Reschooling: women vs. men, etc.

Today I am taking a little happiness in the fact that I did really well on my first organic chemistry exam. The professor is intense, the class itself is intense (clicker education), the material is not so easy to grasp sometimes and can require understanding of a lot of abstract concepts. I'm sure relative to material to come, this is just baby stuff but it doesn't seem that way now. The victory feels very good, but I have no time to bask in it - I have a paper to write, an exam to prepare for and a lot more work to do for everything. It is very, very strange to be working hard as a student at my age and have my family too. I hope I will always have my family.

It occurred to me the other day that I am one of about three older women in the chemistry class, but there are no older men. Come to think of it, there have not been any older men in any of my science classes. There are some in my statistics course, but not the science classes. Hm. I'm wondering why. And it is interesting that several people I have met already have bachelor's degrees and are working to become additionally educated to develop their careers. The formula is definitely bachelor's degree and a lot of hard work + integration with the working world. That last component is what I never really obtained after getting my degree eons ago. If I had it to do over, I would have crafted my education in a way that the endpoint was more integrated with the outside world, pointing to some professional path with a network instead of ripping away from it all and moving back to Oregon from Illinois. Or I would have built it and finished it here in Oregon in the first place.

I must be getting a little better.

I'm actually thinking about knitting something for the first time in almost a year. The other day I was excited about making a nice dinner for the family. This sounds trite, but enjoying normal things has not been the standard fare for a long time. My dad died after a prolonged illness, both my dogs died, and I gave away my pet chickens all within a few months. My children are growing up and I'm facing a huge job of trying to build a new life. But it is good, very good to think about knitting again and actually be thinking it seems kind of... special. I will celebrate the end of my term by knitting a Christmas gift for my sister, and a neckwarmer for myself.

Something a little funny.

I'm thankful that it is summer.

Warm weather is something I appreciate. I am a thin person and cold sears through me easily, so the heat of summer is something I welcome. I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful that I have a reliable car at this time, and that my family is healthy. That is no small point of gratitude. We have a home, enough food to eat. With summer here, our windows are open, and every morning when I wake up at dawn, I try to focus on things I'm thankful for. But there is something different here now. There is often a silence that almost sounds like pressure, like a vacuum unless birds are singing, and birds, with the exception of crows, have been uncommonly absent. It was a silent morning today, a vacuum of silence, until I got out of bed. That is when the crows began to caw and have been doing so since. I will often see 4 to 10 crows in one neighbor's yard, eating their bird food. I have seen up to 40 or so high in the fir trees, flying between roosts. I think the issue of crows is not exclusive to the area around our home though. I see and hear them on the campus where I am attending classes several miles away. Last night a headline caught my eye. Apparently there is a problem with crows in the Seattle area too, and a University of Washington professor decided to study the crows' ability to recognize human faces and found that they actively do so. Here is the link to the story. Their intelligence has not been disputed, but the question I am not hearing is Why Are There So Many Of Them Now? And what can we do about it? Gone are the days when the songs of the birds were consistently varied and by August I could hear plenty of bugs buzzing, humming, generally making their insectoid noises. This year, however, there is very little of that. I haven't seen any real butterflies, almost no dragonflies, virtually no regular flies, very few bees and almost no wasps. Ants are around though. I think they'll be around long after humans are gone, provided there is land for them.

A new road.

I have now completed my first week as a full-time student. It is quite an adjustment. I am not the only student who is older, but I am probably one of the two oldest. One younger woman in my class has two bachelor's degrees, Journalism and French, and is preparing to head into a more practical direction. These are the realities of the Old US College System. To encourage a person to head into a major that has no practical place in society should probably be accompanied by significant advising and assistance to the student to dovetail them into the working world.

