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.

Secure

What one word describes what you want most in life?

A friend asked this via a Facebook status post today and I came up with my answer immediately: Security. It's all I want right now and, now that I think about it, security is the only thing I have ever really wanted, ever. It all comes back to that for me. I just want to feel safe, in every way. I want the security of knowing that somebody loves me and understands me and will do whatever is necessary to protect me. I want the security that comes from having friends and co-workers that support me and understand me. I want the financial security of a steady job and a comfortable income. I want the security of knowing that my family is safe and healthy. I crave the security that I imagine will come from having children, the security of knowing that someone will carry on my family through future generations, that a little bit of me (biological, perhaps, but if biological children doesn't work out for us then certainly a little bit of my morals and teachings) will be here in this world even when I'm not. I want the security of knowing more or less what to expect next in my life.
I don't need anything lavish or exciting. In fact, what I want is mundane. Just a simple feeling of security. That's all I need to be happy. This becomes increasingly apparent to me all the time as I realize that the only times I am ever distressed are the times when I feel insecure: when I don't know what is expected of me, when I don't have a plan for the immediate future, when I can't anticipate what is going to happen next and I feel like the rug could be ripped out from under me at any moment.
Maybe that description is true of everyone, but maybe not. I feel like there are some people in the world who are perfectly okay without any kind of safety net. I have friends who are (seemingly) content to live life as loners, without a plan in place, without a clear sense of where the next paycheck is coming from. Some people seem to thrive on that, in fact. I can't imagine it.
This doesn't mean I'm dull, I don't think. There is plenty of room for adventure and trying new things within a life that is still fundamentally safe. Take traveling, for example: I love traveling. In fact, there is almost nothing I like more. You might think this contradicts everything I just said, but it doesn't. It's perfectly possible to travel to an unknown place and still feel completely secure surrounded by your family with a Visa card and an itinerary.
The hard thing about wanting security more than anything, though, is that it doesn't really exist. There is never a time when I can fully let down my guard. I enjoy my life--I enjoy it very, very much--and I do have the ultimate security of knowing that I am a strong, resilient person who can always cobble a sense of security back together for myself even if it all falls apart. But it's frustrating to know that all security is an illusion.
Right now I have Penn's strong arms wrapped around me (metaphorically, but often literally), friends and family and colleagues that (mistakenly) think I am brilliant, a comfortable roof over my head, a bright future. This is just another one of those times in which I feel the need to remind myself to cherish all of this while I have it. And to hope for the best, of course.

What one word describes what you want most in life?

P.S.-I've been a horrible blogger this summer. My latest excuses are a bout with stomach flu and many, many hours being spent on a big summer project. I also have been spending a good amount of time doing dissertation work (yes!) and preparing for the summer course I begin teaching this week. Still, I'll try to post more than a few times each month.

Good Try, Kid

Tonight I'm babysitting my friend's almost-four-year-old son. I think he's pretty precocious for being only three. It's not surprising because his mother is bright (unfortunately his father is the world's biggest ass, but that's another story), but it's still funny to watch him approach other children at the playground and say things like "Nice bike you have there!" like a tiny middle aged man.
He was pretty easy to sit for today, since mostly I just had to sit on the couch while he showed me all his "cool stuff." Bedtime, though, was a hassle. I was expecting it because this kid really has no schedule--which would drive me MAD as a parent, but to each her own--but I was still amused by his tactics to delay bed. The following were things he told me during the twenty minute pajama, tooth brushing, story time routine:
"My legs hurt from the scooter."
"I want a Coke."
"I need my Batman."
"I need my camera."
"I'll wait for Mommy to tell me what to do."
"I need a light on in the closet."
"I need to watch some TV because I have a headache."
To each of those my response was either "Going to sleep will help with that," or "No, sorry." I'm totally the mean baby sitter, but I'm okay with that. The kid would seriously be up all night otherwise. Truth be told, I put him to bed an hour ago and I know he's not actually asleep yet. I keep hearing him get up to walk around the bedroom. So far whatever he is doing is quiet, though, so I figure unless it sounds like he's doing something dangerous it's best not to show my face in there and start the litanny of wants and needs rolling again.
Although I did just hear something that sounds suspiciously like coins being emptied out of a piggy bank...maybe it's time to intervene after all.

