So Far So Good

We had the home inspection today. The house is almost fifty years old, so there are some things that we need to fix, but the vast majority of it is relatively minor stuff that we can handle on our own. The biggest project is the windows, all of which need to eventually be replaced (the house was built in '66 and the storm windows seemingly date from the same year). We have a typed list an entire page long of things we want/need to do relatively soon (cut down a pine tree that is planted way too close to the house, buy covers for the light switches since apparently they all went missing when the house was painted, purchase some area rugs, put up window treatments so that I can close the blinds and prance nude around my living room if I feel like it) and things we'd like to do eventually (re-tile the bathrooms, build an awesome deck off the dining room). I'm sure the novelty of home ownership will wear off rapidly, but for now it's fun to look at the list and prioritize the projects and think about how we're going to make this house feel like ours. So, yes, I feel relatively confident now that we will actually get the house. I know there's still a chance that something could go wrong with the financing somehow, but everyone from Penn to the realtor to the loan originator herself has told me that's unlikely. Now Penn and I just sit and wait to be told that everything is good with the assessment. We go to settlement in 25 days!

Unrelated Things I Suddenly Need to Post Somewhere

1. We have a ratified contract on a house. We're getting it inspected on Monday, and I'm not talking about it any more until we have had the inspection, because until that has happens the situation still feels very precarious to me.

2. I'm writing a paper for next month's conference. It's due to my working group tonight. I have so much else on my mind at the moment that it's really hard to force myself to care and turn out a quality product. I said to Penn last night, "Why does this even really matter? I only wanted to go to this conference so I could apply for a travel grant to add to my resume. I got the travel grant, so my mission is already accomplished. If I don't decide to get a job right out of school, or if I can't get a job right out of school, I probably won't go back to this conference for at least five years. Probably most of the important people in the group who will read this paper will be dead by then, so if this paper is awful, who cares?" (Penn pointed out that this is a terrible attitude to have toward my work; I responded that, seriously, there are a bunch of ancient men in the group so I sort of have a point.)

3. Marrying into Penn's family is great, but there are occasional bumps in the road. We're trying to plan the menu for the rehearsal dinner. Penn made the mistake of sending the restaurant's rough draft version to his mother for feedback. Her response was that we should consider our guest's palates and that "lots of people will turn up their nose" to the items. Which would make you think that we're offering the guests, like, cow tongue and seaweed-wrapped octopus, right? But do you know what's on the rough draft menu? A pot pie made with lamb. Pork loin. Fried fish. Carrots. French fries. Spinach artichoke dip. The most unusual item on the menu is butternut squash soup, which I suppose isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it's not exactly exotic. And, admittedly, because the restaurant is a British pub they describe one side item as "mushy peas," which is charmingly British but not very appetizing. (I actually meant to warn Penn to just change that item to "peas" before he sent it on to his mom.) Still, we purposely picked a restaurant that wasn't "out there," knowing that some of Penn's relatives aren't particularly adventurous. I thought we'd struck a great balance between sophisticated and relaxed, and the restaurant is chef-driven (which will please my family) but serves basic British pub fare (which will please Penn's). We're trying, in other words. We know that Penn is sort of the black sheep of his family, in the sense that he has a tendency to be more open-minded and adventurous, but sometimes I forget exactly how carefully we have to tread when running new ideas by his family. My fear is that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of things I think are perfectly normal but that will utterly shock Penn's family as they come to light. It's all about baby-steps, I guess. We'll add roasted chicken to the menu (that's completely innocuous, right?). I'll try to remember that not everyone was raised by a restaraunteur. Compromise. (Also, I know Penn is occasionally just as baffled by my family, so it all evens out.)

4. Our wedding invitations just arrived! I'm going to go open the box and make sure they printed correctly. Hooray!

My pledge

September was a very busy month. There were things that were great about the month. Notably, Penn's sister-in-law and mother threw me a lovely bridal shower and my mom and sister and aunt came to visit for it and Kiki came to visit, too, and it was really fun having family and friends from different segments of my life together. It was a good preview of what's to come at the wedding--the wedding which is now less than 100 days away! I'd never even been to a bridal shower before, so I didn't know what to expect, but of course it was fun to drink punch and eat yummy snacks and play goofy shower games. And getting gifts wasn't bad, either! The shower had a kitchen theme so I received some awesome gadgets. I've been cooking and baking up a storm this month (partially because it feels like the only thing I do these days that has immediately tangible results, but also because I have stoneware baking dishes! And fancy knives! And a food processor! And don't tell me it's bad luck to use shower gifts before the wedding; we all agreed at the shower that it was fine to use them and I don't want to hear otherwise!). Incidentally, my very favorite shower gift wasn't a gadget, but a dishtowel my grandmother embroidered with the Witches' Stew recipe from Macbeth. I love my grandma so much.

