing the arrangement.  I hope this works.  It comforts me to know that a responsible and caring individual will be living here and loving the animals we cherish.  It’s going to free me up, not only logistically, but also emotionally, to go back and forth to Asia or Africa or wherever assured that the details of life back home are well managed.

S. says it scares her how well things are falling into place.  Yet it sure as hell doesn’t scare me.  I think this is meant to be, and I have faith in the universe to arrange the nuts and bolts accordingly. 

By the way, yesterday’s office painting party proved a great success.  The entire process lasted approximately 4 hours, but now the walls appear a welcoming and calming green–woodland valley haze to be exact.  I’m glad to have completed that project and to now be working in an environment I had a hand in shaping.

I don’t know that I have much more to share–except to mention that I am still not looking forward to a long semester of grading papers.  Regardless, things get going with an “All Staff” meeting on Monday.  Classes begin on Wednesday.  In the midst of all of this, I remind myself that this semester is bound to be better than last.  My schedule in and of itself is far superior since my classes end each afternoon by one.

So, all in all our Asian adventure is getting off to a good beginning.  S. probably won’t go to Bangkok till the end of February.  That means a mere two month separation before I am able to leave the states around the first week of May.  It seems we’re building a bit of momentum–movement in the right direction.  I’m excited.

I unfortunately may need to keep this post brief, as I have to hurry off to my office for a “painting party.”  “What is that, ” you might ask.  Well, for a Christmas present S. bought me paint for the office I share with another instructor and several graduate students, some of whom are meeting me later this morning to begin applying the new teal over the now hideous blue.  Not that there’s anything wrong with blue.  It’s just that not all of the walls are currently the same shade, so in the fall we vowed to improve the appearance of the windowless space and voted to use the color S. then purchased.  So today we actually undertake the makeover.

However, I have not told any of these women about my plans to settle in Bangkok and not return in the fall.  It will be difficult to keep this quiet, as I am bursting with the urge to tell.  S. thinks I should not share the news with anyone until the paperwork in Atlanta is complete and job is guaranteed in that ultimate sense.  This could take until the end of the month.  In the meantime I am trying to focus on the here and now and get going with a busy semester.  I simply must make myself enjoy this process–appreciate the way each detail evolves into a fuller and more substantial experience in the end.

Tomorrow morning a professor from the English Department is coming to see our  house, as she may be interested in living here next year.  We’ll see what happens, but this is a positive development at the very least.  Almost immediately then S. and I need to begin transforming what is now our “junk room” into space for our house-sitter to live.  I suspect the bulk of the work will fall to me, depending on how soon S. has to leave for Asia.  This task will involve first finding room elsewhere in the house for all of the “junk,” currently stored there–items which are in fact less junk and more household stuff used too infrequently to have yet found a more permanent place to live.  After the room is cleared, we’ll be able to paint, before finally removing the disgusting brown carpet and sanding and finishing the floors.  It’s the sanding that I suppose will take most of the time.  I expect to spend weeks down on hands and knees getting up close and personal with sawdust and other airborne particles one would probably prefer not to breath.

With that being said, I should probably close and get ready for school.  The painting party begins soon.

S. got the job–opened an email around 7:30 this morning offering her the position!  Fortunately the news arrived in time to keep me out the morgue.  The wait was killing me.  Well, okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not knowing was, at the very least, excruciating.  So I’m relieved.  I’m excited.  Actually, I’m thrilled beyond belief!

Now I feel fairly certain I will not be teaching in the fall.  This feels good.  It’s not that I don’t like my job.  I love it, in fact.  However, I look forward to the break.  I’m excited about exploring my options overseas.  Perhaps, I’ll end up teaching in Bangkok.  Maybe, I can develop this blog into a book–work up a proposal that I can sell to an editor.  It seems that people might want to read about S’s doing disaster response, about our efforts to maintain a partnership amidst her need to travel internationally for 80% of the year, our accomplishing that by my chronicling the adventure, anchoring it textually, as we together take on this challenge in word and deed.  S. is in-deed the doer in our relationship.  I work with words–use language to image our expereince.

Does this sound overly ambitious?  Is it silly to want to write about this?  I’ve never before blogged.  I don’t know how to go about getting people to read what I write.  If anyone can offer advice, please post comments below.

