in medias res

What Kind of Accident...

2009-10-18T22:22:00.005-04:00

This might be futile, but I just stumbled upon my own blog and realized that people are, occasionally, visiting it so perhaps I will update it. What kind of accident has brought you dear souls to a blog that has been dead for so long? A bad Google? I would like to officially apologize for this misdirection. Now, I shall blog silently, I'm sure.

I am long overdue for an update - though I have no idea what shape this blog will take and I think it needs a change. My friends use their blogs to showcase their tremendous marketable talents (photography, design, etc.), their wisdom and wit, or their babies. Three strikes for me. While I figure out where this will go, I should tell you this biggest thing that has happened to me. So there's this boy...

I first met him in the spring of 2005 and we became friends. It wasn't the kind of friends who try to see each other, but the ones who have great conversations when they do. And the summer of 2007, I stopped blogging songs of thesis procrastination (stopped blogging full stop), and I got in the zone on my thesis. I lived in a local coffee shop that had cozy corners and crazy hours. This boy showed up at this coffee shop as well. And every once in a while, we would both look for a little distraction and end up talking, and then end up at the pub next door with two pints of beer. Here it is, two years later, and I went and married that boy after he proposed to me with a sunrise on top of a mountain in Maine.
To be continued...

(Look at how lazy I have become!)

COMING SOON

2007-09-20T18:19:00.000-04:00

...I WILL be blogging merrily again. And I have stories.

Starting with this little transformation:

50 Ways to Finish Your Thesis

2007-05-22T12:39:00.001-04:00

Paul Simon, my apologies for this bastardization. I call it therapy.
Some of these names*, you will not find in a baby book - unless it is a really bad baby book.

"'The problem is all inside your head,' she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to [finish your thesis]

She said it's really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued
But I'll repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to [finish your thesis]
Fifty ways to [finish your thesis]..."

1. Start over from scratch, Hatch.
2. Just get a new ploy, Roy.
3. Don't answer your phone, Joan.
4. Jump off a bridge, Midge.
5. Divorce facebook, Brook.
6. Wait 'til you're crazy, Daisy.
7. Don't get mad, Thad.
8. Eschew The Boy, Joy.
9. Avoid The Girl, Earl.
10. Disown your blog, Dawg.
11. You gotta get fierce, Pierce.
12. Don't get sad, Lad.
13. Avoid depression, Lalalaression.
14. Go to church, Lurch.
15. Or the coffee pub, Bub.
16. Don't ever sleep, Peep.
17. Or go for a run, Hun.
18. Pour yourself a stiff drink, Link.
19. Start a new fad, Tad.
20. Write an email, Dale.
21. Go for a trip, Kip.
22. Apply for a job, Bob.
23. Forget how to think, Pink.
24. Over-research, Perch.
25. Make a long list, Chris.
26. Get a little silly, Billy.
27. Have some fun, Sun.
28. Go ride a bike, Mike.
29. Embrace crack, Zack.
30. Search for Truth, Ruth.
31. Find someone to blame, Jame.
32. Exfoliate your feet, Veet. *
33. Make out your will, Jill.
34. Make yourself sick, Nick.
35. Long for thinner thighs, Bligh.
36. Put on the kibosh, Josh.
37. Climb the highway to heaven, Evan.*
38. Decide you're intellectually sterile, Darryl.
39. Practice being curt, Bert.
40. Start to get fat, Matt.
41. Write a poem about fizz, Lizz.*
42. Re-read The Bell Jar, Lamar.
43. Watch Who's the Boss, Ross.
44. Live like a bat, Kat.
45. Obsess over your fanny, Danny.
46. Long for a hug, Doug.
47. Decide it's all a fluke, Luke.
48. Pull some weeds, Edes.*
49. Find your way, Jay.*
50. Don't make me cry, Rai.*

*All names are fictional and have no correspondence to real characters in the Life of Tara, with the exception of the asterisked peeps. Veet is short for Vita, my new friend. There is no real correlation between her and feet. Evan plays in a local band, Lizz is a writer, Edes (also a writer, even though she doesn't know it yet) loves yardwork, Jay was in the Coffee Pub as I wrote this, and Rai is my major professor. He is a kind man who would never intentionally make me cry.

The final one for me: BE YOUR OWN BOSS, HOSS!

Bossing myself into productivity.

P.S. - MY YOUNGEST BROTHER, CHRIS, GOT ENGAGED THIS PAST WEEKEND! It's a beautiful story - I'll have to tell it later. Here is a picture of the happy couple.

Please Don't Hit the Crazy Duck

2007-05-15T11:48:00.000-04:00

I have a much longer blog waiting in the wings for some clarification and refinement and word haggling. For now, I will just continue with a quick update and a moment of happiness for me.

Update #1: I will not be going to school next year. I feel good about this decision, even though it involved much hands-wringing and waffling. More on the specifics of that later.

Update #2: I will be in TWO fabulous weddings this summer: Jodi Thomas and Tisha Warren. I am very excited about this! It gives me something to look forward to while I diet and exercise.

Update #3: I am in the last throes of my thesis, which I just described to someone as feeling like I'm wrestling with a greasy hippo in a jello pit. I will post a more substantial post once it is in the hands of my committee and off of my "To Do" list. (Also, "thesis" kind of rhymes with "feces." I'm going to use that in a song or a poem soon.)

Update #4: Today, it hit me that I'm 26. If you're older than me, you're probably thinking "Baby!" If you're younger, you're probably thinking "Fogey!" I'm just thinking, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!"
Time to wake-up and smell the decreasing metabolism.

Update #5: More animal crossing signs! I discovered today that I'm a huge snob about these. I am only amused by ones that are in the wild, and not ones that are produced for Gadzooks or Spencer's or some other intentionally goofy store. It's like buying your Krispy Kreme at a gas station. It's an abomination.

One of these is from my recent trip to Savannah - turtle crossing. My favorite one right now is of a mama duck (or a stay-at-home papa duck) and four baby ducks. One of the baby ducks is a wee bit harried. Since I also never behave for family pictures (see below), I feel a deep connection with this duck.

Now...I'm off to apply for graduation. Hollaaa!

But You Don't Have to Take My Word For It...

2007-03-11T01:35:00.000-05:00

Happy Daylight Saving Time Change Day! I stayed up to bid farewell to the hour I won't get back until November.

Also...

I don't know if I'm legally allowed to steal this much content, but I recently [re]discovered toothpastefordinner, and I want the world to know about my love. I was actually introduced to this website a couple of years ago by someone who knew me well enough to know that I would love it. Like my fashion and my perfume, I'm just now catching up with what the rest of the world knew was great several years ago. And, in my typical overzealousness, I lost two prime grading hours today when I decided to check out the archives. It's just like when I "discovered" Scrubs (now that it's in its sixth season) and decided to watch everything available on peekvid. Or this past Thursday, when I decided to take five pictures of "bear crossing" signs while driving down Hwy. 19 along Florida's coastline.

And tonight's obsessive amusement is brought to you by "Insomnia: Guaranteeing an Unproductive Tomorrow."

Enjoy. This one's on the house.

For your favorite diabolical hamster or frat dude:

On teaching woes...

On singing the blues...

On "tara's real problems are funny"...

On tending to pomposity...
On the joyful life of the easily amused...

On family...

Pomposity, meet Easily Amused. You two should get along grrrrrreat.

Sweet dreams. (This is from my recent trip to Tarpon Springs, Florida. More on that once I have been more productive and am allowed to write a real post.)

P.S. - No Ph.D. news yet. Keep holding your breath.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to 27 - Take ONE

2007-02-22T13:08:00.000-05:00

Recently, at the height of my optimism, I mentally penned a lovely little post about emerging from the valley and arriving at a mountaintop of self-acceptance and, finally, being comfortable in my own skin. I even thought that maybe I was ahead a few years; I heard this wasn't supposed to happen until I was in my 30's.

I should've started writing immediately.

Unfortunately, as is wont to happen, I've somehow wandered to an entirely new valley- except now I have a mountain of papers to grade, confusing comments from my thesis adviser, no word from any of my Ph.D. programs, and a strange cold that knocks me out before I can get anything done. (Tara marvels at her capacity to whine.)

That is to say, dear reader, this is where I am at the moment. I hope to be in a much better state for the next take.

Low point: when I again failed my "lemonade-maple syrup-cayenne-water only" diet, this time after 24 hours.

High point: Playing with Nena, the 4 lb. chihuahua (Bruiser's doppelganger) we are dogsitting for the weekend. Mims and I have been projecting our own neuroses onto the dogs again. "Bruiser is confused and feels like he's receiving mixed signals. He's going to go hide in his home."

I plan to continue my game of hide-and-go-seek with my life for the rest of this week and to get a little interstate therapy on my drive to Charleston this coming weekend. Stay tuned. It will get better.

Nunsense!

2007-02-16T09:28:00.000-05:00

I have to thank the lovely LAURIE PINKERT for sending me this article under the subject line "Our vocation changes would not be so unusual!"

Some days, darling....

My Great Disappearing Act

2007-02-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

My thesis is long overdue, and I knew I needed some kind of big push to make it finally happen. Thus, The Great Escape was put into motion. I originally planned to pack up my car and drive to some strange town in Florida to work for several days. A week before I was to depart, a lady at work offered one of her houses to me for as long as I wanted to stay. The house was in Apalachicola, Florida - about 80 miles from Tallahassee. However, my great disappearing act didn’t quite start out as I had hoped.

Preparing was great. I gave myself permission to pack comfy clothes and to leave my jewelry and my hair straightener behind. I went to Fresh Market [cue the angel choir] to pick up fresh fruit and veggies for sustenance. One of everything, and a celebratory bottle of white wine. I even took The Bruise for a nice long walk at Lake Ella in a typical bad-parent move of trying to spoil my child before I abandon him. I took my time on the drive, and stopped anywhere that tickled my fancy. (This included “Junk in the Trunk” thrift store and a field full of rusted out trucks, all in a row.) I took pictures – not very good ones – while I drove.

At first, the roads seemed pretty familiar. Mike and I used to make this drive all the time. We’d drive down to his friend’s house down on Alligator Pointe (I insist on the “e” – gives it more character) – just the two of us for the day. This was my first time behind the wheel on this drive, so I noticed everything a little more. When I finally passed The Pointe, the road was completely new to me and my adventure was really beginning. Then, I hit a bird. That made me cry a little - like a bad scene in a chick flick.

My original plan was to be working by noon, but I didn’t even get to the house until 2. This house, by the way, is magnificent. It’s a one-story house built in three exclusive sections – a kitchen/living room/dining room, a master bedroom/master bath, and a guest cottage (two bedrooms and a bathroom). Each has two locking doors and all three share a sprawling porch. I felt like I was in a Caribbean plantation house. The actual house is dark brown on the outside with a rusty tin roof. The inside has wooden floors wooden paneling on the walls painted eggshell or beige, and white crown molding. High ceilings. The simplicity is offset by the original folk art that covers the walls and the iron and galvanized steel sculptures that seem to somehow fit really well. No matter how I try to explain this house, it will end up sounding bizarre. Just think House of Blues meets Pottery Barn. My favorite thing about this house is the outdoor shower. It has a tin privacy divider and wooden saloon doors, but the top opens up to the world. Before I die, I must live in a house with an outdoor shower.

After I explored the house and carried everything in from the car, I decided to start work. I got everything ready, but when I turned on my laptop, I got the dreaded blue screen of death. I tried restarting – same problem. At first, I didn’t panic. I called Dell, and “Michelle” helped me run some diagnostic tests on my computer. While we were running those tests, she kept saying, “Just to set your expectations…” and then told me that she was probably going to need to send me a new hard drive, and that I would need to go pay $$$$ for some computer store to pull all of my old files off of my computer. Then, mid-test, my cell phone dropped the call. I called my dad and I started to cry. Everything had been going far too well with getting to this place, and I refused to go back to Tallahassee without SOMETHING written. It wasn’t looking good.

Michelle finally called me back. After we determined that the hard drive was the problem, we started the computer in safe mode, restored the system to an earlier point, and then ran diagnostic tests for the next four hours. The problem with the hard drive miraculously disappeared. I professed my undying love to Michelle, did a tiny bit of work, and crashed by 10pm. I was hungry (the veggies weren’t doing it for me) and emotionally drained. The first night, I didn’t sleep well.

You see, the only problem with my little dream house is that it isn’t very well lit. During the day, it’s a delightful haven. But, even at 26, I’m still a little afraid of the dark. The house creaks and groans. The front screen door and the gate on the side of the house slam with every gust of wind. People walk up and down the street all night long. It was eerily quiet enough for every noise to be exponentially louder than it actually was. My overactive imagination created sinister characters to roam the porch and hide in the woods. The first night, I slept on the couch in the main part of the house. I was too afraid to walk across the dark porch to the other part of the house to set up my bed. I told myself I was too tired, but really, I was too scared. Thursday night, I finally made it to the bedroom/bathroom section of the house. I was up until 4am, when I finally fell asleep from exhaustion. I convinced myself that I had forgotten to lock the front door, but I was too afraid to get up and walk through the dark porch and unlock that part of the house to check it, so I just prayed for morning and had a nightmare that my camera and my computer and my printer were all stolen. All night long, I stared at the small light on the back porch, expecting a dark figure to move in front of it to stare back at me through the thin curtain.

I promise, I did actually work on this trip. Thursday was a lovely day of work. I got up early, went for a nice, long walk through the old fishing village to clear my head from the restless night before. None of the shops were open yet. I went to the Piggly Wiggly to get a few more basics, since my few veggies were leaving me hungry.

Finally, sick about how much time had already been wasted, I sat down to work. Once I started going through old drafts I had sent to my major professor along the way, I realized that I had more written than I thought. It just hadn’t been put into the right place yet. I started filling in some of the holes. Mid-afternoon, I went for a quick run. The town was more alive this time. I enjoyed the nice weather from the porch, talked to a good friend on the phone, and read through some really important articles I hadn’t had a chance to read yet. I steamed some more veggies for dinner, and I felt very grown-up. At one point, I was really in the zone and didn’t leave my chair for four hours. By the end of the day, I had twenty pages in the first chapter, thirty pages in the second chapter, thirty pages in the third chapter, and another ten pages of miscellaneous information. Now, most of this is still rough and in draft/notes form. I felt good about the work I was able to do. At midnight, I finally braved the scary porch to get to the bedroom. But, as I already said, sleep wasn’t to come for a very very long time.

Friday, I was too tired to work. I decided that I had to go back to Tallahassee – that I couldn’t spend another sleepless night in that house. Since the owners of the house were coming to town on Saturday morning anyway, I decided it was finally my day to explore the town. I took an extra-long shower in the great outdoors, and then I went to town for treasures. (I wanted to get a gift for my lovely hosts.) I also wanted to take pictures. I don’t know if it’s kindness or curiosity, but people love someone with a nice camera. They assumed I must’ve earned it somehow. I wandered through the antique stories and several stores full of really cool decorating trinkets. I took pictures of the old fishing boats. At one point, a man (mid-50s?) stopped me to ask about my camera. Bob and I spent the next two hours discussing the beauty of Apalach and the story of how he decided to restructure his two big businesses in Colorado so he could come be an artist in Apalach. He introduced me to the locals as they walked by. I met Ryan. She and her husband are cooks at the Gibson Inn. They were trained in New York City, worked at a very successful restaurant in Chicago, and then they decided to get away from city life and come here. I also met a woman who worked for years at a university in Canada. This past December, two days after they arrived in Apalach for a six-month stay, her husband died. She told me about how she left for awhile, and finally decided that Apalach was where she most needed to be. She has been returning to each place they lived, slowly spreading her husband’s ashes over every body of water. Next, trip, she’s off to Ireland.

Bob showed me his old warehouse that was a commercial space below, and was being converted into an apartment above. They’re maintaining the rustic look of the warehouse. The ceilings are at least 12 feet tall. Bob, who is 6’2, can stand in the windows and still have several inches above his head. At one point, when I was following Bob through a trapdoor onto his roof to get a better view of the town, I thought, “Is this really my life!?”

That night, before I left town, my neighbor Anna Maria took me down to the Gibson Inn for cocktails. She was an art curator in textiles at the Met in NYC before she and her husband, an attorney, moved to Apalach. Now he’s a general contractor and she’s a real estate agent. We talked about small towns and colleges and running, and the town drunk came over to kiss her on the forehead for selling a house that made his property values go up $80,000. The whole town was at the Inn. Forget Cottondale. When I finally run away from home, I’m running away to Apalachicola. First, I suppose I have to create a fabulous life to run away from.

