marniere

So How’s Retirement Going?

Posted on November 6, 2023 | 3 comments

I get that question a lot. Also: Are you bored yet? How’s the job-hunting going?

Not bored yet. Not job-hunting yet (that’s imminent, though).

My activities for the 23 weeks I’ve been retired fall into roughly four categories:

Flurry of activity related to life coaching
Sludge Time
A bajillion health appointments
Flurry of activity related to emerging from Sludge Time

I hired, as my life-coach, the amazing Kelsey Brennan, whom I know first and foremost as an American Players Theatre core company member (and who is currently doing a standout job as the lead in what may be my all-time favorite production @ APT, Proof, which is getting great reviews and selling out fast). She offers a complimentary session as a coach and I found myself so energized after that session, there was no question but what I wanted more. We met four times in April, as I was finishing out my last semester as a professor, my last semester at the now-nonexistent UW-Richland. Then we skipped May–I needed to focus on finals and she needed to focus on getting a new season started at APT. We met four times in June and four times in July, ending approximately on my 58th birthday. I got A LOT done related to that work, but the focus ended up being de-cluttering and making my front porch a useable space. There’s more work to do (PLENTY OF IT) in that regard, but it is a useable space, and sometimes seems almost magical:

I really can’t recommend Kelsey highly enough as a coach. Among other things, she is a Certified Professional Coach through the International Coaching Federation, a title she earned through completing training at UW-Madison. She is energetic and energizing and really, just a fantastic listener and insightful reflector, as in “I’m hearing you say ______” (which sounds kind of corny when I write it that way, but so many times she filled in that blank with things that yes, I was saying, but wasn’t realizing I was saying.)

Other interesting things I’ve done since retiring:

Did a fair bit of socializing on the porch, especially with friends I’ve been meaning to hang out with but hadn’t gotten around to hanging around with much in my always-exhausted/not-yet-retired mode. (I have a list. I didn’t make it very far through the list before it got cold. The inside of my house isn’t as ready for socializing as the porch.)
I’ve been active with the River Valley ARTS board, working on Make Music River Valley and an upcoming silent auction of some works by the amazing Peg Miller. I’ve taken over writing the newsletter for RV ARTS, and you can see the latest edition by clicking here. I also had the fun opportunity to be on WRCO a couple of times promoting RV ARTS programs.
I did the training to become a substitute teacher and may yet do that but am not quite feeling the pull of it yet.
I took my son for his first college tour.
I went two different times to a 5th Sunday Hymn sing, led by my amazing friend Susan Thering at the Little Brown Church, where we end every session by singing “Church in the Wildwood” with the lines, “No spot is so dear to my childhood / As the little brown church in the vale.”
I taught a class on failure and creativity for my amazing former colleague Dr. Valerie Murrenus-Pilmaier, who teaches at the Sheboygan UW campus.
I hung out with two more former UW Colleges colleagues and very much enjoyed talking over good times over good food.
I attended an online chapbook workshop offered by the Wisconsin Fellowship of poets.
I danced to Thriller (see this post for details on that!)
Began a Mindful Aging class through the UW Health Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program.
Attended the award ceremony for my friend Gail Hoffman who was awarded the Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award. Her speech focused on the teaching cohort we had at UW-Richland, how devoted we were to good teaching there. She is currently thriving at UW-Platteville and credited them with being a teaching-first institution, and I think that’s true, but it touched me beyond words to hear Richland remembered so fondly and so accurately.

In between flurries of activity, there has been what I’m calling SLUDGE TIME:

It was kind of depression. Poems I began to write as I was coming out of Sludge Time (titled, imaginatively, “Sludge Time #1” and so on), have the recurring question: “Is this depression?” and then a question that answered that first question and asked another: “Am I still depressed?” Whatever it was, it seems to be done. I knew it was almost done when I started writing a lot. And I’m still writing a lot–I’ve listed several projects for myself for Nanowrimo, including writing poetry. I’ve been writing a poem a day for a couple of weeks now, all post Sludge-Time-Poems.

I think some of Sludge Time was exhaustion and recovery from having taught in a university system that has been chaotic the last 10-12 years. THAT’S A WHOLE OTHER SET OF BLOG POSTS. The recovery isn’t complete. The fury I felt when I learned the UW System had spent $480,000 to come up with a shitty logo was BIG. And the wave of emotions that came over me upon learning two more former UW Colleges campuses are closing was BIG.