There were some other fun things, too. Nicole had her bachelorette party (her wedding is only three weeks away!). As part of her bachelorette festivities we went to a drag show. Three days later I was checking my budget on Mint, which automatically labels and categorizes my debit card purchases, and I guess it didn't know exactly what to do with the drag club because it labeled the cover charge "Education." I guess it was an education of sorts! I'd only been to one drag show before, and that was when I was in St. Petersburg so the whole thing was in Russian and much of it was lost on me. It was fun to go to one here in the states where I could actually understand the jokes and the music.
There were other fun times and I mostly maintained my usual sunny disposition, but I have to be completely honest here and say that last month was stressful. I was happy to change the page to October today. I think a combination of things is making me stressed:

1. I'm teaching a class at the university and I'm also doing a ton of tutoring for high school students because it's fall testing season. Because the tutoring doesn't come with a set schedule, I haven't been able to get into a good routine this fall. Also, I have several private students right now and there's a certain amount of brain space devoted to keeping track of their hours and calling them to schedule sessions, and although I love the extra money I get from private tutoring I find the logistics obnoxious. It would be great if this was my only job, but it's not. I could say no to some of these classes, but we really need the money right now for the honeymoon and because...
2. We're buying a house. Or at least, we're trying to buy a house. Again. We've gone back and forth on this all year long. Earlier in the year we got all the way through the pre-approval process for a loan but then realized we couldn't actually qualify to get the loan for a couple of very tiny, infuriating reasons. We tried once more through a second company, got frustrated, and gave up for a season or two. Then suddenly at the beginning of this month Penn decided he was interested in starting the process again. We went through the pre-approval process again and have magically been pre-approved for way more money than we were in the winter (ah, the mysteries of home financing. And to think that this is the process post-crash with a focus on transparency? What must it have been like before?!) Now we've reached the stage of actually looking at houses with a realtor, and although I'm terribly excited about owning a house I know that part of my anxiety this month comes from not knowing where we'll be living a few months from now. There's also that whole looming mortgage thing, which sometimes makes me break out in a cold sweat even though logically I know we can definitely afford a house. I wouldn't be on board with this plan otherwise. It's just the biggest thing I'll ever buy so I can't take it lightly. Then there are the logistics of finding time in my schedule to house hunt. We went out for four hours last weekend and will look at a dozen more houses this weekend.
3. Wedding planning. Here's the thing: I enjoy making decisions about the wedding. I've liked picking the dress and the flowers and the menu and the invitations. I HATE trying to get in touch with vendors, though. Why can't anyone ever call me back or, better yet, actually answer the phone the first time I call? And you might tell me, "Just pick a different vendor if they don't answer your calls," but this is a problem across the board in every part of the wedding industry I've dealt with during the planning process. Apparently everyone isn't glued to their cell phones at all times. The nerve. It is just really frustrating when I have an "easy" task on my to-do list like "Set up cake tasting" and then I can't reach a human being to actually accomplish the task. It leaves me feeling like there are still loose ends to tie up every day, and I hate that feeling.
4. The dissertation. It's just there, looming in the background. I haven't had time to work on it (see above re: wedding planning, house hunting, teaching 25 hours a week) and I know that it's the thing that is stressing me out most of all.

Those are the big things. That doesn't count the committees I serve on, the editing projects I do, the fact that I volunteered to make 8 dozen cookies for church on Sunday...Last week I was in the middle of prepping a lecture when suddenly the power went out and I lost my internet connection, and in losing the internet connection I just lost it, period. I ended up in bed sobbing because I suddenly felt like I was unable to accomplish anything--not just that night, but ever. Thank god for Penn. He told me exactly what I already know when I am being logical: that the airline can keep changing our flight times but we'll get to New Zealand and back somehow and we'll have an awesome honeymooon. That we'll buy a house and move in November or December or after the honeymoon, but either way we will eventually have a house and we'll feel settled again. That we'll be married in January even if nobody comes and the florist never returns another phone call. That I will be able to finish the dissertation eventually, even if it doesn't happen until after my funding runs out.
I love Penn, and he has inspired me to take some pressure off myself about the dissertation. I have been putting so much pressure on myself to finish this school year, or at least come close to finishing. That's just not reasonable, though. I'm trying to buy a house (Penn is thankfully doing most of the work on that, but I still have to look at houses and do research). I'm planning a wedding almost entirely by myself. We're taking a trip to the other side of the world for three weeks. I'm teaching a class that I'm prepping from scratch, and I'm taking on as much extra tutoring work as I can to save up money for said house. I'm not superwoman. Penn pointed out that maybe becoming a wife and a homeowner is enough change for one school year, and that I'm not letting anyone down if I don't finish this program in May. There are many ways to finish the dissertation in the summer or (more likely) in the fall. I'm panicking about a self-imposed deadline, and I need to stop worrying that my world will explode if I don't meet it.
My goal for October is to relax and to stop wishing this time away. I'm just so eager to get to the next step. I'm ready for my legal status to match the level of commitment I have always felt with Penn. I'm ready to take an extended vacation. I'm ready to take the leap and become a homeowner. I'm ready to take an even bigger leap and become a mother. I'm ready to have a PhD so I can move on to whatever the next step is going to be. I'm not good at these transition periods. Look back through this blog and you'll see half a dozen posts just like this one where I harp on about my anxieties about an upcoming life change. I think it's time I worked on embracing the transition, though. After all, my life is not on pause until I'm Mrs./Dr. My life is happening right now, and although I don't tick everything off of my to-do list every day it's still a damn good life and I need to enjoy every second of it.

Mama

Penn: So I guess there should be a mother/son dance at the wedding since you're doing the father/daughter dance?
Me: Yeah, probably.
Penn: I think my mom would like that.
Me: So what will you dance to?

Penn: I don't know. The DJ sent me a list of songs people use often but they're all really cheesy and terrible. And I don't want to dance to a love song with my mom.
Me: Well, the song I'm dancing to with my dad is probably intended to be a love song.*

Penn: But it's not too cheesy, and parts of it could be about a daughter.
Me: Do you have any songs you remember dancing to with your mom when you were little? Or songs she sang to you?
Penn: No, not really.
Me: Or a song that is particularly meaningful or symbolic to you?
Penn: I guess we could dance to Little Drummer Boy.

