You Can't Rush Sourdough

Our sourdough starter #2 is up and running. Or bubbling, rather. We got it going a little over a week ago and had been feeding it twice a day since then to try to coax some life out of it. By Sunday I had just about given up hope. Our starter #1, at the end of its life, had such a delicious yeasty smell. When I gave it a good stir before making something sourdough-y, it smelled a lot like an open bottle of wine. On Sunday, starter #2 smelled like play-dough.

Mark convinced me not to give up on it, though, so I let it sit and think about its actions for another 12 hours without adding any extra flour to it. That seemed to be the ticket. By Monday I was noticing a few more bubbles, and by Tuesday afternoon it was threatening to spill over the sides of its jar. I overheard my dad ask Mark if he should be afraid that the starter was going to attack him in his sleep. That was when I knew we were really in business again.

However, as we expected, starter #2 doesn't have the delicious tangy smell starter #1 had after five months of living in our fridge. We made our sourdough English muffins this morning, and they didn't taste sour. They fluffed up, but barely. It's just going to take time for our starter #2 to come into its own.

It's going to take a while for us to come into our own up here in the Cities too. The vacation effect has worn off a bit. Although we're still enjoying spending time with my family and are still thankful for how they've opened their home to us, we're beginning to wish that we had our own space some of the time. But Mark is still searching for a job, and I'm still not getting paid by my school. We just have to wait to become an autonomous family unit again.

Also, I'm beginning to really miss my library. Yes, I still think of it as my library. I miss my coworkers who are actually some of my best friends. I miss the hustle and bustle, and I miss seeing people everyday. Right now Mark and I have a lot to do, but it's just stuff to do. While we're doing it, we're not very social.

And the driving. Yeesh. It's really really going to take me a while to come into my own driving around here. Hopefully at some point driving to a new location won't feel like a major ordeal. I won't sit forward on my seat, clutching the steering wheel in a sweaty vice-like grip, my heart won't pound as I change lanes, and my lower back won't be sore from tension by the time I arrive at a new location. (Of course, I should qualify this  by acknowledging that Mark does not experience these symptoms driving around the Cities. I'm the hyper-sensitive, ultra-stressed, uptight one in the relationship.)

Moving to a new location is a little tough, even when the move was desired and anticipated. I'm not complaining about our situation right now. We're just like a new sourdough starter-- it will take a few months for us to find ourselves in our own place, begin working out how to make new friends and hold onto left-behind friendships, and drive without hyperventilating. But pretty soon we'll be making things happen confidently (and with a little tang).

Not Stressed. I am NOT STRESSED.

I haven't disappeared from this blog; I've just been moving. I'm now typing this from Minnesota instead of Iowa. We're at my parents' house. Most of our belongings are in storage in Mark's parents' basement. The rest of our stuff, that we thought we'd need in the next couple of months, is in boxes and totes here at my parents' house.

Nothing is organized now. We have piles of papers. (I hate piles of papers. I want them in files.) But overall, things have gone well. We are here.

In the two weeks leading up to our move I was really not stressed. I was not worried about the upheaval or the transition. Even as we packed boxes and approached the time when we would have no income I did not feel stressed. And I was so very proud of myself.

Mark's parents came down to drive the moving truck on Saturday, and we weren't going to follow until Wednesday. This meant that we were camping out in our house for about four days. That was okay. All the cleaning was okay. No hiccups in our plans.

We've had a couple of hiccups today, though, and I'm beginning to feel a little stressed.

Well, okay, I'm pretty stressed. I feel a little bit like my life is over. It started this morning when the inside panel fell off of the door of our car, the same car that was hit by a tree branch two weeks ago. Mark knew what to do to get it back on and I helped him duck tape it on. That was alright. No big deal.

Then when we stopped at Mark's parents' house on the way to my parents' (because my bin with essentials like underwear had accidentally ended up on the moving truck), we found out that a can of gasoline that we had packed in a box (yes, we know now what a bad idea that was) had gotten turned on its side and leaked a puddle all over my in-laws basement and our couch. Oh dear.

I handled that alright, though, after apologizing profusely to Mark's parents.

Then when we arrived at my parents' house, I realized that my sourdough starter had gotten sealed in it's container, thus cutting off its supply of oxygen. When I questioned Mark about it, he said he'd sealed it last night. The starter smells funny and there isn't a hint of a bubble. I think it's dead.