I am still watching the economy but not as closely as I was. I am trying to focus on a positive future rather than the dire predictions of the day. In my state the unemployment rate is 12.4%, the second highest in the nation; Oregon used to be a progressive state with a good education system, but it has always had a precarious economy. I grew up here when the mills began to close, but I lived in a college town and lived in a neighborhood where everyone was college-bound; the timber industry and the economy didn't feel threatening then. Today of course, all that is different. One economist I follow is Diane Swonk. I do so because a) she is a woman; b) she is a mother; c) she is a successful economist and d) she is not freaking out about the economy. She grew up in Michigan while her father worked for the automobile industry and I heard a speech of hers once, decided she was more optimistic than some of the people whose opinions I had been reading and thought it was a good point of view to consider. Here is a link to her latest post, where she writes that recovery is painful. Yes, I can attest to that. I am trying to remain hopeful that this new trajectory of mine will come to fruition, that things will fall into place as I walk through this transition from being a full-time mother, graphic artist, child-care provider, elder-care provider, animal-lover and all that I have been over the last 10 years to working in a rewarding job doing meaningful work.

awakening... after twenty-five years.

It's like I've had blankets ripped off me on a cold winter morning. Twenty-five years of my life has passed, and I am astonished that I threw away so much opportunity, so much of what I worked so hard to achieve for the first half of my life for the sake of my family life and children. I have Googled around to see if this situation is unique. I couldn't find much.

The other day I saw a spider swinging down from the light in the hall. I grabbed the thread and lowered the spider into the toilet. It wadded up into a ball, then began to swim, desperate to get out, unwilling to stop trying but unable to get traction on anything, not even the porcelain. I saw myself in that spider and decided to let it go. It scuttled off to a place behind the toilet and I haven't seen it since.

It's hard not to look back on my life and dwell on all the choices I could have made differently. Really hard. And I worry about my children. I will always worry about them.

Ten crows hiding

There really has been an invasion of crows here. I googled it and what has transpired here with the influx of crows has gone down in many other smaller cities like mine. They apparently prefer smaller cities, especially near a river. The river? Right next to downtown.

Further parallels: got a notice from my son's school that this neighborhood that has become so vacant and haunted is now plagued by some gang activity. Do I wish we could flee? Yes. Right now. And to turn back the clock which I cannot seem to do. During the day when I am home and not volunteering for the food bank (depressing) or at the job center (depressing), I sit by my woodstove thankful for the heat, thankful for my internet connection, sometimes I listen to the radio also very depressing. Neil Conan of TOTN is so cock-sure of himself, it's too much for me. And TV? Forget it. The joy of what this place had the first three years of our lives here is gone. An era of guinea pigs, preschool and dogs. Hope for my kids' safety and futures has diminished profoundly. Suddenly I am useless to my community except to care some for my children who don't need me as much anyway. There is a horrible sense of abandonment by a world that I thought I lived in. It's gone gone gone. I knew. KNEW when we bought this place that the sign at the top of the street that reads, "Dead End" was prophetic.

A view of my neighbor's house across the street:

Creative work has evaded me severely. I am not driven to do it, cannot seem to find the peace that I need to do it. I cannot knit. Instead I am shocked by my ill-preparedness to face a rugged world, far more rugged than I ever realized it is, and I am terrified for my sons' safety and well-being. I am not finding any pathway back in to the workforce, and the few moments I've had as opportunities have met with a degree of mockery in one case, pity in another. I never thought of myself as being an older worker before, but apparently, obviously now, I am. Having spent time as an artist without substantial financial backing elsewhere was a mistake. Basking in the aesthetic beauty and meaning of what I could see? Foolish. I should have been working my way up in public or healthcare administration or something. Taking my kids out of the schools here and schooling them myself was also a mistake. I should have gone back to work/school and put them into private schools. Or let them sink/swim before the gangs moved in. I am not bilingual, and because I am not, I have another serious blow to my reentry into the workforce.

I'm working on six months of this realization that the world has changed and I have been left behind. I could use a really good adviser, somebody to mentor me back into the workforce. I was so foolish not to be building a significant network all this time. I let my significant other and my own denial prevent me from embracing the world as it IS instead of basking in chickens and dogs and innocence that is transient and often trashed sooner than we would like. I'd run to Canada or Vermont or some place like that if I could.