Now, I’m back n Tallahassee for the rest of the weekend. Last night, I crashed. Today, I’m going to work. This was a much longer post than I expected it to be, but I guess that’s the luxury of finally feeling like I had time to breathe. Even with everything before me, it feels good. I feel good - better than I have in a really really long time. “Everybody needs a little time awaaayy…”

M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i

2007-01-22T23:00:00.000-05:00

I always associate Mississippi with a song my younger brother David made up on a trip to the Midwest when we were kids. It has no recognizable tune or logic. It goes, "Miss-sis-ssiiIIIIIiiii-uh-pee. Miss-sis-ssiiIIIIIiiii-uh-pee. Said the lady, I'll beee yer frieeeend... (repeat....repeat....repeat.... repeat....repeat....repeat). He sang it until Chris and I attacked him.

That has nothing to do with the rest of this post.

Okay, so some time at the end of last semester, I agreed to go on a trip to New Orleans to work on houses from Hurricane Katrina. I agreed and then quietly waited to see if the trip would actually materialize. Even though the first time we met as a group was three days before we were to leave, everything came together really well. I bought a sleeping bag, expendable clothing from Goodwill (a DARE t-shirt!), and wrecking gear - which included a "Wrecking Bar", safety goggles, leather work gloves, and a scarf with skulls on it.

I love my wrecking bar. It's like a crowbar on steroids.

Friday afternoon, we loaded up several different cars
and headed over to Mississippi. It felt a little like a youth group trip, and I felt younger. I even spent a few minutes gazing out the window and wondering about where my life was headed. (New Orleans was the only answer I came up with.) The group from my church had a few upperclassmen, but mostly first year students that could have easily been my students. I tried not to play that part of things up in conversation too much.

When we got there late-ish on Friday night, a group of conservative Mennonite youth were playing volleyball and someone broke out an accordian. I spent the whole weekend trying to correct myths about the Mennonites and Amish. The camp where we stayed had been built by Mennonite Disaster Service. The camp at Pass Christian, Mississippi was beyond beautiful. Live Oak trees on the Gulf Coast.

Early Saturday morning, we all had breakfast and split into our respective workgroups. I decided to hop in the car with people I had only briefly met. We had a great time! On the way there, we were listening to music that was popular when I was in high school and they were in elementary school!!! We got lost in New Orleans, only to be rejected by the very confused owner of the house who, I assume, had been waiting for a very long time for help and wasn't really expecting it anymore when it finally came. It made me sick to think about how much people must have been using the storm to try to rip people off, and now they were distrustful. After unsuccessful attempts to go talk to her, we left to join the other group working on a 4-story/level house across town.

Because the house hadn't been touched since Hurricane Katrina, we had to wear safety gear to go anywhere near it. I was really impressed with how hard everyone worked. All day long, we hauled, ripped, crushed, and piled the debris. By the end of the day, we had all of the rooms stripped and only two hadn't been completely cleared out. I'll admit, I lost a little steam about halfway through the day when I found out that the house was actually on the market. It felt much better to think that we might be actually helping people get back into their own house. I decided that it didn't matter - we were there to do a job, and we needed to do it well. Either way, it meant one step closer to the community being revitalized.

By the way, the two neighborhoods we visited were mostly vacant. The first neighborhood where we were rejected, was not nearly as nice as the second neighborhood. Realizing that it took thirty of us an entire day to clean out one house made it seem like New Orleans would never be rebuilt. There is still so much to do, and it felt helpless. As a country, I think we're all still feeling helpless, but we've also moved on and forgotten about how different it is. If I lived in some parts of New Orleans today, I would think that watching television would either be a huge addiction or the most depressing thing in the world. The "reality" of American life showed on tv is so disparate from what it looks like in these untouched areas.

People came by to talk to us and to thank us all day. The guy across the street (with the weird angels hanging from his front porch) told us about how he and his family had to be airlifted off of the roof of their house. One guy out walking his dog told us about how he was really discouraged and depressed and trying to clean out his house when a work group came by and helped him get the whole thing done in a day. He talked about how much that helped him.

By that evening, we were a good kind of exhausted. We gathered around an even bigger fire on the beach that night. I think I was in bed by 11pm?

The trip wasn't anything super-eventful. I had a great time, and it's back to life as usual. Well...as "normal" as life can get when you own a super-duper wrecking bar!

PICTURES:
1) my wrecking bar
2) the first house that we didn't clean
3) the view from the camp, looking to the beach
4) the santa I appointed as the guardian of the trash pile
5) the trash pile at the four story/level house
6) one of the creepy angels that guarded the house across the street
7) It's true - you can't beat Wagner's meat! (When we were lost, we turned around at this convenience store.)

Girl, Set Yourself Free

2007-01-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I called my grandmother to wish her a happy 80th birthday, and it turned into a long, funny discussion while I wandered aimlessly around Publix in search of dinner. As always, it involved my grandparents asking if there was "anyone special" in my life. I told them there are many very special people in my life.

Finally, I told them that no, there wasn't anyone "special" in the way they meant it.

They told me that every day, they pray that God would continue preparing that special someone for me. They also reminded me about Great Aunt Bertha who "made a life for herself" as a world traveler and missionary yet was never married and was perfectly happy.

Later in the conversation, after Grandma told me about meeting John Dillinger when she was a young Amish girl in Indiana, I lectured Grandpa for letting Grandma fix her own birthday dinner.

"Ach, well, that's alright by me. I'm just happy to have a husband to cook for," she responded.
I came back with, "Yes, Grandma, thanks for rubbing it in my face that I'm still single." We laughed.

Then, today, I was sent this article from The New York Times. Apparently, 51% of women are now living without spouses. I have mixed feelings, and I'd love to know your response.

On one hand, it's encouraging to consider one day living in a culture where people aren't made to feel like they are undesirable or defective because they're single.

On the other hand, I'm a little concerned that, for some, being single is considered to be so much more liberating that marriage ends up with a really bad rap. I don't know what it's like to be married, and maybe that's natural, but I have to hope that it isn't. Marriage isn't a magical solution for any kind of loneliness nor is it a requirement for adulthood (that's why we have health insurance, taxes, and mortgages - and I've got two out of three)...but now I'm especially curious about the ways we've perhaps built up a mythology of marriage that leaves so many people empty and lost? And I have to think that marriage isn't the only culprit in this little identity-theft (or voluntary-surrendering) scheme; what about careers or other overwhelming responsibilities?

I'm sure that a good marriage teaches you to be more selfless, and this article seems to outline certain selfish pleasures that these women especially enjoy...is selfishness a prerequisite for our understanding of pleasure, then? No, that just cannot be right. Have we confused basic self-care (education, exercise, good food) with selfishness??

I especially like the last line of the article.

“Once you go through something you think will kill you and it doesn’t,”
she said, “every day is like a present.”

Que Verdad.

(This is on the heels of watching The Last Kiss last night. I was sobbing and disillusioned for 4/5 of the movie. The last few scenes almost saved the movie for me, but they just made Mims mad.)

I'm sick of thinking about the marriage stuff for now, so this will be my last post on that matter. Just got inspired. Yesterday, I spent five hours straight working on my thesis. Tonight, I'll finally make it to the gym.

Life's good. I got no complaints.*

*Except for the frustrating people of the world - but we won't talk about that on here.

The Measure of My Days

2007-01-11T19:31:00.000-05:00

Lately, I’ve been noticing that I spend most of my time doing things that don’t really matter. The things I want to do, I don’t do. The things I don’t want to do, I do. (Thank you, The Apostle Paul.) A very wise friend of mine once said that if you don’t do the small things now when time is tight– such as making time for relationships and reading and rest – then you never will. There will always be something more pressing. Another wise friend has been explaining how connected every aspect of our lives are – my inadequacies in one area can affect my relationships or performance in another area.

I’ve been doing a lot of mulling in the new year…

[Cue Baz “Luhrmann’s Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen”?...

record scrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaatch]

Maybe not.

I have decided to stop discussing my romantic relationships on this thing – unless something significant happens. We’ll see how long I hold out. If I can help it, I don’t want to hurt people.

I’ve also spent way too much time working. I had an especially stressful week right before Christmas. I was working myself gloomy. I bought an elf hat with ears to help get me in the Christmas mood, but it didn’t work. I felt overwhelmed and tired. When I was volunteered to edit 100 pages of a colleague’s dissertation (on psychometrics) the same week I had to proof and electronically edit two manuals by myself, I reached a breaking point. I was working too much, and I had nothing to show for it.

This semester, I’m doing things a little smarter. I cut back my hours at work, signed up for some empty hours at school (to get Sallie Mae off of my back, and to get student insurance). I put most of my Ph.D. applications in the mail this afternoon. When I met with one of my professors, he asked where I went last semester. I was here. I was here, and no one saw me because I hid.

No mas!

By the way, can you tell how much older and wiser I am now? Or, at least, older. I aged over the break – had my 26^th on the 26^th. I’m almost 30. I spent quality time with the family and listened to the pitterpatter of little feet – namely, David and Casey’s cats Dan and Ann. I also discovered Taco Boy with Edie, did some good catching-up with my high school friends. I ate. It was largely uneventful, but I was surprised with a big, beautiful digital SLR camera for Christmas/birthday. It was useful when I packed up my bags a few days later and rode into the Texas sunset to watch my good friend Heather get married. I love Texas. It’s the Southiest of the South – warts and all.

I hid behind my camera most of the weekend, and I vacillated between feeling beautiful and connected to the people around me, to feeling awkward and unwanted. I think the latter comes mostly from a feeling I don’t want to have – that I hate myself for even having. And even after I returned to Tallahassee, to my lovely roommate and to several refreshing days with my Laurie, the feeling persisted...

I think it’s probably normal right now, but when all of your ex-boyfriends (and a few almost-boyfriends or small crushes) are engaged or married, when your youngest brother’s friends are all getting married…it can make you start to ask some painful questions.

I know the advice. And I don’t want to be the girl who wants to get married. (That girl gets on my nerves!) Besides that, weddings make me tired. Dysfunctional marriages make me tired.

I keep telling myself that this is liberating. Every direction I thought my life was going to go – it isn’t. I get to rethink everything. But I still mourn a little, pay my proper respects, to the life I maybe secretly was hoping I would have.

When I start feeling this way, I like to stretch out wide so I take up most of my bed. Then, I put my arms behind my head and think about sleep. I don’t want to miss out on having a bed that’s just for me. (…because you know how crowded a bed can get once you get too many cats!)

***
In other news, if you have been waiting anxiously on an update on the packaging video I was agonizing over for work – the one where I wanted to have the F-Cat with the moving arm? Well, the wait is over. It’s here! It features a persnickety flamingo and a stern but easily ruffled narrator. (I can hardly take credit for it now. While I got together the chunk of ice, it was another gal at work who carved out the sculpture. I got to put in a joke here or there, but we’re calling it her baby now.) So, please, enjoy the thrilling adventure of packaging test administration materials. (There are a few jokes that make me laugh, but mostly it’s d-r-y. For what it is, it’s decent…)

Enjoy.

And ssssttrreeettccch...

My next update will discuss my trip this weekend to Pass Christian, Mississippi with a group to do (still much-needed) Hurricane Katrina relief. We're gutting houses. I had to buy safety gear. "Safety First!"

(Note: A group of Mennonites built the camp where we're staying. Some kids who went before were talking about how they got to hang out with the Amish, and how it was wedding season, which is like mating season for them, and that all the women just sit around and wait for some guy they barely know to come up and propose, and then they're married! My thought was, "No, that's a small Baptist college - not the Amish!" Ka-chigga!)

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

2006-12-02T00:51:00.000-05:00

Story Time (and family photos - see captions below)

At least once a year, my family tries to go to Iowa. This year, we chose Thanksgiving. My mother's fear of a holiday without the whole family finally came true this year. For years, every trip has been "Our last trip together with the whole family." My brother and his wife were with her family for the holiday, and the rest of us flew to Iowa. My parents were bawn and bred in Kalona, Iowa, so we get to see both sides of the family when we go "home" for the holidays. There's nothing like going home to confront the ghosts of my former self. I always feel like the petulant, stubborn little girl comes out - at least inwardly if not outwardly.

This year, my brother became especially interested in our family history. We copied old photographs, read through family history books, and listened to stories. My family tells the best stories, and my Grandpa Yoder sometimes puts on his preacher voice when he's telling a good story. He told us about being a CO - a conscientious objector - during the war and working in the camps in Mississippi and Alabama. That he and his brothers were opposed to war meant that everyone especially wanted to pick fights with them. He told about the time that he and his brothers were in the city and someone started to taunt them. When great Uncle Paul started to run, these guys caught him and used brass knuckles to beat his face to an unrecognizable pulp. They missed their train and had to stay the night in the city. And that's why Uncle Paul's nose is so crooked. Grandma told us how Great Grandma Beachy used to always say, "Well, ach, I just can't fix those fancy things- like Jello-that your mother makes for you."

There were also newer stories. Like the time my 12 year old cousin, who is always begging to drive, told his mom that he was going to drive up the grocery store. She gave a sarcastic blessing and bid him farewell. When my uncle came home, they realized that he was gone. He came back from the grocery store to a whole world of hurtin'. "But you told me I could!" was his defense. "We didn't think you would actually be stupid enough to do it!" was my aunt's response. Apparently, he also said, "Well, at least I didn't drive it the whole way in the ditch, like Aunt Faith did!" It's true; a younger version of my mother decided to take the car for a drive, ended up halfway in the ditch, and continued her trip to her cousin's house.

We spent most of the trip eating, talking, and playing games, like Dutch Blitz. While the rest of the world was out shopping the day after Thanksgiving, we played twelve rounds of dominoes. My favorite part was the constant argument with my grandmother over whether or not the rules of dominoes actually applied to her. She would conveniently forget to draw when she couldn't lay down. My mom would remind her; my grandma would throw a domino at her as a "thank you."

We also had the inaugural Hostetler Thanksgiving Flag Football Throwdown, hosted by my cousins, Carla and Emily. (Two very cool girls, and I'm a little sad that we live so far away from each other.) Watching my uncles coach my younger cousins made me want to be a dad some day soon. Everyone took turns as QB. The younger boy cousins would call the plays in the huddles, and the dads/uncles would act like it was the greatest plan they had ever heard. It wasn't about winning; it was about making these boys feel good about what they could do. We lost something awful, but that was okay. I had a good tackle, didn't miss (or get) any passes, and we had a great time. (Note to self for next year: apparently, I'm supposed to try to let the QB know that I'm open instead of just hoping he doesn't try to throw it to me. Lesson learned.)

Now, I'm back in Tallahassee for the last week of classes. I'm starting to get sad about losing this next batch of students. I hope I don't ever lose that excitement over these students. I'm also working on Ph.D. applications for next fall, and finishing up a very overdue incomplete. And then there's my thesis...

Finally, in response to several questions I've received about the ambiguity of my last post...a few weeks ago, Mike and I decided to end our dating relationship. And there's no good way to say that. "Calling it quits" sounds like you've just quit a person, or "break up" sounds like something that is terribly broken, and it wasn't. It wasn't for a lack of love, or for anything that had gone wrong. We still love each other; part of us will always love each other, I think. It was more the realization that what we have together is limited in where it will probably go. He has this big, amazing writing career ahead of him, and he has to be able to go where the opportunities open up. (And he is GOOD. He's going somewhere, and I think everyone sees that. He knows stories and he knows writing. I've learned more about writing and about people in general in the past two years... It's not easy for writers these days. You have to get this fellowship, to get this many books published...you have to know the right people, and he does.) I'm trying to pursue my career in academe, and I'm limited to those schools that will actually take me. That's all I'll say about it on here, on the world wide interweb...I haven't wanted to talk about it very much, but I figure that both of my readers deserve to know, since you've been following this for so long. So...there you have it. New chapters.

PICTURES:
1) I think these are my great grandparents when they were younger? People say I look like the girl on the far right.
2) My mom's family - she's front and center
3) Great Grandpa and Grandma Beachy (Andrew and Elizabeth)
4) My mom on the farm
5) Yoder children and cousins - (my mom is on the far right)
6) Grandpa - a conservative Mennonite pastor - with a gun
7) Great Grandpa Beachy. This picture can also be found on some postcards in Iowa.

P.S. - TRUE STORY: So Kalona is kind of small (but wonderful!!!) It has one stoplight, one motel - The Pull'r Inn, a Casey's General Store, and various local shops and restaurants. Lately, it has really started to grow. One thing that they've started work on is a strip mall and, I'm not making this up, apparently the Amish were very upset. They couldn't believe the depravity of a town that would actually build a STRIP mall. Tsk-tsk...I'm sure some of the disappointed Amish youth have to make new plans for their rumspringas now. A mall of strippers was just too good to be true.
(Blame my grandpa if this proves to be false.)

Pardon Our Mess...

2006-11-15T14:55:00.000-05:00

I will be updating my dear readers (both of you) on my life recently, but not exactly to the present. On some things, I’m not ready to come out on the ole’ blog yet. Eventually...maybe...