That was the final straw. I cried. Tears dripped down my face as I unpacked the rest of our refrigerator items and nestled them into my parents' fridge. It wasn't Mark's fault. This is just one of those communication lapses that seem to happen during times of great busyness. But still. My baby.

After we were all done unpacking, I opened the mail that had begun to accumulate at my parents' house for us. I was expecting to see the letter in response to the health insurance I'd applied for, since Mark's and my health insurance through our Iowa jobs will end on April 30. I was not expecting, however, to have our application denied.

More correctly, my application was denied, because of my 'pre-existing condition' of polycystic ovary syndrome. I was not expecting this little wrench in things, and that was the final final straw that left me feeling like my life is pretty much over.

I know it's not. I know there are things we can do and that we will probably be able to find health insurance before May 1, even if it's through a COBRA plan from our previous employers. We'll be making phone calls tomorrow.

But tonight, I don't have much of a sense of perspective. I'm just tired and stressed.

It wouldn't be a major life change for me if I didn't expend some good solid stress over it, right?

I'm Here! I'm Just Studying at the Same Time

I was told today that I’ve been ‘silent online’ recently, and that’s definitely true. I’m still here, though! Tonight I’m going to give blog writing an honest-to-goodness fighting try. I’ve begun a few blogs over the past two weeks, and they’ve all fizzled into nothing. They almost all start with some variation on the theme, “I’ve been studying.” Then I realize that pretty much all my attention has been sucked up by that studying, so I don’t have much to write about other than elementary pedagogy and linguistics. (For example, did you know that the reason it’s so hard to learn English grammar is because English has Germanic roots, not Latin roots, and grammar rules were first devised by Latin teachers who tried to fit the English language into the Latin rules they were used to? No wonder learning grammar is the bane of all fifth graders’ existence!)

But really, I have had a life of some kind over the past couple of weeks, although the variety of life experiences has been much reduced. What has happened?

1. I have studied. My tests are coming up on February 18 and February 23. As I keep telling co-workers at the library, I will be a different person when those tests are done: a happier person. The tension frown between my eyebrows will (hopefully) disappear and I’ll have a sense of humor again.

2. We have decided to get a hamster at the library. National Library Week is in the middle of April, and the three of us on the planning committee for this momentous week in the world of librarians decided it would be fun to get a hamster and then allow children to participate in a naming contest for the hamster. My vision for the hamster is that it will live in the office that my fellow children’s librarian and I share and that we will bring it out after school gets out and let kids pet it. Maybe we’ll let it roll around the children’s section of the library in a hamster ball. You may think that we’re crazy for wanting to get a hamster. But really, it’s only the other librarians who are crazy because the hamster is my idea and I will be washing my hands of the little rodent and leaving it and its smelly cage in their care in about 2 ½ months.

3. I have studied more.

4. I had a birthday. Having a birthday in January means that I often receive calendars or winter-related items. I tend to not be terribly excited about calendars after years of calendar birthday presents. Neither Mark, nor his parents, nor my parents gave me a calendar. This year, my parents gave me a coat.

 Pretty, yes? I told Mark that the amount of teal and turquoise in my wardrobe is reaching a critical level. I don’t want to turn into a turquoise Dolores Umbridge.

 For my birthday, Mark and I went to a classy little café in the next town over. We had crepes and good coffee.

 Then we spent some time continuing a discussion on ‘family values’ that we started on our 3^rd anniversary date in August. We’ve wanted for a while to write down a list of values and post them in a visible place in our house.

 The idea is to try to live up to the values. That may seem obvious, but I find, at least for myself, that life gets in the way and I don’t end up really thinking about my values. I only discover later that I’ve passively adopted habits that reflect a rather disappointing value system. So, the hope is that with these values posted in our house, the habits will come as a result of the values, not the other way around.

5. I have taken practice tests and studied the rationales behind the answers on the practice tests.

6. I have gotten a haircut. It was a really not-dramatic haircut. I didn’t have the energy to think of anything exciting to do with my hair.

7. I have found more materials to study and pored over them in an antisocial way at the break room table at the library.

8. I have not read much, other than textbooks and the books that I’m supposed to read in order to lead various book club discussions at the library. For those I’ve read What Alice Forgot  by Liane Moriarty, which I found both fascinating and then disappointing; Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, which taught me more about the French Revolution than any history class I’ve taken; and am currently reading Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol, which I sneakily planned into the book club schedule when I was making it last fall because of my interest in Teach For America. Oh, and I've also plowed through 'The Dark is Rising' series by Susan Cooper. Fun, but, as I said, I had to plow.

