Just got an email from our editor (oooh, doesn't that sound smart) offering us a contract for our romance anthology!!! Woohoo!

This is so exciting and so important and so timely. Yes!

For class today we read Claudia Dain's The Courtesan's Daughter, mainly because she's a Raleigh-based writer and has agreed to visit the class (this is my NC Encore class for the over-50 non-credit, continuing education program at NC State).

The main focus of a good deal of the book is the virginal heroine's request of the hero for a pearl necklace. We discussed the meaning and symbolism of the necklace. Pearls=innocence, virginity, what you give your daughter on her high-school graduation. That is, NOT what a would-be courtesan asks for from her would-be protector. They're also sensuous in and of themselves: they warm to the touch, they're round and voluptuous, they roll along the bosom.

"And then," I said, "there's the sexual meaning of a pearl necklace."

Blank stares.

"You're going to make me describe this, aren't you?"

Eager nods.

No shit, there I was, explaining pearl necklace to a group of about twenty Southern white women, all over fifty.

They decided that *I* needed to ask Claudia in two weeks if she knew about that definition when she wrote the book. ;)

We also discussed the differences between a courtesan, a prostitute, and a mistress. Interestingly enough, THEY came up with the idea that a mistress was necessarily related to a man--one can't be a mistress without being the mistress of someone--but a courtesan was a professional description. The rest of course is a matter of precisely how much one earns.

This post is going to be all about how I suck as a teacher. So let's get this part of it out of the way right away: yes, I know I'm a good teacher. I know I'm a lot better than other teachers/professors out there. I have an enthusiasm for my subject matter, I have convictions about the skills I teach, and I'm very very good at imparting both to my students. I know that. But remember that thing about competent people not thinking they're competent and the idiots thinking they're all that? Well, this is one of those posts, okay?

Because while I am good in general, I suck donkey's balls in the specifics.

I don't grade. Not I don't like to grade. I just don't grade. I hate the time suck it represents and I hate being confronted with my students' low education level and complete ignorance, so I just don't do it. And that's just so not helpful for the students. How can they improve in a writing class if they don't get anything back from me?

I don't do the readings I give my students. I usually go with what I remember about the text from reading it years ago and add a quick skim if I need to. I certainly don't do background research. When my students don't know that England is a monarchy and then I have to explain what a monarchy means, researching the finer historical points of whatever text I assign them is pointless.

All my lesson plans are by the seat of my pants. I don't have an overall scheme. I rarely have a complete calendar on my syllabus. I write the paper prompts days late and just before class when I do get to them, so they're not as step-by-step comprehensive as they need to be. I don't include a rubric, which I have to start doing to justify my exasperation with the papers I get and the grades I then give them.

I'm not actually good at teaching literature. I've got this conviction about teaching my students how to be literary critics, because that's not something anyone ever overtly taught me, but I don't actually know how to go about doing it. I've got this conviction about using one third of class time in literature courses on paper writing, but I resent it and so drag my feet on actually doing it, so the papers I receive suck. If I would just do what my convictions lead me to do, things might get better, but that requires forethought and planning and that's hard, dammit.

I need prior planning. I need to read the assignments. I need to put thought into the prompts I give out. I need to GRADE, dammit. I need to believe in my students again. I have a vague memory that at the beginning of the semester, I loved my students. Right now, I'm so frustrated with them and their inability to GET what I thought I taught, but I don't know if it's them or me, because I wasn't actually a very good teacher this semester.

I'd like to recommit myself to getting it right next semester. I used to put more time and thought into it, but that was when I was teaching one class a semester, with 18 students. The 4/4 load, with three preps, plus ALL the other work I'm doing, is a bit overwhelming, and everything suffers because of how I procrastinate my teaching and grading.

One of those wonderful days that is just soul-satisfying, although not really amazing for any obvious reason.

My mother watched the boys last night (in which my baby is possessed by screaming hissy-fit demons) while we were in Raleigh. We get back around two in the morning and fall into bed at my mother's house. We wake up in the morning and bring a cold boy to bed with us. It's pouring rain so we have a slow breakfast of waffles and sausages. After it clears up, we start lopping branches off my mother's trees, under her direction. Then it clears up a bit more, so we go out to buy some plants, take out her misshapen box bushes, replace them with cool plants, and then eat her amazing dinner. Then we come home.

See? Nothing really interesting or exciting or noteworthy. But a wonderful time with family and good hard work and fabulous food.