Almost a month ago, I flew to Memphis for Mike’s birthday and our one year anniversary. (Well…officially one year. Legally one year. Prior to that, it was only in practice but with no social obligations.) A 1 ½ hour flight vs. 10 hours in a car made a world of difference. The best part about a flight is always the anticipation at the gate. I’m closer to him than I’ve been in a month, and I’m trying to watch movies and read and sleep to get my mind off of it. I was already kind of emotional prior to seeing him. They took my foundation and lip gloss at the airport. In my head, I composed an angry blog entitled “Not Without My Makeup.” I cooled off by the time I got on the plane. My neighbor, the talkative corrections officer from Louisiana, let me out first because of how excited I was. I saw that Mike called, but I wanted to be able to see him the first time I talked to him in Memphis. I followed the signs to baggage claim, smoothed out my appearance in the bathroom, and waited. Finally, I called him.

“Where are you?”

“Baggage claim,” he said. “Where are YOU?”

“Baggage claim. I don’t see you!” I said.

I ran through the halls, hoping to see him around the next corner. It took us a really long time to get it together, but we finally did.

It was wet and cold when I got into town. We went to a barbeque place on the way home from the airport and got two big plates of sweet and saucy pork, hot wings, and a six-pack of beer to take back to the house. We set up shop, watched Lost, talked, laughed, napped, read, and repeat for the next five days. That’s what Memphis is always like when I visit. I gain weight because he eats three whole meals a day – and an optional fourth meal late at night, and I never want to be that girl eating salad while the dude is eating a juicy cheeseburger. I sleep more. I fall even more in love with him and with Memphis. We went on walks this time. We watched In the Bedroom, and I got freaked out at how much Nick Stahl looks like my brother. He bought me two beautiful necklaces for our anniversary (and a card that made me cry). I got him a Crosley record player that got there a week early. We went used book shopping. I felt more comfortable with him and his friends than I ever have. He was surprised at how talkative I was. I had gone into this trip realizing that things were reaching a point when we needed to figure out what was next. I wanted to enjoy every minute of him.

I came back late on Monday feeling very good about my visit overall. We had worked through some things and were going to try to apply and get in the same area for school...

In other news, I also went on a fun trip with my church’s 22-35 year olds. We loaded up the cars and went to Panama City Beach for the weekend. The day before the trip, I got an email about a deep sea fishing trip for Friday morning. I am not a fisherwoman. It requires a patience I will never possess. But, I decided to try it for the sake of adventure. I paid my $50 and, at 6am the next morning, I was with four other people, headed for a six-hour fishing trip out of Panama City Beach. I bought a hat with a skull and crossbones that says “Calcutta” as my secret weapon, and it must’ve worked. I caught four fish – the most in our little fishing crew. (I had a deckhand named “Doc” who helped me out. He called me “Rookie” all day.)

The rest of the weekend, we were set up camp-style in a retreat at the far end of the beach. In the girls’ room, we stayed up late talking. My most ghetto self came out as prompted by Fergie or as the mood struck me. I do much better one-on-one and I’m not so good in groups; I’m starting to accept that about myself. I had good talks this weekend. Quality bonding. We also attempted a bonfire on the beach that only really consisted of a lot of lighter fluid and some newspaper. I left refreshed and missing even more those friends that are scattered across the country…

Looking forward, I go to Charleston this weekend. On Tuesday, I fly to Iowa with my family, and then I’ll return for the last few weeks of school. I didn't really feel like blogging when I

started, but now I'm happy that I did. Thanks to Edie, Heather, and Miriam for giving me a hard time about it. And now…a new year, new dreams, and I love that I have absolutely no idea where I will be twelve months from now, or even who I will be. Such is life.

(Is it my brother David, or Nick Stahl? You choose.)

What You've [Not] Been Missing

2006-10-14T10:07:00.000-04:00

I want to make good on my promise to talk about the last few weekends. I realized I go on too many rants that, really, who cares about that. Just the hot air blowing up from Florida. I'm resisting the urge to write a blog called "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" about how much I hate hate hate the current country music that took Team America to be the gospel truth. Take for example a certain American prophet - Toby Keith: "Oh, justice will be served and the battle will rage:/This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage./ An' you'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A./ 'Cos we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way." I don't know if I've ever been more proud to be an American. "Justice", eh?

This ties in - trust me. A few weeks ago, I went to the Memphis fair with Mike and some of his friends (who are so nice, it makes it even harder to leave). And the featured band was none other than than The Charlie Daniels Band. When we walked by, they were playing "Long haired country boy", and the only reason I remember this is because all of the vendors, all of the bystanders - everyone was in their own very expressive little music video. Even the women were proud to be long-haired country boys. Serving up foot-long corn dogs and singing to each other "to just leave this long-haired country boy a-LOOONE." One guy in particular - a sandy-haired long-haired country boy in a flannel shirt/jacket that hung like a bell over his very tall, very thin body - he was the real thing. I couldn't stop staring at him. It's the way people sing when they're in their cars or in the privacy of their own homes. I love the fair.

Before we went to the fair, we had a cookout with a couple of Mike's friends. They used to own an art gallery; everything is beautiful and unique in their house and in their backyard. And, they're just really nice people. We ate black bean soup (the last semi-healthy thing we'd eat all night), talked until it was nice and dark, and then we headed down to the fairway. Mike brought his camera;I brought $50 for fair food and rides. I love going to the fair with people who like the rides. I can't remember any names, so I'll make them up as I go. We started out with the "Human Airplanes", where you lay on your chest and your arms and legs hang free as a giant disc spins you around and up into the air. On the "Spinning, Throwing Claw", we sat up with a large u-shaped bar over our chests as this gigantic spinning claw swung us back and forth over the fairway. Mike talked me into trying "Fall to Your Death." I think I screamed a bad word. I can't remember the others. Mike and I went to the fairway to eat more food and win some prizes. All in all, we had a corn dog, cotton candy, a funnel cake, and I had a bite of homemade potato chips and a bite of a fried Snickers bar. Mike won a large inflatable bat for me.

The rest of the weekend, we hung out with his best friend in Memphis, went exploring downtown, spent some quality time with his mentor+fiance+new baby (fiance is GREAT - I wish we lived closer to each other...), ate sushi, took naps, watched movies...a very, very good visit. He's patient and kind and fun. Oh, yes, and I rode up and back with a wonderful writer/FSU professor I babysit for. We talked most of the trip (boy, can I talk). I introduced her to Reno 911, Lost, The Office, and Hardee's thickburgers. She brought Curb Your Enthusiasm, and we were so distracted, we took a detour through Tuscaloosa.

The weekend before that was also very busy. I went home for Brandy's wedding. She was the most laidback bride I've ever seen. I wanted everything to go especially well for her. My duties were to hand out programs and to read the thirteenth chapter of Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. I was nervous. The location - Alahambra Hall in Mt. Pleasant - was perfect. Everything seemed to be going smoothly until a very astute bridesmaid asked, "Why isn't the caterer here yet?" Hmm, yes. Instead of telling the bride and making her panic, they went to her big wedding notebook, called the caterer, rearranged the order of the reception so that the toasts and the dances came earlier, and THEN they told the bride. Then, we all became the official spirit committee. We tried to get people to dance and encouraged people to frequent the bar. The food and the cake were delicious, the bride was beautiful, the maid of honor's toast was money, and I got to see some faces from my past. It turned out to be a very nice wedding. However, I have decided that, if I ever get married, I will go up to the deejay's booth at the beginning of the reception and ask to see the discs that contain the following songs: the Cha-Cha Slide, Cotton-Eyed Joe, Brick House, YMCA, any song that can lead to a congo line, and anything with Tim McGraw. I will break these discs. I'll leave the Electric Slide in case of an emergency.

This is the same weekend we were trying to throw together a surprise 50th birthday party for my mom. That was a feat, and she kept unwittingly sabotaging my efforts to get anything done. She was mad at me for most of the weekend because I was gone so much. I kept "going to hang out with Edie" or to "help out with Brandy." Really, I was meeting up with my aunt to buy enough food for the 50+ people we invited. I was copying old pictures of her and putting them into a scrapbook everyone would sign. Our last night together, she would barely speak to me because she was so hurt. My brothers and my sister-in-law were all home, and she was disappointed in me and my dad for not planning something for her birthday. To throw her off the trail, we went out for ice cream and gave her the jewelry we all bought for her.

I said my goodbyes to everyone after breakfast on Sunday morning and pretended to get on the road to Tallahassee, but really I went home and worked with my aunt (who was 8 months pregnant at the time). We made flower arrangements, cooked quick-fix food, set up the tables and chairs. My parents went out to dinner with my brothers, and then they "said goodbye." I even called my parents "from the road" and told them I was tired of driving. I was standing in our house with our 70+ guests at the time.

She was shocked. She had been so busy being upset with me, that she didn't pay attention to any of the signs. She kept saying, "Oh, TARA!" All was forgiven, it was a great party, and almost all of the food was eaten.

I hope that when I'm fifty, my life is that rich and full of people - just like my mom's. I also hope we can have chocolate cake AND carrot cake all at the same party. Cake doesn't count on your birthday.

Quick Note: Since this party, my aunt has had her baby. The kid in the orange-striped shirt in this picture is my cousin. When he walked in and saw his mommy breastfeeding, he said, "So THAT's what those are for!"
They grow up so quickly...

I See London, I See France, I See the Emperor's Underpants

2006-10-06T23:42:00.000-04:00

"By mapping a third critical route away from the impasse between biological essentialism and discursive constructivism, I argue for a nonteleological notion of nature, challenging models of evolution that define the biological understanding of the body, sex, and reproduction according to the arborescent logic of inheritance. In particular, Darwinism--and to some extent neo-Darwinism--implies a filiative model of the body based on the binary logic of sexual exchange..." - Luciana Parisi "Information Trading and Symbiotic Micropolitics"

That's a random quote from an article my advisor insists is crucial to my thesis. I might have a cursory understanding of it in a few weeks, after it has simmered. Right now, I feel stupid. I'm not sure if I'm changing, but I have this inner beast that screams "bullsh*t!!" at some things I come across in my field. That can't be good for my future.

And my reference to "The Emperor's New Clothes" is just me trying to be a little too clever. I don't have any special wisdom or insight. If anything, I'm the one saying, "Emperor? When did we get an emperor??"

At least I've got my SmartWater to pull me through. Hey- I'm not afraid to lie to myself.

If You Don't Know How to Pronounce "Lancaster," Get Your Cameras Out of PA

2006-10-03T22:32:00.000-04:00

I always get excited any time I see something written about the Amish or the Mennonites. Weird Al Yankovich, Kingpin, the Simpsons, Hallmark movies*…Now, under these circumstances, I wish it would stop.

For me, being raised Mennonite is more of a cultural distinction than a religious one. My parents helped start a Mennonite church that eventually dropped its name; few in Charleston understood “Mennonite.”***(see below) Even though I never lived in Iowa, I always said I was “going home” because it was to the community that always felt a little more like home and was consistent with the ways my parents tried to raise us.

“Going home” to Iowa required adjustments. My mom and I would take off make-up and jewelry during the last hour of our 19-hour trip home. I had to wear longer shorts and more crew tops. No television and "secular" music. To entertain myself, I would explore the storage room for old pictures, clothing, and clues to the short lives of my two uncles who died as children. I still try not to get stuck outside by the old barn when it’s dark.

I feel equally close to the Amish church because I am only one generation away from being raised sans electricity and telephones. My maternal grandparents left the Amish church soon after they were married, but they maintained very close ties to their Amish relatives and neighbors. My grandfather, a Mennonite pastor, would take me to sing at the elderly care facility where he also worked. It wasn’t until I was older that I appreciated the resonance of his voice from the pulpit. My grandparents and their house has changed very little in the past twenty years. Old trinkets are still appreciated on the well-dusted shelves. My grandma still uses the same patterns to make her dresses. She keeps a bulletin board archive of every family Christmas picture she has received for at least five years.

The priorities of my extended family was always a check on my “vertlicht” (sp? “worldly”) ways. We focused on fellowship and food. All three meals were a production that would last until the dishes were picked clean by wandering forks or until the stories ran out. Between meals, we grazed on brownies, chocolate peanut butter balls (buckeyes), vegetables, pickles, bread and jam, cheese, ice cream still icy from the churn – all were homemade. My family has perfected the art of the casserole. They were the original organic farmers. The Hostetlers in Iowa were different from the Hostetlers in South Carolina.

When my mom called twice yesterday, I knew what it was about. For her, the Amish/Mennonite world has always been the antithesis of everything beyond where the horse-drawn buggies run. Had I grown up there, I “never would have seen too much too soon, learned those awful words and a lack of discretion, tried to dress like that, dated a boy like that, learned to dance like that…” For her, the lines have always been clear, and home has always been a safe retreat. It’s where we should have grown up. Now, it is no longer safe.

It’s not just the violence of Charles Carl Roberts. Something feels very wrong in all of the news coverage of a community whose religious beliefs forbid photography. (“Thou shalt have no graven image.”) Those selected by the media as spokespeople for the Amish church – Ruth Irene Garrett and Tom Schachtman, among others—are not respected by Mennonite and Amish communities because they have tried to profit off of sensationalizing the Amish. (Garrett grew up in the same community as my parents.) I want to block the cameras, but, like everyone else, I also cannot look away.

I think I’m also a little jealous over them. They’re part of my heritage. I’m afraid of them changing. I’m also a little afraid of them not holding up under the scrutiny. So far, I haven’t been disappointed. Their only response, as they bury their daughters and sit in the hospital rooms, has been “We forgive .” It makes no sense. Then again, grace never does.

*If you watch Harvest of Fire, you will see many of my relatives on screen and in the credits. My grandpa has a scrapbook of signed photos and bits and pieces from the production in Kalona, Iowa. It's cute.

***Quick history: Mennonites are similar to Protestants, and came out of the same division in the church. The difference is that Protestantism was based on political and spiritual issues; Mennonitism was only spiritual. Mennonites are usually distinguished by believing in baptism upon confession of faith – as opposed to infant baptism, and pacifism. Varying degrees of conservative dress and a denial of material goods are found throughout the Mennonite church. The Amish church grew out of the Mennonite church in the 1690’s. It was in an attempt to preserve rural life, return to the original teachings of the Mennonite church, restore discipline, and to avoid materialism. The practices they developed are to these aims.

Coming Soon: Brandy's Wedding and my Mom's 50th, The Fair and Other Adventures From My Recent Trip to Memphis, Long Car Rides, and Mike Shot an 89 Yesterday...

And One More Thing...

2006-09-13T23:52:00.000-04:00

Please check out this article to see how my school plans for next year have gone from definite to unlikely.

On one hand, I'm happy not to be stuck in the mess.
On the other hand, I'm sad for my friend who has gone before me, and who is stuck in the middle of everything.

I have some big decisions to make. Maybe this is the sign I need to trade in my quill pen* for a firefighter's hat.

*Note: Let's be honest, I'm really not good enough to even have a quill pen. I couldn't let that lie continue.

Writing Cojones

2006-09-13T23:38:00.000-04:00

Every year (for a whole three years now), I make my students read an essay by Gail Godwin called “The Watcher at the Gates” from our first year reader - On Writing: A Process Reader. It’s one of several that I secretly subtitle: “Writers’ Neuroses Unveiled!”

In the essay, Godwin talks about our brutal inner critic who hinders us by providing a running commentary on our writing. I told my students that it’s my conservative grandparents who clucked at my pierced ears. When it comes to this blog, my students are my watchers. Some of my best stories, I’m terrified to tell. I already feel too vulnerable after facebook and myspace. They know too much. The healthy distance between teacher and student that I’d like to imagine exists is even more tenuous now.

I could probably also group my co-workers in this category. My work stories can’t show up here. When I think about telling a story, I mentally trace a path from the people in the story to my blog (the guy at work who is on facebook, which lists my blog, and so on…) Church people either. I can talk about close friends and family who wouldn’t mind showing up in my blog, but those aren’t really my best stories. I have a friend who was outed to her office by a nosy, googling co-worker. I’m a little traumatized by her experience.

So, dear reader, it is not that I don’t have any stories to tell; it’s that I’m still neurotic about hurting people’s feelings. Maybe I’m still too raw from my own wounds. But I am so careful, that my stories all have safety hedges of ambiguity. That doesn’t make for good story-telling.

For example – I have fabulous stories from my two half-summers working on the sailboat in Chicago [see above], but we are still good friends with the owners. My stories aren’t scathing or offensive; they contain a mix of good and bad. I’m scared to write the bad, so the stories remain unwritten until I one day forget them.

Here I sit, sans tell-able stories. Maybe it’s time to take some of the advice I give my students. Maybe it’s time to grow some story-telling cojones while I dance the line between the truth and full-disclosure.

Spite and Sundance

2006-09-07T14:17:00.000-04:00

I love back-to-school. Everywhere I look are ads of clean-cut kids (ages 10-22) in their empty backpacks and most fall-iest colors. Except this year is a scary fashion twilight zone. In elementary school, I had three pairs of knit leggings. My favorite pair was white with lace trim. My legs were nicer then, and the oversized t-shirts were perfect to hide my increasingly self-conscious body. (The shoulder pads also completed the broad-shouldered chic.)