200 Days and Counting

I was walking to Target this afternoon and I saw a deer. It was crazy; I was just walking up the street and out of nowhere a deer came leaping across the road directly in front of me! She crossed into the woods in the vacant lot beside me, and I had time to take a quick picture with my phone before she disappeared. It was a bizarre sighting for so many reasons. First of all, the deer had just crossed a four lane street that is the main artery through my neighborhood, causing several cars to slam on their breaks. Second of all, I don't understand where the deer came from. There is a series of narrow forested vacant lots that run along the train tracks, but I was a block past the train tracks at that point. So, presumably that's where the deer had come from, but in order to cross the street where she did she must have walked up the sidewalk for a block or through the parking lots of several tire and auto body shops. And it was odd because it was noon, and I was under the impression that deer are generally active at twilight and early in the morning. Obviously, something is wrong with this deer. At the very least she's completely lost because she's a mile from the big park (and even the big park doesn't necessarily seem big enough to be home to herds of wild, roaming deer). Poor thing. I hope she at least makes it back to the park somehow. I don't know what's up with all the wildlife sightings lately. I've seen a fox, that snake I wrote about, and a deer, all in the past month or so. And it's not like I live in the country, or even on the edge of the suburbs. I live right smackdab in the middle of a sprawling city.

Changing the subject completely, I had my first wedding-related dream the other night. I was "reading" a bridal magazine last week ["looking at the pictures and ads" is more like it since there's not exactly much in the way of written content in these magazines, but I got a free subscription when I got engaged so I page through the issue every month] and one of the articles was something ridiculous about Decoding Your Wedding Dreams and it was all about how you shouldn't panic if you dream that you're marrying someone other than your fiance or if you have a nightmare about terrible things happening at the wedding because it's not a bad omen, it's just your brain working everything out because even though weddings are happy the planning process is still stressful. Well, yeah, obviously. Thank you for stating the obvious, article. At the time I was like, "Hmmm, I've been engaged for seven months and haven't had a single wedding dream yet." But then--maybe because the article put the idea in my brain--I had a wedding/honeymoon dream a few days later. In the dream I was in a hotel room and Kiki was supposed to be doing my hair and makeup, but instead she was doing her own hair and makeup. The deal was that I was supposed to wait until she was ready and then she would help me get ready, but the clock was ticking and we were running out of time. I was standing at the mirror trying to curl my own hair and getting really stressed out because it wasn't working and finally I was like, "Kiki, I am supposed to be walking down the aisle in forty minutes and you haven't even started to help me!" and she was like, "Just relax, I'll get to you," but I was panicking because I knew I wouldn't be ready to get to the church in time. Then suddenly the dream shifted and Penn and I were on our flight to our honeymoon but we only made it as far as Los Angeles, and through the whole flight the giant Boeing 777 was flying really low and zooming between skyscrapers and it almost crashed about a dozen times. The low-flying/almost-crashing plane dream is nothing new since I have a version of that dream at least a few times a year, but the wedding was a new theme. I have, in fact, asked Kiki if she will do my hair and makeup for the wedding since she's great at that sort of thing (and is in fact doing it professionally now; she did a producer's hair and makeup for the Tony Awards the other night!) but I feel pretty confident that she's not going to make me wait until half an hour before the wedding to get my hair fixed.
Now I'm curious to see what other sort of crazy wedding-related dreams my mind comes up with between now and January, because I'm sure that won't be the last one.

And I'm Supposed to be an Adult...

Do you want to hear a story about a really, really stupid thing I did over the weekend?

Sure you do.