He wasn't kidding! He was being completely sincere. "Come, they told me, pa-rum-pum-pum-pum." How would you possibly dance to that? Oh, I love Penn. A couple of nights later we were back on the subject again, and this time he said, "I was thinking that we could dance to Bohemian Rhapsody since it stars with 'Mama,' but then I realized the next words are 'Just killed a man.' So that won't work."

I suppose the first step of this decision-making process should be to teach Penn what constitutes a good song for partner dancing, huh?

*The Way You Look Tonight, the Michael Buble version. Oddly enough, that was the first song that popped into my head when I was thinking about dancing with my dad at the wedding (we used to dance to it sometimes when I was little). I figured we'd do the Frank Sinatra standard, but I hadn't run the idea by him yet. Then couple of months ago he text messaged me out of the blue and said he thought the Michael Buble song would be perfect, and so that's that!

Just the Latest

I taught my first fall semester class yesterday. I'm teaching 23 students and the prof who teaches the other section of the exact same course only has 6. I'm trying not to be too bitter about that, but seriously, someone should have capped the classes differently if they knew that only 30 students needed to take the course (and someone DID know that, because it's a class for new majors and they know how many majors are in our department). If 25 students are allowed into each class, of course they're going to fill up the one at noon instead of the one at nine in the morning. Having said that, I think it's all going to work out okay. I carpool with the person who teaches the morning class so that will give me three hours in my office each morning to do whatever prep needs to be done for the day, and I'm determined to do any grading on Tuesday/Thursday afternoons. I don't mind if two entire days each week get eaten up by teaching provided that the other 3 work days can be devoted to dissertation work. I really do enjoy teaching and am glad to be back in the classroom this year after two years of office/research assistant work. Some of the students looked like deer in the headlights when I passed out the syllabus, but I tried to make it clear to them that it contains all of their assignments, in detail, for the entire semester, so it looks more intense than it actually is. I hope this semester goes well and I have good kids. I really don't have time for student drama this semester on top of everything else I'm trying to finish.

I had another wedding dream last night. In the dream we were at the hotel post-wedding ceremony and were getting ready to do our "grand entrance" into the ballroom. The wedding coordinator had already sent the bridal party into the room when I noticed Penn was missing. I was asking everyone, "Where's my husband?" and at first no one could find him. Everyone was like, "He's probably in the bathroom," and I was like, "Typical. He always picks the least convenient time to do that." I peeked into the ballroom and saw everyone standing up waiting expectantly for us. The DJ was killing time by playing that "How Bizarre" song that was popular when I was in high school, and I was like, "Oh god, this is humiliating." Finally Penn strolled back into the corridor where I was waiting, but he wasn't wearing his tux anymore. Instead he was wearing his tuxedo pants with this brown and blue striped polo shirt that he wears at least once a week (unless I hide it in the bottom of the drawer). The shirt was all wrinkled; he basically looked as schlumpy as Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. I was like, "What in the world?! Why did you change clothes?" and he said, "Why does it matter? The wedding is over." I said, "No it's not! We still have to do our first dance and do the toasts and cut the cake. And while that happens I'm going to be wearing this sparkling wedding dress and you're going to be wearing THAT?!" He was like, "I don't see why it matters," and I was like, "Think of the pictures! They'll look ridiculous!" and he said, "Fine, I'll change back into the tux," and I said, "No, it's too late, everyone is waiting for us in there," and he was like, "No, I'm putting the tie back on," and I was like, "Never mind, we have to go in there like this. I can't believe you did that!" Then I woke up, thankfully, because the dream was really stressing me out. I told Penn about it as he was getting dressed for work and he admitted that he can actually see himself doing exactly that. It really was very in character. I'm pretty sure he won't actually be removing his tux entirely to change into a comfy shirt, but I'm willing to bet that the tie and jacket stay on only through our first dance. And that's okay.

Speaking of which, Nicole and I are making the men go to a dance lesson with us in a couple of weeks. She and her fiance are getting married next month so this is our last chance to follow through on the threat we've been making for months to force them to go to the free dance lesson we got a coupon for at the bridal show. I was going to just tell Penn our outing was a surprise, but that would actually be a terrible surprise for him and I don't want to be mean. Instead, we've promised the guys that we can go for wings and beer first. It won't placate them entirely, but it's a decent compromise.
Also, I'm going to the store today to start putting things on our wedding registry. Penn registered for some tools (maybe not the norm, but I think the point of the registry is to request items for your home and tools will definitely help us with the home upkeep). He told me, however, that he does not care at all whatsoever about dishes, towels, bedding, or kitchen gear. He also said he trusts me and I have good taste, so I can just go and pick out whatever I want. I was told "no pastels" and "no flowers unless they're in manly colors," and other than that I can have my pick. I realize we won't get everything off our registry--or even half of it--but I'm looking forward to picking out some things in a "This is stuff I'd like to have someday" sort of way. It will at least give me some idea of the general direction in which I'm going with kitchen/bathroom/bedroom.
In short, despite the anxiety dreams there are some very fun parts to wedding planning. I wish there was a fun part to dissertation writing. I'd be making much faster progress if that were the case.
The dog is begging to go out, so I guess I'm going for a walk in the 90 degree heat. Fall can't get here fast enough.