Leggings are back. When I first saw them in NYC, I thought there was just a disproportionate number of dance students roaming the streets. I don’t know if I can go back. I just can't believe that big on top, skinny on the bottom is really a fashion philosophy right now.

Outside of a gym, that much fabric should never cling that closely to anyone’s body. This is boring, but I’m responding to my roommate’s “constructive criticism” to post a new blog. Nothing is going on here. I’m all moved in, pictures are on the wall, and I’m down to two small bags of miscellaneous articles.

I’m in my second week of teaching. Somehow, I’ve always avoided teaching more than one class by working as a tutor or as a mentor. This semester, I am a non-waiver teaching assistant teaching two classes. If I had actually finished my thesis, I could be an ad junct making more money. Instead, I have to pay for the one hour of thesis I’m taking to keep my student status. And - the big blow - they took away my desk in an office. At the beginning of the semester, I verified that I was supposed to stay in that office. “No problem!” is what I was told. One week later, the line I got was that, “Since you’re not a teaching assistant and there aren’t enough seats for the other assistants.” Oh, but if it talks like a teaching assistant, walks like a teaching assistant, and gets paid like a teaching assistant and is required to hold office hours...then it deserves a desk in the Williams building.

Instead, I’ve scrounged up a desk in Dodd Hall Basement. I’m not above being in the Basement; I have many memories from my days there. It’s dirty, covered in pseudo-intellectual grad student graffiti, and floods occasionally. At least four different departments house all of their grad students in the Basement, making it the worst place on campus for holding student conferences or catching up on my own work. It reeks from the constant intellectual pissing contests. All of the romantic appeal - the grittiness - of the Basement disappeared after the first year.

And I actually used my office more than most. I had a regular buffet of quick-fix meals that I offered to other grad students. I sometimes spent more hours in my office in one week than people spent in theirs for an entire semester. I’ve already passed out my course policies guide with my office hours and location. I almost walked my students down on the first day. Now I have to tell them that I no longer have that office.

Returning to the Basement is especially humbling. In my small life, it’s ugly pride at its worst. In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. I’m a little ashamed of my self-indulgent rant.

Really, it comes down to feeling a lack of validation. I thought that they were in need of instructors and that I was actually helping meet a need (and I needed the money). Now, I feel like I’m a burden, like I’m unwanted here. On top of that, they didn’t process my paperwork quickly enough and I don’t get paid for another two weeks. [Insert Debbie Downer “wah-waaaaaaah” here.]

On the bright side, I like my students. I spent an entire weekend planning my semester. I’ve vetoed all of the touchy-feely “tell me about your feelings” papers. I didn’t want to hear all about how someone’s high school prom showed them how they could be successful in life, blah-blah-blah. Critical cultural studies instead. In both of my classes, I can already guess which students will work the hardest, talk the most, or actually take my teaching to heart. I’m balancing the theoretical reading with the practical reading, and giving reading quizzes that invite discussion and ensure that they have read. And, these students are fun. Their energy is invigorating.

Other signs of aging - I bought a new computer, and I signed up for health insurance. I feel so big. After at least forty hours of research, and several designed-but-unbought additions to my virtual shopping cart, I bought the computer. She’s a sleek and sexy beaut. And when I start an application, I don’t have time to get a drink or take a shower while I wait for it to process. The old one was loud, hot, and hasn’t been the same since I launched it across the room in my sleep one night. This one has more power and features than I know how to handle. The only thing it lacks is MS Word, which means my thesis continues to be on hold while I work through my TO DO list. (READ: Watch all of Season 3 of Arrested Development.)

In other news, I will be making my directorial debut this fall in a documentary called “FCAT Packaging Instructions.” I got the job by default (I was the sucker who didn’t attend the meeting), and I have been dragging my feet the entire way. When it was announced to the entire Assessment team that I was in charge of the video, I realized it was time to put my bad taste and sense of humor to good use. Meet F.Cat. I’m thinking something very Conan O’Brien with the still picture and a moving mouth. Maybe a long furry arm can be used to point to the graphics throughout the video. I have one week to pull it together. And I have to make it simple enough that it will get approved. What is the line between amusing and disrespectful? How close can I get? Why are they letting the least technologically-able person do this? I think it’s age-discrimination. And it’s hard to do an image search at work when Google: Images is a forbidden site.

Now, my work beckons. Next stop – Sundance. (My delusions allow me to face the new day.)

Take me to tired, I'm bed

2006-08-14T20:35:00.000-04:00

Moving sucks.

While I love the chance to reinvent my environment, I'm now at the stage where I have a million homeless odds and ends all over my floor. The good news is that I've simplified. I've been mercilessly cutting furniture and unused goods from my life. The bad news is that I've also been tempted to fill it up with new toys and useless yet amusing goodies. (For the love, I own a South of the Border snow globe!) My Enthusiasm never consults my space nor my bank account when she's out shopping.

For more information on our moving frenzy, I defer to my ever-patient and long-suffering roommate's blog. I never realized how hard I could be to live with until I tried setting up house with someone new. While organizing the kitchen with Miriam, I realized an annoying passive-aggressive little habit I have. Instead of saying, "That's a bad place to put that," I say, "I don't know if I would put that there." (At one point, she said, "Well, Efficiency would say that the plastic bowls should go on the bottom since we use those more." I then asked what Efficiency would like for dinner that night.) If I ever get married, it will have to be to a very patient man.

I'm all moved in and cozy. I've alphabetized the DVD's within each genre. Now, I'm just tired - a tired that doesn't even go away after a decent night's sleep. A little too tired for my office revolution. (I did notice today that 80% of our security guards look like they're going to an audition for Shaft. Sunglasses in the building? Maybe they can join me.)

Part of my tired comes from a few weeks of traveling. The last Thursday in July, I got up at 4am, drove to Jacksonville, and caught an 8am flight to Bethlehem, PA. I had a four-hour layover in Detroit. I read Anna Karenina and resolved to carry much shorter books on all future flights. I arrived in Bethlehem at 4pm. Even though he was a long way off, I knew which blurry figure was Mike the moment I got off the escalator. I went with him to work that night and put faces to the names from two months of stories. The Moravian College campus was lush and full of beautiful old stone buildings. And, to make the experience complete, I got to stay in a pseudo dorm room that made GWU's accommodations look extravagant. Friday, I worked on manuals from the DOE while he played the role of sarcastic administrator for the camp. We flirted across the desk we shared. After work, we went for a run and got dressed for our swank dinner out on the town. I wore a red dress, and I made him "pick me up" from my room. We had dessert at a mom and pop joint downtown, and I got the owner to tell us how he got into making his own ice cream and how he chooses his flavors.

Saturday morning, we drove to New York City for the day. One of his best friends lives at Union Theological Seminary with his wife and two year old son. This kid loves "Mike-Cwo-wee" and answers "I do" to everything instead of "yes."
"Should I put the eggs in the pan?"
"I do."
And when people start laughing, even though he doesn't know why, he squeals "Laughing!" and joins in. We spent half of our day with them. While the husband cooked dinner, I discussed faith with his wife (an administrator at the seminary). She was fascinating.

The other half of the day, we walked around the city. We saw great Atta Kim and WeeGee exhibits at the photography museum, and we spent some time in Central Park. He took me to Grey's Papaya for my NYC hot dog (brown mustard and sauerkraut). I had to confess about the blisters I was getting on my feet from the shoes he had warned me about, and then to buy a new pair of shoes. When we finally drove away from the city that night, we were beat. Despite my best efforts, I fell asleep for half of the ride home. He's a good man.

Sunday, we got up and lugged our cameras to the old Bethlehem Steel factories to take pictures. I've always wanted to go out and take pictures with him. Unfortunately, the only way we could get in was on a tour bus with windows that were not conducive to picture taking. (Mike did not want to join me in climbing over the fence. I realized again that I am becoming my trespassing-loving mother.) I still took four rolls. That afternoon, he took me to the driving range to teach me how to hit golf balls. Now, another guy had once tried to teach me how to golf. He didn't count on my lack of coordination. By the end of my lesson with Mike, I was hitting them consistently but not very far. Baby steps.

Monday, I got up at 5am again and took a bus into New York City to research at the Ellis Island Research Library. That experience deserves its own post. I think I'll save that for later.

Tuesday, I flew back to Jacksonville at 11:30 pm, and got back to my apartment at 2am. On Friday, I drove down to Charleston for a bridal shower and to see family that was in town. I got back late Sunday night and had to start moving on Monday.

This past weekend, I finally had to say "no." Some really great friends from college were getting together in Tennessee, and I had planned on meeting up with them. But I hadn't slept ten hours in three nights combined, I would've had to break into my savings, and I would've driven 17 hours (round trip) to see people for 36 hours total. I was a little bummed this past weekend, but I had a good time with the roommate. We met our neighbors, talked, unpacked...good times.

Now, I'm tired. I'm going to be an old lady and go to bed before 10:30. Sometimes, it's nice to be old.

And now, for your moment of Zen...

American Dreamz

2006-07-21T10:09:00.000-04:00

My thoughts of an office rebellion began on a subtle July Monday morning. I was sitting in the copy room, listening to the clunk-clink-whiirrr of the copying machine with the 100 page double-sided “Production Specifications Guide” I was copying for just because. It was 10:15 and hot, and suit jackets and cardigans were already being shed and manila folders serving as makeshift fans.

In the copy room, I found a plastic seat where I was eye-level with the top of the blue-green cabinets, each with a ripped sticky note, denoting the type of paper housed behind each door. I notice the layering of neutral colors in a puke-ish haze. Blue-green cabinets, taupe walls, burgundy-cushioned chairs, charcoal desktops. If I sit still too long, the sensor decides that I don’t exist and the light turns off; I flail wildly to get the lights back on.

Flailing fit over, I eye the post office boxes – a sturdy, thick translucent material with a wire rim. They would be useful in my upcoming move. Initially, I have no intention of stealing the boxes. Then, I see the black print at the bottom:

“Maximum penalty for theft or misuse of postal property $1,000 fine and 3 years imprisonment.”

I want to load up as many as I can carry and run for the stairs. If I get five boxes, does that mean $5,000 and fifteen years in the slammer? What type of “misuse” could I get into that would warrant such penalties? Stealing mail? Carting stolen money from a bank? Beating someone until they develop a faint bruise? Sledding down the stairs?

I’m slightly satisfied by this thought. The diplomacy and non-abrasiveness of everything here can make you a little crazy. I wonder if I’m alone in this – if this is just a cosmic sign that this isn’t where I need to spend the next 25 years, slowly developing a hunched back and bad eyes.

I’m also increasingly annoyed by all of the signs in the copy room. Over the mail bins and recycling tubs are torn and faded, and often handwritten notes with thinly veiled frustration.

No personal mail – take your letters down to the bin in B1!!

No Xerox wrappers in the Recycling Container.

Use only the Quick Copy paper in the copiers.

Load the paper according to the arrows on the OUTSIDE of the package.

If you use the copier in the afternoon, load more paper. Do not load it on top of the old paper, but move it to the top. If you don’t, the paper will misfeed [and everyone will hate you.]

Please don’t make a mess in here and if you do______ clean it up!! (This self-proclaimed “Friendly Reminder” was posted and dated October 15, 1998 by someone named Jenn or Tenn or Venn or Lenn – I can’t tell.)

At some point, someone decided to make these pretty by “matting” them on construction paper, but the mats have separated from their documents and both have been given a healthy pat to stay on the wall.

I’m frustrated by the rules and procedures and processes. That’s when I start to notice the signs of rebellion. Under “The Wrappers Contain a Plastic which is Not Recyclable!! Thank You!!” someone has written [You’re welcome!!]

Above the copier, the sign reads,
“To save toner, please leave[!!]

lid down when copying.”
I’m tempted to comply.

Someone has dumped the rubber bands and drawn a smiley face on the bottom of the container.

Someone else has written “SICK” three times in the dust on the wall.

Another one of my coworkers has adjusted his cubicle so one wall becomes a makeshift door. When he wants to be left alone, his cubicle just fades in with the rest of the walls. He’s safe.

Yes, the rebellion starts slowly. It will probably maintain that pace and only move as quickly as the herd ambling from the cafeteria and dispersing among all eighteen floors of our building. After all, this is an ROTC (Running Out The Clock) job for many people.

It’s not all bad. I get a sick satisfaction from finding copy errors or inconsistencies. It justifies my years of nerdiness. I also kind of like the fake spat I have with another office person. My camera phone has been helpful in sending threatening pictures to her work email address.

And, if I’m going to do the office thing, I don’t know that I could have a better group of people to work with. I get souvenirs from other people’s vacations, and hugs when I return from my own. My boss takes the time to say, “So, really, how are you doing, Tara?” at least once a day. The other part-time editor has become a close friend and advisor. In thirty years, if I can be half as cute and sexy and wise as these women, I’ll be thrilled. They make my future not seem so daunting. I like watching the copy boy mature from a party boy to a committed and loving young man. I love the occasion poems and racy stories that come from the last person I would have expected. And there’s the office hippie who continually surprises me with the places he has been and the things he has done. (I think I’ve mentioned these people before, but they deserve another mention.)

Despite all of these good things, I’m still going a little stir-crazy. Maybe that will push me to be more productive in my non-office hours? Right now, that involves reading Anna Karenina (Tolstoy’s brilliant) and planning a trip to NYC to research for my thesis and to PA to visit Mike. TWO MONTHS since I’ve seen that guy – he has been working and we didn’t think we could swing a visit. I leave this coming Thursday.

Originally, I was to be leaving for UF and my Ph.D. right now. I’m slowing down to enjoy the inevitable changes that will occur over the next year.

Blow out the candles, make a wish.

Mediocre Artistry and Unbridled Dorkiness

2006-07-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

One of the things I love most about Tallahassee (yet frequent the least) is the bohemian artsy section called "Railroad Square." Just having it nearby makes me feel a little better about Tallahassee (and our phallic capitol building). Go south on Macomb over Gaines, past the All Saints Cafe - the coolest 24-hour coffee house ever, and over the railroad tracks. You know you're there when you see the yellow brick road and the mammoth metal sculpture/collages everywhere. And the art studios. And the first Friday of every month, they open all the studios and stores, play live music, sell wine and beer, and hundreds of people come out to wander, buy, and be inspired. I mostly did the latter.

[vintage poster prints matted on painted canvas------------->]

After some aimless wandering and really good sushi with Lauren, Amber, and Chris, the only thing I wanted this weekend was to throw myself into a few projects. Despite the birthday party at the Baba, church, THE game/lunch with a few new friends, and then more socializing with my church's 22-35 group (where I met more lovely new people), I got through a lot this weekend.

[<------------vintage postcards glazed into a painted serving tray]

I bought an electric (palm) sander (yeess!!), put all of my loose photos into albums, cleaned and organized my closet (by season, type, and fabric texture), and refinished the coffee table and end table in my living room. Tonight, after work, I glazed some vintage Florida postcards onto the bottom of a serving tray, cut a picture to adhere to a raised-tile picture mount , and mounted several pictures from a vintage calendar on painted canvases.
[vintage poster cut to fit tile - I may seal this and make it a giant coaster? Is there a need for a giant coaster?------------>]

I'm sick of moving half-finished projects from one apartment to the next. I didn't get around to the Seinfeld Days-of-the-Week underwear I was going to create for a friend about a year ago. I'm over those now. I'm trying to think of a new concept, since the last set of Days of the Week underwear I made for myself just aren't doing it for me anymore. (The celebrity-themed underwear used all old pictures from when they were in their glory. The set included: Patrick Swayze Sunday, Ralph Macchio Monday, Tony Danza Tuesday, Webster Wednesday, Ted Danson Thursday, Fonzie Friday, and Tom Selleck Saturday.)

I'm open to any new theme ideas. (Maybe an academic theme? Freud Friday? Edward Said Saturday? Spivak Sunday? Raymond Williams Wednesday? Too nerdy??)

The three problems with these underwear are that:

1) I have to use white Hanes to get the iron-on transfers to show, and I often feel very granny in these now and don't want to wear them.

2) I get so excited, I want to show everyone. But I can't. So then I get frustrated.

3) I'm the only one who actually gets excited, and I annoy everyone around me with my dorky enthusiasm and bad taste.

But I'll still do 'em.

This post is too long now, and I still have laundry to do. I wanted to do a brief update. But, like everything else this weekend, this started small and ended up a little hyper-vigilant.

Speaking of these tendencies (one last story)... I was desperate for some headphones for a student's tutoring session on Friday, so I ran all over the department and finally found a pair courtesy of my music-loving thesis director (and academic rockstar). He was hesitant at first because he had just used them when he worked out. I reassured him that I had anti-bacterial wipes to take care of them before and after use.

