Sunday, October 22, 2006

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the Pumpkin Patch at the Tupelo Buffalo Park with a group of families from PEAK. They had a haybale maze which everyone enjoyed, even the lady who lost a pair of glasses in it and walked over it three times with helpers before she found them. The children played themselves out.

Autumn has been hard for us. My husband has had commitments almost every evening for over a month. I'm left alone at home with the girls all day and a good part of the night. We can't find a babysitter and we've only got one working car, so the girls and I are pretty sick of each other right now. Brighteyes has been so fussy we got down to doing lessons only one or two days a week, then stopped completely. I don't have the energy to deal with all her screaming.

I've also felt the urge to write fiction again. Fiction is a lot more uncomfortable for me to write, what with getting inside another person's head instead of just blathering my own thoughts. It feel much more intimate. I can't do it with anyone making noise near me, let alone standing over my shoulder. But I'm never alone. I can already feel the urge dying inside me from not having a chance to get out, and all I've written are snippets. The girls don't understand why I need to be alone, and it makes them cling to me even tighter. I don't know what to do.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

We set up at the Rock & Gem Show on the Old Miss campus yesterday. Our babysitter cancelled at the last minute, which threw everything up in the air. We took the girls along, and I must say they were very well behaved. It still put a spanner in the works.

Note to self: always put out your own press release. Don't rely on the show to do it for you. That's the only way to control the quality.

It's the first time I've been on a college campus that had a football team since "tailgate parties" became big business. How on Earth do the students stand it? There were thousands of strangers everywhere, spending huge sums of money to rent dinky tents, grills, beer kegs, and satelight dishes that littered every inch of grass on the campus and made driving impossible. And this goes on for every home game? Unbelievable. The Administration's response to that lunacy had been to move the game time back to 8:00 to encourage it. I went to the football-free
Mississippi University for Women and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi before tailgate parties were hot. Weekends were down time. They were time to chill out and catch up on your friends, your sleep, and your homework. I couldn't have stood that insanity twice a year, let alone every other weekend. I was shocked at the Ole Miss Administration, as it looked like they were placing money-making opportunities way ahead of the needs of their students.

We were set up at the
Oxford Train Depot. It's a 135 year old brick building with hardwood floors. It's lovely, and the brickwork is in fabulous shape. My husband walked with the girls up to the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. It's a 10 year old building that looks really impressive from a distance. Get up close to it and you'll see that the "brickwork" is actually concrete slabs with caulk holding them together instead of brick and mortar. Find a place where the caulk is peeling off and you'll see cardboard shims under the caulk. One of these buildings will still be here in another 100 years. The other won't.