5 Favorite Fall Activities

Prior to this year, if you asked me what my favorite season was, I would immediately answer summer.  I detest winter with its frigid temperatures and lack of outdoor actvities for those who get cold easily.

But this summer's oven-like temperatures were too extreme.  I can't believe I actually got a case of cabin fever in July! 

This week's beautiful weather has brought me a sense of calm and renewal.  To celebrate the beginning of fall, here are some of my favorites activities that have been on hold this summer.  

Cooking

Holy crap, I want this oven! (source)

Given the dearth of food-related posts, you've probably guessed I've barely turned on the oven the past 3 months.  Too much heat + cooking for one will do that.

But now is the time for comfort food to make a return.  Crockpot dinners, casseroles, slow roasting, potatoes, chili, and bread making will now populate our weekly menu.

Pumpkins

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Speaking of comfort foods, though we eat pumpkins all year round, fresh ones in the fall are awesome.  I roasted my first pumpkin just last year and it definitely beats out the canned stuff.  We have a local pumpkin patch that I'm hoping to check out soon.

Twilight Walks

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Lower temperatures + harvest dust = beautiful evening walks. It's not too chilly so it's perfect for a brisk pace and the sunsets get crazy vivid.  There's also a crispness in the air that can't be beat.

Tea

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Don't get me wrong - tea is great in the summer, particularly iced.  But there's nothing like setting down on the couch after a long day of work and curling up with a nice hot tea.  I particularly love the warm feeling chai gives you in the belly.

Salt Baths

This is actually the brand we use - $5 at Walmart (source)

Our bathtub isn't the most comfortable for soaking (it doesn't even fit the two of us), but I'm undetered.  I've read that Gen Y doesn't have much need for bathtubs, but we clearly bunk the trend.  I would so love to have a soaking tub one day!

There's so many other things about the fall to love - sweaters and cardigans, football season, end-of-season campfires, leaves turning ...

What's your favorite part about autumn?

Soothing September

After a nice time visiting all of our family and friends this weekend, I'm thinking about what this next month will hold for us.  Though I am no longer teaching, Mike is back in class two nights a week.  My job will continue at a slightly hectic pace until a new editor is hired.  I also have a trade show in Orlando I'll be flying out for.

One thing I realized this weekend is how much balance I've lost in my life as of recent.  Admittedly, I know that teaching + a day job will make for a busy time.  I didn't know, however, how much 2 classes each week would affect me (nor that my mate would be gone for most of it ...).  Let's just say that it would be prudent to limit myself to one in the future.

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Whenever I get stressed, not only am I an unhappy camper, but my body joins in on the fun.  Like most people, I begin to sleep poorly, make unwise food choices, gain weight, have acne show up, and feel sluggish on all accounts.  The past few weeks, I've even been fighting off allergies/a cold.

All of this is completely unnecessary.  To try to get more done at work, I've rarely taken lunch breaks and routinely stayed late.  Funny thing is, all this extra time isn't amounting to more productivity.  Just more stress and tiredness.

So I'm declaring this month "Soothing September" and am setting out to regain balance.  My goals are simple:

• Get proper rest.  Despite what the studies say, I'm a 10 hours a night kind of girl.  That means going to bed somewhere between 9-10pm.
• Mindful eating.  Meatless Mondays and a influx of fruits/veggies are being reinstated.
• Read.  Despite the hectic schedule as of late, I've continued picking through the Lord of the Rings trilogy and now only have the appendices to polish off.  This has been very relaxing and I need to continue making time for this.
• Exercise. Though in an ideal world I would bike to work every day, I am going to shoot for 2 days.  I also want to take evening walks and add some simple weight lifting.  Whatever combination I fit in, I want to get 30 minutes in 3 times a week.

While I'm tempted to add more, I'm going to stick to these.  If you make your goals too complicated, I've found they just end up complicating your life. 

What are your goals for this month?  

Labor Day Plans

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The last official weekend of summer is here.  It’s been a crazy couple months and while I do not welcome cooler weather, I am happy to leave Summer 2011 goodbye. 

To celebrate this extended weekend, Mike and I are headed up to our respective hometowns – Clear Lake / Mason City / Nora Springs.  We haven’t been up that way since last Christmas and I’m pretty sure our families will incite a riot if we stay away any longer!

As for costs, it’s a low-budget affair.  Gas to drive the 250-mile round trip and a mandatory afternoon treat at Taco Tico and Cookies Ect (it’s a Mason City thing …).  Each set of parents is providing meals and/or lodging, which is much appreciated.

Our days will be spent visiting family, who are all essentially based out of Cerro Gordo county.  Our time will also overlap with a visit from Mike’s sister and our 2 nieces and nephew, who we haven’t seen since Thanksgiving.