He just looked at me. "Oh my - you're serious? HA! Of course you do. Of course."

That's when I realized that maybe I have a problem. And maybe that's the one thing my hyper-awareness has failed to pick up on, even though everyone else has.

Sad thing is - I kind of like my problem. It's me - take it or leave it.

[<-----------grey-green distressed table BEFORE refinishing]

[refinished, newly distressed red tables, which isn't really as orange-y as it looks here---------------------------->]

Saying Goodbye to Neil

2006-06-26T22:09:00.000-04:00

My father’s tone remains the same when he’s trying to tell me a joke and when he’s delivering bad news. (And his voice doesn't show sadness - only his pauses.) That’s how he told me about Neil – with no forewarning. I had called home on my way out to meet my friend Lauren at Andrew’s downtown.

“We just got a call from Chuck who was with Neil in Charleston last weekend. He said Neil was out riding his motorcycle and he was in another accident. Except he didn’t make it."

Didn’t make it – like it was a sports team or a flight he wasn’t quite adequate or timely enough to “make.” I was sobbing as I turned my car back towards my apartment. There was nothing to say, but as soon as I got off the phone with them, I wanted to call back. I wanted to crawl through the phone and cry in their arms. Everything was going on as usual here. I wanted to be with the people whose lives also felt interrupted.

Neil wasn’t technically family, but when he took over David’s downstairs apartment and started working for my dad, you couldn’t have told any of us that. He had the run of the house, and spent many late nights in kitchen talks with the family. He was always polite, but he was also always going to do what he wanted. My mom would always call after him to wear his helmet and be safe. He would “yes ma’am,” and then we’d hear him doing a wheelie down the street. Neil was so charming and irresistible, no one could ever actually get mad at him – just shake their heads and smile.

He loved his motorcycle – a sporty little Honda – and I think it fit him well. He could enjoy how it felt to speed. He made up errands just so he could run all over Charleston. I don’t know of him making any long-term plans – he just wanted to enjoy the ride. He was carefree, but not flaky. He would sit around and talk about God, or love, or happiness with anyone. Everybody loved Neil.

I think that’s why we were all very sad to hear that he died. He had been doing tricks in the Anderson Mall parking lot with some of his buddies. He lost control while attempting a wheelie and crashed into a concrete wall. He died almost instantly – or at least I’d like to think that since I don’t really know – from severe chest trauma and a spinal fracture. The newspaper said that his friends were standing in the rain and watching, and couldn’t offer any comments. A dark black stain and orange spots of police spray paint mark the spot now. Ah, Neil.

People came from all over for his funeral – Florida, California, Virginia, North Carolina…It has been hard to say goodbye. I think if I remove myself from it and make it a story I’m telling, it’s easier. I’m observing, not experiencing. And the guy in the casket looked nothing like Neil. His face was twice its size and it was covered in thick makeup. I feel like I told the guy in the casket goodbye, but I still expect Neil to come around.

His grandmother, Mama Jo, stood by the head of the casket to receive condolences. Neil grew up in Mama Jo's house. She hugged me and told me that they had donated his organs, so that part of Neil still lives on. “He was a perfect specimen 'cause he's young. They even took his eyes. I asked the man to cut his hair while they're at it. It was too long. He'd always say, 'The girls like it.'”

When we walked away, my brother said he catches himself thinking of how he wants to call Neil and laugh with him about who was there and how he was dressed and what they were saying, but...

While it was sad, I think most people there felt peace that Neil is in heaven. Most, but not everyone. His father gave an emphatic plea for everyone to, “Next time you want to make a bad decision, don’t. Don’t do it for Neil. Make his death mean something.” I’m just as guilty of always wanting a reason for something, but something in the way his father said that made me question this tendency. We want reasons and meaning and purpose so that everything can fit nicely, be processed, and then be filed as a “lesson” for future reference. I don’t think life is random, but I also don’t think we should always feel like we can understand everything. We can’t. But this is always easy to say when my emotions aren’t suppressing my reasoning.

That was this past weekend. In two days, I drove from Tallahassee to Atlanta to Anderson and back. I got back late Sunday night and now I’m off. As long as I stay busy, I’m okay. Maybe this coming weekend, when I’m with my family again, I can grieve a little more. I’ll let the pressure out slowly so I don’t spill over. There’s enough to do during the week now.

One thing that still needed doing was finding a new home. My roommate and I had decided to make everything easier on ourselves by just staying in the same apartment for next year – a perfect plan…except the property managers had already rented our place. Mims called to tell me that around noon today. The hunt was on again, and she’s studying for an exam tomorrow and, on Thursday, leaves for a one month volunteer gig in Charlotte. We had to move quickly. She gave me permission to just find a place for us and take care of everything, but I didn’t feel good making such a big decision for both of us. I went through several websites, put together a listing of places that met our criteria (2/2, W/D, close(ish) to school, affordable). I suppressed my inner-cheapskate in favor of safety (i.e. – the 2/2 that was $430 and in a notorious neighborhood). I gave her the list, made an appointment to see one place, and we began our hunt (again). This met all of the above qualifications, but it was small. Outside felt dry and deserted. Another place I kept going back to – literally around the corner from where we live now- was also managed by the same company. It was being shown at the same time, so our girl sent us over to look at it. It’s a 1,200 sq. ft. 2/2 townhouse WITH an enclosed back patio. It’s nice. And it’s BIG (when it’s empty) with high ceilings and walk-in attic storage space AND window seats in the upstairs room. I’m most excited about the wall of built-in bookshelves on the second floor. We saw it at 4:45, and signed the lease by 5:45. (And, it’s Bruiser-friendly.) Neither of us had time to mess around. The only problem is that we’ll have maybe a 5 day move-in window. Worst case scenario will be one day, and Mims gets back from her trip only several days before. It’ll be rough. The fact that I will need to prime my “picked acorn” room doesn’t make it any easier.

Now that things are a little more settled, I’ve fallen back into Walker Percy. The Second Coming. I’m reading for pleasure. It’s my therapy. (Also reading The Burden of Representation by John Tagg. Percy’s a little more accessible and fun.) I’ve missed reading.

Now, work beckons. Actually, it has gotten sick of beckoning. It’s giving me the cold shoulder. I must woo my work. Maybe I’ll remember all the reasons I fell in love with it in the first place? Maybe.

(Mims just moments before we signed our lease.)

My Doppelganger and the Governor's Handshake

2006-06-15T00:03:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, I was so overwhelmed by a Memphis music and movie store that I balked and bought one of the first things that caught my eye – Superchick (1973). I was repulsed by the bawdy cover until I turned it over to read, “Tara B. True has created the perfect life for herself as a plain, unassuming airline stewardess. But once she lands she really takes off, transforming into Superchick – blonde, beautiful, and ready for action…” It was vain – I know this. But the appeal of hearing my name (which never makes it to personalized pencils, keychains, mini-license plates…) when it wasn’t referring to a big ole house was worth the $5. Plus, I’ve developed an unhealthy appreciation for things that are bad. It has been worth every penny.

Am I recommending this movie? Not really. Were it produced today, the movie would never earn the mild “R” rating it was given in 1973. One website describes the movie as, “Arguably campy and noticeably tame by today's cinematic standards, Superchick's humor, attitude, and ‘what-were-they-smoking?’ inherent quirkiness has proudly earned the film prominent billing in the 99 Cent Video Review movie library.” One of Tara’s love interests is a surgeon who won’t kiss her because “Germs. They’re everywhere. I…sigh…I just can’t kiss you.” (Even though we can see now that her promiscuity made this a wise decision by the surgeon.) This is after he proposed to her by saying, “Tara, you should marry me. I’m rich, you know.” (Other gems are not really appropriate for a general audience and will not be reprinted here. My roommate and I would look at each other and say, “Did they really just say that!?”) As a “stewardess,” Tara sported a baggier version of the airline’s uniform. “With my shape and measurements, I couldn’t wear my uniform form-fitting. I did that once and I was even hit on by the autopilot.” She only travels with a large empty white purse that carries her skimpy white tennis outfit and knee-high red boots, among other outfits. Obviously, many things separate me from Superchick.

However, some similarities warranted more research on our heroine. Tara’s “frumpy-girl” hair is similar to my current style. Then it got a little weird. Joyce Jillson (“Tara B. True”) is my exact height. She was born on – get this – December 26, 1946. (If you continue a sequence of single-digit even numbers, it goes 4-6-8-0-2-4-6… and I was born in 1980 – the next numbers in the sequence! Okay, that’s a stretch.) She is better known as Nancy Reagan’s astrological advisor during her husband’s administration. She claims to have recommended George H. W. Bush to the Reagans. George H. W. Bush is the father of John Ellis “Jeb” Bush – the Governor of Florida. Ole Jeb-o stopped by my desk today on his way through the DOE. The circle is complete.

You’re spooked, right?

Quick commercial break before we go back to the Tara Connection – I actually did meet the Governor today. The word went out on email that Jeb Bush would be coming by our cubicles this afternoon. I didn’t believe it until I saw a photographer with a really big camera walking around our floor. I organized my cubey, concentrated on my posture, and tried to read through the reports in front of me. I didn’t know he is so tall. He was very nice – asked us what we were working on and what we do when we’re not working part-time – and seemed very pleasant. Despite my complaints about certain administrations, I was momentarily star-struck. And here I thought I was excited when the Office Depot order came in and I got more page flags and red pens.

Commercial break over. Back to my doppelganger…

Another source says, “Cashing in on the blossoming 1970s' sexual liberation movement, [Superchick ‘s director) Forsyth chose Jillson to epitomize the ideal post-feminist woman: self-reliant, successful, self-assured, and seductive enough to possess a suitor in every port. ‘Life's made up of people, not just one person,’ Superchick (who's devoid of any ‘superpowers’ other than her own intellect and sexual frankness) tells her multiple love interests in the film's surprisingly philosophical conclusion. ‘I take life the way it is -- people the way they are. I don't want to change it or them. I will live the lives I choose, with or without you.” While I don’t agree that this movie is a model for the feminist woman, I dig her independence and self-awareness. I’ll abandon the rest of that rant off for now and leave you with one last comment about Joyce Jillson. Astrologist. Richard S. Newcombe, president of Creators Syndicate, writes, "She took something that was somewhat stodgy and made it full of life -- just as she was.” Stodgy and full of life – that’s our Tara (B. True).

Thanks for humoring me.

I started my spring cleaning this week in anticipation of Mike’s arrival on Saturday. Spring cleaning means that everything gets pulled out and trashed or organized according to a system I can never keep consistent. But Mike surprised me Friday evening at dinnertime; the house was still mid-cleaning. I was still excited to see him.

Bruiser, however, wasn’t as excited as I had hoped. We know he hates men, but we didn’t realize how much. Now we’re a little more aware of his feelings. Friday night, he barked until he threw up. We worked out a system where if Mike wanted to come into the apartment, I would shoo Bruiser into his comfortable residence or into the kitchen. The barking would only stop if Mims was here or if I gave him a dirty look and a stern “NO!” I felt like an ogre. Instead of warming up to Mike, Bruiser became more brave and actually nipped his heels twice. We were getting desperate; I was afraid we’d get evicted. The solution? Leftover salmon, water guns, and a system of “time out” places from his crate to the kitchen to his crate in the kitchen. After one very miserable day for Bruiser, it worked beautifully. We had been afraid to do anything “mean” to him, but an episode of SuperNanny convinced me that we needed to set some boundaries for our problem child. By the time Mike left this morning, Bruiser was eating out of his hand. Score.

The long weekend with Mike was fun. We ate too much at good restaurants and I was finally introduced to Shingle’s – the best friend chicken I’ve tasted. He goes right about my speed – it’s really nice. And it will be a long and very very sad two months until I see him again. (He’ll be busy at a job with JHU’s Center for Talented Youth in Pennslyvania.) I get used to him being here (in a good way) and it gets harder each time.

On Monday, we drove down to Alligator Point for the day, but the tropical storm was starting to show and the waves were starting to splash onto the road. We ate our convenience store grub and drove back to Tallhassee. The rainy days made for nice naps and movie-watching opportunities. And, many opportunities for me to beat him in Mancala and air hockey. (But he dominated in Scrabble.)

Now, I’m back to work and making my own excitement. I found an apartment but I’m not moving until August. Until then, Mims and I are having fun watching bad movies, studying for law school (her), and reading for a thesis (supposed to be me)…and Bruiser has been sleeping a lot. And stretching. We have a little over a month to work out our differences. Wish me luck. Until then…Your Pseudo-Superchick

"OUR HOUSE...in the middle of the street"

2006-06-09T07:07:00.000-04:00

Ever since last Saturday, I've been on a relentless hunt for a new place. There isn't really a rush since we probably won't officially be out until mid-August, but I'm afraid that as the 18-22 crowd start their trek back to Tallahasee, the half-desirable places will be taken. I will be stuck sharing a flat with a gaggle of squealy, happy-to-be-away-from-home girls with no hygiene. (Not that there's anything wrong with that - some of my best friends are squealy, happy-to-be-away-from-home girls with no hygiene...)

But trying to find a place to house both Cujo and I hasn't been easy. Many places that allow pets do so because the old stains will not be easily distinguishable from the new. This is less than desirable. Even though I'm already over on my cell phone minutes (the only phone I have), I still spend at least four hours (not necessarily on the phone) every day trying to find a place to stay. I've also become the unofficial real estate agent for another lady in our office, who is trying to find a cheap apartment for her college-aged son. I've got it down to a science.

I considered a studio efficiency, but only because I am easily won over by gimmicks. Give me hardwood floors, high ceilings, and a translucent, wood-frame divider for the bathroom walls, and my discretion gets lost in my "ooohs." It was a peach cinder-block palace on the outside. When I realized only two pieces of [my cheap] furniture could make the move with me, I kept looking. Plus, Cujo and I might need some space.

The place I'm set on now is a 1/1 apartment in a newly renovated complex. Apparently this place used to be sort of bad before they evicted half of the tenants and got strict about their renters. It's next to good neighborhoods. They even made their own website. Even if they are all stock photos, I like the image they want to create for themselves. (Only one photo is actually from the Franklin Pointe Apartments.) I'm not sure about the big-brother-eyes on the "maintenance request" page...but the rest of it is pretty good.

The best part is that they'll take the Cooj and I'll have a nice amount of space to myself. If the Cooj and I can't make it work, I'll still like the apartment and the price. The bitter rental agent (personality conflicts with the other employees, I think) gave me insider tips on what to request so I get a really nice apartment. She mentioned that a seven pounder like Cooj might not make his mark enough to warrant the pet deposit ($100) and increased rent ($25) that comes with loving an animal. And, just like the translucent-bathroom-divider thingy in the studio, I think I got a little suckered by the decorating.

Once my dog and I love each other and I find an apartment, I'm afraid my life might just fade into a blue-grey cubicled monotony that is too bored to post entries. (I'm countering this by requesting the deluxe apt. with a large living room/dining room.) Until then, I'll keep you updated. A few years ago, I was writing about my solo travels. Now I'm just happy to be ankle-deep in housing possibilities. And I just found a great foam that deep cleans your carpet. "Don't get too close to my fire 'cause, uh, you'll just get burned."

The Decisionator Makes a Hasty Retreat (and Considers a Name Change)

2006-06-05T11:01:00.000-04:00

For those of you following my adventures - on Saturday, I found an apartment. I gave an enthusiastic "I'll take it", even after I saw her checking out my FSU license tag and then tell me that I needed to give her, up front, $485 x 3 ($1,455 - first and last month's rent and a security deposit). It's funny the little warning signs that you don't take into consideration.

Fortunately, there was Someone looking out for me with this little deal. I happened to stop by the house on my way back from the gym yesterday, and I ran into the previous tenants as they were clearing out their stuff. I asked one little question, "What do I need to know about the apartment?" They showed me the mildew on the baseboards, windowsills, and in the backs of the closets; the faucet that only turns off with pliers and pressure or the one that gives no hot water; the broken door that they were also told would be replaced before they moved in...they gave me strict instructions to have someone look at the plumbing, and they told me that their electric bill averages $150 because of the in-the-window AC unit that gobbles electricity. They had never heard of her asking for that much money up front. She hates college students.

By the time I left an hour later, I had already seen the woman's scar from where she had half of her liver removed, I knew the location of each of their seven children and how bored she gets at her mother-in-law's house, and I heard about how their relationship with the landlords (husband and wife) went sour when the wife-landlord decided to try to run the show. (They gave me the husband-landlord's cell phone number. Told me not to deal with her anymore.) I think they were happy that I stopped by because the wife-landlord tried to make them sound ignorant and irresponsible. I saw the other side of the story when I talked to them. They felt like they were trying to always do the honorable thing with these people - to be fair and to answer to God with their actions - and everything was playing against them. That being said, we agreed to not discuss the fact that we had our little meeting when I talk to the landlord again. They are in enough trouble, and I don't want to start off on a bad foot.

