Unstuck in time

As a youth, I loved Kurt Vonnegut's books. In this later phase, I find myself "unstuck in time," seeing the connections and constellations of the events of my life. When I am with my grandchildren, I see myself as a young mother, and I see my sons both as fathers to my granddaughters and as my own babies.

I point to pictures on my wall.  "That's Daddy, when he was a little boy." It makes no sense:  Daddy is a grown man, over six feet tall, not a baby.  To me, he is a baby, a boy, a man.  I am a girl again, a new mom, a grandmother.  My granddaughter clutches at my breast and shrieks that I can't give her what she wants.  She's angry! I'm just nostalgic for the days when babies fit so perfectly into the curves of my body and nursed themselves to sleep there, when needs were simple and I knew how to fill them.

It's nostalgia!  It isn't supposed to be Truth.  Yes, I was as clueless as any other new mom.  All that falls away with the years. All that remains is the memory of the smell, the touch, the sight of those fat little thighs, and the sweaty heads, and the little fist relaxing on your ample post-partum tummy. Oh, and the post-partum tummy:  I managed to keep that, too.

My Dad had mild to moderate dementia, and he sought refuge in the past. He had lost executive function, that ability to analyze a situation and then take action.  His short-term memory was shot, so he couldn't remember whether he had ordered in a restaurant, but he could describe in great detail the Jewish deli in New York where he first ate a knish, more than 60 years ago. ("Ya never had one before? Well, don't start today!" the guy behind the counter said, which Dad accepted as a challenge.)

The past was colorful and he was the hero.  The present was confusing and painful.  Who wouldn't pick the past?

The past is appealing to those of us without dementia, too.  The older we get, the more we reach back to examine.  How have we changed over time? Remember the day we bought that lamp? Did I ever tell you about when...?

I was talking with my sister today about waving a white handkerchief to signal surrender, and I said, "Remember how Dad always had a handkerchief?" "He should have carried two," she replied. "He was always giving one up to wipe our snotty noses in church."

That's what parents do. They carry a handkerchief not for themselves, but for the runny noses and bleeding knees and teary eyes of their children. They give up their jackets when their children need them, even if their children are 30 and should really know better.  Parents care for their children.

My middle child brought his family home to me for a week last month.  He and his daughter were both sick with colds.  It gives a mama equal pain to hear her child hacking with a cough whether that child is 1 or 33.

I heard my son coughing in the bedroom below me, and I remembered the night when my parents brought me a bowl of ice cream to soothe my throat. (Dairy is possibly not the best home remedy where mucous is involved, but it would have been ungracious to turn it down.)

I read somewhere that kindergarten children don't know what a handkerchief is, because no one carries them anymore.

I do. I collect them, and use them as a decorative window covering.  I have a special set for Christmas. I keep two in the purse I carry to church, one for me and one for a friend.

The day I got married, my dad had a handkerchief ready to catch my tears, a tender moment that brought me to tears this morning.  Lucky for me, he had a handkerchief handy.

From there to here to where

Another of my posts following the death of my dad. It's a different kind of passage, a sail through some rough seas.  I'm trying to recover the person he was to me before his final years as I transverse the passage from child to orphan.  I hope some of these words resonate with fellow travelers on this journey.

I did not intend the visit to be my last. Dad went downhill fast, but I had no indication he would die that day.  My son had given me a report from his visit the day before, and our best guess was a couple of weeks. Speech was difficult for my dad, and I could no longer understand him on the phone.  I knew that the only way to have two-way communication was to do it in person.

I sat with him while he went from responsiveness to a coma over the course of the day. After the first hour or so, he floated in and out of consciousness, eyes staring vacantly, lying perfectly still.  I think his systems were just shutting themselves down, and voluntary movement was gone.  So, mercifully, was his ability to feel pain, since he was unable to swallow even a sip of water.

And so I sat with him, holding his hand, able to stare at him without rudeness.  Pili, his caretaker, told me how much she loved him, even though she'd only worked for him a few days.  He reminded her of her own grandfather, once fiercely independent but now felled by a broken hip.  Helping my father helped soothe her distress at not being able to take her turn by her grandfather's bedside.  I told her what a force of nature Dad was before this final combination of illnesses and old age took him down. We swapped some family stories over the deathbed, two strangers coming to terms with loss and providing an odd comfort to each other. We talked of dying at home, and dying in the hospital, and how to let go.

How to let go of him and how to let him go.  Pili said he had promised not to die on "her watch." She said he knew she was a softie and she worried about him.

The portraits, shot in a hasty photo inventory in 2008.

He lay underneath his portrait and my mother's, the place he had slept all the years of my life.  They joked they had hung the portraits over the bed to settle any questions about whose side of the bed was whose.  They are beautiful pastel portraits of a beautiful couple in their late teens or early twenties. Since I first learned to crawl up onto that bed to bounce, in eight different bedrooms, my parents slept under those portraits.  They'd overseen heart-to-heart conversations, joyful girls-only slumber parties with my mom, the "nest" my daughter made at the foot of Grandma's bed, a few very difficult conversations, a couple of surprise presents, mother-daughter reviews of Mom's jewelry, some memorable breakfasts-in-bed.

And now he was dying in this bed, almost unrecognizable to the youthful self above him. I studied his face, looking at the curves and the angles, the spotted skin stretched tight over his head, the skin loose on his hands from rapid weight loss. I remembered my visiting his father, my grandfather, in his last days, an incomprehensible sight for a five-year-old child. I recalled more vividly being with my father-in-law as he lay dying in a cold emergency room bed, wondering what kind of comfort I could give.

I was not there when he died.  Pili sent me away, saying he would not leave until I left him.  Not on my watch, either, I guess. I did not leave because Pili told me to, but I did leave, and he died shortly after.

In my family, we have always talked about dying, never passing on. We never talked about heaven, and Dad told me after Mom's death that neither of them had faith that heaven existed.  Dad used to say he wanted to be hit by a truck (and sometimes he drove as if he wanted it sooner rather than later...).  He did not fear death, but for a long time he feared dying.  He had pamphlets from the Hemlock Society, yellowed with age, in his "when I die" folder. He feared the loss of control, the loss of choice.

For a long time, he feared losing his independence, losing his intellect.  He posted a DNR in his house, in his car, in the minds of his children. He was terrified of being in a vegetative state, but he was also terrified of being in assisted living. In the end, he was ready to go. He had lost his short-term memory almost entirely and he was easily confused.  He relied on his impressive long-term memory to dazzle and distract, and he managed to fool a lot of people that way.