Also part of retirement: health care for myself and my family

I knew I’d been going to a lot of appointments for myself and taking my mother to her appointments and going to some appointments for my Dad, but I was a little startled when I totaled them up. 32 appointments in the last 23 weeks. 10 for Mom and Dad (mostly Mom). One for my son’s wisdom teeth surgery. That leaves 21 for me. Five of those are physical therapy for my back (and those are ongoing). Also, x-rays for my back. A physical. Bloodwork. Sleep Clinic. Bone Density scan. Upcoming: MRI to check in on an incidentaloma in my pancreas. My health has not been fantastic but gosh darn it I’m working on it.

What I thought I might have done by now but haven’t:

Sent thank you notes for an amazing retirement party back in March. There’s really no good excuse for that lapse of good manners, but I will say this has been a really overwhelming time, the last year since the announcement that my sweet little campus would be closing. And one might express skepticism given how slow I’ve been, but I do intend to get to those thank yous soon.
Updated my resume/begun to network/started an actual job-hunt. That’s coming–for financial reasons and just sludge time reasons, I need to be working approximately 20-30 hours a week, starting approximately in January. More on that soon!
Finished cleaning out my office. BUT I’M WORKING ON THAT:

Clockwise from top left: UW Bitchland letterhead (UW Bitchland will never close, btw). My office from outside, with the overhead projector transparency of Emily Dickinson which I fully intend to leave in the window. Some Dickinson and Bishop books I haven’t packed up yet (with, I think, a cardboard cutout of Dickinson sticking out from between books). And my paper-thin, cheap regalia, because I was too cheap to spend money on something I’d wear once a year (I never attended my grad school graduations so I didn’t have any). I made a medallion out of gold duct tape because I found the medallions others wore to be (somewhat/very) affected and precious, and I just wanted to be able to point to my chest and say “Mine’s bigger.” Which I did at least four times.

Finally, this is like the creepiest thing I’ve seen in a while:

If you look to the left and downward from the Dickinson pic, you can see the shadow of the transparency on my blinds. It looks like an Emily Dickinson alien ghost. Also of note: the rusty slime that sometimes dripped on the inside of my office (state legislators and the UW System weren’t the only ones neglecting my sweet little campus). I really can’t think of a better image to end things with. Creepy, hilarious, poetic. C’est moi.

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Posted in American Players Theatre, Authenticity, Burnout, Daring Greatly, mindfulness, Poetry, Procrastination, Searching, Uncategorized, UW System, UW-Richland, Writing

Dance Like Someone IS Watching But You Don’t Give a Fuck

Posted on October 29, 2023 | 2 comments

I remember when Thriller came out in 1983. I remember going to TJ McFly’s in Carbondale because it was easy to get into without an i.d. I remember the dance floor. I remember where the big TV was. I remember the guy I had a crush on who I met there. I think his name was Rod. I think all of that is true. What I also remember is that my friends and I learned the dance steps for Thriller and that’s how we danced when the song came on.

But now, having started to learn the actual choreography, I think we knew maybe one or two steps. And we probably looked great—I mean, we weren’t 20 yet. We were shaking our booties. We looked fine. But we didn’t look like the Thriller dancers except in my head.

And why am I learning the choreography? Specifically, it was to prepare for today, for an event called Thrill the World. Locally, we did Thrill the World River Valley, and it was a fundraiser for the Spring Green Community Library and River Valley ARTS (full disclosure—I am a board member of RV ARTS).

Our local Thrill the World page had a spot where you could sign up to be a fundraiser, which I did. To be honest, I thought lots more local folks would. I was anticipating lots of fundraisers and lots of dancers. There WERE lots of dancers! Which is remarkable, because in my opinion, it’s a ridiculously difficult dance.

I do like to dance, and I like to have a few little dance breaks during the day as part of my pomodoro process. But I haven’t GONE OUT DANCING for a long time. I did all through college, and then graduate school.

My favorite two people to dance with EVER were my friends Dennis and Maria. Dennis was like a grandfather clock with multiple sets of arms and legs coming unsprung approximately in time to the music. I loved dancing with him (at a little remove, for safety’s sake) because it was a joyous thing, watching him dance. Then my friend Maria, a lot of times, her dance was kind of just rhythmic surfing. I was just sure between the two of them out there that absolutely no one would be looking at me and my little girlie moves. You know—“dance like no one is watching.” No one was watching. They were watching Dennis and Maria.

But of course, we should dance like people are watching and we just don’t give a fuck.