I feel a little foolish for not researching what I need to look for, such as the telling details of decay and neglect, before I made a decision. I won't make that mistake twice. (Another red flag: she wanted me to go ahead and turn the electricity on in my name on Monday [today] so the guys can have electricity when they go to replace the floor in the bathroom. I had already decided that I would only do this if the electricity they used is deducted from my rent.)

This doesn't mean this is definitely a "no" - i like the apartment. But, once you add in the utilities, I could get a really nice studio apartment (FROG) that includes EVERYTHING + amenities in Southwood! (see -->)

But I plan to walk through the apartment with her before I give her a single penny, get a list of things she plans on fixing before I will move in, and then only giving her the rest of the money once those things are done. And I will take pictures before I arrive, read the lease with a careful eye, and then keep a record of when I make complaints and how long it takes before they arrive to fix them. Actually, that might be a good general strategy full stop.

sigh...I feel like I'm back at square one. And I'm still feeling like an ogre for breaking up the blissful roommate/Bruiser relationship if I move, and it is becoming very difficult to find a decent place that allows pets, so...

Stay tuned - The Decisionator might just be changing her name to The Deliberator.

That might be my best transformation to date.

The Decisionator Strikes Again

2006-06-03T17:34:00.000-04:00

For the fifth time in two years, I am moving. Quick recap:

#1- Moved to Tallahassee from North Carolina - sublet townhouse for the first six weeks
#2- Moved to current apt. complex with new roommate Jen - had to settle for a micro apartamento for the first few weeks until the bigger one opened up
#3- Moved to townhouse with Jen
#4- Moved to other apt. with Miriam
#5- Move to my own little bungalow (pending)

I still hate moving. Since I had been planning on moving to Gainesville in the fall, I wasn't prepared for apartment-hunting in Tallahassee again. Knowing my propensity to collect an overwhelming number of options before evaluating a single one, I decided that I needed to go with my gut a little more. Today, I drove aimlessly through the city and left many messages with property management companies. I finally realized that everything is pretty much the same (with broad margins). The best deal I could get on a place was in the $400-$560 range. I just needed to find the least bad place.

As I finally decided to cry "uncle" and go home to wait for a call from the cheap little apt. in the semi-sketchy complex by the railroad tracks, I saw THE place. A small, grey house with white trim. I called the number on the "FOR RENT" sign. The price was good, her description was good. I went home to relax and start my other work, but I kept thinking about this house. I called the owner, and we met for a quick walk-through. It's not perfect, but it suits me for a year. It's older - the former residents did a doozie of damage on the floor and tub in the bathroom. All should be well before I move in. A young couple lives in the front half of the house, which makes me feel more safe.

The lack of a dishwasher only slightly dampens my enthusiasm. The stove is cute. Mentally, I've already started planting flowers and taking meals on my oversized deck. Of course, I may be anti-flower if I have to wake up to this (see below) wallpaper every day. I've always liked having a roommate, so this change will be huge. My current roommate had already put a deposit down on a new place much closer
to campus because I told her I was leaving.) Actually, she's not around right now, so this will be posted on the internet before she even knows I found a place. I should probably work on that.

In other news, Bruiser and I are starting to bond ever so slightly. We'll have to see how this all plays out once I introduce him to La Casa de las Flores.

And, I played with the law school students last night at Big Daddy's - probably the dirtiest little place on the Tennessee Street strip. My roommate's study partner has a band. I had a fantastic time. My quality of life has increased significantly recently; it makes me not hate myself quite so much. Everything is pretty enjoyable now. And the things that aren't - well I just have to let them go.

I hear the roommate stirring, so I should go give her the news and brush up on my dishwashing skills - or maybe I'll just enjoy the last few weeks of the whirring and whooshing of clean dishes.

A Plethora of Updates

2006-05-27T18:39:00.000-04:00

I still haven’t learned to budget for the perks of being an unmarried twenty-something-er. Weddings, travel, entertaining, traveling to be entertained, travel attire, wedding gifts, shower gifts, baby gifts, birthday gifts, "just because" gifts…but it’s worth it.

Baltimore was beautiful, but busy. Very bachelorette-y. We had six girls in the bride's townhouse and, halfway through the weekend, a disposable razor was flushed down the only toilet in the house - it was out of commission until one hour before the wedding. That made for funny discomfort. The matron of honor and I drove up from Richmond on Thursday and previewed the wedding night CD we made for the bride ("tap that badonkadonk") while we were stuck in D.C. traffic. I put together the beach bag of goodies for the bride. I had made a quick trip to Spenser's to buy a few things for the wedding night. It's hard to keep one's perspective in Spenser's. Everything showcases male genitalia. Even the most tame merchandise is embarrassing when it appears outside of the store. I asked the clerk to double-bag it and I wrapped it in several layers of teal and white tissue paper.

Thursday night was the quiet before the storm. Friday morning, the groomsmen arrived from Connecticut several hours early (7am) and crashed on the couches while we wrapped Reese's pieces in tulle secured with raffia for the wedding favors. The bridesmaid who knew the area left with a list and came back every few hours to drop off her goods and pick up a new list. By noon, some of us were slap-happy. The bachelorette party started at 5:30 and ended around 1am. We made a certificate for the bride's "release from bachelorette-dom" and gave a piece to each bachelorette participant. The bride had to earn her certificate through a series of dares, but she retained veto power. The best part - we got to dance. I didn't ever really dance until I was in college, and these were some of the first girls I ever danced with. Boys came and went and tried to impress us by sweeping us (literally) off of our feet. (Even with the most confident boy dancer, I always manage to screw up the spin. Maybe I'm too independent and awkward to be any good?)

The bridesmaid's luncheon, rehearsal, and rehearsal dinner were beautiful. I got a pedicure from a loquacious little pedicurist at the Greek-inspired salon two doors down from where we stayed and I bonded with a bridesmaid I knew mostly through stories. (My stories might be better if I could remember what all happened, but we were so busy even the day of the wedding and everything was so emotional, I can't keep it all straight.)

The morning of the wedding, I learned that my talent for tulle leaves much to be desired; the bride was so beautiful, I'm sure no one even noticed. The whole wedding was distinctive and elegant. The couple was married on top of Federal Hill overlooking the Baltimore Harbor, and their reception was in a room of the American Visionary Arts Museum at the bottom of the hill. She surprised the groom by serenading him with "At Last". Everything was beautiful. (Have I said that yet??)

Mike was incredibly helpful the day of the wedding, and I'm glad he got to come despite all of the chaos leading up to the wedding. I wanted my friends to finally meet him and it was fun to have so many of the people I love in the same room. We left after the wedding and I crashed in the car while he valiantly drove the whole way to Richmond. I felt bad - I had sworn that I'd stay up with him while he drove. The next day, I made the long trip from Richmond to Tallahassee in ten hours + a 45-minute layover at South of the Border. Am I the only person alive who thinks the tackiness of that place is appealing??

A few more updates are in order:

THIS DOG'S LIFE
Bruiser/Buddy/“Cooj” (short for “Cujo”) has formed a loving, trusting, and affectionate relationship with my roommate; I still get the cautionary stare from across the couch. It’s so pathetic, it’s funny – my dog just isn't that into me. I’m his despised sugarmama. I’d be hurt, except I abandoned him for two weeks when we first got him. He’s getting better as long as I pretend he doesn’t exist. He let me pet him four times today. If I try to show him that I want our relationship to work, he becomes distant and hostile. He’s such a dude.

TRUE LOVE WAITS
The biggest news is that I've decided to defer starting my Ph.D. program for a year. I've been contemplating this since before I made my initial decision and, for several reasons, starting this fall would be a really bad idea. One small reason is that if I can get a few things (my car) paid off this year, I won't need to work while I'm in my Ph.D. program. Not having a part-time job while I'm in school would significantly increase my quality of life. There are other reasons, but that'll do for now.

FUNKY COLD MEDINA
The good news is that this new resolve has also inspired me to get out of my funk. I'm exercising more, eating better, taking more time for friends, and starting to read for fun again. Watch out, world. I'm going to take my time and enjoy every bit of this. Independent Tara is not dying.

Midweek Zen

2006-05-17T09:41:00.000-04:00

This is going to be a cheesy and a bad post - I can already tell that. I haven't had enough time to process and I know that more will happen that will push these experiences out of the story rotation before I can write about them. You've been warned.

After a few days with old friends, I'm overwhelmed with goodness. I went to Gardner-Webb for roughly 36 hours to visit a few people that live in the area. Boiling Springs is a small town for so many memories. First, there was the four years of school, living in the apartments on the edge of campus, slipping on the mud as I ran to class, the old Williams building that still smells the same. Then, there are the memories from the year after graduation when I moved there for a job and other things - the heartache and growing pains that hard year. One friend used to run the perimeter of campus with me and we'd talk the whole time. We ran this again on Monday. The big things are the same, but the small details have changed enough that it no longer feels like home. (Then there was the time we played in the sprinklers and mud of the new football practice field.) I read stories and looked at pictures with one friend. Discussed life and literature and motherhood with another. I was sad to leave. That night, I went to Greensboro and sat up until 2:30 talking with friends and enjoyed some comfortable silence. With other old friends, there was some awkward silence. That happens and I'm okay with that.

Now, I'm finally with Mike in Chapel Hill. Yesterday, we split our meals between his friends; I'm inspired by their lives and their work. I want to be as full of life ten or twenty years from now. He's golfing with another old friend right now, and I'm about to go for a run. I have ridiculous faith in my last-minute efforts before a big event.

Big decisions about next year still nag me, but I'm putting them off for at least another week. I've decided to go on a thesis-bender when I get home - lock myself in my office at school for at least 48 hours or until I have forty more pages. No outside communication - just me, Ellis Island, Typhoid Mary, and Foucault.

The hard part is that Mims said that Bruiser is now completely cuddly and starved for attention, and all I want to do is to get home and play with him. I tell my friends stories about him and see their eyes glaze over, but I can't stop myself. I can't believe I've become that girl about a dog.

And now, a little more quiet before the whirlwind-of-a-weekend.

Nuptialpalooza 2006

2006-05-13T09:30:00.000-04:00

I'm on the first of two weeks of "Nuptialpalooza 2006." I'm starting out in Charleston for the first marriage out of my group of high school friends. (Another one is slated for early fall, and all of the other ones are in serious relationships. They're dropping like flies.) I'm with two of the other girls on program duty. This means that I'll have comrades with much better memories to help me when I am awkward and vague in my questioning as I sort through the messy mental files of pictures and names that have somehow blended from high school and college. My lack of a poker face is no help here.

Yesterday, we were invited to the lovely bridal luncheon at High Cotton on East Bay street downtown. The bridesmaids have glamorous jobs in New York City and San Francisco and, as they were telling me about them, I was alerted that my dress was being suctioned to the air conditioning uptake grate. Smoove. I practiced my best posture and not sawing with my fork.

For the rest of my stay here, the weather has been perfect. Last night, my brother and I took the top off of his Jeep and drove all over Charleston. We talked about our futures, our careers, our relationships...I'm hoping the rest of this week is just as enjoyable. This morning, I stayed in bed and read 100 pages of a book, had Oreos and milk for breakfast, and now I need to run all over town to find perfect wedding gifts and any supplies I might need to be the maid of honor extraordinaire next weekend. One of my best friends from college is getting married in Baltimore - the ceremony is on Federal Hill, and the reception is in the American Visionary Arts Museum. Tomorrow, I'm driving up to North Carolina to visit some of my friends in Boiling Springs, Shelby, and Greensboro. On Tuesday, I'm meeting Mike in Chapel Hill so I can meet some of his friends and Wednesday, we're driving up to his brother's house in Richmond. Thursday, I'm riding with the matron of honor to Baltimore where we'll try to make this the best wedding ever. I'm sure to get made fun of for how cheesy and excited I am - I'm bracing myself for that. By the time we get to me, everyone will be seasoned wedding experts. Right now, it's still a bit of us throwing our hands up in the air. (I love that phrase - picture a flock of disembodied hands being thrown into the air.) If we wait long enough, maybe the excitement will come back in style the way bellbottoms became flare leg jeans. (Yes? No?)

Before I go, an update on Cujo. When I got home from work Wednesday night, I realized that he was very perky, and that the pain medicine I had been giving him was making him drowsy and cranky. ($40 to make my dog in a bad mood - what an investment!) He perked up, started exploring the apartment a little more (with his poop) and actually spent the night between the couch and the end table. When I got home from work on Thursday, he was almost excited to see me. Usually, when we try to talk to him, he turns to the wall and blinks very quickly and tries to deny that we exist. He wanted to see everything I did and for me to pay attention to him without actually paying attention to him. I was sad to leave just as he was warming up to us.

As I drove onto Johns Island late Thursday night, I got a call from my roommate. "GUESS who just curled up on the couch next to me and let me pet him??" Yes, our little Cujo Tinman does have a heart. After a minute, he remembered that he hates us and went back into hiding. Baby's first cuddle! I'm missing so much with my life on the road...

Time to shake the birdseed from my dancing shoes.

Mommy's Reality-Check

2006-05-08T23:06:00.000-04:00

Neither my roommate nor I could sleep last night for our excitement to bring home our little bundle of joy today. I tested out several different "homes" for him and picked the one that looked less like a prison and more like a camp-y yurt. I also made sure we had an adequate supply of toys and treats. Time moved too slowly at work. At exactly 4:30, I left to pick up Mims and speed over to the hospital two miles from our house. It took us twenty minutes just to get there. Traffic was awful and we had a Florida storm, but we were giddy.

We filled out paperwork, met with the vet (from Elizabethtown, Kentucky), filled out more paperwork, paid, and then waited while they got "Hostetler shelter dog." I wanted everyone to know why I wanted to call him Bruiser. I don't think anyone else really cared.

Finally, the doors opened and out came a dog much cuter than what I remembered. Mims wrapped him up in the green chenille blanket we brought for the occasion. He looked terrified and exhausted. We decided we needed a "Baby on Board" sign to warn the maniac Tallahassee drivers. Mims rubbed the back of his neck and he almost fell asleep. Finally, we got home. The rescuing and healing could now begin. (Note: He's pretty drugged in this picture.)

We took him outside, gave him some food - I got him to eat out of my hand, and that was the last time we were allowed within a foot of him. I coaxed him into his little home with food and he refused to leave. We tried to build trust by gradually moving closer. While I was out for a run, Miriam said that he went into the kitchen and used the bathroom on the rug that was next to the puppy pad. At least he was close. We even took his yurt outside, but when Mims reached in to help him out, he snarled and snapped at her. Now, for some backstory - when I was in elementary school, the neighbor girls across the street had a little black spitz; I could never understand how they'd love something so evil. I remember standing on a dining room chair and refusing to move until he was locked up. I'd sit on the highest bar stools so my feet would be out of the range of his teeth. He bit my face the first time I met him. Today, Bruiser brought all of that back.

Knowing we were getting a dog that had been abused was almost romantic. I could love it to wellness. I wasn't realistic enough about what that meant. Joyce Meyer says that "hurting people hurt people" - and Bruiser still responds from the insecurity and lack of trust he used to survive his abusers. In the past month, he has gone from a bad home to a loud and scary animal shelter, to a trip to the hospital where strangers cut off his hoo-has, and now to our apartment. Dude has been through a lot. I keep reminding myself of that. I cannot respond to his attitude and withdraw - I have to move forward with patience and gentleness and love. Then again, he is a dog. While I thought I had read enough articles to understand the psychology of a dog, I'm realizing that I know nothing. I have to throw all of that away and to watch and learn. The good will come eventually. I'll get to cuddle. (As I'm sure you've figured out by now, this is about more than just a dog.)

I think this is revenge for my years of calling mean dogs "Cujo." Now, I'm Cujo's mommy.

(One final small victory: as I was typing, I could hear Bruiser drinking his water. At least he won't be dehydrated when he pees all over my kitchen. More to come...)

I'm a Spicy New Mommy

2006-05-06T18:04:00.000-04:00

If "spontaneity is the spice of life", then I have just become very spicy. For a very long time now, I have wanted a dog. I've been researching breeds and rescue organizations. I was even willing to drive ten hours to get this little yorkiepoo:

Unfortunately, they were sold out by the time I decided I might want to go for it. I had decided that I was being foolish and a dog was a bad idea now anyway.

Someone in our department sent an email about how the animal shelters are overwhelmed with pets that college students have left behind like the sofas and end tables that now fill the Tallahassee dumpsters. The shelter was on my way home this afternoon, so I called my roommate and we took a little trip.

It was heartbreaking. If I had the space, I would've gotten one of the older dogs that are less likely to be adopted because everyone always wants the younger, sexier puppies. We knew we needed a small dog. We picked the one that gave the greatest quiet cry for help - an adult chihuahua mix. He started shaking when I picked him up. I took him to the play room and he nuzzled his head into my lap. He would explore the room and then run back to my lap to kiss my face. He also looked like a kitten when he played with the ball on the floor. I whispered sweet nothings into his ear and, while my roommate bonded with him, I went for the application.