Turning Over a New Leaf

I'm afraid 2010 is going to prove to be the year I failed utterly and completely at blogging. I'm not going to ditch the blog entirely because I do feel inspired to write posts once in a while (much, much more often than I actually get around to writing them, nowadays), but I do feel a bit sheepish because the last time I wrote anything was at the beginning of the month and it's now less than a week until September.
The past week has been rough going. For some reason I am not dealing well with the transition from summer to back-to-school this year. Everything was annoying me. Here's the short list of people I temporarily wanted to throttle last week:

1. The other members of the editorial team for the website I kindly help to edit for a professional organization. Please don't launch the website unless you're relatively positive you really have gotten all of the kinks out, especially when one of the kinks is all of the e-mail sent to any contact on the site--ALL OF IT--coming to my inbox instead. Also, if you have told me that the deadline for finishing a particular project is "Immediately once the website is launched," then I would like some warning about when it's actually going to launch, as opposed to just receiving the same e-mail that the rest of the 2,000 members in the organization received the day it went live. That took some scrambling.

2. Students registering for my fall class. There are two sections of the exact same class. I'm so glad that 20 of you decided to register for my section, leaving my colleague with only 5 students. And I'm sorry, but if my class fills up before the first day of school you are out of luck. Why in the world would I let you oversubscribe my course and become my 26th student when the exact same course is being held a mere three hours earlier and only has 5 students in it?
3. My friend's 4-year-old. Aw hell no, child, you do not throw a food wrapper on the floor and respond to my polite request to put it in the trashcan with, "YOU do it." Count your blessings that I am only the baby-sitter so all I could do was give you my meanest look and my sternest, "No, YOU opened it so YOU do it."

Other things were annoying me, too, but I've actually been in a good mood for the past couple of days and rehashing the list will just remind me of why I was so annoyed in the first place last week. I think I'd rather just let it all go and move on. I was so obnoxious last week. I cried out of frustration two nights in a row recently, both times over absurd things. The one night I was sobbing on Penn's shoulder because I was worried about how having a baby might make us the kind of dreary, hopeless, dragging-through-life-with-just-the-bare-necessities-never-trying-new-things-or-having-fun kind of people I never want to be, and suddenly in the back of my mind I was like, "Wow, this is a really irrational thing to be worrying about. Crap, what if this is a hormone thing and I'm already pregnant?!?!" Luckily that fear was averted the next day (but, um, yes, I guess it was a hormone thing!). Anyway, I think the brief bout with moodiness has passed.

Now I just need to convince myself that I'm excited about the school year starting. For the most part, that's true. I'm excited to teach my fall class (hooray for teaching my own course two terms in a row!), I'm excited about having time to devote to my dissertation instead of to summer projects, I'm excited about all the fall activities coming up and the fact that every week brings me closer to the wedding and a three-week honeymoon.

I also need to convince myself that, even though I'm not as on-track with my dissertation as I hoped to be at this point, I have done a lot of other important, career-building things. I think part of my grumpiness lately comes from the fact that it has been almost a year since I took my comprehensive exams and I feel like I haven't advanced at all since that time. That's not true at all, though. In the past year I went to London to do research for my department and helped to lay the foundation for a study abroad program, I completed a bunch of the requirements toward a university teacher certification that's going to look awesome on the resume, I wrote a book review that is being published next month (!), I wrote and defended my dissertation prospectus, I directed a show, I created and taught a summer course, I was invited to present a paper at an upcoming conference, I became the assistant editor of two publications and a website. That's not bad for a year's work, and that's not including the fact that I've been planning a wedding and holding down my part-time tutoring job in addition to my university job.
I need to stop comparing myself to other academics. I need to start giving myself more credit for the things I have accomplished so far. I need to give myself permission to work at a reasonable pace and give myself credit for each step I take in the right direction, knowing that I will finish this degree eventually. And I need to remind myself that the goals I initially thought I had when I started this degree have changed. It's not just me in the picture anymore. I'm not discounting the importance of finishing the program, but I'm factoring different priorities now, too. But that's a whole 'nother post.

P.S.-In all the frustration of last week I did have one really big highlight: my wedding dress was delivered to the bridal shop and I had my first fitting! I hadn't seen the dress in the shade I ordered (I tried it on in true white and ordered it in "pearl"), so it was so exciting getting to see and try on my actual dress. I love it! And it doesn't even need alterations, just hemming and a bustle. While I was there I also bought my veil. It was the second one I put on and the instant I did I was like, "Yes, that's it! That's exactly how I want to look." I get to go for another fitting in two months and I already can't wait for that, much less wait for the day I get to put it on and walk down the aisle.

Montana

Over the weekend I went to Montana for Jen's wedding. (You know, Jen, the one I was hiking with last year when her boyfriend proposed.) Anyway, Jen's boyfriend is now her husband, and I'm so happy for both of them.
Jen's was the first wedding I had been to since Penn and I got engaged in November, and it felt different than any other wedding I'd ever been to because the whole time I was there I kept thinking, "Eeeee! That's going to be me in five months!" When I met up with Jen when I got to Missoula on Wednesday the very first thing she said when I got into the car was, "DON'T DO IT. DON'T HAVE A WEDDING. EVERYONE IS DRIVING ME INSANE." The poor girl. We went to have lunch at a local river park where food vendors set up stands and then we hit some of the local boutiques and then went to a bar to have a beer, and during the four hours we were together her phone rang approximately every seven minutes. People were calling to ask about the plans for the bachelorette party that night and texting to say they had arrived at the airport and calling to get phone numbers for other people coming to town and calling to ask whether or not it was time to start working on salads for the rehearsal dinner yet or if it should wait for later and on and on and on. Frankly, after watching her text and talk on the phone all afternoon I was going insane, too. I forced her to turn it off for forty minutes while we had our beer just so she could get a break.

Anyway, lesson learned: delegate! After watching everyone drive Jen crazy with questions I decided I'm doing one of two things:
1. Give a couple of friends every single detail I can possibly think of and let them be the contact people for the two days before the wedding. At the very least they can serve as call screeners, answering the questions they can and only directing people to me or Penn when needed.

