Jen Russum

Gymnastics

Gymnastics

I remember this fact from the 1992 Olympic Summer Games in Barcelona... the width of a balance beam is five inches, only slightly wider than the average TV controller. I was so into gymnastics that year. Those were the days of Kim Zmeskal and Shannon Miller. My sister and I would run across our family room, doing carwheels and landing with our arms held high like real gymnasts. If I look around for a remote control in my living room, I won't find one. We don't have a TV! That's right - we spend our nights eating dinner, reading, cleaning, laughing, browsing the Internet, occasionally watching a movie on the laptop, but we never watch TV. But if I look around for a balance beam in my living room or anywhere in my life, I won't find one of those either. I feel like I have NO balance right now. Poor Kim (my fave) fell off the balance beam in the games that year. It was disappointing to say the least, although she bounced back with outstanding performances on her other routines. I feel like I fell off my balance beam too when the semester started about a month ago... Here's the thing about my life. I am busy. Very busy. But I have always been busy. I have always been a work two jobs, coach a volleyball team, lead a Bible study, go for a three mile run, meet two friends for coffee today kind of girl. I don't know how to not be busy. (I know this can be a bad at times...) But the thing is, I thrive on busy. I love having a schedule and having to be disciplined about how I spend  my time. If I have a free day (which is rare), I barely get anything done. But if I only have 20 spare minutes in my day, I might get the bathroom cleaned AND the dishwasher unloaded in that time slot. The problem I am running into right now is that I live in too many worlds. I am a wife and a teacher and a student. And it's hard...and often confusing. Literally, confusing. Like I can't keep track of what my next priority is because it's almost time to eat dinner (wifey), I have 20 drafts to read before tomorrow (teacher), and I have to read three cantos of The Faerie Queene by Wednesday (literature nerd). All these things are TOP priority in their own little world. So I have to admit, three worlds is a lot for me. I am loving my new role of wife more than I thought I would. I have loved setting up our little AZ home, and I enjoy finding new recipes and cooking dinner a few nights a week. I like hanging out with my husband and going on little adventures around our new city. I even kind of like cleaning my own kitchen and bathroom, knowing that only one other person lives there to make it dirty (cleaning with multiple roommates is always complicted and never ending... especially when they are all girls...five heads full of pretty girl hair do not a pretty shower make). I would LOVE for Micah to help me a little more around the house (hint, hint...I wonder if he even reads "our" blog...), but all in all, I like being a wifey. I also like being a student...and a teacher...but I am quickly discovering it's hard to do both at the same time. I am so thankful to be back in school pursuing my dream of getting my PhD. I love school, so I came up with a way to stay in it as long as possible. I have secured myself SIX more years of school. Pretty impressive, huh? I am challenged by my coursework and excited about the all the possibilites with my degree. But I also love teaching. In some ways, teaching is easy this year. Compared to teaching high school, my job is a breeze. I only teach three days a week. I only have two classes with 38 students total...which means I only have to grade 38 essays at a time, instead of the 120 essays I was constantly hauling around with me last year (not joking). But grading 38 essays is a little different when you are also trying to read the 3,800 pages of reading assigned from your own teachers and are currently writing two 38 paged papers for your own classes. (I am exaggerating...but only slightly...grad teachers are pretty generous with their reading assignments). Basically, all I am saying is that my life is crazy right now. I feel like I could do the wife and student thing well or the wife and teacher thing easily. In the past, I could have easily survived the teacher/student combo, but I don't plan on getting rid of my hot hubs anytime soon.... Truth be told, I don't plan on getting rid of any of my little worlds, because I love them all so much. I am taking suggestions though on how to manage my time better. If you have any ideas on how to find my balance beam, get back up there like Kim did, and walk evenly between these three world, I would love your suggestions! I am loving this calendar by Emily at Jones Design Company. It has a place for prayer requests at the bottom, which I think is the only way I will make it through this semester! At least TV is not stealing anytime out of my schedule.... ... Read more