I was glowing when I asked for the dog from kennel 37. She looked at me apologetically. "He's already been adopted. He gets picked up Tuesday."
I almost cried. I told her that they really should put up signs so people don't get their hopes up and fall in love with someone else's dog.

"Well, there is another one..." Her hesitancy made me nervous. "He hates men. Seriously hates them. He freaks out when any of our guys gets near him. When he came here, his skin was rubbed raw from his collar. But he's really sweet - as long as you're not a guy."

"It's okay - I'm in a long distance relationship anyway," I said.

When they brought Buddy into the room, he was also shaking. I could see where the fur was coming back on his belly and under his legs. He wasn't as affectionate, he wasn't as playful, but I fell for his buggy little eyes. Someone told my roommate that they are more likely to euthanize the dogs with issues. That was all I needed to hear. I filled out the application. On Monday, they will clip his little manliness and then send him home with us. We made a trip to Petsmart to pick up supplies. I was a little covetous of the Westies and Boston Terriers - I have never really liked chihuahuas, and I detest making dogs cutesy. The more I think about his quiet sweetness and the help he needs, the more impatient I am about Monday. And, I've decided that he needs a better name. He needs a name that makes him feel tough and big.
I think I'll call him "Bruiser."

Mondays in May

2006-05-01T21:49:00.000-04:00

I don’t remember Mondays lasting this long. Last night, I got in from another (my official, originally planned turn) trip to Memphis. I couldn’t leave Tallahassee until that Saturday morning because I had to take my Spanish language proficiency exam. Most people brought in an old Spanish/English dictionary. I brought in a grammar book, two dictionaries, and various writing utensils (just in case). I was THAT girl.

Despite my meager Spanish college classes where my amigos composed ballads for our cute, single teacher (such as “dar me some secretos puntos”), I think I did well. But I was pretty groggy because, the night before, I decided to celebrate the last day of classes with some friends at the Bradfordville Blues Club. I felt like a cool cat. The directions were to drive out to the northernmost point of Tallahassee and take a right. When you’ve gone down the road so far you think you’re lost, you’ll see two tiki torches on the side of the road. Take a right and head up the road that the DOT has only heard of in stories. When you see the cinder block building with a bonfire and you can smell the fish frying, you’re there. We were far enough from the lights of the town to have a really nice night sky. I hate that I’m discovering this gem as I’m leaving the city. I hereby vow to go every weekend that I’m actually here.

I was still groggy and humming from the blues when I started my trip to Memphis. I broke up the trip by taking pictures of the 16-foot tall scrap metal rooster, the sign for Tri-State Casket Sales, and Mollywood with its life-size Elvis. When I finally got to Memphis, we walked over to the pizza café to meet his friend for dinner – the first of many body-sabotaging meals. We were more productive than usual. We had three days where he worked on stories and I worked on my thesis. We went running several times, watched movies, played with his friends, and ate. I went pillow-shopping and for pedicures with my P.F. (potential friend). We also had a two-man whiffle ball tournament, several Scrabble standoffs, and we got caught up on episodes of Lost.

Overall, we had a fantastic time. I forgot how easy it is when we’re together. I guess I took that for granted when he lived here. One of his friends had a cookout at her vintage house. Both she and her husband are artists, and nothing in this house is ordinary. We sat around a bonfire and told our stories. We visited his buddy at his new job at the coffee shop just so we could give him tips. We napped. It was ten kinds of nice. That’s probably why today felt so long. Grades are due tomorrow so I’m double-checking everything. And I’m putting on the brakes and hoping that the summer lasts a little longer. OR that I develop mad Herculean academic skeeellz. This time, I promise not to be picky.

Faster than a Gallon of Cheetahs

2006-04-17T21:18:00.000-04:00

Time for my latest discovery:

My video iPod has made traveling practically painless, but it has also decreased the time spent on soul-searching and goal-making. It's much easier to zone out in front of the Colbert Report ("Coal-bear re-poor"), the Office, or catch up with those crazy kids on Lost. (Thanks to DP...) I've also discovered podcasts. I have Ravi Zacharias's Let My People Think, vintagetooncast, NPR's daily report, Scientific American, BBC's Homegrown (British rap!), Ricky Gervais, the Onion headlines, Knopf's Poem-a-day...

Confession? Scientific American does not get nearly as much play as the vintage tooncast. Chalk up another one to my good intentions. I also sometimes cannot watch the screen on Lost because it scares me and I jump, and that is not a good thing while I am driving. (NOTE: To the naysayers - yes, I realize that driving and watching a tv screen is also not a good idea while driving. Point acknowledged.) And I ONLY watch these on the straight stretches of dead interstate where the only life comes from Pedro's beckonings to his personal kitsch mecca on I-95.

The road is starting to feel more normal than home. Last Thursday night, I drove up to Atlanta and stayed with my brother and his wife. I arrived at 11, we talked until 12:30, and then I started revisions on my popular culture conference paper. Two and a half hours of sleep and several hours of awake later, I printed the incomplete version and navigated into the deep of Atlanta and the Marquis Marriott. I tried to look important in my navy wrap dress (an oldie but kind-of a goodie), camel wedge shoes, modest earrings, and impressive computer bag, and to practice my business woman's strut. And I prayed that no one would show. I felt lucky to get the 8am panel, which coincided with the PCA board meeting and a tour of Atlanta's cemetaries. That precluded two large groups of the PCA crowd. I was nervous about the size of the room; it seated forty and our table was a little too neatly laid out with notepads and pens. I was sweating as much as the silver pitcher perfectly placed in the middle of the table. At 7:50, I was alone in the room.

A few minutes before 8, the panel's chair/presenter arrived with her husband and one of her advisors. Her paper was part of her dissertation in New Media Studies from a Canadian university. Mine was a late-night effort in a class on sympathy and affect. Presenter number three didn't show. The largest part of our audience (three more members) came in slowly while I delivered my paper. I lost my inspiration to really present the paper and make it as interesting as possible. I wanted to move quickly so they wouldn't ask any questions. (I wrote a critique of the use of the image of the suffering child to raise funds for many humanitarian organizations. It's more involved than that, but also a lot more boring.) The other, much more interesting paper was on the mythology of memorial spaces - specifically the space occupied by the twin towers, and the discussion about how it is to be memorialized (and by whom).
Response to both of our papers was wildly positive and encouraging. I felt good (and tired) as I got in the car and headed to Charleston for the weekend and the long stretch of I-20.

Easter weekend at home was good. The family gets together and we all fall into our old roles with one very good new exception - my new sister-in-law. She is wonderfully sweet and caring and we love her. She's a sharp contrast to my biting humor. She's the GOOD Hostetler girl now. I am ornery, and was told so on several occasions this weekend. We went to the beach, ate, talked, rode bikes...it was nice and way too short. (I also tagged along as one of my good friends from Charleston shopped for her wedding dress.) My cousin told his mom that he "can run faster than a whole galllon of cheetahs!!" She asked, "Do you know how many cheetahs are in a gallon? A gallon is what we get our milk in." He gave a sheepish "Oh" and a giggle and ran off (like a cheetah?).

There wasn't any indication of the recent vandalization on our house, but I noticed that my old notebooks and letters had been dumped all over my closet. (They had been in the bottom and back of a closed cabinet.) My mom told me that some of my notebooks were open like someone had been reading through them. I felt sick. I prefer to choose my secrets that get shared with the world.

More news from home will have to wait. Until then, I have to learn espanol para un test on sabado. As you can see, I need major ayuda - more than the Spanish channel can give me ahora.

Sierra del fuego.

"Here I Go Again On My Ooooowwnn..."

2006-04-13T15:54:00.000-04:00

Quick Updates:

It’s been too long. The stories have piled up so high that the time (and attention) it would take to go through everything recent is more than I can handle. And we all know that I’m often the first person to lose interest in my own story, and make everyone else follow suit.

First of all, after a miserable couple of months since I’ve known that I actually have a choice for my Ph.D., I’ve made a decision. Many of you may have thought that I made the decision already based on the fact that I called everyone and bought a t-shirt and cups (my “I’m going to UF!” stage), and then became so sad about leaving that I left everything in the bag on my floor (my “I’m going to FSU!” stage). I do better without a choice. A big thank you to all the friends who have talked me back and forth about this, the professors who offered their wisdom, and the strangers who asked and had no idea what they were getting themselves into. My apologies, too.

I’m going to the University of Florida in Gainesville.

However, since many people (outside of Florida) don’t know the difference between the two, you probably thought I was going there already. No need to take down that mental post-it – now it’s true. And I haven’t been calling people to tell them; I’m sick of bugging everyone about it.

Ultimately, it came down to the move that would help me have the best career options in four years. Unless you’re an academic rockstar (or working with one), it doesn’t look great that you stay with one program the whole way through. Every time I heard someone disprove this theory, I got excited and decided to stay. Even then, I was disappointed in myself for giving in to fear.

I’m sad to leave the friends I’ve made here, but they’re leaving this year or next year anyway. The grad lounge in the Williams building will fill with strangers and I’ll feel strange. While I am not nearly as endeared to these professors as I am to my old G-dubb professors, I have become more comfortable with them than when I first started.

Now, I’m off to a whole new level of uncomfortable.

I’ll save my goodbyes for later.

In other news, I am still recovering from a spontaneous weekend excursion (remember them??) to Memphis last weekend. Late Thursday night, Mike and I were discussing the emotional disadvantages of our respective geographic locations. When we got off the phone at 2, I (very poorly) packed a bag. I got in touch with his best Memphis friend to let him in on my little plan and, after three hours of sleep and 6 hours of work, I packed up the Camry and headed west on I-10.

Along the way, I gave detailed descriptions of the night out on the town I was having with the girls, even though I was sure he could hear the driving rain of the Mississippi/Tennessee storms in the background. Remember the storms that killed several people last weekend? Tara’s luck: I drove right through them. My brother and my roommate both kept me updated on the tornado warnings. I decided it was not a good time to catch up on my movie-watching. Or my grading.
At a very tired 1am, I walked up to his house and started pounding on the door. Initially, he did not appreciate my excitement and I could hear his grumblings. He jumped as soon as he opened the door. He looked at me, looked at my car, looked at me, looked at my car, and then it hit him. I got a really great hug (one where your feet come off the ground). It was a great trip.

Saturday, we made breakfast at his buddy’s place, and then all three of us hopped in his blazer and headed down to Oxford, Mississippi. We spent a couple of hours at Rowan Oak – Faulkner’s home. Did you know that he has the plot sequence to one of his books written on the walls of his office? Brilliant. Then, Mike and two other Memphis students read their work at Ole Miss. (He’s so good!) We went to an after-party that served Cosmos and wine, and, late that night, pulled back into Memphis. The next day, we went to a friend’s co-ed surprise baby shower, and I left around 4pm. Very sad. Another two hours of sleep on Sunday night and that (kind of) brings you to right now.

Now…when I’m packing up a bag for a conference in Atlanta at 8am tomorrow, then to Charleston for the weekend.

It just doesn’t stop.

And now, I’ve really lost interest in my own stories, so…for now…

Love and decisiveness,

Tara

Sunday Thoughts - Not My Own

2006-03-26T11:41:00.000-05:00

This used to be much easier...

"Perhaps the only thing that anyone can be absolutely sure of is that he will never be able to prove it either way--with objective, verifiable proof. We can know that in the beginning there was God and not just some cosmic upheaval that brought light out of darkness only when [emphasis mine] we have experienced him doing the same thing in our lives, our world--bringing light out of our darkness.

To put it another way, unless there is some very real sense in which the Spirit of God moves over the dark and chaotic waters of this age, these deeps of yours and mine; unless God speaks his light- and life-giving word to me, then I do not really care much one way or the other whether he set the whole show spinning x billions of years ago. Unless I have some real experience of it myself, then even if someone could somehow prove to me objectively and verifiably that it all happened just as Genesis declares, I would be tempted to answer him with the two most devastating words in the English language: so what?"
[...]
"But notice this: that love is not really one of man's powers. Man cannot achieve love, generate love, wield love, as he does his powers of destruction and creation. When I love someone, it is not something I have achieved, but something that is happening through me, something that is happening to me as well as to him[...] So the power of God stands in violent contrast with the power of man. It is not external like man's power, but internal. By applying external pressure, I can make a person do what I want him to do. This is man's power. But as for making him be what I want him to be, without at the same time destroying his freedom, only love can make this happen. And love makes it happen not coercively, but by creating a situation in which, of our own free will, we want to be what love wants us to be. And because God's love is uncoercive and treasures our freedom--if above all he want sus to love him, then we must be left free not to love him--we are free to resist it, deny it, crucify it finally, which we do again and again. This is our terrible freedom, which love refuses to overpower so that, in this, the greatest of all powers, God's power, is itself powerless."
[...]
"faith here is not so much believing this thing or that thing about God as it is hearing a voice that says, 'Come unto me.' We hear the voice, and then we start to go without really knowing what to believe either about the voice or about ourselves; and yet we go. Faith is standing in the darkness, and a hand is there, and we take it."
-Frederick Buechner, The Magnificant Defeat

...but I'd rather throw out the old boxes and wrestle for every inch of understanding and hold a hand in the darkness and grow through my doubt. On most days, at least.

Bow-wow-wow yippee-yo yippee-yay

2006-03-08T00:03:00.000-05:00

Updates: I have officially heard back from 9/12 of my schools.
I've been accepted at FSU, UF, and UK - all of which are decent programs with unique specialties. Gainesville sounds a little more appealing than Lexington, and it's a much better deal. I'm waitlisted at Emory, but I'd be shocked if that changes. Just being waitlisted is enough for me right now. Every day, I make a different, passionate resolve about the next year of my life. I've been asking everyone, "If you had it to do all over again, would you?" But I don't think that's a fair question. It's like me telling them to actively regret or praise their lives - with a slant towards the former. All of this analysis is starting to bore me into actually making a decision. I just have to trust that all things will turn out for good.

Speaking of trust, (Sorry, I couldn't think of a good transition)...
Two weeks ago, my parents' house was ransacked. The thieves, not realizing that we are the kind of people who trust banks and still have our first color tv, dumped every drawer and overturned every mattress. They took my father's laptop, printer, and over $100 in quarters my brother was collecting. We've lived there for over twenty-five years, and this is the first problem we've had. I suggested that we invest in a security system. My mom got a dog.

My mom blames our lack of canine representation on the recent break-in; our dog just died a couple of months ago. It's not that she was especially fond of Pooch - she just doesn't form emotional attachments to animals. But she did memorialize his death with a wooden cross and a typed eulogy. To cheer her up, I sent her twenty pages of information on dog breeds and pictures, but she "wasn't ready yet." However, the Saturday after our break-in, my parents went to the SPCA and got a new "security system." Dad didn't want anything that could possibly wear a sweater. They brought home a chocolate lab named "Edisto."

At first, my parents were enamored with the pup. My dad took him to work a few times; my mom would walk him in the park that is a twenty minute drive. But his shyness quickly wore off and now my parents have to puppy-proof their lives. With a baby, you have to make adjustments in the house so the baby will be safe. With a puppy, you have to make adjustments so the house won't get ruined. He ate through his bottle of antibiotics and the bed my mom bought him. The world is his chew toy. I can't wait to meet him.

However, the death of Pooch caused my four year-old cousin to ask big questions about death. After giving it some thought, he has decided that he would prefer not to go to heaven. For one thing, heaven sounds boring. It's too full of pretty stuff. "But South Carolina has the beach and 'quarium", so he has decided he'd just like to stay there. Another day when they were out running errands, he asked his mother if cars go to heaven. When she told him "no", he grumbled, "I wish I was a car."

In our next issue of "Tara's Adventures of Naught," I will discuss my trip to Maryland and my week with Mike. Until then...you stay classy, planet earth.

Mommy Dearest

2006-03-05T23:45:00.000-05:00

My weekend of playing mother is officially over. For the past 56 hours, I have been cook, maid, entertainer, chauffeur, referee, singer, and craft technician for an 8 year old and a 10 year old (with a brief stint as a vegetarian dragon with a British accent and mild lapses into other poor imitations of accents). I’m tired. With my students, I can anticipate the problems that could arise and arrange my plan to reduce the chances of failure. Sisters aren’t so easy – especially when they’re two intelligent and perceptive young ladies. Because I never had a sister, I underestimated the territorialism and the range of catalysts for arguments. I found myself searching for the logical response to “she’s breathing too close to me.” Everything is about turns and equality and justice – or there’s screaming. Actually, it usually starts with screaming and the response to my pointed, logical questions is “becaaaaause [huffy breath]!” I somehow unconsciously block arguments that make no sense to me, such as the “don’t let her sing on the songs on my CD,” but this only leads to more screaming and huffy breaths. I don’t feel like a very good babysitter. Sometimes, I reply with my own huffy breath.