The tests have undoubtedly stressed me out on occasion over the last couple of weeks. I’ve had a number of optimistic cheerleaders hooting and hollering for me, even when I have felt like I will never pass the tests, which will render my life pretty much worthless. (Did I mention that stress makes me prone to overreaction?)

I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the tests now. But I still may not be ‘here’ much until they’re over!

Announcement (but not a baby announcement)

So many blog post ideas have come into my brain and then gone out of it again that my brain is starting to feel like airport security. Only my brain is not as effective as airport security because the ideas seem to be coming and going pretty freely.

Mark and I have wanted to move back up to the Twin Cities in Minnesota for a little over a year now. The reason we’ve been so slow to actually make the move, however, is that we only kind of wanted to move. Every time we found ourselves on the verge of making the decision to move back, something would stop us. Friends. A job that I love. An impending and potentially financially stressful mission trip. A church we were excited about being involved in, where we felt that we were seeing God at work in cool ways.

But last August, kind of on a whim (but with Mark’s knowledge and blessing), I applied for a program called Teach For America. If you look at their website for about a minute, you’ll see what they’re all about: giving all children, no matter their socioeconomic background, a good education.

Teach For America (TFA) recruits members (they call them ‘corps members’) and then place the people they recruit in struggling schools around the U.S. The people they place do not need to have teaching licenses at the start of their two-year commitment to TFA but will take classes throughout the two years to get licensed. TFA also provides tons of training and resources before corps members are placed in schools and once they start teaching to help corps members succeed as teachers.

It’s a pretty sweet deal. It’s a sweet deal for the corps members because they get their teaching license and experience at the same time, so they don’t face the same dilemma that recent graduates with a teaching license face. TFA also has a very good reputation, so to be able to put TFA on a resume is pretty nice. It’s also a sweet deal for TFA. Because their reputation is so good and their corps member benefits are so good, they attract a huge crowd of applicants and then they’re free to pick and choose the cream of the crop. It’s a sweet deal for the kids in the schools too. The corps members chosen by TFA are all very driven to see their students excel in school and beat all of the horrible odds that are stacked against them because of the social injustices of our country.

Anyway, you can probably guess where I’m going with this—much to my surprise, when I applied for TFA, I was invited back for a phone interview. I was further surprised to be invited back to a final interview. And I was completely and utterly flabbergasted (how do you like that for a word?) to be offered a position with TFA in the Twin Cities teaching ESL in an elementary classroom starting this fall.

I got this news on January 7, and the next few days were full of conversation and speculation between me and Mark as to what TFA would mean for us, if I were to accept their offer. We came up with a number of effects, both positive and negative, TFA would have on us and our future plans:

1) We would have a good reason to move up to the Twin Cities where

     a. we would be closer to family (see our motivation here)

     b. Mark would hopefully have more opportunities to advance a career in music

     c. we would be closer to college friends

     d. we would be able to cross-country ski in the winter instead of being blown to death by icy gale-force winds

2) I would get my teaching license and be able to teach in a school, which is something I’ve wanted to do pretty much since I graduated from college (yeah, I know, obviously I didn’t think through my college education very clearly when I started).

3) One of our dreams has been to live in the city and minister to the people we by – TFA recommends that you live where your students live and get to know them and their families outside of school. In this case, TFA’s desires were directly in line with desire of our own.

4) I will most likely receive a $4,500 education grant both years that I am a TFA corps member. Since I’ll have to be taking classes to get my teaching license, these grants will probably not help with current loans, but they will also probably prevent us from incurring further education debt.

5) I will be very busy. TFA doesn’t hide the fact that the two years as a TFA corps member are very busy. TFA expects you to give your all to the students you serve. My personality is that of a perfectionist (sigh—not always a good thing for me), so it will be easy for me to fall into giving too much to teaching and too little to Mark. And the other people I love.

6) Because of the reason above and because we’re leaning toward domestic adoption, we will probably not be able to start an adoption until my two years are almost up. That does make me kind of sad. I’ve had my heart set on parenting for two years already and now it will be another two years before we have even the possibility of starting our family. Ouch. Ouchouchouch.