2. Go all Bridezilla-style and give all of the guests a printed itinerary for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with every detail I can think of, which should hopefully cut down on some of the "What am I supposed to wear tonight?" type of questions that Jen kept having to field.
I realize I'm going to get bombarded with questions and calls no matter what. I also realize that in one weekend there is no way I'm going to be able to spend true quality time with all of our guests (or any of them, probably). Still, I'd like to be able to have conversations with the people I'm actually with at the moment without having to answer my phone every three minutes.

When I wasn't picking up useful wedding tips [any song that was played at house parties when we were in college 5-10 years ago still makes everyone crowd the dance floor; tell the DJ exactly who is supposed to give toasts and don't let him just randomly pass the mic around] I was just enjoying myself. I went out to Montana by myself since Penn is saving up vacation days for our honeymoon and couldn't take three days off work. Before I left Penn asked me if I was worried about going to a wedding by myself where I wouldn't know anyone except the bride and groom but I said, "Nah, I'll be fine. I can be outgoing when I need to be!" It turned out that I was right and I had nothing to worry about at all. All of Jen's girlfriends from Montana was great: laid back, friendly, chatty, funny. They took me into the circle right away and by the second day of my trip I felt like I'd known them forever. I ended up sharing my hotel room for a couple of nights with one of Jen's work friends who had flown in from California, and she and I hit it off right away, too. I had planned to stay at the hotel by myself all four nights, but Jen's house was so busy that her friend felt like she was imposing by staying there, so I offered my second bed to her. It ended up being nice having company for two nights (and having someone to share the hotel bill with didn't hurt!).
In addition to the wedding itself--which was a blast, I danced all night long--I went to Jen's bachelorette party, I jogged along the Clark Fork river trails, I hiked the "M" (the peak near the University of Montana and I hiked it twice in a row because I'm a beast!), I took advantage of the fact that there's no sales tax in Montana and I hit some of the cute boutiques and bought a couple of dresses and a pair of sunglasses, and I went river rafting with Jen and her husband and a bunch of friends who had been at the wedding. Missoula is beautiful. It reminded me of Idaho (which I visited as a kid) and it made me miss my family's house in the Rockies.
Overall it was a relaxing, enjoyable weekend. It's too bad that Penn had to miss out on it because I think he would have had a great time, too. Still, it's nice to know I can hack it on my own and have a really good time meeting new people, even without the "other half" I'm growing accustomed to having around most of the time.

Ode to the 46

I love the bus. I honestly do. I love that I can relax and read or close my eyes for a while as someone else handles the stress of the traffic. I like the exercise I get walking to and from the bus stops. I like the virtuous feeling I get from reducing my carbon footprint. Sure, I could get everywhere twenty minutes faster if I drove myself, but I genuinely like the bus. It gives me an excuse to spend some time with my books or my blogs read on the blackberry. It's the only time in my life right now when I can read without feeling guilty because I should be doing something else (research, exercise, talking with my almost-husband, whatever...not that talking with Penn counts as a chore because it doesn't, but you get what I mean, I hope). 'I can do actual work on the bus if need be, but I've come to appreciate my commute as my time to relax and be by myself. It's pathetic, maybe, that my life is so full right now that most of my me time comes on the bus, but that's just how it is until the dissertation is finished.
Sometimes I feel like I should film a PSA for the bus: "Young, attractive, middle class white woman regularly rides city bus and survives!!" I don't understand why I am consistently the only white person on the bus, especially out in the semi-suburbs where I live. In the city it's a bit better and sometimes I'm not the only white person on the bus, but most of the time I am. What causes the white middle-class stigma against riding the bus? All the people in the world who complain that they don't have a free moment in the day don't know what they're missing.
I want to tell everyone I know, "Take the bus! You'll feel productive, because you're commuting, but you can read a book or listen to music without your kids or your boss or your friends pestering you!"

Not that the bus experience is always perfect. Today, for instance, I had to do a tutoring session for one of my high school students and then go to my dermatologist to make sure none of my bazillion freckles are morphing into anything weird. Penn has the truck with him two hours away, so I had to get to these appointments on the bus.

I had to catch one bus near my (temporary) house and then transfer to another bus fifteen minutes later. Well, the first bus was running late and as we were approaching the stop where I was going to need to transfer I saw the bus I needed to transfer to: driving right in front of the bus I was currently on. Grrrrrr. The drivers can't contact each other (I was on a city bus and I needed to transfer to a county bus run by a different company entirely) so I knew there would be no way I could get off of my bus and hop onto the other one. The one I needed would already be on its way up the street. Luckily I know the system well enough now that I knew the bus I was on would get me to a train station and from there it would be a one-stop train ride and then a slightly longer walk than I would have had from the bus stop. Still, it was annoying to be stuck on the first bus watching the second one cruise obliviously in front of me.
Then I was waiting for my bus to the doctor's office when it drove right past my stop without stopping, despite the fact that I was holding my bus card in the air in the unofficial "Please stop for me" gesture. I was like, "What the hell?!" and I jumped up and down to try to get the driver's attention and then began to sprint up the street after the bus, hoping the driver would see me and slam on the brakes. Then behind me I heard loud honking. I turned around and, lo and behold, there was another bus for the exact same route! I always dream that will happen when I miss the bus, that maybe this one time there will be another 46 right behind the one I just missed. Well, today there was!! Apparently the driver of the first bus that had passed by was running late (REALLY late; like half an hour late) and so she was no longer picking up customers, she was just doing drop offs. It made for an entertaining ride to the doctor's office because every time we'd approach a bus stop I would see everyone attempt to wave down the first bus, then get enraged when it passed by, then light up in surprise when they saw the second bus right behind it.
Oh, bus. You are rarely perfect, but I do like you.