I don't know how the dying goes, I don't know where the dying go.  In many ways, Dad was lost to me long before he died.  I am doing my best to find him again.

Let me tell you something

My dad thought ahead.  When he bought something big and expensive, he might say, "You kids will fight over this when I'm gone."  (Sometimes, I thought:  what you don't realize is we will fight over who has to take it.)  When Patrick was born, he didn't ooh and aah over his beautiful first grandson.  He started calculating how much of Patrick's life he would likely get to see.

For years, I've known there were envelopes "to be opened after I die," with letters from my dad.  Having spent years carefully prying tape off of Christmas packages to check out the contents beforehand, I found it difficult to wait. What did my letter say?

Dad died December 1.  I was with him as he faded from life, the light going out of his eyes.  He lost his ability to speak or move and drifted along the borderline between sleep and coma. I said goodbye, and I took my letter. Halfway home, I got a call that he was gone.

What did the letter say?

We've had our times, my dad and I.  Mostly good times, but some monumentally bad ones, too.  Dad rarely hesitated to deliver advice, and he wasn't entirely clear on the concept of "opinion," being pretty sure that he was right about all things. He was given to the grand gesture, like pulling the phone out of the wall when I was not quick enough to end a conversation.  (Back in the day, the phone--and there was only one per floor--was hardwired into the wall.  And you probably shared a party line with some cranky old lady.)

He clearly loved me.  Just as clearly, he saw room for improvement.  He was more forthcoming with advice than with love. Stand up straighter, lose some weight, get my hair out of my eyes, tuck in my shirt, get my elbows off the table.  Study harder, revise that college essay, practice the clarinet.  Save more money, hire someone to do that, and for god's sake, don't get married before you graduate from college.

He was a great one for the object lesson, and I was a great one for rebelling against the object lesson.  He favored the surprise attack. It is a kindness to both the living and the dead to leave that area unexplored.

My older sister and brother absorbed a lot of my dad's self-improvement energies, and that led to a lot of fireworks, especially with my brother.  Dad said to me once that, while they had pushed back, I just used humor as a weapon until I got my parents into shape, and then I eased up on them.

And every once in a while, when I really, really needed it, my dad came through for me in an unconditionally supportive way. The letter he left was one of those times.

I wanted to be alone when I read it, but I also wanted to be in a safe place.  I drove to church and read it in the empty sanctuary.  I knew I could draw on a circle of support there.

So what did the letter say?

He wrote about the joy I had brought him, about the love and respect he had for me.  He said he could never repay me for what I had brought to his life. He said he hoped when I looked back at my children, they brought me as much joy as I had brought him.

I burst into tears.

Dad wrote that letter in 1979, 34 years ago, and felt no need to edit it as the years went by.

I did plenty of editing of my own over those years--gaining a couple of kids, losing a husband, dropping out of the professional world, learning to take care of myself, learning to ask for and accept help. Dad had touched the essence of me and of our relationship and written me a letter that crosses the decades to speak in a universal way.

What would you write in your letter? What are the things your family needs to hear from you, or you need to tell them?

My children will surely find mine in snippets on my computer, in version after version, as unfinished as my Christmas letters from 2009 to 2012.

Or maybe they will just know that, yeah, they do bring me as much joy as I brought him.  Yup, they surely do.

The Right Place at the Right Time

My dad died recently, so I've been thinking a lot about love and loss, and especially about my parents.  When my dad was alive, we used to tease him, saying, "THAT'S going into the skit at your funeral!"

I did not attend the memorial service, but if I had, this is what I might have said.

My father was a demanding man, driven to perfection (and generally coming pretty close).  He was hard on himself, and he could be hard on us as well.  He was the first of his generation to be born in the US, and he believed that brains and hard work would guarantee success.  We were born with the brains, and he created incentives to ensure the hard work.  I remember earning stickers for staying dry at night (which perhaps was not as early a memory as I might like to think) and quarters for good grades, an incentive program for his children that mirrored the ones he created for Fortune 500 companies.

I stayed in school for a long time, eventually earning a Ph.D.  As I neared the end of my graduate program, I bogged down, and Dad sent me an inspirational graphic.  He drew a thermometer of the sort that fund-raising campaigns favor, with Ph.D. as the final goal.  Along the way were marked progress points like “Entered Kindergarten” “Moved to Chagrin for seventh grade,” and “accepted to college.”  The thermometer was filled very nearly to the top, a reminder that I had nearly reached my goal. 

I graduated a few months later, and my parents came to my graduation.  A couple of years later, doing some career development exercises, Dad wrote that he considered my earning that Ph.D. as one of the top ten achievements of his life.  He was proud of what I had accomplished, and he also took pride in setting an expectation for success, creating the conditions necessary for achievement, and supporting me psychologically, emotionally, and financially every step of the way.

The last time I talked to my dad, we talked about my son Jefferson’s upcoming graduation from his nurse anesthesia program.  He sighed.  “Boy, I wish I could be there,” and we both knew that he wouldn’t.

My children were lucky to live only an hour from their grandparents throughout their school years, and Grandma Janie and Grandpa Tak attended every concert, school play, and graduation--just as they had attended all of mine.  But Dad was too frail to make this trip. He died a week after that conversation.

Today is Jefferson’s graduation.  He’s graduating from the #1 nurse anesthesia program in the country. It’s been a long slog:  six years and his second master’s degree in nursing.  Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to offer the same kind of support to him that my dad offered to me.  Today, his success is his own, but I share in the joy it brings.

Team Jefferson, with scrub caps in VCU black and gold

Addie is not too sure about this.

Horribly out-of-focus pic of Jeff's newest scrub cap.  

When my first child was born, Dad said to me, “If I am lucky, I will live to see this child graduate from high school.”  Patrick is 35 now, and my parents attended his graduations from high school, undergraduate school, and his Ph.D. program. He would have enjoyed Jefferson’s graduation, and I know he would not have wanted me to miss it.

Expectations

Oh, life is full of disappointments, anywhere you care to look for them.  The greater the expectation, the more likely the disappointment to follow.  Still, I was surprised to see this warning in my local K-Mart.

I've decided not to pursue it further:  I have no need to seek additional disappointments in my life.  I'll never know why this particular magazine moved an anonymous shopper to post a sad little warning.

I am reminded of the six-word Hemingway novel--

For sale:  baby shoes, never worn.