7) However, both Mark and I acknowledge that at the end of my two years with TFA, we will be more financially stable than we are right now. I will have my teaching license and a few years of experience. Mark will hopefully have been able to begin his career in music recording and production. And we will have our school loans almost all paid off, or maybe completely paid off. In my mind, that would be a much healthier environment to start an adoption anyway.

So, all things considered, we came to agreement, and I accepted the position with TFA. I’m so excited about teaching ESL and about moving back up to the Twin Cities.

BUT.

In order for me to participate in all that TFA offers, like teach, I need to take and pass the MTLE tests, the Minnesota Teacher Licensure Examinations. These are tests that those aspiring to teach in Minnesota usually take after having taken certain courses in university. TFA apparently has such a high opinion of its corps members that they assume corps members will be able to study for and pass the exams without having taken the classes.

Usually they’re right, it looks like, with I think around 80-90% of corps members passing the tests on the first try. But that doesn’t assure me, and that’s the reason I was crying over oatmeal on Saturday morning. And that’s the reason I haven’t written any blog posts in the last two weeks. I’ve been tracking down study materials and studying.

I’m sure you’ve all read enough of my blather for one day, so I won’t force you endure descriptions of the tests I need to take or the measures I’m going to studying for them. Maybe another day, but not today.

Suffice it to say, if I can pass these exams in a month, then big changes are coming for me and Mark!

Small Town Life

Since my husband and I moved to this little town in Iowa, I’ve been reminded on occasion that we do live in a small town. It’s a bigger small town than some of the other small towns nearby, but it most definitely is a small town. Mark’s parents and his sister and her family also live in a small town, but it’s a small town right outside of a large city. Many of the people in their community work in the large city. The town that Mark and I live in is interesting because it is entirely self-sufficient.

We have all the things that very small towns typically have: hair salons, local restaurants, gas stations. We have things that small towns sometimes have: a hospital and a number of grocery stores and a Super Walmart (lucky us) library. But we also have a number of things that small towns generally do not have: a golf course, a public school and a Christian school, about 15 churches, and a college. People living in this town don’t need to leave or associate with the outside world unless they want to.

This is the kind of town in which culture can take a side path out of mainstream American culture and no one puts up a fuss and maybe no one notices unless they decided to go to a college or university away from home. For example, in this town children are regularly served hot chili soup with a side dish of cinnamon roll at school for lunch. Soup suppers at schools and churches often serve this combination as well, and the deli in the little mall has a whole day devoted to this combination once a week during the winter. I’ve actually taken to it myself—a slurp of some spicy, salty soup and then a bite of sweet cinnamon roll complement each other nicely.( Once you get past the initial skepticism and try the combination, it stops seeming so strange.) This is also the only place on earth that I’ve lived where a ‘slopping joe’ sandwich is called a ‘tavern.’

Anyway, in a small self-sufficient town like this, the network of relationships can begin to take on the look of a ball of yarn that has been bouncing around freely in the trunk of a car for weeks. Upon discovery, there’s no clear evidence of where the yarn starts or ends, and the idea of sorting it out makes you want to cry or laugh hysterically.

Earlier this week, I called the city utilities company with a question that Mark and I had about out utilities bill. I was put through to a live person in the right department immediately (a definite perk about living in a small town).

“Hello, I have a question about my utilities bill,” I said.

“Alright, what’s your question?”

“I just noticed that the bottom of my bill says ‘auto pay—do not send payment.’ My husband and I were out of the country in October and we had a one-time auto-pay set up then. Last month I sent a check to pay the utilities bill without noticing if it was supposed to be auto-pay. I’m wondering, number one, if we accidentally double-paid last month and, number two, whether the bill is supposed to be auto-pay.”

“Well, do you want auto-pay set up on your account?”

“Yes, if I can keep it as auto-pay, that would be great.”

“Well, you’re all set then. You didn’t double-pay last month and we can keep auto-pay on your account.”

“Excellent! Thank you. Um…. don’t you need my name or account number or something to answer these questions?”

“Oh, no, Hillary! I recognized your voice, and then when you said you’d been out of the country, I put two and two together.”

We both had a good chuckle over that, and then I hung up. I still don’t know who I was talking to.

This recent example of small-town life brings to mind another incident from a year or two ago.