Friday night Penn and I went out with some friends who live in the city. It was a fun evening, full of entertaining conversation and dinner at a "gastropub" (which apparently just means "English pub that chooses to serve teeny tiny plates of food for way too much money"--seriously, the food is really good but the plates are tiny and I don't think the term "gastropub" should excuse that kind of behavior) and then a couple more drinks at a dive bar. We headed home around 11. Our walk home from the subway station is downhill past a grocery store, and on Friday night there happened to be a Harris Teeter shopping cart perched conveniently at the top of the big hill. So Penn grabbed the cart and said, "Do you want to ride in a shopping cart?!" For whatever reason, this seemed like a brilliant idea, and I said "Yes!" and hopped in. I attribute at least a little of my decision-making to the fact that I'd had a few Strongbows, but, truth be told, I have let Penn push me in a grocery cart before stone cold sober (not that pushing each other around in shopping carts is, like, a regular pastime of ours, it's just that it had happened once...maybe twice...before).
So, anyway, I hopped into the grocery cart, which was one of those tall, skinny two-level ones. I threw my bag into the bottom of the cart and Penn started pushing me downhill. And of course you have already guessed exactly where this is going. Penn was pushing me, I was shrieking, but I wasn't actually scared because he seemed to have the whole thing well under control. But then we got to the bottom of the hill and we were beginning to come to a stop when suddenly I thought to myself "Whoa, looking up at the sky!...Still looking up at the sky!!!...Oh, and we're on the ground." I actually said that last part, the "We're on the ground" part out loud in surprise. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, so I sort of couldn't believe it had happened at all. One minute I was rolling down the hill, the next minute I was flat on my back with my head craned backwards to see Penn, who was lying on the floor behind me. The post-accident adrenaline kicked in and I jumped to my feet immediately, as did Penn. I said, "I'm okay, I'm okay!" to Penn and two old ladies who were staring aghast from the Harris Teeter parking lot. But then I immediately burst into (quiet) tears so, no, not entirely okay. [Incidentally, isn't that weird how adrenaline works? Every time I've ever been in an accident I've always gotten up and walked away saying, "It's okay, it's okay," even when it's instantly clear that, no, it's not okay. I've leaped up and walked away from sprained ankles and a knocked out tooth and near-concussions and having the wind knocked out of me. How bad does an injury has to be before it's impossible to actually hop back up? I sort of feel like my leg could be ripped off from the hip and before my mind completely registered what had happened I'd still be attempting to stand up and announce "I'm okay!"]
Anyway, apparently what happened was that Penn tried to slow down the shopping cart but in doing so he leaned his body weight on it too much and the whole thing tipped over backwards. I felt bad for him because he clearly felt terrible for accidentally tipping me over. As I pointed out to him, though, he didn't force me to ride in the grocery cart. He didn't even have to talk me into it, he just suggested it and I said "Sure!" So it's definitely my own damn fault for being such an idiot. So now I have a big bruise on the back of my knee from where it was resting over the side of the cart, an inexplicable bruise on my left hip (I have no idea how it happened, but it definitely came from the fall), and a scrape on my left elbow. The worst is my back, though. I have a fist-sized scrape on my shoulder blade from where my skin scraped along the asphalt, and my lower back has long purple bruise from one side to the other that is the exact length and width of the shopping cart handle, which I fell on directly. I'm trying not to be a baby about it, but I'm pretty achy. Penn is taking good care of me, though, since his only injury is a (deep) scrape on his thumb from where the cart fell on it as he tried to catch it.
We definitely got a good laugh out of the situation, though. And I'm sure the old ladies who were at Harris Teeter in the middle of the night have enjoyed telling the story all weekend, too. It's definitely one of those life moments when you look back and say to each other, "Why on earth did we even for an instant think that was going to be a good idea?"
I definitely don't feel like a mature, reasonable adult right now. Then again, Penn argues that it's a good thing that we're still in touch with our inner stupid teenagers, and maybe he's right! Still, I think I'll just walk home from the subway from now on. No more shopping cart rides for me.
Also, where do you think this goes on the hierarchy of Stupid Ways in Which I Have Injured Myself? I think it goes above "Whacking Myself in the Face With a Raquetball Racket While Fooling Around Instead of Actually Playing Racketball" but I'm not sure if it beats "Dangling Off a Balcony in a Parking Garage in an Attempt to Land on a Flight of Stairs One Floor Below but Landing Wrong in my Heels and Tumbling Down Half a Flight of Stairs."