I find this real-life six-word story equally compelling.  Is this a person disappointed in love, or perhaps one ruing the thousands spent on a less than perfect day?  Maybe a person of limited means frustrated by an inability to fund a dream wedding?  So many ways to disappoint.  I am happier with the mystery.

My own baby granddaughter wears no shoes.  Her fat little feet don't hold her up yet, although they will soon.  She hasn't learned to plant them flat and wide.  She does a hundred squats a day, hauling herself up on with whatever she can find, and plopping down again on her diaper-padded bottom.  She learned to climb up one stair this weekend, and found it both surprising and terrifying.  It's only one step, but there she was, out on a ledge, not knowing what to do next.

I feel like that sometimes, too.

Right back where I started

I went around the world by plane, boat, horse cart, canoe, bike, foot, bus, train, carriage, and probably some other means of transportation I've overlooked.  Now I'm back home, in my own little house, at my same job, in my treasured circle of family and friends.  I traveled over 20,000 nautical miles and 6000 air miles to make the trip, losing a whole day and picking it back up through more than a dozen time changes as I traveled westward around the globe.  I crossed the equator twice and the prime meridian at least five times.  At one point, I crossed them together.

This week marks another way I am back where I started.  As I unpacked for the first time on board, I lost the sight in my left eye and was sidelined temporarily by what looked like a vitreous detachment.  After consultation with the ship's doctor and an ophthalmologist in San Diego, I was allowed back on the ship, cautioned to watch for further symptoms and see a doctor when I got back home.

So Wednesday, I went for a routine follow up visit to a new ophthalmologist.  I thought I would run down from the office, get checked out, and be back for an afternoon meeting.  (My office is up two flights of stairs and down one corridor from the eye clinic, a benefit of working in the hospital.)  Instead, I wound up having some kind of procedure that evidently has no name other than "sort of a spot welding, but with lasers."  I have asked several times, but this is all I get.  It felt more like jack hammers, but with lasers.  Or staple gun, but with lasers, since the idea is to tack down the retina, not break it up.

Turns out I had three tears in the retina, of uncertain age.  I wasn't having any symptoms, so it's likely that they occurred at the time of the original incident back in January.  Fixing them required 1500 of something, presumably beams of intense light aimed at my eyeball over the course of two hours.  Not pleasant.

Recovery was also not pleasant.  I wound up calling my (amazing) boss, who administers the ophtho department as well as my own, which set into motion a whirlwind of concern.  (The retinal fellow made a few rookie mistakes, like not giving me any aftercare instructions, or his name.  He also did not get a consent for the procedure, which set into motion a whole different whirlwind and resulted in my treatment being taken over by the attending.)

My (third) new eye doctor says don't lift anything over five pounds and don't do anything more strenuous than walk around the block, which is my kind of medical advice.  He also says watch TV instead of reading, knowing it's unrealistic to expect no reading or computer work for the next three months.  I am practicing my touch typing skills, and I am being conservative about my screen time, but there's no realistic way to move through my life without computer screens for the next month.

As is so often the case, this medical intervention gives me much to think about in terms of how medical care is delivered and how dependent consumers are on providers whose qualifications we have no way of judging.

I work in a teaching hospital, and I am fully prepared to have care provided by a team that includes medical students, residents, fellows, and often puts attending physicians into a background role.  It can be an uneasy balance.  As a person with only one body, a relatively healthy one, I don't have a lot of points of intersection with the system.  I have no way of differentiating between routine, emergent, acute.  I've been here long enough that I know health care decisions can also be an uneasy balance.  I, too, have to find the balance between criticizing the system and benefitting from the favors I can call in.

All of this balancing has left me a little unbalanced.  I walked in expecting a routine visit and had instead a very thorough examination (which is, I suppose, the routine) that uncovered a condition that was treated immediately.  Was it emergent (in need of immediate treatment)?  The San Diego doctor said that if he had uncovered/suspected a retinal tear, he would have sent me to a specialist and it would have been 10 days to 2 weeks before I was treated, so he had no issues with my taking off on a journey to a host of third world countries.  My Charlottesville doctors said let's see if the laser suite is available yay it is and have a seat.  Whoosh!

Same eye, totally different treatment approaches.  Not sure the new docs would have been so sanguine about sending me off for four months.  Does "don't pick up more than 5 pounds" also mean, "there's no way in hell you should get on a plane"?  Lucky for me, I don't need to find out.  If there was a bullet there, I dodged it and had a fabulous trip around the world.

Two weeks out, I am in the eye clinic for a third follow-up visit.  My eye has been dilated so often the pupil is (semi? no one knows) permanently larger.  I am once again hypervigilant about every floater. Mostly, today, I am wondering why people come on time for a doctor who is two hours behind schedule.  I should have brought lunch.  Also, a power supply for the computer.

The waiting room here is crowded, with many people here accompanied by someone younger, or at least someone who can drive them home.  There are two nice ladies in orange outfits, which may be coincidence or may be ashram-dyed-to-match.  The man sitting nearby just showed me a closeup picture of his truck tire, featuring two pieces of grass which look EXACTLY like a cross.  (Clearly, he is the designated driver.  None of the actual patients could see well enough to have discerned this apparent miracle.)

The strawberries I put in my smoothie this morning looked EXACTLY like hearts.  Until I mercilessly crushed them.  Life is full of unrecognized miracles, cynics, and folks searching for something to kill a few hours.

Algú m'estima

I've been away from the trip and from the blog for over a month now.  My loyal Russian friends, whoever they are, are still checking in from time to time.  In any month's time, there are 16 hits from Russia, which leads me to believe it's an automated blog visit, only showing up because my real-person audience is overwhelmingly from the USA.  (German fans, the Russians are giving you a run for pride of second.)

I was pretty disciplined about writing on the ship (although I never quite caught up after leaving Japan).  But at home, there are many more distractors.  Try putting your work, family, social lives on hold for four months, and then add deferring all health and home maintenance issues.  Why, there's hardly enough time to catch up on bad American teevee!  And there are still billions of Sudoku puzzles I have not completed.

Which is to say that I totally mistook "limited internet" for discipline.  All those good habits I had on the ship have disappeared.  With the force of a slingshot pulled waaaay back.  I only gained a couple of pounds on the ship, but access to American restaurant portions, snack foods, and choice in general have undone all those flights of stairs climbed.  (Except for trips carrying my luggage to be weighed, I never used the elevators on the ship.)

I have also replaced blog writing with actual conversation.