At that time I was still working at our church. Our clothes dryer had died a few days before and we had decided that even though it was an ancient model from the second-hand appliance store in our town, it was still worth getting fixed, or at least looked at. I called our local appliance repair center and asked to have someone come look at our dryer. The girl I talked to said that someone would be along that day or the next to look at it.

A few days passed and no one came to look at the dryer. Finally, about three days later I received a call from the appliance repair store.

“Hello, this is D--- from the appliance repair store. Is this the F---- residence?”

“Oh, yes it is!” I answered.

“Sorry we didn’t send someone by a few days ago. We realized that we didn’t ask you for a phone number, and you’re not in the phone book.”

“Oh, no problem. Will someone be able to come look at our dryer soon?”

“Yeah, I’m planning to come look at it today.”

It was only after I hung up the phone that I began to wonder how the repair center got my phone number, if we weren’t listed in the phone book.

When I went to work that day at church, I told the two ladies working in the church office my puzzling story. When I got done, one of them started chuckling.

She said, “Oh, D----  at the repair center is my cousin! When I was in there yesterday I asked if he’d gotten a call from a Mark or Hillary because you said you were having trouble with your dryer. He said, ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I did, but I don’t have a phone number for them.’ So, I just flipped open my phone and gave him your number!”

See what I mean? Small town life. It’s sometimes strange and stifling, but sometimes it’s oddly helpful.

Anybody want a peanut?

Have you seen the movie The Princess Bride? If you haven’t, come now. It’s an American classic. Go see it.

If you have seen it, remember the part where Inigo Montoya and Fezzik have just captured Buttercup? They have all just climbed aboard the boat and Inigo and Fezzik start their rhyming game. See the clip below to jog your memory:

Inigo and Fezzik are not the most admirable characters ever created, so I’m not sure I’m happy to be comparing me and Mark to the two of them. It can’t be helped, however. I don’t know how Mark and I got started with this little game in our marriage, but sometime in the last few years we started playing a similar rhyming game. Here is an example, from last Sunday at lunch:

Mark: I think the rice is nice… It will quite suffice.

Hill: … If it’s on ice!

Mark: That doesn’t make sense! If you add some spice.

Hill: And stir it twice.

Mark: But keep out the lice.

Hill: And the mice.

Much laughter and snickering ensue, picturing lice and mice in our rice and beans.

Hill: Or we’ll pay the price!

At this point we started really laughing and never got back to the rhyming game. That’s usually how it ends. Don’t you wish you could join us for lunch? 

After Moz: The Big Picture (But it's really not that detailed so don't get excited.)

This is kind of like getting on the phone with a friend for the first time in months. I experience this quite regularly. I have a few very good friends from high school or college that I try to keep in touch with. Unfortunately, I am not a very good phone friend. I’m busy, they’re busy. And, well, we just don’t talk as much as we would like. So, when we get on the phone for the first time in three months, we always have a stutter of awkward uneasiness. What in the world should I ask this person about? And what should I tell them?

What should I tell you?

Not too much has changed yet as a result of our trip. (If you want a recap of our trip, check out our blog from our time in Mozambique.) Our perspective is a little wider. I’m perhaps a little more content with what I have. I’m also perhaps a little more easily irritated by petty complaints I hear.

One of my biggest prayer requests going into this trip was that Mark would come away from our time in Mozambique with a greater sense of calling in his life and career. He’s kind of floundered since college, not sure what he wants to do, not sure what he likes to do, not sure what God’s calling him to do.

While we were in Moz, Mark spent a lot of time in a recording studio helping record and edit a variety of pieces of music and the gospel of Mark in the Chuwabo language. He absolutely loved working in the studio. So, since we’ve been home, he’s begun to look for ways that he can begin working in a recording studio. Does he need additional schooling? If so, what kind? If not, what else can he do to gain experience in the recording industry? How can he build connections and get to know people already working in the recording industry? These are all questions he’s been asking himself.

And, though we haven’t made any major changes yet, I can feel that changes are coming. It’s exciting to see Mark excited. And it’s exciting to wonder what kinds of changes are coming down the pipe toward us.

That’s where we are in the ‘big picture,’ right now. Adoption is still looming (hopefully) near on the horizon. Other changes are looming as well, that I’m not quite ready to share here yet. But, as I say, it’s exciting.

OK. ‘Big Picture’ blog done. Maybe next time I’ll write about my newest granola recipe.