So that was my Mother's Day. Oh, except that Theo MADE me a card that has three hearts with arms and legs and faces on the front, the big one labeled "You," holding the hand of a smaller one labeled "Me," which is holding the hands of a smaller one labeled "Isacc" (yeah yeah). And inside the card read "I hope our hearts are always conected. Happy Mother's Day." Made and written and illustrated completely by himself. Amazing child.

Oh, and I got a Garden Rocker and a box of jasmine tea. :)

How wrong is it that my latest Paperback Swap book is a Book Crossing book that I will not be releasing into the wild?

I'm at Drill this weekend. I'm still unbearably proud to wear this uniform. I still look at my name tag on my chest and know that I'm representing my family with that name, that I am a physical embodiment of the commitments that my husband and I have made together to our family, our country, and our principles. I've spent some of the best days of my life and the worst in uniform. I've met some of the best people I know in uniform. I've learned as much about myself in the relatively few actual days I've been in uniform as I have in the many years out of it. I've learned how strong I am, how committed to my vision of the world as a just place. I've learned to be proud of myself and what I believe in and stand for.

And while all this is true and will continue to be true, I'm also more frustrated with and vexed by the process that is slowly grinding me out of the Guard than I have ever been by anything else.

Because of my problem with thermoregulation, I am being processed for a medical discharge. Because I tend to get an unbearable headache and throw up a lot after having been outside in the sun for more than, oh, say, two hours, I cannot perform my military function, and am being slowly kicked out.

This is a problem that the Guard caused. As one of a small group of Officer Candidates from Michigan (where it was 45 degrees), I arrived in Maryland's Camp Fretterd (where it was 85 degrees) the day before OCS started in 2003. They didn't seem to expect us and didn't know what to do with us. They grudgingly and belatedly fed us Burger King that night and had nothing for us the next morning. By the evening of the first day of OCS, I had cried on the phone to Jonathan that I didn't think I could do it, and had thrown up all over my bed. I spent the evening in the local hospital, being pumped full of saline, and went back to Camp early in the morning. Four days later, I successfully completed a 5 mile hike with full ruck, but only just. Six weeks after that, after blowing away the 12 mile hike with full ruck by basically jogging through the whole thing and feeling great, I fell out again on a piddly little 2 mile ruck march. Which happened to be at noon in Alabama in June, without warning, without plan, and without communication as to how far we were going. And while I understand that this is how it is in real combat situations, at least in real combat, there is a reason to do things and usually a way to find out more about why it's being done. In Alabama, we were told to hike without being told for how long or why. Someone told me "one more mile," then someone told me five and I just collapsed. Full out hysterics and collapse. So, yeah, maybe not a good soldier, but also treated badly by my command.

After one succumbs to heat once, one succumbs much more easily the next time. And so, twice in 2003, at least once in 2004 (once after running at Drill in NC in 95 degree heat with the Staff, I threw up on the way home), at least two mild near-misses in OBC in 2005 (once caused by a GI bug, another extremely mild one during our lone FTX), my huge disaster in August 2005, and once during Katrina. And since then, I've been very very careful.

In 2006, my Colonel chose to leave me behind when the unit went to Kuwait because of my heat issues. He knew I could and would do a good job as Rear Detachment commander, so he decided to let me serve in that capacity, rather than risking a medical discharge when I admitted during the SRP (pre-deployment training and paperwork time) that I'd had so many heat injuries.

Yesterday, I had a Fit For Duty physical. This is a physical I've pushed for and agitated for and insisted upon, because I know I cannot do my military job. If I can't be outside on a summer morning in my yard gardening for more than two hours, I cannot do the 15 hour, without-a-stop ride from Kuwait to Baghdad in an un-air-conditioned Humvee, let alone any missions once actually on the ground.

And it was a FFD physical, rather than a medical review board, because all the incidents of heat injury have taken place while in uniform. For a while during the physical, it looked like I wasn't going to even get a "profile" (medical designation that you can't perform certain tasks) because it had all happened so long ago and I've been so careful, but the doctor I was dealing with understood my issue and situation and gave me the permanent profile that basically is the death-knell for my Guard career.

Only one person I've told this weekend said, "Oh, God, I'm so sorry." That's probably because he's the only person who knows how competent I am. Everyone else who knows me has left or been pulled away.