The wait is killing me.  I may be in the morgue by morning, if S. has not received word from her NGO about the disaster response position in Bangkok.  Call me reactive, even histrionic, if you will, but I definitely don’t deal well with the indefinite.  I want to know where we’ll be six months from now, who will live in our house over the next year, when I can let my university know I may not be teaching in the fall.  I want a lot, for sure, but I feel nearly paralyzed by the uncertainty.

I did manage to take down our Christmas tree this morning, pack up most of our ornaments, and drag what’s left of the decidedly dead douglas fir to the curb–a carpet of needles marking its path to roadside cemetery.  And let me assure you that the effort to do even that much seemed enormous, as I fought lethargy to place each ornament in its box, each box in its bin, and each bin upstairs in the guest room until S. can help me stash them in the attic.

School starts a week from today, so I should certainly be preparing my syllabus.  I should be making reservations for my students to visit the library and contacting the volunteer coordinator from the non-profit my classes will be working with this semester as part of a service learning project.  I should be doing a lot, but I am, in fact, doing very little in that regard.  The uncertainty about our future leaves me lethargic and lacking  motivation to move forward with life as we currently know it.  I crave the upcoming challenge, so much that the logistics of life in Lexington feel unappealing and insignificant–especially compared to the potentially exotic that could be our not so distant future.

Certainly I’ll survive until we know something definite.  But, alas, I don’t like it one bit, so forgive me if I bitch and moan and whine.  My attitude will improve; I promise.

I don’t know if no news really is good news, but I, in fact, have no news–at least no news on the job front.  I am becoming more and more anxious the longer it takes to hear from S’s NGO.  However, S. seems to think that our not having heard yet indicates that the Bangkok office would indeed like S. to return and the delay actually involves the US headquarters attempting to get her employment approved.  The truth is that we actually know nothing.  We are still waiting.

In the mean time I had to go into the office again today for a meeting the associate director of the Writing Progam organized to begin planning an April event that will highlight ways in which writers engage with their communities, specifically around the issue of mountain top removal in Appalachia.  I’m not overly enthused about taking on another project during our current transition, but I want to do what I can while I can.

A bit of good news involves the fact that we may have found someone interested in living in our house over the next year.  I won’t say anything about who that might be quite yet.  But it is great to have a responsible person reasonably enthusiastic about the prospect of caring for our home and animals.

I wish I had something of substance to share, but besides the fact that it’s cold and rainy in Lexington this afternoon and besides the regrettable reality that I have been battling a head ache since early this morning, I indeed have no news–not that either the rain or my headache actually qualifies as news to begin with.  Let’s just hope that my newslessness IS a good omen, that it does bode well for employment opportunities in Bangkok.

This morning S. resigned the executive directorship she currently holds with the Kentucky  non-profit  that advocates for the homeless in our state–effective January 23rd–if the pending position in global disaster response needs her that soon.  This stresses me considerably.  It makes me anxious for her to submit a resignation without the other job being firmly secured.  It puts us in a vulnerable position financially, and I dislike vulnerability of almost any kind, but economic vulnerability especially.  But she insists this timing is necessary.  I just pray that the new job becomes available soon and that S’s salary and housing stipulations are acceptable to the employing organization. 

I find all of this stressful.  And I’m not looking forward to the upcoming semester.  As a matter of fact, I don’t feel like teaching at all.  I want us to hurry and move on with our lives.  I don’t want to be stuck back here in Kentucky until May, while S. gets to go abroad in search of more exciting and meaningful work.  My attitude may be bad, but I can’t help it.

Also this morning, I purchased my university parking pass for the semester and stopped by my office to turn in hard copies of my final grades from the fall.   With that accomplished I feel more prepared to take down and put away our Christmas decorations, neither of which I really want to do.  I don’t know what it is I actually want.  I don’t know why I feel so unmotivated and uninspired.

I DO know that I enjoy this blog.  It makes me want to write a memoir.  And though I dare not go into any details of my story prematurely, let it suffice to say I DO have a remarkably dramatic tale to tell–the particulars of which most people currently in my life might find difficult to believe, but all of which is easily substantiated, documented, etc.  I wish I could find a publisher willing to offer me a book contract and an advance, so I could put aside teaching for while and focus on the telling of my tale.  Probably I should pursue such a contract, but I have no idea where to begin or even whom to ask for advice.

