Random After Shower Thoughts

And just like that, after a shower, my mood is markedly improved. It's magical.

Random Thoughts:

1. I think that in my previous life I was a 500 lb pastry chef named Herb. This would explain the love-hate nemesis variety relationship I have with donuts, cakes, pies and the previously mentioned cobbler. I must conquer my pastry weakness if I am to evolve.

2. If Star Trek was real, would the captain allow blogs that satirized him/her?

3. There may be some kind of relationship between world peace and the number of hair products at Walgreens.

Tear Jerkers

Why am I sitting here watching “Stepmom” on TBS’s Movie and a Makeover?

Could be lots of things. My S.O. lawyer is hours away in the stix, chasing cases. A is upstairs taking a nap for just an hour. And here is my To Do List…from yesterday:

Want To Do Today:
Laundry
Start working on class stuff (reading, planning, grading)
Call about brakes and get estimates
Figure out what to do about car tire
Oil change
Cook Dinner
Enter receipts and organize bills
Send packages to parents and in-laws
Draft abstract for conference and email to co-chair
Draft ideas for journal submission
Grant report plan developed
Email bookkeeping: Answer emails, etc.
Eat Lunch!!!

Can Realistically Do Today:

Notice: I didn’t list anything under the realistic category. What ended up being realistic is that I 1)ate lunch and 2) watched “Just Like Heaven.”

There is something incredibly disturbing about the mesmerizing effect that Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon movies have on me at my most depressed moments. Cursed Hollywood machine! Where are those damn tissues…

But even worse is that I humbled myself to call the mother-in-law to see if we (A and I) could just come over and hang out. If she was home, she let the voicemail get it. If she got home, she didn’t call me back. What is it? I didn’t invite her over for a second time when my parents were here? I should shop more at Nameless Chain Store just to say hi? There’s a big, bad, social faux pas around every corner and I’m mugged by every one of them.

Times like these, I try to envision the space and frame of mind I would be in if I could be anywhere, doing anything. My visions are all about feeling and looking beautiful, inside and out.

Guess I shouldn’t have that second helping of blackberry cobbler.

Coffee Thought of the Day

Is it just me, or do you sometimes find yourself talking to your coffee. (e.g. “Oooh coffee, you so good to me. I love you SO much”).

It is just me? Damn.

That’s okay coffee—they’re just jealous.

Making Sense of This New World

Are you an alien?

Don’t answer that. The question above was the latest asked by A. of yours truly. I like to think of it as a rhetorical question, really. As in, I know you are an alien, but just how long were you planning on trying to maintain a secret identity?

Now that we’re living in the land of catfish, blues and cotton, I fear that everyone has discovered my alien identity. I keep hearing that David Byrne song from somewhere behind my right ear:

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
with a beautiful Wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

So the song may not exactly fit my situation, although I do admit to wishing I had a beautiful house and a beautiful wife so that she could do all the laundry in the beautiful house, make Walmart runs (yes, gentle reader, Walmart), and cook lavish dinners that we could all sit down to by candlelight. She could also make me feel sufficiently guilty about not exercising such that I could resist that second piece of pecan pie…

Speaking of desserts. Oh what I wouldn’t give for a powdered sugar Dunkin Donut and a French vanilla coffee…I’ve made up my mind that while I’m in DC next month, I simply must have one. Maybe then I will think my life is the same as it ever was.

Same as it ever was.

Circular Reasoning

Yesterday, I began my day feeling overwhelmingly crappy, with my 3-almost-4 year old checking me out, after which she thoughtfully said, “Let’s have a happy day today Mommy.” Gotta love her, and gotta hate myself for replying sarcastically at first (under my breath) “yes, let’s.” But after that, I did earnestly ask “Okay, A. How do we have a happy day? I need help.” To which she replied, “welllll, we go potty, wash our face, brush our teeth, take a bath, and get dressed! And have some breakfast!”