Ohmigod, you're back!  When did you get back?
What was your favorite port?
Was it worth it?

But it's always been my intention to tell the rest of the story, post some more pictures, and maybe even transition the blog into the third half on land.  While lots of you have told me you couldn't keep up with the blog, some folks have flattered me with assurances they read every post.

So stay tuned.

The heart pillow/quilt I schlepped around the world meets my Barcelona bedding.

This just in

Last ship breakfast.  Now back to yogurt smoothies.

And so the voyage ends.  We docked in Barcelona early this morning, disgorging around 800 people a a few thousand suitcases, backpacks, duffels, and cardboard boxes.

It's quite a logistical feat to get us all off.  Everyone had to be packed by 1 PM on Wednesday, with just their hand-carried luggage left.  The luggage was color-coded and brought to one of two holding areas, fore and aft.  Tymitz Square filled up with all the stuff left behind.  All day long, the crew carted off our detritus--backpacks, water bottles, clothes, toiletries, notebooks.  A big freecycle.

As we came into port, we could see friends and family waiting.  Many brought signs and flags.  My shipbaord daughter Keani's parents brought a Hawaiian flag, making them instantly recognizable.  (They are actually German, and will travel with Keani to Germany to see their extended family.)  One girl picked out her parents and her aunt, who had come as a surprise.  She was shrieking (fortunately, a happy surprise).

If anyone came to meet me, sorry I missed you.  I could have used some help with my bags!

Adios, Explorer.  So many memories.

I had booked a room not far from the port, in a building with an elevator, a block from a train station.  Barcelona is a city of charm, but also steep streets and buildings with many stairs.  So I had my priorities!

First stop, the apartment to drop off my luggage.  I had made the arrangements with Andrei, but it was his father who greeted me.  "You are alone?" he said, surprised.  I do not know whether this was because the room was a two bedroom suite or because I had enough luggage to last for, say, a four-month trip.  With souvenirs.  (One whole suitcase is stuff I bought, including a queen size comforter.)

After showing me the room and the rest of the apartment, he left to find the password for the wireless, closing the door behind him.  I admired the view from the balcony, sorted out what I needed for the day, and started out.  The doorknob would not turn.  Then it came off in my hand.

My friend Betty says this is what happens when you complain about hotel rooms.  Ghana may not have had water, but it did have doorknobs.

I have taken apart a doorknob or two in my time, and I have broken into rooms with credit cards, and I have even taken doors off hinges, but I was quite firmly stuck in the room.

Ayudarme?

The apartment is long and skinny, and there were four closed doors between me and the owner, but he finally did come to let me out.  "China," he muttered.  (In China, the hotel used fancy pants plastic cards as room keys, and it came with not only doorknobs but combs and toothbrushes.)  "I will fix."

In the meantime, I got the internet password and downloaded my location to my phone.  I got onto FaceBook, as did dozens of Semester at Sea folk.  The Hawaiian-German Keani downloaded 170 pictures from South Africa alone.  I had half a dozen new friend requests.  We are starved for internet.

I found a book in my hotel called "Barcelona ist einmalig [first of all, fundamentally] Katalonien." Which is true, and proudly so.  I picked up some children's books in Catalon.  (When Catherine was little, I picked up a children's book in German for her.  I apologize in advance if this causes my granddaughters grow up to live in Barcelona in twenty years.  Chickpea also has books in Dutch, Greek, Italian, German and probably several other languages by now, so I think one in Catalon will not hurt.

St. George is very big this week in Barcelona

I planned to drop off my luggage and spend a day wandering the sunny streets of the city, but sun was sorely lacking today.  I learned my water resistant jacket is optimistically labeled.  Last time I was here, Catherine went swimming the first week of April and we baked in the Mediterranean sun, but today was chilly at best.  When it started pouring rain, I came back to take a nap.

Cold and dripping, I stopped on the way home at a small grocery and bought milk and a chocolate bar. Hot chocolate sounded like just the thing.  The man behind the counter started a conversation:

Where you from?
US.
Where?
America.  Los Estados Unidos.
How long you stay.
One day.
How long?  One week?
No.  One day.  Una día.
Una día?
I come from boat.  El barco?  Par avion [but that's French, right?  Oops]  Mañana, USA.
You have husband?
No.  Tres niños, no esposo. Una vez, tengo esposo, pero ahora, no.

So now I wonder, is it wrong to travel alone in Barcelona?  I had two conversations today, and both of them led to the traveling alone question.

Back home again, I was heating up my milk and the landlord offered me a bowl of the soup he had been making.  I had planned on a good local meal, but a bowl of soup and some fresh bread filled me up.  Romanian soup, from the stomach of the cow.  Six hours to cook.  My landlord for the day is from Transylvania.  He sells "artificial salt."  I didn't try to make sense of that.  He's never heard of Unitarians.  I didn't even try to explain.

Orange you happy?

In the time that I have been gone, #1 son bought a house, quit his job and got a new job.  #2 son gave up his house, bought an RV and made plans to spend the next year as a nomad student CRNA.  Daughter ended a long-term relationship.  #1 granddaughter learned to read and tell jokes and #2 granddaughter learned to smile and roll over.

And now comes the announcement that I will greet #3 grandchild in October.  Last I heard they were calling the baby Clementine (but all I have is a stolen orange, so it will have to do).

I have been counting the days all along, because it's the only way to keep track of them.  I work an ocean at a stretch, but there aren't many markers. One more Deans' Memo to go.

Tonight was the Alumni Ball, which I skipped.  We had a formal dinner and the waitstaff even had special shirts for the occasion.  They went all out on dinner, and people wore clothes they had bought all over the world.  I wore a length of rayon from Burma, which someday will be a real skirt, with a scarf in matching colors I bought in India, earrings from South Africa, and a bracelet from Ghana.  Men wore suits they had made in Viet Nam.  Women wore traditional dress from China, India, Vietnam.  (Along with the usual skirts so tight and so short they left nothing to the imagination.)  There was a slide show I would have liked to see, but a friend asked for some help.  Then a dessert buffet that was like walking into a patisserie.  The ball itself was crowded, noisy, and full of flashing lights.  I checked in on the CCTV just to make sure there wasn't anything I might regret missing.

