I'm not moving to a place that's named after a nursery rhyme character.

On Wednesday, someone shared a link of Facebook about the discovery of a "Goldilocks planet." That's a planet whose orbit around its sun makes it not too hot, not too cold, but potentially "just right" for life to develop. Within an hour the link attracted a large number of comments, some humorous, some political, about who should pack their bags and move to this other planet, twenty light years away. That's the inspiration for this week's Weekend Assignment


I'm just not. It's silly.

Plus they almost certainly won't have WiFi. And I bet getting pork products and the teas I like will be even harder there than it is in Turkey. So no. I'm staying put.

There's a wonder of the world on my doorstep (well, not too far anyway).

 This is my entry for The Weekend Assignment #335 : History.

We don't all live near the site of a battlefield or other world-famous event, but any place has its own history: political, cultural, even natural history. How aware are you of the past of the town, city or state where you live now? Share with us a story of local history.

Turkey is full of history, of course. It's where you go if you want to visit Athens or Rome. But it's old, terribly old. And, to me, at least, it makes the artefacts of other centuries pale dreadfully. I cannot walk past an ottoman palace without worrying it's going to faint on me. And what's modern is mostly drab. Here, anyway.

Anticipating the apple

Scroll back to last autumn. Max and I taking our weekly walk around campus, picking crab apples on our way.

Two Thousand and Sixty Two

This is an entry for the Weekend Assignment. The task this week is to describe what the world will be like in fifty-one years' time. Well, America, not the world, but I'm editing to fit my abilities here! Hope Carly and Karen who set the assignment won't mind. Also, I hope they won't mind that I've changed the logo!

 In 2062, my son Max will be 59. His friends Imogen and Julius will be 55 and 53. My bloggy friends' sons Jacob and HRH will be 59 and 53. Hopefully by then mid to late fifties will count as late middle age! But I'm not so much worried about their physical conditions. I've got some other more pressing questions: where will they be in 2062? Will they be hiding out, alone, in bedsits? Scared to come out in a world they still don't really understand and that definitely doesn't understand them? Will they be shunned by society? These are not crazy worries. This is the world many adult autists live in now, and unless some pretty hefty changes take place in the next fifty years, it's not going to be any different for our kids. And, let's face it, in fifty years' time, we might no longer be around to help them.

Papers and tiny computers. That's all. You can dump the rest.

I'm writing this on a piece of paper. With a pencil. Well, clearly I'm not, otherwise it wouln't come up on the screen. And I could say that I did and now I'm just copying out and so the creative process happened with the pencil. Except for the last two sentences. Three now. Four. Meh.

So let me try again. I started to write this on a piece of paper. With a pencil. I was lying on my lego-strewn, not exactly clean, not exactly antique but certainly old, rug from Kars. I was surrounded - still am, I'm just sitting there now instead of lying - by old wooden chests and tables, more rugs, and antique metal artefacts. The shelves on the wall opposite me are filled with books way beyond their capacity. One small segment of the shelf has a small cubic black tv on it, with a dvd player and a satellite box. Wires are dripping from that shelf like the guts out of a deceased StarWars monster. Disgusting.

I'm writing an opera. With zombies.

A little while back I made a pitch to Andrew Lloyd Webber for a musical (well, not really, I wrote a blog post about it, but you never know, maybe he read it). It was called: Mary Wollstonecraft, a Musical Life. I'm thinking of changing it to Mary Wollstonecraft, a Musical Life with Zombies. For one thing, I've got the material. But mostly, I think it would sell more tickets.

I got a book for free the other day.

We just don't have a great library record in the family. What with my sister being chased out of them by ghosts and my great great great uncle Washington ending up with that  huge fine...

Not that I don't read. I do, all the time.

But I'm not that good on libraries. Every time I go into one, I marvel at the fact that they'll let me take some books home for free. Any book I like. Even crime fiction. That is truly wonderful.

She's a poet and she knows it.

The Weekend Assignment this week wanted us to write something on poetry (April being poetry month, and all). Also to write a Haiku. Ouch. Can't do that.

I stopped appreciating poetry when I switched from French to English in my late teens. I mean I love things like Emily Dickinson, Wendy Cope, and I'm quite fond of Christina Rossetti, but on the whole I don't get it. Don't know why. Different rhythms and rimes, different conventions that I never studied. Maybe. Oh, and I quite like it when my husband reads poems aloud to me. Hint, hint...

My 10 year old daughter, ever tuned in to my swearing under my breath, asks what's up. I said I have to write a Haiku and will probably have to give up on this week's assignment. "Don't be stupid, she says. It's really easy. All you have to do is think of a subject then express yourself about it in 5-7-5. I open my mouth to scold her for, well, knowing better than me, when a light shines and I ask sweetly: 'Would you write one for me?'. 'Sure. I'll write a few and you can choose one. How about Istanbul and other places?' 'Ok'.

Making time

I find it incredibly difficult to keep any kind of structure in my life. After a change in routine or schedule it usually takes me several months to reinsert some of the things that 'drop out' because I can't make the time. And I'm an academic, married to a husband who actually does half the chores and childcare! What must it be like for the average professional woman with children and a husband who doesn't believe in domestic responsibilities? I can't even begin to imagine.

In fact, I wonder there are any such women at all! (Ok, I know you're out there. I just didn't want to say something as trite as 'I don't know how they do it!' Much less offensive to question your existence, right?)