After a shower, coffee, a muffin that looked like it might be healthy (hey, it had raisins and carrot pieces in it) and a good bit of highway sunshine, my mood was improving visibly. I stopped by to see my friend that works at the museum gift shop. We walked and talked a bit under the balmy blue sky. Drove in to campus, met with my graduate student worker, and had a teleconference call to take care of the faculty business that has been alternately a joy and a humungous thorn in my ass for the past two months. At the conclusion of the meeting, a fellow committee member asked if I might want to join her and another friend for midday margaritas, chips, and salsa at a local Mexican restaurant.

Uhhm. What is “Yes,” Alex.

Shockingly, I didn’t have the margaritas. Did have two deliciously cold Negro Modelos in frosted mugs while my colleagues and I brainstormed around our emerging collaborative research project and professional activities. Reflecting on our conversation this morning, it is possible that I think better when I’m drunk. No, seriously. Okay, well...at least other people who are drunk think I’m smart. Anywhoo.

Before I left the office for the Mexicali rendezvous, I checked my email—found out my friend in the federal government had asked me if I would be willing to come to DC to review proposals—airfare paid, plus an honorarium. Though my first response was “HELL yeah!” I was gradually able to calm down and write a very professional “I would be delighted, thanks for thinking of me” email.

Is it just me, or is life weird like that. I mean, it seems that the infrastructure needs I called attention to in my previous post were handled between yesterday and this morning (bout to make breakfast for my S.O. after a nice early morning conversation), with graceful flourish.

Makes you think—Why? Holla back if you read this.

Politics of Posting

To rant or not to rant. Yeah, I’m still on that kick. Especially since (sigh) things have not gotten easier since last week. And so, I’m tempted—soooo tempted—to unleash all of the pent up frustration, sadness, anger and despondency about the current condition of my life. When I’m in this space, the blog seems like a nice little clay pot that I’ve hidden away in the closet. When no one is looking I sneak it out and put little pieces of text in it, put the lid back on, and hide it away. The only thing: once I close the lid and the closet I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone else in the world can see what I’ve written. Although there’s little way of knowing for sure. I fear that I’ve always harbored the exhibitionist tendency…which makes my desire to vent even stronger. The dark side of the force is calling me…I. Shall. Resist.

Sitting here in the pre-family rush hour (smell the quiet—like honeysuckle and chocolate, right?) I realize that my life has an infrastructure, the support beams of which are currently (1) progress at work, (2) reciprocal intimacy with my mate, (3) “alone time” of some sort and (4) REAL conversation with someone I can trust. Absent these things I get depressed (check); feel resentful toward my spouse (check); get fat and break out in pimples (check); and shoot off my mouth to (fill in the blank) colleagues/moms at the preschool/relatives after which I think to myself “...hmm…I don’t think I should have said that….” (check). Oh, and I also engage in inappropriate shopping and excessive reality TV watching. Check.

More later.

The B Word

Irony is posting to your blog on the theme of “balance” at midnight when just ten minutes ago you vowed to work on the chapter that was due to your editors, uhm, TODAY. But when there’s something blossoming, you let it bloom.

S.O. was going to go to Africa—his boss had a ticket that was originally purchased for his son, but neither he nor his son could use it. (The boss’s son thought he was going to Ghana for his volunteer teaching experience. But you know how it goes—you say Ghana, I say Guyana....) So after sweating through a week of trying to figure out how to pull together a spur of the moment trip to Mother Africa, S.O. finally threw in the towel. Deflated, he sat at the kitchen table and went through the mail. He asked me for a coin to scratch of some “instant win” thing on an advertisement for a repossessed car sales event. While A. watched Max & Ruby reruns, S.O. scratched, and I did my cheesy “Big Money” dance. Mommy mojo kicked in—turns out that we won the 2,000.00 grand prize shopping spree…strangely close to the amount of $ we would have shelled out for his trip.

So, we celebrated by all climbing into bed to watch Good Times on Nick at Nite—S.O. in his jammies, me fully clothed in work attire, and A. in her pyjamas, crocheted poncho, and princess Barbie crown (you know, the one with the strobe-like flashing jewel in the center).