Best Baked Potato Soup

For all of you trying to survive the blizzard that seems to be hitting just about every area of the country this week, I thought I would post the recipe for a delicious Baked Potato Soup I made last week. It made it onto Micah's list of favorite dinners instantly, probably because it involves bacon... While it's not blizzarding in Phoenix, it's even pretty cold here. I've never heard so many people cuss about weather under 40 degrees in my life. Nor have I ever seen so many people wearing shorts and eating ice cream cones in 35 degree weather either. Yes, I witnessed both of these things happening on campus today. Arizona is a strange place... Let's just say that it is cold enough here that I actually put on my mittens in my car today to touch my cold steering wheel (not to buffer my hands from a hot steering wheel, which is how I use the same mittens in August), and I had a strong desire to be wearing earmuffs as I walked to my car after class. But anyway, back to the soup. I modified this recipe from one I found on Allrecipes (I pretty much modify every recipe I make because I'm picky, lazy, feeling creative, don't have ingredients, etc.) and turned it into an amazing crockpot creation that cooks while you do whatever the heck you want all day long (or go to work, school, etc). If you are stuck at home in snowy weather, this soup will warm and cheer you right up. Hopefully you have ingredients or can find a way to get to the store to pick up some groceries.... Plan to spend about 20 minutes putting the soup together in the morning. I didn't give myself enough time, and I was almost late to school and had to leave dirty dishes in the sink. Yuck. Add to a crockpot: Two 14.5 oz. cans of chicken broth 1 small onion chopped into tiny pieces (I only use half an onion because I don't love onion...) 1 clove garlic, minced 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon dried basil (I used fresh because I had it...)1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 3 large baked potatoes, cubed (You can peel them, but I didn't...)1 cup half-and-half cream (If you want to be healthier, you can mix milk and half and half)1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce or salsa (I used salsa... just a little spoonful) Now you need to fry up 3-5 strips of bacon. You can actually do this before or after you put everything in the crockpot. When the bacon is done cooking, take about 2 tablespoons of the bacon grease and add it to the crockpot. This is the secret ingredient. Cut the rest of the bacon into tiny pieces and put it in the fridge until dinner time. I use handy ol' kitchen scissors for this job. I love kitchen scissors. Let the soup cook for 6-8 hours on LOW. It helps if you can stir it once about halfway through the process, but if you can't, no big deal. Just stir it up about 5-10 minutes before you serve it. Serve both the homemade "bacon bits" and grated cheddar cheese as a garnish for the soup. I wish I had a picture of this goodness from last week, but I forgot to take photos... sorry! It was gone before I could get out my camera (okay, not really... this easily feeds 4-6 people and we still have some in our freezer which I will probably enjoy for lunch tomorrow...I am just not used to taking pictures of what I cook yet because, let's be honest, it's kind of a weird thing to do). But I promise, it's amazing! ... Read more

My Big Sexy Paper

My Big Sexy Paper

Tonight in class my teacher told me that my research on mom blogs could easily become a "big, sexy, publishable paper." While my favorite word in that phrase is "sexy" (because how many people would consider mom blogging sexy??? Except it IS...there are some hot mamas out there who have carried 2-4 children in their bodies and still look AMAZING) the most important word in the phrase is "publishable." Getting published. It's what being a grad student and a professor is all about. Being published means getting job, keeping a job, earning tenure, etc. It's important. And it's scary. I don't like to think about trying to get published because it seems daunting and depressing with lots of denial letters (probably e-mails these days, let's be honest, why waste ink?) and recommended revisions. And the biggest problem is that before you can get rejected or accepted or "accepted with revisions" you have to actually think of something to write about. Some new "sexy" topic that not too many people have already written about... That seemed really difficult... until tonight. Apparently my topic is sexy. Mothers who gain power through writing online is a hot topic. It's not like my paper is ready to be published. I mean, it's not even written yet. I have no idea where this project is going... but it's encouraging to know it might go somewhere. It makes me want to work even harder at it, knowing that there is a SMALL chance that I could publish a paper during grad school. And even if this hypothetical, sexy, yet-to-be-written paper never gets published, it still excites me that a legitimate interest of mine - mommy bloggers - is also a legitimate reserach area in the rhetoric community at large. Here is just a sampling of my research summary that I presented in class tonight. This is the conlcusion in which I explain my interest in my chosen community: "Although I am not a mom right now, I hope to be in the future. As a new wife, I stumbled across a few mom blogs this past fall when looking for new recipes online to fulfill my new wifely cooking duties. I was instantly fascinated by these women who network, write, and work from home. Although I will probably never be a full-fledged stay at home mom, I hope to work part-time and devote a good deal of my time to nurturing my own kids someday. I honestly did not really realize this mom blog world existed until a few months ago, but I am eager to learn more about it this semester. Some of it seems silly to me, of course. I can’t imagine writing a full blog posting about going to the grocery store or getting the mail (and I have just recently stumbled across a housewife parody blog that I find highly entertaining), but at the same time I admire these thrifty, creative women, their business pursuits, their honesty about the hardships of motherhood, and their devotion to their families."To all the sexy mom bloggers out there, thank you for giving me some sexy research...http://www.flythroughourwindow.com/2011/01/besides-cleaning-closets/ P.S. Apparently when you put the word "sexy" in your blog, Google places creepy online dating/sex forums ads in your sidebar. Sorry. Please do NOT click. ... Read more