At this point, my only regret may be not bringing a bigger suitcase.  My main duffel is packed almost full of souvenirs (half of it taken up by the silk comforter I bought in Japan).  Today was another hard day as people decided to send their possessions home at $7.50/pound.  My office became information central for such questions as "You said in the Deans' Memo the scale is 15 pounds off.  Is it 15 pounds lighter or heavier?"  Yes, we are now the Bureau of Standards.  And the Bureau of Redundancy, answering questions with facts we have repeated over and over in the Deans' Memo.  Tonight a student was hurt that I didn't recognize him.  He said, "I'm the one who wanted to have a pizza party and you said I couldn't."  Get in line, Buddy.  That was one of 30 pizza parties and 50 taco parties I refused.

The Field Office has three doors, but all of them go through another room to get to the central reception area.  I have told people at least a thousand times they can go through our office space, no need to knock, go right in, no, second door, not the first one, I don't know if Karen is in, go look.

This afternoon, Karen came through and I said, "Quick, shut the door.  Or I will kill the next person who comes through it."

Karen said, "Just a second, I need to make a phone call."  Her days are pretty high stress, too.

We have not had very many lovely sunsets, so I took this one of the penultimate sunset.  The last one may not be worth a photo, and if there's one thing I've learned on this voyage, it's don't wait for a second chance.

Orange, I'm happy.

Party like it's ... Fes

Our incredible homestay host, Kaoutar, made our last night in Fes a memory worth its own blog post.

The home we stayed in is in the Medina of Fes, the old city.  The whole Medina is walled in, no traffic.  You couldn't fit a car on those streets, anyway.  Some of them can barely fit a donkey cart.  This means, of course, that when you buy a refrigerator, it is wheeled to you on a pushcart, pulled either by a donkey or a man.  We did see donkeys trotting around with all kinds of things, including tanks of propane for stoves.  Interestingly, they wear rubber shoes for better traction on the cobblestones, which get slippery when they get wet.  Since you can't hear them coming, the most important word in the Medina is "Ballach!" (bahLOCK), which means "get out of the way!"

The stores in the Medina are mostly open stalls.  The residential sections have massive wooden doors, with two separate sections.  A high doorknob for people coming on horseback, a low one for the rest of us.  There are tiny windows high in the walls, but most of the light and air comes from the courtyard, which is open to the sky.  A ritzy house has a screen over the courtyard, but many are completely open to the sky.  They have drains in the floor and the whole courtyard is a step lower than the other rooms.  Rain comes in, rain goes out.  Moroccan homes don't tend to have a lot of furniture.  The tables and chairs are iron frames and ceramic tile tops, so they are indoor/outdoor, just like the living rooms.

Will the real Moroccan please stand up?

[From left:  Meg, Michaela, me, Kaoutar, Kaitlyn, Phyllis, and Brooke.  We let the men back in to take photos after the dancing was over.]

Kaoutar's mother bought her house to use as a B&B about 15 years ago.  But she ran into licensing issues, because she could only outfit four rooms with separate baths.  She works with a homestay program now that has a lower barrier.  We stayed in three of the rooms, and our tour guide stayed in the fourth.  We did not meet the mother, who may have been staying in one of the other rooms that does not open onto the main courtyard.  The house is at least four stories high (three very tall stories, but also doors opening up midway up the flights of stairs).

All through the house, there is wonderful ceramic tile and iron work typical of every place in Fes, no matter how modest.  The bathroom may have no hot water (this is not really a hypothetical; the sink only has one tap and the shower ran cold from both taps), but the cold water falls onto gorgeous tiles.

On our second night with her, Kaoutar had a surprise for us.  At our request, she had bought the ingredients for pastissa, which is sort of a crèpe-wrapped pie, with chicken, almonds, onions, and loads of sugar.  Dessert for dinner.  It's a party dish, so she made a party for us.  She borrowed party clothes for each of us, color-coordinated ensembles with dress, overdress, belt, and head scarf, and then she dressed each of us.  And then we danced.

And we looked at her wedding pictures, and we talked about the baby she will have in December, and promised to send all our friends to Morocco to stay with her.

I haven't had so much fun dancing since Jefferson and Megan's wedding two years ago today.  Happy anniversary, you two, and I can hardly wait to see you in a few days.  xoxoxo

Got my snark on

Three more days and there's a definite change in the atmosphere.  Today is a study day, but there's no studying going on within earshot of the Administrative Office.

There's a scale, and people are weighing themselves and their luggage.  The scale that was there this morning was replaced with a scale that folks are saying overweighs by 15 pounds. 

Which is about what you might have expected to gain on a diet of croissants, bacon, and omelets every morning.  I know I'm not weighing myself until the dead of night.

Another group of people is signing up for "Luggage Free," the world's most misleadingly named freight company.  This is for people who cannot bear the thought of consigning their possessions to the airlines and would rather spend hundreds of dollars having FedEx consign them to the airlines for them after helpfully encasing them in plastic so they don't get dirty.  The cost to ship is $7.50 a pound from Barcelona.  You can spend $100 to check a second bag, or you can pay $375 for a bag at the maximum weight of 50# for most airlines.  Luggage Free indeed.

Obviously, it's difficult to justify this expense if you are flying straight home.  For the students who are spending several weeks traveling around Europe, the convenience may be worth it.  But, really, it's almost cheaper to pay someone to come to Barcelona and carry your bags home for you.

In addition to the general angst surrounding packing, there is the usual end of school year signing of yearbooks, exchanging of addresses, and trying to fit in time with friends.  All of which is going on outside my door.  Inside, I am battling printer issues, duplicating last minute exams, and answering stupid questions.  Pretty much a regular day.

Oh, and we've been in sight of the Rock of Gibraltar since 7 AM.  Passed it around 7, anchored in the Mediterranean waiting to get cleared to get in line to wait for fuel, circled around, approached, circled back, and now we've been filling up for about 6 hours.  (BIG gas tank.  We also filled up in The Gambia, if you recall.  As well as several other ports.)

So there's kind of a party atmosphere.  And a packing atmosphere.  And trying to get something done in the office so I can go party and pack.

It amazes me that 103 days into a voyage of 106 days, I am still being asked if this is the academic office, where the executive dean's office is, and if I'll make some copies.  No, down the corridor, and I don't have a copier.

A student just whined in an email that he couldn't file the folder on the public drive where you are supposed to drop your songs to be played at the Alumni Ball.  Which is tomorrow.  It's not unrealistic to think the folder might no longer be accessible, 27 hours before the event.  But I checked, and it is.  The student was unhappy that I hadn't mentioned it in the Deans' Memo, evidently missing this notice, which has run unchanged for a few issues now. 