Which is what I did today. One of the reasons I signed up to be a fundraiser was because—well, it was a fundraiser. And good organizations were set to receive the funds. And I’m a board member of one of those organizations. Etc.

The other reason I signed up to be a fundraiser was to go public with my intention to dance in public and follow through with it. I was worried I’d chicken out (and that’s even before I started watching the tutorials and learned how freaking hard the freaky steps are).

Why would I chicken out? Well. My health is not fantastic. I’m ridiculously out of shape. I have asthma. And I’m in physical therapy for back pain. My spine has an official diagnosis to go with its damages and deformities, but I just like to think of it as having a rickety spiral staircase where all the helpful bones and cartilage should be. Movement wears me out and there’s a particular pain in my lower back I’m very familiar with and sometimes my hamstrings just SEIZE UP. But my awesome PT guy prescribed more activity, and this seemed like awesome activity.

So I did it. I watched the tutorial videos and went to an in-person practice. It wasn’t a stunning success leading up to today. I can free-form dance for 3-5-7 minutes without falling over, and I’ve been diligently working my way up to doing multiple minutes of the official Thriller dance steps, but an hour of mostly standing and repeating dance steps—that I couldn’t do. So I did a lot of from a chair. Which, you know. Not my vision of myself.

But damn it, I did it. Did I get all the steps down and do the whole thing? No I did not. Did I begin the whole thing by writhing on the street? Also no.

But here’s what I did do. I sat in a chair near the dance spot, and by the time the street writhers were standing, I was in line with them. I did the steps I’d learned: I zombie marched. I shoulder stepped. I booty bounced. I swam. And then I (kind of did what I was supposed to) and finally right-hipped and left-hipped and roared my way away from the dancers and into the crowd of people watching.

My son got off from his retail job in time to step outside and watch. He assured me I didn’t embarrass him, and that I wasn’t the zombie LEAST ACQUAINTED with the actual steps.

But even if I’d embarrassed my son, even I had been the zombie least acquainted, I’d still have done it.

And I’m really proud of myself. Grateful to the people who donated to my little personal fundraising page. Grateful to Stef and Phil, the zombie bride and groom. It was their actual wedding day today, and they did this as part of their reception. Too cool.

I’m reminded of Teddy Roosevelt, the “man in the arena” quote. Not that anyone has criticized me to my face, or would, but this part (even with the old-fashioned gendered pronouns) really resonates:

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

It wasn’t blood and dust on my face; it was makeup and baby powder to make me look pale. If we do it again next year (and I’m hearing we will), I hope to see more of those folks who were on the sidelines getting out there and booty bouncing along.

(If you want to donate to my little fundraiser page, you still can—I put the deadline down as Halloween. And remember—it’s my little spot, but the funds raised are going to the Spring Green Community Library and River Valley ARTS.)

Zombie eyes. (And my ridiculous hair, which kept just trying to look cute.)

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Posted in Authenticity, Body Image, Daring Greatly, Healthy Health, Spring Green, Sustainable Chaos, Uncategorized

A Bladeless Knife Without a Handle

Posted on November 8, 2022 | 1 comment

can’t cut much except 
for memories
or time

into smaller and
smaller units
and smaller still 

if you leap halfway across the stream
and then halfway again
and again

you’ll never get there
tantalizingly close but not
unless your feet are big

If I use nothing
to slice into nothing
I have nothing

but blood

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged poetry

Printer Prayer for the Beginning of the Semester

Posted on August 28, 2021 | 1 comment

 
for Ellyn


Sure sometimes Wisconsin gets cold in the summer, jacket-weather cold,
but almost always the end of August is muggy hot
and the machines we need to do our jobs so often stop.
They just stop. They take the pages we labored over,
every policy researched and thought through, assignments shaped
for permanent learning, an ongoing attempt to balance love
of students with love of subject, excellence and kindness weighted
the same. Those very pages—stuck together like hands in gloves.
Like makeup slathered on. Like sandwiches. Or shredded like potatoes.
Or torn like deckle edges. Or folded up like accordion pleats.   
So just this once dear universe, benevolent being, ghosts,
please let the stupid printer simply print. Extra seals
of blessing might include collating and stapling. Thanks.
Honestly, this small thing would be enough for today.