I'm thinking of all this because this week, I'm GOING BACK TO THE GYM! I will go, that is, provided I've filled my quota of words on the book, which I can't very well be doing if I'm blogging...

But if the last few weeks are anything to go by, I should be ok. I typed out the requisite number of words and still had time to grade essays. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder (for the nth time) whether it's not actually easier to get things done when you've more to do (within reason!). My first experience of this phenomenon was writing my Ph.d. For the first three and a half years, my writing style had been pretty much the same as any other grad student, i.e. spend an afternoon in front of the computer, go out and get drunk to celebrate, have a terrible hangover the next day and stay in bed, then for the rest of the week alternate between running around like a headless chicken trying to get your teaching done and feeling sorry for yourself because you're not writing.

And then I had my daughter. And then, for one, I couldn't get drunk (breastfeeding and all) and also, the hours I had for writing were so precious I simply couldn't waste them. Knowing that husband and baby were out for a duration of precisely three hours and that I would have to do the same for him later so he could write his Ph.D. thesis meant I sat down and wrote the damn thing. It also helped me to acquire some pretty good writing and organisational habits. I don't spend so much time not writing now. I'll always manage to put some words on the screen, even if I know they're not very good words. It comes down to knowing it's not that hard, that it doesn't matter that much, that it's just a job.

And as far as realising that time just isn't flexible is concerned, just put a hungry child at the end of a stretch and try see if it will extend!

But if time were flexible, what would I like to have more time for? That's an easy one: sleep. I'd like to go to bed at night, not worrying that I won't get enough sleep and that the next day will harder as a result. I'd like to wake up rested every morning, and then have the chance to stay in bed a little longer. Without children jumping on me, with no one there except my husband. And I'd like this while at the same time keeping the wonderful hectic lifestyle I've got right now. So yes, it is an extension of time I'm after, not a change of life.

Can anyone arrange this for me?

This post was written for Karen and Carly's weekend assignment#315: The Thief of Time.

What I'll mostly be reading this summer

Right. I've found another weekly meme writing type thingy to do. Which is good because Marianne is going to do the Sleep is for the Weak Writing Workshop from now on. This one's called called Weekend Assignment and the topic is Summer Reading.

Here's the instructions:

Okay, yes, I know, it's still spring, but this is when I begin thinking about what kind of summer reading I might like to have on hand for those too-hot-to-clean days of summer. So, for this week's assignment, I want you to share with us the kind of summer reading you look forward to the most. Sci-fi? Horror? Political Thrillers? Romance? It's all good. Now, tell me more!
Extra Credit: Okay writers, get to work! Write me the opening paragraph, just (1) paragraph of a summer read you would like write yourself. Again, any genre works fine, have fun with it!

Huh, that's a good one. Summer reading. As in: it's summer, you can just lie about with a beer and a huge pile of books. As in: you're not going to have to work or chase after children on the beach all day long and drop exhausted as soon as the sun goes down. (It goes down early in Turkey, even in summer).

Ok, I'm playing martyr here. I am looking forward to summer reading, even if I won't be spending that much time on it.

Actually, I ordered some books from Betterworld books specifically for the summer. I ordered a guide book to Florence. Yes! I'm going to Prato, just outside Florence, in August, all by myself. I'll have two plane journeys and 6 whole days there with no children to worry about. Ok, I probably won't be doing that much reading, as it's a conference, and also, I'll be wanting to look around a bit. But still. I've ordered books. I ordered books I've already read, many times, just because it was Florence. So I ordered A Room with a view. And Where Angels Fear to Tread. And Howards End. (Nothing to do with Florence but I quite fancied re-reading it and it just so happens I didn't bring any of my E.M.Forster books to Turkey with me. But let's face it, by the time the books are out of the box I'll be half way through them. So maybe I need something more substantial.

Er, Dante? I suppose that's substantial and he's from Florence. I've read bits, but never cover to cover. Except I can't read it in Italian, so should I read it in French or English? Too much trouble to decide, I think. Or I could read that big fat book called the Dante Club that's been sitting on my bed side for nearly two years now. It's about translating Dante in America and black flies that eat people. Except there's a good reason why it's still on that pile: I didn't like it. But it looked like on principle I should like it so I left it on the pile. What do you do with a book you don't like? Can you give it away before you've read it? Advice welcome.

The book I'd really like to read if someone would bother to write it:

The authors of this book, out the kindness of their hearts, will proceed to teach you, clearly and concisely, but with plenty of cool, not-exactly-real-life case studies, how to stretch time, so that you can actually read more books in the summer, be relaxed as you're reading them, and remember more than just the title three months later. The book will go through various techniques in just enough details so you can try it at home but not so much you will be able to blame them if it doesn't work – after all, we know that you don't have time to do anything properly! We will start with how to put your children in suspended animation through yoga and simple relaxation techniques while you just finish that chapter (and maybe another one). Then we will take you through a step by step explanation of how to get the elves to do your work for you without having to pay them (this might also help take care of the children so you can read more than one chapter at a time). Last but not least, Mary Poppin's method for housework (finger clicking, spoonful of sugar song singing) will be described (but if you actually want to learn it, you'll have to pay a monthly fee of 30 dollars to some weird internet company).

But what I am really looking forward to reading this summer , or as soon as I can get my hands on it after it's published, is Charlaine Harris's latest instalment of the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series: Dead in the Family!Dante be damned!

Oops, I think The Dante Club is somewhere in that lot...