Alumni Ball Song Requests   Had enough of Gangnam Style and Call Me Maybe?  Last chance to drop your favorite songs in the folder on the public drive.  Sorry, but no requests can be honored the night of the ball.

The folder is called <_DROP YOUR SONG REQUESTS FOR THE ALUMNI BALL>, so I guess it's understandable that he couldn't find it.  I tricked him up with that "favorite" in the description.  There are currently 263 items in the folder, which translates to 10-15 hours of songs for a 2 hour event.  But I didn't want him to be disappointed, so I wrote, "Look again, and I bet you can find it.  Here's a hint.  You don't have to go very far."  I also told him to check with the person who put up the folder if he couldn't find it. 

I was trying to convey my unhelpfulness, but I need to be less subtle.  I got an email back telling me how hard it is to find on a mac because the files aren't necessarily alphabetized and how much of a disaster the public drive is in general and how someone has changed the settings to make it nearly impossible to find.

Huh?  His mac must be one of those newer models where files are assigned spaces wherever they fit best, like a big game of Tetris.  Mine just has the usual choice of arrangements:  name, date (modified or created), size, kind, label.  I want the "random" choice!  Or maybe "nationality."  Also, on my mac, the folder is colored purple so it stands out. 

I am a very helpful person, but I am tired of people who make no attempt to solve their own problems and then blame their failure on you.  So I confess to answering his second annoying email by suggesting that if he has problems understanding his mac, he ask our IT group for help, and if he has a complaint about how Aparna named the file, he take it to her.  He took the hint.

A tougher case is the girl who came by the office this afternoon and said,

"I'm really stressed about packing.  Do you have boxes?" 
"No."  I did not bother to expand this response.
"Why not?"
"Why don't YOU have boxes?"  (The Deans' Memo specifically said, you'll have to get your own box in Casablanca.  We will not have boxes and will not have tape.  It took two days of inquiries before I could write that.)
"You should have boxes."
"Sorry, we don't."
"Do you have anyone who can pack for me?"

Yes, that's exactly what she asked.  She thinks the SAS should have a person tasked with packing for her.  Well, for all 637 students, I suppose, but mostly for her. 

"For a fee, of course."

Whew!  I thought she was spoiled.  She's just a job creator. 

As a matter of fact, one of our faculty members is packing for a student who bid $200 for the privilege in the shipboard auction. 

"You could put up signs," I suggested.  "I bet you could find someone who would do it." 

She flounced off.  She's probably looking for someone to put up the signs.

C'est Maroc

As predicted, it did not take me long to get lost in the medina.  Armed with google maps on my phone, Sherrie and I set off from the port entrance.  She wanted to exchange rupees for dirhams, so we went in search of a bank.  We were so late setting out that we saw friends coming back and they steered us to a bank a block or so along the way.  No luck with the rupee exchange, but we were able to use the ATM to get some cash.

While I was waiting, I tried to orient myself on google maps.  For some reason, the GPS still thinks I'm in Burma.  While I was in Burma, it was sure I was still in Hong Kong.  It has not been a useful locating device. This makes it difficult to use a map.  You have to have some kind of landmark starting out, like a street sign or a unique intersection, or knowing where the ship is berthed.

Or, you can ask someone to look at the phone and tell you where you are.  I asked the bank guard, who looked perplexed and sent me to the teller.  The teller tapped his finger on the phone, moving the map, and pointed to the area behind him, saying that was where the medina was.  The answer to all tourist questions is apparently the shopping center.  It's a reasonable answer for someone who's just gotten money, I suppose, but it was not the answer to my question.

So we wandered into the medina, which looks like a tangle of brain tissue on the map.  The streets laid out by the French are orthogonal and diagonal, and the medina streets curve around and fold in on themselves.  We picked randomly at the intersections, figuring we would untangle ourselves eventually.    Sherrie bought a lovely tunic and pants and some bras.  She tried on the former, but the latter was pretty much on spec.

The threat level in the port is 2, which we understand has to do with our being a big group of Americans rather than any particular political situation in the country.  At our diplomatic briefing, the consular officer told us that we were targets for theft not because we were American tourists, but because of our financial status.  What that really means is, take the same kinds of precautions you would in any big city.  Poor people rob rich people.

The harassment level seems to be a 3.  Everyone invites you into their shop, but they don't seem desperate.  The lady in the dress shop seemed quite intent on selling Sherrie more than one outfit--and quite intent on ignoring both our English and our French (how do you say polyester in French?), but most of the merchants let us walk on by.

One man struck up a conversation with me.  He wanted to tell me all the places he's been in the US, and it was a lot.  He's lived in Texas, New York, and Florida, and he's visited several other states, including Virginia.  He told me his sister in Boston frequents a Dunkin Donuts right at the site of the bombing every day, but was not at work that day.  (Not surprising.  The Boston Marathon is held on Patriot's Day, which is a state holiday in Massachusetts.  I can't speak for the Dunkin Donuts location, but I do know that.)

Meandering through my life, curving in on itself like the streets of the medina, I mention here that my Runner Boss had crossed the finish line in Boston shortly before the bombs exploded.  Sailing into Casablanca last night, sitting at my desk on board, I watched him on the local news, in an interview filmed only a few feet from my desk on land.  Because the internet connection spit out the film in fits and starts, I got to see every detail.  I've seen those photos, that clutter on his desk.  I know what's hiding just out of sight.

I was hungry for those details.  I am ready to be home.

But in the meantime, I am not, and I'm enjoying my last few days.  While Sherrie shopped for underwear, I talked to the Moroccan vendor, who told me his name, Said, means happy.  He told me this because he loves to go gambling and always wins.  He also told me pashmina is cotton and silk, very fine quality.  (Pashmina is goat hair, actually, and only from rather specific goats and rather specific areas of their bodies.  The best pashmina wool was traditionally collected from bushes the goats rubbed up against.  But perhaps the Moroccan goats rub up against cotton plants and silk cocoons?)

He had some very pretty scarves, and I was very tempted to add them to the family of scarves I have been amassing.  Although traveling in a westward direction has had clear advantages in terms of having so many 25-hour days, traveling in the opposite direction would have made for better scarves.

But we wandered on.  We wandered into a residential area, and I took this snapshot.  Beautiful tile fountain, it evidently serves as the community's water source and laundromat.

Eventually, we found our way out to a main road and oriented ourselves.  We ate in a French seafood restaurant (good, not great).  Sherrie learned her French from the concierge at a French whorehouse in the 70s, but apparently they are gastronomes.  She was able to translate the items not covered in Mme. Colignon's French class.  Which is proving quite useful here.