(potential part 2--a prayer for actually staying alive during our 4th COVID semester)

________

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Posted in Authenticity, Bloem or Pog, God Stuff, Hot Take Poem, Pandemic Poems, Poetry, sonnets, Teaching, Uncategorized, UW System

Tagged jammed printer, poetry, prayer, printing, printing syllabus, sonnet, sonnets, syllabus, University of Wisconsin, UW Milwaukee Waukesha

Powerless

Posted on August 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

I don’t think it was a funnel cloud I saw, but 
it was black and the sky was swirly and it was at least
a protuberance on the belly of the sky, a bump
that got sucked back up before I plunged ahead and passed
under it. Trees were thrashing and arcing, deep
ceremonial bows to the east, to the west. Metal chairs
and a table flew in front of me; I skirted them, aware
it might have made more sense to back up, 
go around the block. But I just wanted to get home. 
“Holy fuck,” I said to my son. “Power’s out,” he said.  
We might drive around a bit, charge our devices, scope
out the damage. We might wait until everything’s dead.
I used to have recurring dreams, when I lived in a trailer,
of tornados peeling the roof back like a sardine can, 
lifting me gently in my bed. I always hovered at the roofline.
Nothing like that’s happened to me in real life. Not ever.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged poetry, sonnet, storm, tornado

Prayer for the Burying of Masks

Posted on May 23, 2021 | Leave a comment

It isn't time to stop wearing them completely. Not quite yet. 
(My Dad's nursing home. Young nieces. The immunocompromised.)
But I want to celebrate because it’s time to wear them less. 

I’m picking one mask to compost in the garden. A favorite 
from the ones I’ve sewn? Black N-95? Baby-blue surgical? I can’t decide.
It isn’t time to stop wearing them completely, not quite yet,

so at most I’ll bury one. Memorial Day weekend. So I won’t forget
the people who lost their jobs. Got sick. Three and a half million lost lives. 
I won’t forget. But I want to celebrate. It’s time to wear masks less.

Now I’m wondering which kind of mask would break down fastest.
Should I cut the elastic off first?  Would the magic still work? Here’s why
I’m not going to stop wearing masks completely, not quite yet:

I don’t want to cause a single retail worker one split second of stress.
Long ago, we buried my son’s placenta in the rhubarb. That spot means life.
Thanks, dirt. Thanks, scientists. Thank-you Jesus we can wear masks less.


And with this mask I am also burying any possible lingering regret.
I didn’t write King Lear. Or bake bread. Or deep-clean. My brain was fried.
It isn’t time to stop wearing masks completely. Not quite yet.
But I am celebrating because it’s time to start wearing them less.

And yes, I do know that we celebrate Memorial Day OFFICIALLY to remember armed services members who gave their lives in service to our country. (I also know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but honestly, if I want to say something nice about a veteran and I pick the wrong day and you correct me? I think you’re an asshole.) BUT LISTEN. MY GRAN’MOMMY ROANE USED TO PUT FLOWERS ON TOMBSTONES OF VARIOUS RELATIVES ON MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND, AND THEY WEREN’T VETERANS. So if I want to use the holiday to just remember something, I’m gonna.

Also note: this is my front porch office, which I like to refer to as the FPO. (I also have a BPO.) This is a nice big old stalk of rhubarb which I’ll admire out here for a day or so and then do something with. Other rhubarb this year has gone to friends, been bartered for a fabric stash, and is going this evening into a new baked beans recipe called Red Beans and Rhubarb (same basic sauce as normal, boring baked beans but w/ red beans & chopped rhubarb. It may be awful. I’ve made it up. Have never tried it.)

The big vase behind the rhubarb is a recent gift from my amazingly talented brother. The wooden cut-outs are a gift from him from long ago–each cloud does indeed have a silver lining.

Also, as for me and my house, we are fully vaccinated. Fully marinated. Or I wouldn’t consider going mask-less.

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Posted in Authenticity, Bloem or Pog, God Stuff, Healthy Health, Hot Take Poem, Pandemic Poems, Poetry, Poetry journal, Searching, villanelles

Tagged ending mask mandates, fully-marinated, fully-vaccinated, going maskless, masks, poetry, rhubarb, still wearing masks, vaccinated, Villanelle

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Sonnet for the End of the Baptist World

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Posted on February 6, 2021 in Uncategorized

Tagged deconstruction, dispensational pre-milllenialism, poetry, pre-millenialism, reconstruction, sonnet

Inauguration Day Advent Calendars

Posted on January 10, 2021 | 4 comments

Right before Christmas, people starting sharing this idea: if you start your advent calendar over the day after Christmas (or buy discounted ones that have CHOCOLATE in them), you’ll end the calendar on January 20, on Inauguration Day. That seemed like a great idea, but our advent calendar is very much nativity story–didn’t seem like a good fit. And the discounted chocolate calendars weren’t VERY discounted, and my son is allergic to a lot of them. So I started thinking about making them.