I am oddly looking forward to this trip.  Despite the concentration of family, going to our hometowns is never our first choice for a vacation.  There’s many reasons for that, none having to do with relatives.  Maybe more on that in a future post.

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At any rate, work has been crazy busy as of late.  Not only are we flooded with special projects and larger issues, but we’re down a team member and have absorbed their workload.  I am in desperate need of getting away to regain some balance.

I intend to not labor at anything but eating tasty food and getting good sleep over the weekend.

What are your plans?

$1600 Gone in a Flash

This is an odd week for me.

I just finished 8 weeks of teaching two film classes. It was a busy two months, teaching back-to-back nights in different cities.  But it was a good run – I had engaged students, taught 4 new movies that were well received, and the responses on the essay test really blew me away. 

So final grades are in, the textbook resumes its spot on the bookshelf, and my prep materials are safely stowed away for future reference.

What makes this an unusual end to a class is that I was scheduled to start teaching a literature class this week as well. 

Note the past tense.

I learned a few days ago that not enough students registered for my class and so it was canceled.  This is standard university policy – it’s just not cost effective to pay an instructor to teach less than 10 students. 

Now I’ve taught close to 50 classes, but this is the first time I’ve ever had one canceled.  This leaves me with a lot of mixed feelings. 

The bonus to this situation is the amount of time I gain back – 40 hours in the classroom, 16 hours of driving, and however many hours spent grading and emailing.  We’ve got a lot going on in our life right now, so having another free evening is not a small thing.

However, there are some definite downsides.

The first is a teaching-related concern.  I’ve taught literature a handful of times, twice before at this particular university.  I made few changes between the original courses as I was still feeling the ropes, but I was ready on the 3^rd run to make adjustments. Add to this a recent university directive to add more “rigor” to gen ed courses and I was eager to get creative.

So I changed the course.  The reading list stayed virtually the same, but I redistributed the points across different assignments.  I went from 1 presentation, 1 midterm, and 1 final paper to 1 small presentation, 1 midterm, 2 responses, a final PowerPoint presentation, and no paper.

You may not be interested in my teaching methods, but here’s the thing – students have access to your syllabus prior to registering for the course.  On my old format, I clearly had enough students to hold class.  But under the new format, I did not.

There may be a number of factors why this course didn’t fly – it’s fall and students want to concentrate more on major classes, not many this term needed to fulfill a gen ed requirement, literature isn’t very popular in the first place, ect …

But I do wonder if my changes had anything to do with it.  I was excited to teach with the new assignments/activities, knowing they would enhance students’ understanding of literature and let us cover a great range of authors and topics.   

I wouldn't suggest I'm as awesome as Mr. Keating, but I'm a big fan of making literature accessible

I don’t regret the changes – if I get to teach this course again, I will stick to my new design.  I just wish I knew why there wasn’t enough interest.

But this is life as a college instructor – classes get canceled, it happens.  However, because I’m hired from term to term, I do not know when I will be teaching again next.  It might be again in October (another movies class), but nothing has been decided yet.        

The other thing that this cancelation has caused is lost income.  Though I’d signed my contract, redesigned the class, prepared all of the materials, and had my syllabus turned in, no students = no pay.

I would never say that it wasn’t worth it.  I have a fantastic literature course ready to deploy when the time is right.  But I can’t deny that we had plans for my pay.  It was to fuel debt reduction, nothing earth shattering, but that’s a good chunk of change that disappeared with only a few days’ notice.

I love teaching.  I make my bread and butter in publishing, but teaching is a natural state of being for me.  If the structure of higher education and the economy allowed it, I would work as an instructor full time, but such is not the case for our times (and the explanation would take up another post).  Hopefully another opportunity will come, but for the next few months, I will lay my teaching hat aside. 

Dreading the Doctor

I know, dread is a pretty strong word, so you can pick from nervous, edgy, tense, anxious, worried, or apprehensive.

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In three weeks, I have my first real doctor’s appointment for the first time in 5 years.

That’s half a freaking decade <gulp>

The past couple of years haven’t been kind financially. 

·        In grad school (‘06-08), I had health insurance but I could only afford to use it for birth control.

·        While adjuncting (’08-10), I didn’t qualify for insurance, so I simply went without. I kept track of my blood pressure at Walmart, got a free blood test in 2010, had regularly massages, and prayed I would never have to go near an emergency room.

·        This past year, I have insurance again but haven’t felt comfortable using it beyond a few urgent care visits. With our income bouncing around, it’s impossible to budget for medical bills, so my attitude has been to just not accumulate any.

This, of course, is not a good path and I’ve been fully aware of it as the years have ticked by. I know the best approach to your health is the preventative one, and routine appointments are a part of that.

Since we moved, we’ve been holding out for my appointments until our income became stable. 15 months later and no relief in sight, it’s time to throw in the towel and just bite the bullet.