What the Pack Taught Me

I have a free evening tonight!! I'm waiting for a friend to call me to discuss lesson plans for the course we're teaching in the fall (she's teaching her own section of the same course so we're touching base to get ideas from each other) and then I can do whatever I feel like doing for the rest of the night! I can't remember the last time I had a free evening all to myself during which I wasn't already exhausted from a full day:

Yesterday evening-updating my training for my tutoring job

Monday evening-meeting with a wedding DJ, lesson planning, plus the power was out so after that it was either read by weak candlelight or go to bed early
Sunday evening-breaking down the project I had been working on all summer, surviving freak thunderstorm that knocked out power to pretty much everyone in the region, going to bed early because the power was out and I was exhausted from my weekend

Saturday evening-Dad still in town; nice dinner at an Italian restaurant followed by many drinks here (Just to clarify, I am in no way complaining about this. Penn and I had so much fun hanging out with my dad, and I loved the bar at his hotel! It was beautiful; definitely one of the most picturesque bars I have ever sipped cocktails in, and you know me, I have been to a lot of bars!)
Friday-entertaining my dad, my aunt and uncle, Penn's mom, Penn's sister-in-law, and my dad's limo driver buddy who were all in town for the night [I promised to give you an update on that. Surprisingly, it went well! The limo driver is a very quiet guy so he mostly just sat back and took in all of the conversations going on around him. I still don't really get his sudden friendship with my dad, but it wasn't as awkward as it could have been.]

Thursday-finishing up my summer project

Wednesday-conducting a dissertation interview, hiking around town advertising my project, happy hour with a friend leaving town for a month

Tuesday-updating my training for my tutoring job, lesson planning
Repeat ad infinitum

Penn left today to go home for a funeral and won't be back until Saturday morning. One of his good friends was basically raised by his grandfather, and the grandfather was killed when his truck was hit by a drunk driver on Friday evening. It's very sad. Penn thought he should go home by himself (I didn't know the man who died at all, so I agreed; I feel like I would be in the way when Penn really just needs to focus on his friend and the rest of the guys) so now I have three nights to bum around my professor's house all alone. Well, all alone but for half a dozen dogs, which isn't really all alone at all. It's always a little bit weird when Penn is out of town. I don't feel lonely or bored--I really do enjoy my own company too much to ever really feel either of those emotions for long--but it just feels strange without him nearby. And I get mildly freaked out when I go to bed at night and rush through my bedtime routine so I can get under the covers, which is stupid because I spent three years of my life sleeping alone in an apartment every night and I never worried that somebody was going to come after me with a knife. Now, though, it feels creepy once I turn off the TV/radio/computer and head to bed. I guess I should feel safe while housesitting, though. I'm pretty sure nobody could creep up on me here with five yappy dogs and one deep-voiced one (mine is the deep-voiced one, of course).

Speaking of that, I have now been housesitting for almost three weeks. For the most part it hasn't been bad. First of all, I'm getting paid a good amount of money every day to basically carry on my usual routine from someone else's house. There is no television here, but I find that I don't actually miss it. In fact, this experience has made me realize that I would be completely content to give up cable entirely and just increase my Netflix subscription to 2 DVDs instead of one. All of the good TV series go to DVD eventually anyway, I can watch the Colbert Report on the internet, and I could live without House Hunters and Say Yes to the Dress and the other fluff I put on as background noise when I'm working during the day. Penn pointed out that we can't watch sports on DVD, though, so I guess we're going to have to keep cable just for that. Don't you wish cable channels were a la carte? It seems stupid to pay $90 a month to watch football and hockey, which I have realized is pretty much what we're doing.
Taking care of six dogs at once has made me realize something, though: six dogs is too many. I always thought I would love a pack of dogs, and to a certain extent I do. It really is fun when I sit on the couch and they all climb up around me and get cozy. The problem is that I feel like I can't devote enough time to any of them. I definitely haven't been able to spend much one-on-one time with my own dog, and I don't even make an effort to spend one-on-one time with all of the others. There's just not enough time in the day. Not that they need it, I guess, because they're dogs, but I feel like I don't know any of them that well. And I know that's stupid because they are dogs, but I still wish they weren't a constant pack so I could differentiate their personalities on a less superficial level. The other problem is that when there are six dogs in the house there's almost always one of them that is being obnoxious at any given moment. Actually, as I type this they are all asleep and it's peaceful, but 90% of the time one of them is doing something that is less than ideal. Someone's barking, someone's begging to go out or come in, someone's whining, two of them are wrestling loudly, one of them seems sick...there is hardly ever a time when they're all being good at the same time. Also, with this many it's impossible not to play favorites. Of the five dogs there is one I really like (so much so that I would take him home with me if I could), two that are sweet but not as special, and two that are just okay. It's all just so different from having my one dog whose personality I know through and through, whose color pattern I could draw from memory, who is a very good dog 90% of the time.
I write all of this because I wonder: do you think it's the same with families who have a lot of kids? I know people always say that there is enough love to go around and that you'll love all of your children the same amount, just for different reasons, and I probably shouldn't compare children to dogs. But I can't help but wondering if some of the problems would exist with big families, too. With six kids, wouldn't one of them always be pissing you off somehow? Would you ever all sit down to dinner together and have everyone in a good mood? I grew up with a brother and sister and there were plenty of times when everyone was having fun together, but even with just three kids one of us was often being a pain in the butt, so wouldn't it be way worse with twice that many? And wouldn't you play favorites? And feel like you could never have one-on-one time with your children? And like you didn't know all of the details, just the basic personality gloss? I feel like that when I watch the show about the Dugger family (another reason I don't need a TV!). The parents always claim they know their children as individuals, but then when they're interviewed about them they give the most basic personality gloss. "She's sweet." "He's always running around." "She's a helper." "He's shy." Maybe they genuinely do know them on a deep level, but I can't imagine how that's possible. Seems to me like with that many kids you spend time making them as similar as possible rather than trying to appreciate them all as individuals.
Anyway, after these three weeks I think I've realized that, as much as I love dogs, I really only need one or two of my own at a time. I can love two at once and feel like I'm treating them both fairly. And I imagine I'll feel the same way about children. Too many would just not be fun or fulfilling.

