A Few Random (And A Few Bizarre) Incidents

I'm warning you: I'm feeling chatty. Okay, so I don't so much feel "chatty," but a lot of things have suddenly happened all at once that I want to tell you all. Anyway, so now you know.

Sweater Weather
A series of less-than-exciting thunderstorms (everyone was predicting something much worse) brought in a brisk cold front. And everyone knows what that means! Sweater Weather! Today I am wearing a wool turtleneck sweater and am quite comfortable. It’s the first sweater of the season, which, quite frankly, is quite thrilling. Quite. Blake is wearing a sweater today, too: a brown one over a brown striped collared shirt. He looks quite strapping, if I do say so myself. And apparently some random girl on campus agreed with me last spring when he last wore this combination. As she came upon Blake on the sidewalk walking between classes, she stopped and told him that his outfit looked very good. Blake was flattered. Because, you know, I guess it’s nice to receive outfit affirmation from someone other than your significant other sometimes. Or something.

Early Childhood Education
Yesterday afternoon, during a random office conversation, the topic came up that, come next summer, Blake and I have no idea where we’ll be living. We could be traipsing the globe, or sitting comfortably here in this little nook of the Midwest. The following conversation ensued:

Me: Yeah, so, for all I know, we could be down in Indy, or maybe even still here in Muncie.

Lisa: That’d be great! You could keep working here with us!

Me: [thinking] Yeah…riiiight.

Lisa: Or, I guess you could find a teaching job.

Me: That’s true, I could.

Lisa: I bet you could find a good job teaching in a preschool or something. I have a friend who did that and she loved it.

Rose: Oh yes, you’d be great with young children…they need good teachers when they’re very young.

Me: Well, actually…I’m only certified to teach grades 6 to 12, and only in history and English.

Lisa: Well, I’m sure that Ball State has an early childhood education program. You could take classes for free! And you could borrow textbooks for free from the Prison Program [a program offered here at Extended Ed].

Rose: Or you could take classes at Ivy Tech [the community college].

Lisa: But Ball State would be free because she’s an employee. [Looks up the Ball State program online.] It looks like they do have an early childhood education program here…it’s 120 credits.

Rose: Either way, I’m sure a lot of your education credits would transfer.

Me: Well…actually…I don’t think any of them would…I did secondary education. I’m not trained at all for preschool. [Thinking: Nor do I really want to be.]

Rose: Oh, but it wouldn’t take you too long. And you’d be such a good teacher for those kids.

Me: Well…actually…if I did go back to school, I’d probably go for a master’s of library science…you know…be a librarian. Or maybe I’d get a degree in editing or writing…or something [Thinking: Something that’s not preschool teaching.]

But I don’t think they heard me because at this point Lisa’s phone rang and I was able to slip quietly back to my cubicle. If they had stopped to ask me what I was considering for my future (instead of figuring it out themselves), they would have discovered that what I’m hoping for is to be able to pass the Breadwinner title onto Blake once he’s graduated and found a job.

After Waiting 6 Months for Our Tax Return…
…it is finally in the mail. Like good American citizens, we filed our taxes and got them in by the April deadline. Because of our move across the country, we were required to file federally, in Utah, and in Indiana. We were able to use an online program to file the federal and Utah taxes, but because of circumstances out of our control, we had to file in Indiana by hand. Because of this, the Indiana state return was not going to be direct deposited into our account like the federal and Utah returns were. We were fine with this. We figured we could wait a while longer to get our money back from the government. Well, come July we figured it would arrive any day now. Come August we were really wondering. Come September we were able to track down a number for the Indiana Department of Revenue. Blake called them yesterday to ask them, politely, where the heck our return was. He received a rather unusual response: “Well, we didn’t have your address.” Um, yes you did. It was printed on the form…in several different places. Good heavens! Someone must have been having a really bad day when they filed our return in the “lost” drawer.

Bras and Statistics
The other day Blake was sitting in his statistics lab working one on one with his professor. He asked her a question about suppressors in variable multivariate regression analysis (whew, that’s a mouthful!). As he understood it, suppressed variables make the statistic seem higher or bigger than it really is. She responded that yes, that’s one way to look at them. And then she proceeded to give the analogy of Padding Your Bra: a girl stuffing her bra to make her seem more well endowed is comparable to a statistician using suppressed variables to make their analysis seem bigger. Blake thought the analogy a might inappropriate, but he went with it. A few minutes later, his professor came back to make sure he understood what she was talking about. He just about had to cut her off to let her know that, yes, he did get, and please don’t try to explain it in more detail. Blake told me about this little incident over breakfast this morning. All I could think about was the time when Frank Costanza was trying to explain bra sizing to George: “You got your A, your B, your C, and your D – those are the biggest.”

You Should Be Proud of Me
Because I am becoming master of my culinary domain. My friend, Sarah, gave us a brimming bag of fresh orchard apples, and last night I put them to good use. I made more applesauce, and an apple crisp. Both are tasty. (And, don’t tell anyone, but both were very easy, too.)

You should also be proud of me because I am now going to stop writing. Goodbye!