Code Blue in Casablanca

We are in Casablanca.  Except for the container cars, it looks as black and white as the movie.  The fog clouds everything, like Vaseline on a lens. 

If I’ve learned one thing from my travels, it’s get out of the port city.  In every port, we dock at a big, industrial port, just like the freighters full of refrigerators.  There’s no grass, no trees, just a mile of warehouses and security and gates.

Casablanca is Morocco’s biggest city, and its most Westernized.  I just finished reading The Caliph’s House, an ex-pat memoir by an Afghan-Scot immigrant to Casablanca.  Same as many other stories, the burned out refugee from the 20^th century decamps to some exotic vacation land and then tries to remake it to the standards he enjoyed in his home country, all the while complaining about how expensive it is to do a renovation with the horrid people who do the work for him.  Our Academic Dean recommended it to me as a good introduction to the culture.  I generally find this sort of memoir discourages me from going to visit, but here I am.

Thanks to my reading, I am prepared for a country where the population cannot be trusted, is superstitious, and has to be tricked into working.  Thanks to the diplomatic briefing, I now have a more objective vantage point.   Now I know that the drivers are crazy, the taxis are insane.  No one follows the traffic laws.  Also, there are demonstrations, terrorist plots, thefts at ATMS, and harassment of women waiting for me.

As Captain Louis Renault asks, “What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?

Despite all of this, I am looking forward to visiting Morocco.  I have only one day in Casablanca and once we get through immigration, Sherrie and I are off.  It looks like we can walk to the medina and some of the main streets, to get a feel for the French Colonial architecture and the local crafts. 

Tomorrow I’m off to Fes, leading an SAS home-stay trip.  I had originally decided to travel with SAS because I thought Morocco played to the weakest of my travel skills, navigation.  My instincts are almost always wrong, and I’ve gotten turned around in every market I’ve been to on this trip.  My work buddy Chris had given me a hilarious but cautionary tale about getting lost in a souk, and I didn’t want to repeat it, especially not as a single woman.  So here I am, leading the group—I just hope I can stay out of trouble long enough to get the group back to home base.

Home base for one more week.  In just a week, we go through our last shipboard immigration, our last long lines to pick up our passport and get it stamped by bored people who would rather be enjoying the pastries our ship provides for them. 

Today’s wait was long enough that my computer finished downloading all the files I wanted from the public drive.  The lines stretched down a couple of flights of stairs, made longer by people who were sneaking in at the landings.  They listened in preport to the cultural information.  Moroccans don't wait in line, they push their way through.

Midway up the last flight, we saw our medical team in action.  "Code blue, code blue, code blue.  Deck 7"  The medical team came racing up the steps, along with several crew members.  Two for the stretcher, two with life preservers to use as pillows.  The passenger is okay, and left the scene in a wheelchair.  This is the team putting away the gear.  You can see two cooks (checked pants and hats), along with a maintenance guy (blue jumpsuit), several officers and members of the ship's medical crew.  Our SAS doc is already in the elevator with the patient.  (I have some decency.)

Faculty/staff are the first group to get off the ship after the Caribbean Sea, who won that honor as champs of the Sea Olympics.  With any luck, I should clear before lunch.  And that will give me a vantage point from which to take pictures of people struggling down the gangway with their carry-on luggage.

Not just another port; THE Gambia

“Hello, sweet sister.  Welcome to the smiling coast of Gambia!”  

It was a lovely greeting, floating up to the rail, where I stood looking out at yet another dock in yet another harbor.

Today we had an unscheduled stop in Banjul, The Gambia.  We gassed up, and we took on some medical supplies flown in from the US.  Our students have been warned, “Don’t play with the monkeys” in almost every port since Japan, but—being of a Certain Age—they played with the monkeys.  And now some have to have just-in-case treatment for rabies.

Maersk containers are omnipresent.

In a similar vein, a student came to the office today to find out just what would happen if he went over his points limit in Morocco.  “It’s the last port, so they can’t throw me off the ship, right?” 

(Students get points for various infractions of the behavioral code.  If they reach 10, they are supposed to be sent home.  Naturally, there are appeals and exceptions, but we have offloaded a few.  Evidently, this one is looking at one more night in the drunk tank pushing him over the threshold.)

Some of our students have the stated goal of being drunk in every port.  (Do they also have aligned goals, like “DUI before 25” and “Passed out in a gutter before 50”?  Better put “Friend of Bill W” on the agenda, too.)

To be specific, this means they are planning to go into an overwhelmingly Moslem, very conservative country and spit in the face of cultural norms.  USA!  USA!  I vote in favor of throwing him, literally, off the ship.

To be fair, most of the students on board share my opinion of these party animals.  Most of the students do not play with the monkeys.  They are the ones stressed out over their upcoming exams, working too hard to taken time to socialize.  They are the ones filling up classrooms for workshops on resume writing, volunteering in Africa, and founding an NGO.  And they are putting on the Drag Show and organizing Crew Recognition Day.  There’s a lot going on aboard ship—too much to take in, really—and most of the students are making the most of their days here.

Today, we stood still in The Gambia, the smallest country in mainland Africa.  It’s pretty much the banks of the Gambia River, 10 miles on each bank, running upriver about 200 miles.  Except for the mouth of the river, on the Atlantic coast, it is completely surrounded by Senegal. 

Because we had people getting off the ship, we had to go through the whole process of clearing immigration.  A dozen men came aboard, largely to drink juice and eat pastries, since there was really nothing else for them to do.  (In most ports, we have a face-to-face, where immigration checks passports for each passenger.  It takes hours.)

Outside, the locals called to us and tried to sell us their wares.  I suppose from their viewpoint, it looked like any other cruise ship coming in to the harbor:  immigration gets on, then people get off.  One enterprising fellow tried to sell an IPad and an IPhone.  (Who knew there was an Apple store in The Gambia?  Or, maybe not.)  It’s sad that they had nothing better to do than wait for people who could not visit.

One local did manage to make it up to Deck 6 at lunch.  This moth was completely intent on my lunch.  Even as I moved my fork closer and closer, it stayed on my plate. 

The moth, too, was bound to be disappointed.  The most interesting thing about the food these days is the new names the kitchen staff comes up with for the same old food.  This was minced beef, indistinguishable from meatloaf.  The potatoes are the best:  they are roasted, steak-cut, home fried, Lyonnaise, and present at breakfast, lunch and dinner.  They are rarely mashed and I’ve never seen them au gratin, probably to keep them dairy free.