Without the A

Yesterday morning my workout was interrupted by the president of the United States. Really. It was a beautiful, sunny, 70 degree day so I was going to do one of my usual bike routes through the big park a mile from my condo. I set off and biked the mile downhill to the park, but when I got to the bottom of the hill I saw two police cars partially blocking the road adjacent to the park, and when I attempted to turn onto the bike path I saw another cop car fifty yards down the path blocking it entirely. One of the policemen was standing outside of his car and he said, "You're not allowed to go down that path, ma'am." I said, "Oh, okay, what's going on?" and the cop leaned toward me and whispered conspiratorially, "The president is about to pass by. He was supposed to be here already, but he's running late." I told the cop thanks for the info and turned around to start biking back up the hill, but then I couldn't resist stopping halfway up the hill to watch the corner and wait until the motorcade went by. It's not every day you see the presidential motorcade! (Although, actually, this is the second time this year that one of my bike excursions has been rerouted by the president's motorcade. Come on, Mr. President! Let a girl get her exercise!) I don't know if I'll ever get used to the fact that I live in a place where it's possible to cross paths with the president with no warning while I'm just going about my daily routine. After three years some of the novelty of living here has worn off, but much of the time it's still really exciting to me.

To change the subject entirely, I started reading A Farewell to Arms a couple of days ago. We have 200 some-odd books in this apartment that I've never read because they were Penn's collection before he moved in with me. (He had about 300 books when we moved in together and I'd read about 100 of them.) I've decided that I really need to start reading the books we already own before going out to buy more books, and I'm even trying to cut back on going to the public library so often in favor of reading things I can find in my own bedroom. During the early years of grad school I didn't have much time to read for pleasure because I had so much course reading to do all the time. Now I still don't have too much free time, but I have more time than I used to and I'm making a concentrated effort to devote my pleasure-reading time to actual books rather than solely to blogs, which was the habit I had gotten into (not that there aren't well-written blogs, but obviously novels generally provide a richer experience). So, anyway, I'm working my way through some of the books we own and since I somehow got through an entire 22-year education without reading any of Hemingway's major works I decided to give A Farewell to Arms a shot. Turns out I am a Hemingway fan despite the blatant misogyny (I'm learning that with Hemingway you either love him or you hate him, there doesn't seem to be much in between), but the main reason I even started this paragraph was to say this: I am appalled at how very little I know about World War I. I read the first couple of chapters of the book and was like, "Wait, the US was allied with the Italians in World War I?" and then I realized that the character was just an American fighting in the Italian army but I still wanted to know who was fighting whom and I realized that all I really know about World War I are little tidbits: 1914-1918, ended November 11th, Wilson was president, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the catylyst, U-boats, tear gas...some Googling jogged a few more memories and I suddenly recalled Coach Sanchez explaining the Triple Entente and ordering the guys in my junior year history class to act like adults for two minutes and stop giggling about the Brest-Litovsk treaty, but mostly I still know very, very little. And I think most of what I do know I learned from Legends of the Fall and The Little Princess.
So my glimmers of memory assure me that I did, in fact, study World War I at some point in high school. And my Googling assures me that it actually was a pretty damn complicated, multi-faceted war (as many wars are, I suppose), so maybe I can be somewhat excused for not knowing every detail, but I still can't believe how ignorant I am about this historical topic. I can't help but think that if I know this little about World War I that the average American must know just about nothing. Because as much as I like to think that I'm average, I guess I have to leave that title behind now that I'm a year or so away from (hopefully) having a PhD. Even though I don't feel like it most days I am, in fact, extremely educated. I'm about as educated as a person can be, in the formal sense of the word. And before my Google spree this morning I would have been incapable of definitively answering any questions about who fought whom during World War I. I had a vague idea (it's not like I would have been all, "Um, China?") but I didn't know the details. And I don't know if that's because the education system is failing all of us, or because there's just way too much to know about the world.