Week Sixteen: Decisions and Revisions

The calculus train is barrelling along past Reimann Sum station now, and I’m staying in my seat and taking all the notes I can. I’m keeping up with my homework on antiderivatives, summation notation, indefinite integrals, and definite integrals. There will be an exam in two weeks covering this material, and I’m not scared of it. The biggest problems this week have been (a) slipping on the frosty ramp outside the house and bruising my hip, shoulder, hand, and ego; (b) getting almost to school and realizing I was driving the car that didn’t have the commuter window-sticker; and (c) getting so wrapped up in my homework that I lost track of time and was a minute or two late to class. They didn’t all happen on the same day (but two of them did).

The smaller the interval you measure, the closer you get to an accurate estimate of the area under the curve.

Of course, I know me by now, and when things are going well I tend to extrapolate the success to the nth degree. If I solve one computer hardware issue I think I should work as a Genius at the Apple Store. If I write a haiku I wonder how I’ll ever have time to finish my epic metered saga. One good pot of soup, and I’m thinking up graphic treatments for a cookbook series. If I think of an improved mousetrap design, I fret over my inability to purchase enough warehouse space to store all the inventory. That sort of thing. It’s more amusing now that I can catch myself in the act of making ridiculous or disproportionate future plans, and ground myself gently back in reality.

Thoughts like these have started me wondering about my academic future. Enough people have asked me if I were going back to school this fall that I started wondering, too. I went from “no” to “probably not” to “maybe” to “I think I’ll change my major to Pure Mathematics and get a full time job too and edit at night and invent cold fusion” in the space of an afternoon. Well, except for the cold fusion. I’m sure someone else has that all worked out by now.

I caught the thought, then I held it and took a more critical look at it. The physics professors seem distressed at the thought of my being a math major. What are you going to do with a math degree? Well, the same thing I was going to do with a physics degree at age forty-coughcoughcough — learn everything I can about what I’m interested in, while I still can. I’m interested in education but not in teaching, but who knows? With four technically oriented kids, being able to teach math might come in extremely handy. I’m interested in the history of math, the history of science, and the history of language. I don’t have five lifetimes in which to read everything, so I need to choose my reading matter carefully. For that, a structured course seems like a good idea. What’s it all good for? Well, it’s going to help me become more like me. That should be the purpose of education — to help you develop your strengths and shore up your weaknesses. It’s your choice as to whether you apply that towards finding a job or not. Personally, I think that this experience and education will eventually land me in a place where I’m making a living, but I just can’t see all the details from here. Not yet.

The math-and-numbers side of me is now being balanced by my words-and-letters side. I’m not just playing Words With Friends and Scramble any more; I’ve gotten a client who would like me to edit his book manuscript and help him get published. While I’m waiting for him to sign and return his contract, I’ll go ahead and hard-copy edit his first two chapters and keep track of my time so I can figure out my rates for future jobs. I’m also editing a friend’s dissertation for chapter-by-chapter publication in an academic journal. I’m reading fiction and nonfiction. I’m writing every day and blogging every week. And I’m still playing Words With Friends and Scramble. Finding point-scoring combinations among the letter tiles isn’t interfering with my “mathing” any more, so I’m just trying to stay balanced.

Then there’s knitting, that combination of wool, coding, artistic expression, and applied topology. I’m doing finishing (weaving in loose ends) on a huge project, turning a heel on a sock, designing a mathematically and artistically geeky scarf, and knitting a lace-edged narrow shawl that’s a therapeutic exercise.  My friend Bonnie has taught me how to do a Long-Tail cast-on — in fact, this patient woman has taught it to me twice so far — so I have a new tool in that particular toolbox.

As usual, all I need is time. T.S. Eliot assures me that won’t be an issue:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
— “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Greater resolution

It’s time again to reinvent myself — to move forward, to learn more, to do more, to be more.

To blog more. Let’s make that #1.

Thusly, I resolve that, in 2013 (!!!) I shall:

1. Blog on Chocolate Sheep again, and regularly. Dare I say, weekly?
2. Finish the Doctor Who scarf I’m knitting for my friend Ginnie. COMPLETED!
3. Complete my calculus class.
4. Learn one new cast-on.
5. Find a Most Excellent Job in my chosen field of technical and scientific editing.
6. Learn one new cast-off.
7. Help my kids be awesome.

Seven looks like a good number, don’t you think?

Sprung

Spring is here this week, no matter what the calendar says. Tommy insists with all his might that March 22 is THE DAY THE SNOW GOES AWAY and that is that! He doesn’t seem to have noticed that the snow is already gone.

The wheel turns and the leaves emerge, the birds make nests, the ground greens up again, and the crocuses poke through and stretch up. All the aspects of spring come around again as they did last year. And the wind is blowing so strongly I am just waiting for branches to come sailing off the trees. Being surrounded as we are by middle-aged maple trees, this is a nerve-wracking prospect.

We have birds about. The usual sparrows are nesting in the garage-gutters right above the car, and the usual starlings are nesting in the broken-down brick chimney, which means the hatchlings are, or can be, inside the house at some point. They also nest inside the little roof over the unused front porch, through a break in the wainscoting. They are annoying beyond belief. I can’t think of a single positive thing to say about them, so I’ll move along now. We also have robins, chickadees, nuthatches, flickers, red-winged blackbirds, American Goldfinches, and Downy Woodpeckers. And “our” Sandhill Cranes are back in the neighborhood, looking for a place to nest. Last summer I had reason to believe that the female of our nesting pair was taken by a coyote. I don’t know if that means that Dad and Junior are back to help him look for a new sweetheart to lure back to his old nest, if the two of them are just going to hang out as bachelors, or how any of that works.

So it’s looking better and better outside — more sunshine and color — but the environment itself is still inhospitable and possibly fatal, especially if you lose your mittens. (Which I just found this morning, incidentally, after nearly getting frostbite yesterday morning delivering urgent Campus Mail with bare hands.) You certainly would be wise to wait a bit before doing anything as brave as cycling or running or even walking Out There.

I’m still viewing it askance after this mild winter. Everyone in Wisconsin my age and up shares that same spooked look that says, “We’re going to PAY for that mildness, somehow.” If we had a May blizzard we might perceive the scales to be in balance again. It’s not that we want it, it’s what we feel we have coming to us.

Spring break is coming, but it comes unequally to all. My own spring break is the last week of March, and my kids’ break is some time in April. Of course they couldn’t possibly happen at the same time. My spring break plans include revamping my work space so that I can file and track the technical manuscripts I’m going to start copy editing. I will take some Before and After pictures of my setup, just to document that I did something. I already have one manuscript I need to edit this weekend, and it’s taking everything I have to keep from putting 150 percent of my mental resources on the Office Makeover Project. Having a bunch of homework for each class of mine due on Monday is also helping.

I suppose it’s time to update my progress on my resolutions. Well, my grades are still up, I’m not exercising in any meaningful way, I’m working on my second Jayne Hat (for which I got new yellow and dusty-pink yarn yesterday), and here is a blog post.

Oh yeah — this coming Tuesday I will have a Teenaged Son. All I can say is Wow. His feet are as big as my feet, his hands are almost as big as my hands. His names are his grandfathers’ and his face is his father’s. He is half Star Wars and half Star Trek. My JC is gawky and geeky and opinionated and emotional and cool. I wouldn’t trade him for any other card in the deck.

He’s bigger than this now…. he’s come a long way since 2007. Love you, buddy.