Still, better than the alternative.  Food cooked for you doesn’t have to meet a very high standard, especially when someone else cleans up, too.

So add another country to the list.  I’ve never been to The Gambia, but I can see it from my window.

It's about time

Going around the world on a ship plays havoc with the notion of time.  Going in a westward direction, as we are, means you lose a whole day, but you pick it up an hour at a time.  In the mad dash across the Pacific, we had three 25-hour days in a row.  (I waste the extra hour, every time.  I stay up way too late every night.  When we gain an hour, I stay up way, way too late.)

One casualty is times for sunrise and sunset.  Generally, you can count on the days getting a bit longer each day from the winter solstice to the summer one, and shorter each day the other half of the year.  But when you are moving through time zones, sunrise and sunset catapult around.  On days when the clock is moved forward or back, the sunrise time shifts a whole hour from the expected.

Days, too, are hard to account for when you are dividing the time into “sea days” and “land days.”  Saturday and Sunday are just names, not leisure time.  I refer to the calendar many times each day to confirm the date. I cross the days off, not in anticipation, but so I can locate “today.” 

I have a chart in my office that tells me when we are going to change our clocks.  I added a column to tell me what time it is back at home base.  I’m not calling; I just like knowing.

We’re traveling around Western Africa at the moment, and we were scheduled to change our clocks tonight, and again in three days as we approach Casablanca.  But not, as you might think, going back an hour heading west and forward an hour as we head back east. We were scheduled to go forward tonight, and then back.  I think the time changes may be related to observances of Daylight Savings Time rather than geographic location.

Rather than disrupt our sleep patterns twice for a zero sum change, the staff captain appears to have elected to tick to our own clock.  It’s a sensible decision, but it makes me vaguely uncomfortable to be out of sync, even if it’s out of sync with an abstract and arbitrary concept.

Ghana sits very close to the Equator, and they do not observe Daylight Savings Time.  All year long, sunrise and sunset are at 6:30.  You could set your clock by it.

In Ghana, the sun is the only thing that runs on schedule.

A room with a mind of its own

Today, technology turned on me.

Well, to be fair, it pretty much does that every day aboard ship, but today was a day that sorely tried my patience. 

The printer has a fun little quirk.  It randomly assigns itself to print double-sided copies, something it is very, very bad at.  I will be happily printing various documents, and without warning, one will print double-sided.  The print menu will say it’s printing on one side only, but out will come a double-sided copy.  This is especially annoying when I have asked it to print only the even pages of a document, in preparation for manually printing a multi-page document on both pages.  So, for those not following this drivel too closely, that means I have page 2 and page 4 on the front and back of the page.  

Fortunately, the printer also jams after printing a couple of these, a then I can crawl around for a while, unjamming it.  (Found a new way to unjam today:  SCORE!)

Another fun habit the printer has developed is randomly choosing to print multiple copies.  One of my jobs is printing out exams, so I’ll be printing 35 or 80 copies of the same document.  That number will get stuck somewhere in the recesses of the printer’s memory, and it will come popping out 

inappropriately like a verbal tic or a nervous response.  Not every time.  Not predictably.  Not often enough that I check, every single time, all the printer settings.  Just often enough to waste a lot of paper and bug the crap out of me.

Our IT team is as baffled as I am.  Intermittent problems are hard to diagnose, and they like to believe it has stopped misbehaving permanently.  But, like the bully who waits until the teacher’s back is turned, the printer is just biding its time. 

Meanwhile, the fax has gone on the fritz.  Whatever little gizmo signals the paper to feed has gone to lunch, and the fax keeps scanning nothing at all.  Two IT guys later, we have reached a truce, the fax machine and I.  Let’s hope it lasts.  It’s the only way we have to make copies.

Jim’s computer reset itself while we were off in Ghana, and it is back to signaling new emails with an obnoxiously loud chime.  And sometimes with a softer chime.  I have no idea why the volume varies.  And sometimes with no chime at all, I suppose, because it does not seem to chime in direct relationship with his complaints about an excessive number of incoming emails.  But I know it’s reset itself, because one of the things it does is reinstall nonexistent hardware as the default printer, something Jim doesn’t notice until he calls me over to figure out why his jobs aren’t printing.  Jim’s computer is very fond of the broken printer/copier we offloaded in California.

Our email system on the ship is a slot machine in disguise.  Press send and you might send zero, one, or eight copies of your email.  Today I got 8 copies of the Deans’ Memo.  Then 3 copies of an email from my work study student informing me I’d sent 8 copies of the DM.  Then 5 copies of an email from another student helpfully letting me know of the problem…

The Deans’ Memo also goes into my junk mail sometimes.  That just hurts my feelings, really.  But lots of things go into my junk mail.  I do not recall any actual junk going there, but pretty much everyone who submits items for the Deans’ Memo winds up there from time to time.  Awkward. 

A month or two ago, I started getting copies of my sent mail in my inbox.  A thoughtful update to Outlook.  Who, after all, would treasure my prose more than I do?  Multiply it by a random number of copies and it really does make following an email conversation difficult.

This afternoon, Land Boss started gently nagging me for something I sent him before I departed for Ghana. Something I had to send him because our feeble internet and my outdated browser conspired to prevent me from saving it on UVA’s website.  Something of which I found no trace.  Not in the Outbox, or the Sent mail, or the Drafts. On my desktop or on my laptop.  Something I then couldn’t transfer from my laptop, because it randomly rejects my flashdrive, my SD card, and my card reader. 

If you are counting, today’s casualties so far include my printer, Jim’s computer, Jim’s printer (which prints double-sided, but prints the back upside down on signal from my computer, right side up from his), the fax, the ship’s email system, and all the portable memory devices I have with me.  When the stapler refused to work, I fixed it with my best no-nonsense glare and I said, “You, I am not going to put up with.  If you continue to misbehave, you are going straight into the trash.”  Four or five crumpled staples later, I prevailed.

And then one of the Resident Directors came begging for a favor.  Three hours before the Talent Show, she had given up on her balky printer, and she needed 400 copies of the program, double sided. 

“Let’s try a test copy first,” I suggested. 

One spontaneous double-sided copy, one jam, one inexplicable reversal of the two inside pages, a dozen reformats and adjustments of margins, and 45 minutes later, we were ready to print.

The (outdated) job manual for my position is very clear:  don’t let ANYONE use the copier except you.

Who the heck would want to?