My mother told me today, looking at hers, that her Grandma Marlow used to make “sunshine boxes” for people–just a bunch of little boxes with fun things in them for people who were sick, or having surgery, or shut-in. Either I heard that story at some point and internalized it (I don’t remember hearing it), OR I got a visit from an ancestor. Grandma Marlow was my maternal great-grandmother, and had passed on before I was born. But she was very creative, and her children were all creative in different ways. (More on that some other time!)

The Inauguration Calendars I ended up making are these:

I’ve been posting as part of the #makedontbreak challenge, and sometimes the prompt worked, sometimes not. But it’s been pretty amazing. I don’t drink alcohol any more, or take Xanax, so managing my anxiety has to come from other bad habits OR–in this case–#craftingismyxanax (I’m not the only one to use that hashtag). When I’m crafting, I really do feel absorbed and relaxed.

Except for today, when the level of relaxation and absorption was fluctuating. I really, really wanted to get these finished to take to my folks. Mom is in assisted living & I can give things to her, but can’t have visits. We can say hello from a distance as we’re leaving boxes, etc. on chairs, stepping back, retrieving them. For Dad, who’s in the nursing home side of the same facility, I can leave packages and someone gets them back to him eventually. I’m going to try to Skype with him tonight to talk to him about it. Because I had a deadline, it did feel kind of tense.

Still, I’m thrilled with what I was able to do. I learned how to make little boxes from scrapbook paper. I learned how to use a scoring board (which I bought with Christmas money). I found quotes to include for some days, chocolate (which my son isn’t allergic to) for other days, and silly little toys for other days.

When this morning started, I had all the boxes made, but no dates, not assembled with their stuff inside, not in their trays. It looked like this:

So little by little as the day went on, I got the dates affixed, the goodies inserted, and then the hard part–affixing them inside the tray w/ double-sided tape because I didn’t want my folks to have to worry about keeping the boxes in there. I was worried they’d pop out and it would be a chore to sort them (although the dates are on there, and probably won’t come off).

I learned that you have to figure out how you’re going to close the box BEFORE you put the double-sided tape on the bottom of it to affix to the tray, because once it’s in the tray, you’re way more limited in terms of how you close it. My Mom’s calendar uses a lot of ribbon (which I found challenging to tie–I have arthritis in my hands and a paper cut under one thumb nail that is very sore), and my son’s uses washi tape–which didn’t work very well (I have more to learn about washi tape, apparently).

This is the closure mode I ended up liking most, the third way I’d tried, for Dad’s. I used a hole punch and threaded twine or ribbon through and tied.

Why all this effort? Well, it gives me an excuse for crafting. But also–I wanted to do SOMETHING for my parents, who are pretty isolated in winter, in a pandemic, in a time of insurrection (though I didn’t know about that until Wednesday). And something for my son, who just turned 16 but can’t get his drivers license yet because we haven’t wanted him in a car, breathing with someone we don’t know, for the behind-the-wheel part.

And it’s just a way for me to fight against the darkness. Here’s the letter I wrote:

This is an Inauguration Day Countdown Calendar, kind of like an Advent Calendar, but looking forward to Inauguration Day instead of Christmas.
It is similar to Advent Calendar in the sense that when you’re little, December 1 seems a long time away from December 25. (When you’re in charge of shopping, planning menus, etc., it feels like barely any time at all!)
Advent and Christmas are all about bringing light to a dark time.
We are definitely in a dark time in our nation’s history, but I have to believe light is coming.

We are definitely in a dark time in our nation’s history, but I have to believe light is coming.

I think my #makedontbreak project for tomorrow will be back to sewing face-masks, which I did a lot of all summer, fall, pre-Christmas. I make them for my parents & a few others, and have a list of folks I want to make them for.

I don’t know how long we’ll all be wearing masks, but we’re not done yet.

Anyway–I’m super satisfied with how these turned out. And I didn’t stop them at Inauguration Day because I think it’s going to be awesome to wake up on January 21 and 22 and onward knowing that Joe Biden is president.

At least that is what I’m hoping and crafting toward.