Well, that was ramble-y. I think I need to go for a bike ride and use some energy.

Nothing Ties This Together

I love fireflies. I'm dogsitting/housesitting for one of my professors right now and I was outside at dusk watering her flowers and there were lightning bugs all over the yard. It felt magical. It's too dry for fireflies where I was raised, and I would see them every now and then in college, but it's only since I moved up here that I see them regularly during the summer, and it still feels like a novelty. I wish there was a way to fill a room with that firefly effect and drift off to sleep watching them (I have a feeling, however, that the charm of fireflies would be lost if you literally filled a room with them). (Also, I realize that perhaps rather than fill a room with fireflies I should just sleep outside, but I'm not really the camping type. I don't think I am, anyway. I've never actually spent the night in a tent. I'll be RV-ing on my honeymoon and I'm pretty sure that's the closest I ever want to come to actual camping. I don't mind the idea of sleeping outside provided it's optional and I have an enclosed, climate-controlled RV to retreat to as needed.)

So, what has been going on around here? Some quick numbers:
3: Interviews conducted as part of dissertation research.

0: Interviews transcribed.

0: Pages of the dissertation written so far.

30ish: Pages of the dissertation that I plan to more or less copy and paste from papers/articles I have already written.

20: Pages of the dissertation I hope to have written--new material, I mean--by the end of this month.

9: Days left in this month. Gulp.

3: Florists contacted

1: Florists who have actually replied to my phone calls/e-mails and met with me to discuss my "vision" for the wedding. (So, uh, I guess the guy will be my florist.)

1: DJ to (hopefully) meet with and hire next week.

6: Summer school classes planned and taught.

23: Students in said summer school course.

18: Students in said class who are part of a special program that seeks out high-potential-low-performing students and accepts them to the university on a probationary basis for the summer term, at which point they take a core class (mine) and study skills classes and if they pass said classes they get to attend college in the fall. I hate the fact that whether or not these students will get to go to college hinges on their performance in this single course. Fortunately, they are all doing well so far.

1: Midterm I need to write this weekend.
This is the first time I have ever taught a college class--from start to finish--that I planned and controlled completely. I have taught entire units in other classes and I have guest lectured many, many times in other professors' classes. I also taught discussion sections during the first year of my PhD, and I had complete control of the grading in those classes and I had to do all of the teaching but I didn't make the lesson plans since they were pre-planned for us. I could tweak things, but I could not change the content entirely. It has been fun and eye-opening to decide what I think is important about my subject and to attempt to teach those things.

3: Days remaining on the project that I had been working on all summer. I'll be sad to see it end (perhaps only temporarily, since we'd like to pick it up again next summer). On the upside, I'll no longer be spending 20 hours a week on this project, and that's a good feeling. That's 20 hours a week I can spend on the dissertation! That's what I SHOULD do with those 20 hours, anyway.

1: Awesome review of said project. I'm proud of the people I have been working with and proud of myself for guiding them. I'm worried that we'll get more reviews tomorrow, though, and that the good one will have turned out to be a fluke.

I now have to quit this number gimmick because it won't work for the other things I want to talk about.

First of all, there have been some strange things going on around here. We had an earthquake last week, an actual earthquake that was apparently felt by most of the local population, although Penn and I both slept through it since it happened at five in the morning. I'm bummed that I slept through it, actually. I doubt I'd have realized what was going on even if I had been awake, but I've never experienced an earthquake and I have always been curious about how it would feel. I've been housesitting so I haven't been at my apartment much for the past two weeks. I stopped by for a while this afternoon to hang out with Penn who was working from home (he chose to work from our actual home, possibly because there are six dogs--yes, SIX, including mine--at the house we're watching and that can get distracting). While I was over there I noticed a jingling sound coming from somewhere in the house. It sounded like a faint old-fashioned alarm clock. I thought maybe that's what it actually was at first, like maybe a neighbor had forgotten to turn his off this morning and we were hearing it through the walls, but after wandering around the apartment I realized the jingling was coming from our china cabinet. Our A/C unit shoots air out behind the cabinet and shakes it ever-so-slightly. There had never been any jingling before, though. I reached in the cabinet and rearranged some glasses and vases so that they weren't touching each other any more and the sound stopped and I know all of this is terribly boring but, look, it's the only earthquake-related thing I actually experienced.
The earthquake caused all of the crystal in my china cabinet to shift just enough that many of the pieces were pushed up against each other, causing a strange clinking sound. I'm glad it wasn't a more intense earthquake. That would have sucked, to get a bunch of hand-me-down crystal from my mother-in-law-to-be two weeks before a huge earthquake. (Obviously, a huge earthquake would suck, period, new-to-me crystal notwithstanding.)