There’s a lot to complain about modern medicine, which I’ll leave to the more passionate, but my biggest beef is the complete inability to know what the hell you will be paying.

There is no budgeting, no comparison shopping, no price checking to know what you are getting into.

In an ideal world, going to the doctor would be like strolling into McDonald’s – all of your options are listed right out in the open with a clearly marked price.

The irony of using McDonalds when talking about heath is not lost ... (source)

Instead, it’s just a guessing game of how much you’ll be charge (and goodness knows when you’ll get the bill – they can wait three months to process it and then want the money in two weeks, but I digress).

Without knowing how much I could rack up at the doctor’s, I’m nervous. 5 years without proper care means I have a backlog of tests that should be run (and a few that I’m specifically requesting).

Not to mention I haven’t had a single shot since I graduated high school in 2002 and there are a few that I really should have current (my thoughts on vaccines to be documented later …).

Furthermore, I am terrified, yes, terrified, of what they could find.  I may be young, but I have a host of factors working against me – inactive lifestyle, constant stress, don’t eat enough fruits/veggies, overweight, and a family history of high blood pressure/heart disease.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and get a clean bill of health, but after so many years of poor habits and infrequent health screenings, well, the odds are not in my favor.

And the thing that really gets to me, is that whatever they might find, chances are it will be my fault I got it.  Something that was a result of my inattention to my body. 

Don't look kid - it will only makes it worse! (source)

Then I have secondary concerns about whether this new doctor will be a good match for me, will she listen to my concerns, will she explain things properly or just brush me off, will she treat me as a person or just isolate my problems … the list goes on.   

In my past, I had some serious trust issues with doctors – some from my childhood, others stemming for a bad surgery.  I had to actively work through those so I wouldn’t have panic attacks before appointments.  I’m glad I no longer fear doctors, I just fear the resulting bill.

Questions – Do you experience similar concerns about medical bills? 

Meet Our Kitties

Meet our children - Ajax (left) and Draco (right)

These lovable furballs joined us back in 2006.  We adopted them through the Humane Society at the age of 8 weeks.  Though not litter mates, they're clearly like brothers.  We jokingly refer to them as our "clearance kitties."

Meet Ajax  

Otherwise affectionately know as The Brown Bastard, Big Man, Chubbins, and Chubzilla.

Unstaged photo.  Mike didn't even know Ajax was sleeping with him until I showed him the picture

Though only a week older, Ajax has always been the larger (and hungrier) cat.  He's full Tabby, which means he switches between smart and dumb in a matter of nanoseconds.  He cannot be trusted with raw chicken in the house, either on the counter or in a trash can.  Beyond that, he loves the allure of feathers and tinfoil balls.   

Meet Draco

Otherwise called Mr. Blue Eyes, Little Cat, and Drakey Drake

Part Siamese (lavender point), part Tabby, Draco's main strength lies in napping.  He is very territorial of the bed and ensures that clean laundry has been slept on.  He knows the word "bed time" and is very excited when there are two humans to cuddle between.  He steals hair ties and pens.

Luckily, the upkeep on these two is quite minimal.  We use Tidy Cat litter and have just switched them to an all-natural cat food (no corn products).  

Do you have pets?  Are they worth the cost?

Screwy Finances Yet Again

So remember our recent bout of debt slashing?  We were flying high on our little burst of income, happily checking off items on our financial goal list.

The tables have turned yet again and we're now back to Square One.

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I feel like we're in this cul-de-sac of financial repetitiveness, a merry-go-round I'd gladly exit if I could.

The dealio is that Mike was supposed to be on another month of orders during August.  So we threw all of that extra money he was earning at debt and a small pittance into savings, thinking we'd get to that with our surplus for this month.

Just kidding.

At the last minute, Mike's orders were canceled.  Yep, no warning, you can go home now.  While that's nice for us on a personal note because this summer has been completely hijacked, it also means Mike won't be earning money at all this entire month.

Lest anyone be super alarmed, we thankfully have enough to cover everything and Mike will back in classes with his GI Bill reinstated in September.  

But it's switcharoos like these that make me question our previous actions, and that's no fun at all.  How was I to know it would have been better to throw a bunch in savings first and not at debt because we would be losing income on short notice?  

I know I shouldn't be hard on us - we don't have a crystal ball and you can only make a good decision based on the knowledge that you have at the time.  

But this is what I think is the most frustrating about our financial situation - it's never consistent. No matter how hard we try, half of our income can disappear or be delayed at any time.  You cannot be financially responsible if you can't PLAN for anything.

<takes a deep breath and eats a piece of chocolate>

Things will be alright, it's just another bump in the road.  Worse things could happen.  But believe me, it will be a happy day when we have incomes we can actually count on.