I guess I’m realizing writing this that I do feel ready to tell the story, as difficult and painful as that may prove.  I think that blogging every day now for almost a week, I realize that I DO have the discipline to sit down and write every day, whether I feel like it or not, whether I even feel like I have anything much to say on a given day.  The details come with the doing of the deed–the act of writing almost accomplishes itself in some ways, if you sit down at a computer every morning and make yourself hammer out the words.

By the way, I still am being quite faithful to the demands of my diet and exercise regimen.  I don’t like not eating what I want.  It’s hell in some regards.  But, God, I have to do this.  I keep telling myself that next January will come, and when it does I can be 50 pounds thinner and happier with my body or the same size I am now or bigger and more miserable than ever.  I choose the former.  I don’t believe I really have any other option.  The other remains a non-option.  I simply can not remain the same.

It’s the same thing with the book and blog.  I must continue pounding away at these keys, as the literal pounds are dieted and exercised away.  I will exchange one kind of poundage for another and be the better for it.

Okay, I got on the scales this morning–big mistake!  It may be that we are about to embark on a grand and exotic Asian adventure, but, God knows, I can’t do it fat!  I simply can not walk the streets of Bangkok like this–all 173 bulging pounds of me.

This is how it all went down.  S. and I had agreed we would weigh on Sunday.  I had begun dieting a week ago but was too afraid to step on the scales.  S. is to start watching what she eats on Monday.  Sunday then seemed a reasonable day to determine what we weighed.  While I may be a chicken shit when it comes to actually quantifying my size, once the decision is made to put a number on the situation, I want to get the pain over with as quickly as possible.  So when we woke up at 2 this morning to take the dogs out for their middle of the night pee, I brought the scales into our bedroom, as the floor in the bathroom slants too badly to weigh accurately in there, and proceeded to strip naked, because God forbid I weigh even an ounce more than necessary.  I even removed my glasses and seriously considered doing without a barrette but decided it unwise to try reading the numbers both blind and with hair falling in my face.  Then, stepping on the scales like the most over-sized contestant on the Biggest Loser, I was told I weighed a mere 75 somethings or other.  Now I may not have a completely realistic sense of what I weigh, but I did feel fairly certain I hadn’t been 75 pounds since I was seven.  And, of course, being without glasses I was unable to get the stupid scales to stop reading in kilograms and begin weighing in pounds, as I stood shivering and blind in a drafty 100 year old house–not able to weigh having made the big decision to do so.  This did not sit well wiith me.  So S., who knows my inclination for thowing fits and was herself sitting warm and fully PJ-ed under the covers of our bed–decided to intervene.  After playing with the thing for a few long and chilly minutes and asking me where I had put the manual–when in fact she is the manual keeping half of this relationship–got the apparatus reading in pounds again.  You know something is not right with the universe when a book of directions is necessary for figuring out scales.

To make a long blog a little shorter, let it suffice to say I weighed a good many pounds more than I wished.  So I am an Asian bound woman on a mission.  I will not walk the streets of a Thai city like this.  I may be willing to wear my glasses the next time I weigh, but I will not make a big fat spectacle of myself on the sidewalks of Bangkok.

We are currently waiting to hear from S’s NGO as to whether or not the organization will be able to rehire her at the salary we need to make this project work. Its end of the year hiring freeze interferes with S’s ability to resign from her present position and prevents us from making practical plans about an apartment in Bangkok, maintenance of our Lexington home while we are overseas, and care of our pets who are unable to travel. One of our dogs, a one year old Maltese named Lucy, will probably make the trip back and forth with me, while the other dog, a five year old terrier mix named Ralph, and our four cats with remain behind. We need someone to live in our house and love these precious pets. Any volunteers?

Today S. is in her Frankfort office organizing files and having AAA tow her truck to a garage in Lexington for repairs. The ’96 Nissan refuses to start. S. drove my Toyota to work, so I am home bound, cleaning up trash in our basement, talking to my mother on the phone, and composing this blog from under the covers of our bed. It is difficult to heat our 100 year old hulk of a house, so I dive under the duvet, huddling with my laptop while dogs doze all around. The spring semester doesn’t begin for another week and a half. So while I probably should be taking down Christmas decorations and stowing them in the attic till next year, I lounge around in bed with books and blog to keep me company and canine body heat to keep me warm. At least in Bangkok cold won’t be an issue, but from there I will probably bitch about the heat. My uncle used to say my body’s thermostat was broken. Surely the approach of menopause and a Lexington home without adequate heat or insulation only worsen that condition. Drop me in the tropics in a few months, and I’m sure to be climactically challenged!