So, what's next is further "counseling." And no promotion. So no Captain's bars for me, because with my profile, I'm basically not qualified for the position I'm in anymore, so they won't promote me. At this point, I could just resign my commission and be done. Because with a permanent profile, IRR (Individual Ready Reserves) wouldn't pull me for deployment either. But I talked with someone today who said that the MEB process means I'll probably get a severance package that is my "bribe" from the Guard NOT to agitate for VA benefits. Take this lump sum of money as compensation for the medical problem we've caused you, and if you then ask for VA benefits to cover the problem, we'll take the money back. But because my problem can't be solved, but can be avoided, there's really no need (I think) for VA benefits, and I probably wouldn't get that many anyway. So the severance package is *probably* worth staying in for. But that depends on how much it begins to piss me off that I wasn't promoted last September like I should have been. It's pissing me off a LOT right now, so we'll see.

Anyway, that's my life with the Guard. I'm very sad about it. But it is what it is. I don't regret anything about it at all. And there's very little I could have done to change the outcome. And I think I've done what I was supposed to (says the atheist). I've served in Katrina, and filled a position in the rear that needed someone competent. So it's all good.

But I still love that uniform.

At the restaurant we were at today, Jonathan was holding Isaac (6 1/2 months, BTW). I called his name. He looked at me. I said, "Hi! It's Mommy!" He smiled. I said, "Where's Daddy?" and he turned to look right at Jon. I said, "Where's Theo?" and he turned to look right at Theo.

SO fucking COOL!!!

Oh, and BTW, he was 21 lbs, 28 inches long, and had a 18" head circumference at his doctor's appointment the other day. A big boy. Slightly heavier than long (weight was just below 95%, height just above 90%. But still very proportionate.

And I've almost completely stopped producing milk.

Today was "warm." Probably about 75 degrees. I had a long day at school, went to the store, picked up Isaac, all in light-weight pants, boots, and a tight knit top with 3/4 length sleeves. Now, I haven't been getting much sleep, but I got home and was just dead. Jon said I was very red, and I felt heat beat.

After a few errands in 75 degree weather. I'm so fucked.

My history with heat is long and complicated, and it's the reason I have a Fit For Duty Physical on Ft. Bragg next month. But the point is, as I said to Jonathan, it's all very well bitching about trying to convince the Army that yes, this is actually a problem and not just me trying to get out of deployments, that this is something I will have to deal with for the rest of my life, but then realizing that yes, this is something I will have to deal with for the rest of my life is completely depressing.

I can't be out in the sun for more than two hours at a time. Ever. I can't be in heat without relief or without doing absolutely nothing. And it's not going away. In fact, it's getting worse. And how do I explain this to the Army as something that's not only real and dangerous, but something they created in the first place? We'll see how I do on May 2.

Switching gears...

My weight, after dropping for 18 months (except for, like, the whole pregnancy thing), has been pretty stable around 152 lbs for about two months now. As I said before, I'm a six 6 or 8, depending on the manufacturer. But the weirdest thing about being this weight, which could actually be called "thin," is that if I'm bloated or retaining water, or just fluctuating for whatever reason, I can tell. When I weighed 195 lbs, three pounds difference one way or another was not something I noticed, nor something that really effected anything. But if I go up to 155 lbs now, my clothes are tight, and my stomach is noticeably bigger. If I eat too much, not only do I feel uncomfortable internally, but you can see if from the outside. Hell, if my bladder's full, it's noticeable from the outside as distorting my abdomen. And if I go below 150--three pounds in the other direction--I just look gaunt. I've never had this much awareness of my day-to-day weight fluctuations before. It's very strange.

Freeze warning tonight. Cover the maple.

1. My username is _____ because ____.
"sarahf" (first name, last initial) because I had no imagination when I created my account and went with the format tammylc had already created.

2. My name is _____ because ______.
Sarah (means Princess) because....my parents liked it? I like it, FWIW.

3. My journal is titled ____ because ____.
Um...hold on..."It is a truth universally acknowledged." First six words of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and seemed appropriate for a journal.

4. My friends page is called ____ because ____.
"Sarah F.'s Friends" because I seem singularly lacking in imagination.

5. My default userpic is ____ because _____.
A picture of a rose over writing. This is a rose I drew from life of a rose Jonathan gave me. It was when we were in college, probably my freshman year, his sophomore year. My mother drove me up to Massachusetts (greater love hath no mother) and stayed in a hotel while I stayed with Jonathan for Valentine's Day. He bought me a gorgeous vase and put a single perfect rose in it. One day while he was at class, I drew it in my journal in pencil (you can still see the lines of the paper on the rose). At some point, Jon scanned it and colored it for me in PhotoShop. Then he (I think) backed it with The Most Romantic Letter in All of English Literature: CPT Wentworth's letter to Anne Elliot at the end of Persuasion. So, romance on romance. Roses are my iconic flower, as red is my iconic color. And it's Jane Austen!