After falling asleep for a few hours, I went downstairs to clean up, where I found that A. had discovered the joy of cutting and pasting, and had spread this joy liberally throughout as many rooms as possible.

If I think about it too much, it would be scary to think about how much TV adds joy to my life. So I won’t think about it. But, I LOVE the show Medium and I love my Tivo even more. After a liberal dose of recorded television, all seems right with the world. So much so, that I cleaned up the construction paper—and the dinner detritus--and decided that if only I can stay up all night I am sure that I can become the professor I was meant to be.

Now if only my eye would stop twitching!

Meditation on Fire

Blogging is as captivating to me as fire, and just as dangerous. I've been thinking a lot this weekend about what the next step for me is, in my writing life and the rest of my life as well.

Blogging Captivation (not necessarily in this order):
1. Developing my writing
2. Being involved in the blogging community
3. Recording the day-to-day for when I start losing my memory or my daughter shows some interest in what I was thinking while she watched Dora the Explorer (whichever comes first)

Blogging Danger:
1. Spelling mistakes (example: instead of the heading above, I first wrote "Blogging Dander")
2. I will write something that my family, friends, coworkers, etc. will find offensive. (Okay--so I admit that I'm afraid this has already happened, which is why I'm seriously thinking about entering the blogger relocation program)
3. So...can I just write the #2 reason fifty times?

What to do? The author of mommyblog suggests deciding from the start whether the blog will be public or private. Obviously she opted for public. I opted for public while trying to keep my identity private. I'm not convinced this is the ethical thing to do, or that it has actually succeeded--my fear being that I've created the tool of my own personal or professional downfall...A friend suggested that I post to livejournal, through which you can restrict the readers of your posts. That doesn't quite cut it either, because there's something really appealing (obviously, given the number of bloggers) about the potential of a readership.

I'm stuck. The writer in me wants to get better at writing. The ethnographer in me wants to document my continuing struggles to find a place within mommydom, wifehood, Southern culture and becoming a better person in my personal and professional life. The realist/buddhist in me says that there are things that I want to talk about that my husband and perhaps friends and family might find upsetting...and I'm not trying to create that kind of drama.

But then the little devil in me says "What's life without a little drama?"

Choices, choices...I know there is an answer floating out there somewhere.

The Last Meeting

I know for a fact that there are a lot of us wondering what we’re doing here, in this moment—and how the blah-blah did we get here anyway? Especially after binge reading momblogs, I know there are many of us out here. And through personal experience, of course.

This afternoon I was suddenly directionless after an entire week of 5am rush-rush-everybody-up-and-get-clean and let’s get the heck out of here two minutes ago mornings, high speed stunt driving to make it to must-not be-late meetings, and lunches, and emergency emails and office drama and dinners with interviewees, and cell phone calls to make sure that person X is where they are supposed to be given this thing that’s happening on the candidate’s schedule, and a cancelled class because I woke up and knew that showing up would be a bigger disaster than trying to pull something together….when I finished my last candidate lunch this afternoon I was suddenly at a loss.

My brain was empty. What do I do? What am I doing? Absolutely nothing came to me, so after the above-mentioned blog surfing I decided to visit my friend at the museum, who wasn’t there Still at a loss, I drove home—stopping briefly at Piggly Wiggly for pork loins, frozen peach cobbler, a pint of vanilla ice cream, lactose-free milk and instant sour cream and chive mashed potatoes. Pitiful as it may be, this is my idea of domesticity. In the area of home-cooked dinners, I have no pride or illusions.

On the way home, I learned that Octavia Butler had died. I listened to an old interview in which she talked about the year she spent on her grandmother’s chicken farm, and I started thinking about how I really have a desire to write about my childhood in Suttons Bay, the place I think of most when I think of what home was before I got married.

I sat down with my laptop when I got home, finally knowing that what I needed to do was write. Unfortunately, I also needed to compulsively check my email, through which I learned that at the precise moment that I was originally wondering what to do, I was supposed to meeting with a search committee to give my vote on which candidate should get a job.

My life is an endless series of ironies and opportunity for humility (enter peach cobbler and ice cream, stage right).