The other strange thing happened just tonight. Penn is staying at our house tonight instead of with me and the six-pack of dogs because he wanted to go to a jam session in a warehouse in our neighborhood. Back story time!: We were walking home from the subway one Thursday night a few months ago and we heard music coming from one of the little warehouses by the train tracks that we have to cross to get from our home to the train station. We weren't aware that there were restaurants or bars or anything in the block of warehouses so it was surprising to hear music. Curious, we wandered over to the warehouse to check it out. It turns out that the warehouse is an art consignment store. Or maybe just a place where the artwork is stored and worked on until it can be moved to the actual store. I have no idea. It's not important. The point is, it's a warehouse that typically serves another purpose but during Thursday nights the owner opens it up to amateur and semi-professional musicians who want to hang out and practice together just for fun. The night we wandered in there were five or six musicians hanging around playing and a few people lounging around watching. They let us in to watch for a while and then told us to come back sometime. Last week Penn happened to be walking home from the subway on a Thursday night again so he stopped in to see what was going on and ended up drumming for two hours! He was very excited about the experience and looking forward to going back again this week. He was hoping it could become a regular thing since he can't play his drums at our apartment and has been out of practice for years now as a result.
Well, when he got there tonight there was no jam session. Instead, there was a candlelight vigil being held for the woman who was MURDERED in the warehouse on Monday night. He called me to tell me that and I felt chills run down my spine. It's such an awful story. Apparently a woman who lived in our neighborhood rented a studio in the warehouse to do painting restoration. She had gone to her studio on Monday night to work for a while but there happened to be a man already there in the space. I'm a little unclear on why he was there. I think he had worked for the warehouse owner before in some capacity, so maybe she felt like it was okay that he was there. The media seems to be under the impression that she didn't know him well, though, or perhaps at all. At any rate, for reasons that aren't clear yet, he stabbed her to death with scissors, in the very room where Penn was hoping to play drums tonight.
The whole thing makes me feel sick to my stomach. I can't even begin to imagine what is wrong with the murderer. It scares me that a seemingly completely random, cold-blooded murder took place so close to my home. It's a fluke, I'm sure, but these are the crimes I hate most, the ones that are completely senseless. I almost hope that they establish a clear motive that doesn't boil down to her just being in the wrong place at the wrong moment. It will be easier to stomach this if there is some cause, because otherwise I'm left thinking that it could just as easily have been me or Penn in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was looking forward to going over there some Thursday and watching Penn drum. I'm not sure that that will happen now. I'm freaked out by the idea of being in that space, and I'm not sure that the jam sessions will pick back up anyway.
When I was planning to blog tonight I was initially going to tell the strange story about how two people in the building next door to ours were arrested last week for robbery and there were half a dozen police cars blocking our truck in the driveway as these two guys who were clearly on meth were led out to cop cars in handcuffs. But that story doesn't seem like a big deal now compared to this other thing.
The crazy thing is that Penn and I do not live in a bad neighborhood. We live in a "good" neighborhood, in fact, on the fringes of one of the poshest zip codes in this entire region (in the entire country, actually). I love our apartment. I hate that things like this happen so close to where I sleep at night. Then again, it just proves that bad things happen absolutely everywhere: big cities, small towns, cushy suburbs. No place is without its secret, underlying problems that occasionally burst to the surface in ways that make you think, "Maybe it's time to move." I'm not going to be nervous in my own neighborhood because I truly do believe that both of those events are bizarre, terrible flukes. It's just a bit much that they took place within such a short amount of time and so very close to my home.

Anyway, I'm off to bed. My dad comes tomorrow for a whirlwind weekend trip. Tomorrow night Penn and I are going out with him, my aunt and uncle, Penn's mom, Penn's sister-in-law, and...the limo driver who drove us around when my dad was here in April. The explanation for this is really a post in and of itself, but the short version is that back when he visited in April my dad wanted to check out some bars/restaurants in another city a couple of hours away and it turns out that if you have a big enough group it's only slightly more expensive to rent a limo than it is to take the train. So we rented a limo to drive us there and back one night and for whatever reason my dad bonded with the limo driver. I sort of think the reason was Too Much Gin plus the fact that my dad not only paid and tipped the driver but also bought him dinner AND invited him to hang out in the bar with us (he didn't drink since he was driving the limo). At one point on our trip home that night I looked out the window when we were getting gas at a rest stop and my dad and the limo driver were standing there together, arms slung around each other's shoulders, laughing like crazy as if they'd known each other their entire lives. The visual was made even funnier by the fact that my dad is a six-foot tall graying white man and the limo driver is approximately a foot shorter and black. They are exact physical opposites. At any rate, my dad inexplicably exchanged phone numbers with our driver and ever since then the driver has been calling my dad to chat. He called him the day after our trip to make sure my dad was okay (we had all had a lot to drink that night; nobody had to be a designated driver!), and he has also called him to say hi on all major holidays since: Easter, Father's Day, 4th of July. So now my dad seems to think that they are genuinely buddies and he invited him to hang out with us tomorrow night.
I hope that they genuinely ARE buddies and that this guy isn't some weirdo who is just using my dad. The whole thing is baffling to me and seems like the exposition to an Odd Couple-ish play or a reality TV show. Then again, my dad really is good at being friends with absolutely everybody and tends to be a pretty good judge of character, so I'm trying not to be too skeptical of the whole thing.
I'm just not sure how Penn's mom is going to react tomorrow night when I'm like, "This is my aunt and uncle, and this is my, um, limo driver?" Thankfully she has met my father once before, so this won't be the first impression. It's going to either be a disaster or a hilarious comedy.
I'll try to remember to let you know how it goes.