I sound like the babysitting grinch. When they aren’t fighting, these girls are funny and affectionate and make wonderful observations about the world. They’re also polite and I can tell that their parents have given careful instructions about where and when certain behavior is appropriate. I only have to speak to them once, and they obey and are instantly repentant. When I was afraid they’d hold grudges because of how “mean” I was being, they would surprise me with a nice hug and a nuzzle into my shoulder. They want me to sing to them before they go to bed, and they always give me a good hug and tell me they love me. I always have a good time with them, even if “we” get up at 6:58am on the weekends. I love them for their “cool teen” books and pink cowboy boots and hair that is brushed twice a day. I sometimes forget how young they are.

They’re finally in bed, the guinea pig, cat, dog, and fish are all asleep, and I am about to start spring break 2006 which will consist of working as much as I can the next four days before I fly to Maryland to see my girls and relive what I love so much about them – they feel like home. I checked my email and mailbox constantly the past few days – no new news from Ph.D. programs (aside from my official offer from one school). If I wasn’t me, I would think I was a little crazy about this whole thing. The girls certainly did when we passed by my mailbox four times on Saturday before we finally saw that I was getting nothing.

That’s all I have for now. I now somewhat understand the harried look on a young mother’s face; I understand why she isn’t wooed by the charms of the children that I find to be so interesting. My mom had all three of us by the time she was my age. The cure for the romantic cooing of motherhood is a healthy dose of [temporary] reality. But, of course, it will be different when it’s my children. It will also be somewhere far, far in the future…

(PS- And I already miss them.)

The Waiting Game

2006-03-03T23:21:00.000-05:00

(background noise: a slowly ticking clock)

Time for some updates – I’m not sure where we left off. I just spent a week in the cold of Memphis, Tennessee. (My blood keeps getting more stubbornly southern.) I hung out with Mike’s friends (both young and not-young), ate, relaxed, slept, laughed…this is vague, so I’ll give you a few highlights. We went to Graceland with one of Mike’s professors (a writer) and another visiting writer. I took over 100 pictures. If I wasn’t an Elvis fan before I went to Graceland (which I wasn’t), then I definitely am now. I’m a fan of anything kitsch, and it doesn’t get much better than a furry white bed, a turquoise-handled pistol, large porcelain animals, and shag carpet all over the walls and ceiling. And the jungle room looks like the debris from a laquer and wood plant’s explosion. Graceland is smaller than I thought it would be (and I never knew that Elvis had a twin brother that died at birth.) I’m hooked. It’s not really Elvis – it’s the idea of Elvis. It’s other people’s journeys to their velvet mecca. The pilgrim of our interest was a thin, middle-aged blond dressed in black except the sequin red ELVIS across her chest. She cried on the two minute bus ride to Graceland while I played with my audio-tour-on-a-lanyard (and wondered about the sanitation issues of shared earphones).

But Graceland was just one stop of an event-filled week in Memphis. For pre-Valentine’s Day dinner, we went to the swank (read: $$$) Wally Jo’s. (Honestly, I expected gator taters. And I’m taking this moment to officially swear off all restaurants where a request for ketchup is considered to be rude.) I wore my neglected black dress and the chef brought us samples of other dishes. I have never had croutons like that – warm and slightly crusty on the outside, but filled with something warm and very soft on the inside. It was like a flava-party in my mouth. I’m also a sucker for a meal with any grits-esque concoction. I also ate at Gus’s Famous Fried Chicken – I bought the t-shirt – and at a 1950s beauty shop-turned-restaurant. I like the adventure of new places, new tastes, new people, but having a familiar face in the midst of it all.

Speaking of new people – I officially made my presence known in Memphis through two game nights of Apples to Apples. People, this could be the best game I’ve played in a long time. It’s an argument free-for-all where the worst logic, with the right twist, can still win. It’s the game I was born to play. I left half the deck with Mike, and he has been using it with his students. My students loved it. Right now, it’s in a brown paper sack on my desk for use by other TAs. (I also learned Shanghai Rummy, but my performance does not deserve any mention.) I met many people I’d love to play with if my world wasn’t 500 miles away from Memphis. But my stay in Memphis was good on many levels, and leaving was difficult. (Not only was it hard to leave Mike, but the roads were caked with ice.)

I got home late Sunday night and I hadn’t fully unpacked when it was time for me to get on the road for a weekend in Charleston. I missed my family and friends and I needed to get a few things from home. Even though I was already in Charleston, I was still homesick. My little city is growing to be so big, and I fear I’ve missed some of its best years. My friends have exciting changes that I’m not there to see. I forget how much time has passed.

That was last weekend. This weekend, I’m the babysitter. I’m getting paid to play and make sure no one gets hurt. (and to referee a bit.) These kids are brilliant – so smart, I forget their ages until they’re scared to go to bed, or start an argument over who gets to sing with the Ice Princess soundtrack, or remind me that I need to get their blanky. But I suddenly felt very old tonight when we drove by Waterworks – the sometimes-English-dept. hangout. It was like they were my kids and my responsibility and my independent days were over. Then, I woke up and realized my independence returns at 10pm on Sunday. And we went for ice cream.

But this is all a prelude to the waiting game. I feel like a broken record: “I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.” I want to teach, but I am deeply conflicted about the next step. I also want to a career with some flexibility so some things, such as my independence, can stay the same. Right now, it’s looking like that might involve a cubicle.

I wanted to figure all of this out before I was lured by the light of an acceptance letter. So far, I have two “no”s and one “yes”. (The “no”s are no source of sorrow; I wouldn’t have really believed it if I had been accepted.) And I’m pleasantly shocked at the school where I made the active waiting list. Every day, the mailbox, my inbox, and my phone messages from unknown numbers are always greeted with a little heart flutter. It’s a big decision, but neither option would be a “wrong” decision. I have to relax and keep a constant internal soundtrack of beach-y music.

More later. Until then, the beat goes on…Next weekend, I’m off to Maryland.

And I'm BACK IN THE GAME

2006-03-02T20:03:00.000-05:00

Good news: after almost a month of forgetting my password, I finally took five minutes and reset the darn thing. I felt like a million bucks that "the girl next door" noticed and wanted me around. Here's to you, superhero girl next door.

Quick story: The FSU library was packed the other night with students studying for midterms. My feelings of pride for all of these studious youngsters quickly faded when I glanced around the computer area to see everyone updating their blogs or surfing people's profiles on one of many face-space-ster sites.
I glanced over the shoulder of one boy as I walked by - the first sentence of his blog: "My weekend was kick-@$$."
So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.
More about my kick@$$ month later - now that I'm back, back again, shady's back, tell a friend.

Accidents vs. Sheer Stupidity

2006-02-05T23:33:00.000-05:00

I’m back. I’ve been lusting for this moment for the past two months not knowing how hard it would be. I slept for an hour last night. I laid down for an hour and a half, but my first bit of sleep, my mind worked feverishly and my eyes never closed. I got up –restructured my paper, had a bowl of Special K, and went back to bed with one blanket and all the lights on. I eat when I’m tired the way I turn down the air conditioner when the music is too loud.

I woke up an hour later wet with sweat and with sore eyes. But it was go time – the day I needed to present my half-baked paper to a room of smarty-pants from everywhere.

First, an explanation. The field of English Literature has not changed the number of Ph.D.s it produces for the past thirty years. However, the number of English majors has dropped (people becoming more practical, perhaps?) and, thus, there are more qualified Ph.D.s than jobs available. This breeds clawing, kicking, slitting, biting, snarling, stealing…But the English programs I have known have all been so lovely and nurturing, I have seen nothing of this scary world. But I know it’s out there. I hear stories.

To survive and actually get a job in this market, I have to stand out. I must publish, present, charm, and network. That’s what this conference was – a suggestion by my major professor to aid in my professionalization. Two other friends also needed to lose their conference virginity. We signed up for a panel, and then forgot about it. February was far. We would each read a paper for twenty minutes, and then brilliant people would ask us questions or grill us mercilessly. It looks great on a c.v.

But…Hi, my name is Tara, and I think I have a writing problem. This paper was written (hastily and badly) in December. I had submitted it to a conference and knew it would need revision, but I didn’t know how much. My professor returned my paper, full of questions and suggestions and praise and constructive criticism (he’s too kind). I read small bits of theory, constantly reprinting drafts of this paper in different arrangements and color schemes. I thought I would try multi-colored post-its on a tri-fold board, but I made too many points and they all ran together like day-old confetti. I grouped them by category and started to develop small chunks of a paper that would come together later. Problem is, it never did. It was fifteen minutes before our panel was supposed to present and I just printed it out as is. Some parts, there were no transitions. I think I planned on them all being so deep into their grocery lists by that point they wouldn’t even notice – just surface long enough for a clever phrase and a nod. The other girl on my panel did very well. It was inspiring – she was so genuinely excited and aware of her topic, and everyone in the crowd ate it up.

(The above is the blog I started Friday night. Now it’s Sunday, and I have a more interesting story. Please pardon the interruption…)

First of all, I’ve had a request to not address my boyfriend by the name “the Boy.” We’ll make him “Mike”. Please make a note of this for all future exchanges.

Second of all, I’m an idiot. I can’t even hurt myself in a cool way – like “I got that scar from a wrestling match with a cheetah.” Or even “I was rock-climbing and I fell and broke my arm.” No. No major breaks - unless you count the time I broke my pinky in the gym when I dropped a weight on it. My bones are too thick from a lifetime of loving milk (and bad breath.)

No, I sew my finger. That’s my Darwin-nominated injury. I was making a blanket and looking around the machine to check the stitches, but I didn’t stop sewing until I felt the needle in my nailbed. I looked at it for a second, reversed the needle out of my finger, and called for my roommate. I just stared and thought, “Hm. That’s gonna hurt.” The roommate came to my rescue and helped me stop the bleeding. I laughed - which feels much better than crying.

It’s like the end of Field of Dreams, after the little girl falls off the bleachers, and her parents ask her how she’s feeling. “Stooopid.”

My roommate says that when she was younger and sewed all the time, she never sewed her own finger – but she was always afraid she would.

That’s my problem: I think it all happens to other people – never to me. I don’t think I’m invincible, I just think surely the odds won’t leave me as the 1 out of 20. I never even win a free Diet Coke on a twist-off bottle. “Please Try Again.”

It’s a slow and painful process, but I’m learning to be more careful and alert. It’s just hard to remember.

Bobbing for Apple Fritters

2006-02-01T20:24:00.000-05:00

Earlier today, when the Boy was trying to compliment me on my looks, I informed him that there had been a tragic accident when I went bobbing for apple fritters earlier that day. I laughed alone at that little gem.

Good evening. I have news.

Well, news for nerds. DID YOU KNOW that you can scan microfilm into a .pdf document? FSU has just acquired this technology. I was giddy until I tried to actually use said technology. It resulted in a lot of whirring and clicking and and zooming and dirty looks from the girl who had just been nice enough to point out the “scan” button to me. And it was one of those awful situations where our workstations faced each other and I had to make a point of turning away when I spaced out so I wasn't giving her the stranger-stare. Very Seinfeld-ian. This was one friend I would not be making.

Hm, maybe I shouldn't have started out with that. But this is the current extent of my excitement. I’m telling everyone. One of my professors shared my excitement, and I felt a little better. Maybe she felt sorry for me. However, much more excitement is pending with trips to Memphis, spring training, Maryland, and many places in between over the next few months. And I get a head-flutter every time I turn the mailbox key. Any day now, the first of eleven letters will arrive. My situation could be helped considerably if our postal technician could be a little more consistent in his delivery times. It feels like a bad relationship, where I’m waiting nervously for him to come around and he is completely oblivious. Perhaps it is time for a little DTR to make sure we’re on the same page. I don’t ask much – just a little consistency on when he’s going to deliver my future. Is that too much to ask?? Perhaps he's just not that into me.

I think I’ve just been watching too much Larry David. One of my friends didn’t realize the potential danger in letting me borrow a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I've begun to channel Larry David. I was in a store (that shall remain nameless) two days ago, and I almost donned my Larry David wig and went ape on the sales associate. Granted, the two of us have a bit of a history in that I used to go to NEW YORK & COMPANY (ha! I said it) often because they trick you with chain coupon-ing. You buy something to redeem a coupon, and they give you half off of your next purchase. I think I ticked off this particular ray of sunshine one day when, after over ten minutes of searching for a caring sales associate, I finally used the hook and body on one of the hanging quarter-body plastic mannequins to get another shirt down. She got all huffy, and told me that if I’d be patient, someone would help me. I wanted to inform her that no precedent had been set for me to be able to trust her. Instead, I apologized in a not nice way (one my mom would’ve made me re-do when I was 12).

For this encounter, I was actually at the cash register with Sunshine McGee. I needed to buy a pair of earrings, make a card payment, and go. I bought the earrings, but when I tried to pay the credit card (which takes 43 seconds total), Sunshine McGee told me that the other salesperson would ring me up for that. That’s fine - I waited for her to finish with her customers. Except New Girl was processing a return on a credit card with an etching of the original sales receipt, and needed to call the original store and speak to the original sales associate who was out on maternity leave, or something. It took a long time. And Sunshine McGee moseyed up to the front of the store, then back behind the counter, then she started rubbing clothes hangers together to build a fire…We had all of the elements – sales associate, cash register, and money – with no action. I barely restrained myself from using loud tones to give her an honest evaluation of her customer service skills. My roommate had my back in case things got ugly. You know those little pins they stick into the security tags? Yeah, McGee!

But this isn’t me. I don’t usually send food that tastes so-so back to the restaurant kitchen, or act rude to the salespeople or servers. I blame the media and too much enthusiasm curbing and I’m now trying to go back to my usual self. But that usual self might just involve fantasies about tackling a sales associate. (“I put my pants on one leg at a time. But once they’re on, I make solid gold records, baby!”)

Okay, confession: I’m so random because I’m desperately avoiding rewriting a paper that I have to give at a conference in 38 hours. (Now that I write that, I’m terrified.) I signed up because I thought it would be good for me. I’m going to stop doing that. So if any of you have an extra paper sitting around about The Killing Fields, and you’d care to share…otherwise, I must go back to work. Boo genocide.

People who need people...

2006-01-30T00:29:00.000-05:00

First, an explanation for my girl in Charlotte. The rats were a gift from my aunt post-Target trauma. (See “It’s Raining Rats!”) She sent me my first rat “from Target”, complete with a signed note from the all of the rats – they were relocating to Florida. Unfortunately, she sent it to the wrong address. Since it was a surprise, my aunt had to call the front office of my apartment complex to have them hunt down the missing box. She told them, “I really hope they didn’t open the box. They might get freaked out. But it’s just a joke.”

When I went to the office to get the box, the office managers were looking at me strangely. I had to explain the store and the falling rats, and then my aunt’s sense of humor and the present. They were curious about the true brown-headed girl in 1256. I don’t have a seedy past and strange fetishes, much to their bored dismay.

For Christmas, I got two more rats (I should post a picture – yes?). Their bodies are a foot long, rubbery, and pitch black. They have a beady-eyed sneer and blood on their bared teeth. It’s hot. One of the rats I got for Christmas proudly stands upright to display its five rows of teats.

Since our last report, there has been a death in the family. Lucky H. (aka “Pooch”) passed away two weeks ago. He was found by Mrs. H. on her way to church. Despite her 12-year ambivalence towards the dog, she mourned heavily for an hour. Mr. H. and his son put Pooch to rest on the family property. Not satisfied with the service, Mrs. H. fashioned a cross out of sticks and read a nice eulogy. (Perhaps she has seen too many reruns of the Cosby Show when Rudy’s fish dies.) Pooch is survived by Lindsay H., his feline sidekick.

I have (selfishly) started a search for a rebound dog for my mom. She wants something that “keeps the deer and the thieves away.” Dad wants something that wouldn’t dare be put into a sweater. My yorkie dreams have been dashed.

However, Pooch’s death has sparked the soul-searching of my 3 year old cousin (and substitute grandchild for my parents, since their children have failed them thus far.) His parents explained that Pooch has gone to heaven, just like Grandma, and they gave a lovely description of the accommodations. My cousin has opted not to go. There’s “no good stuff in heaven. It’s just pretty stuff. South Carolina has da ‘quarium and beach. I wanna stay here.” He asked his mother how long he would have to stay in heaven. She told him it would be forever. “Forever. I hate that stupid word.” When his mother told him that there were no cars in heaven, he said, “I wish I was a car…Jesus should just be happy he gets to see us all the time anyway.” Ah, someone get this kid a Psalty tape and some glue and yarn, stat.

I miss home.

I don’t think it was Pooch’s death, but something has sparked my own little soul-search. It might’ve been the second Friday night in a row that my most appealing activities involved disc 2 of Entourage from Netflix, online library research, bunny slippers, and a big blanket. I couldn’t even muster the energy for any of it. I realized that I miss people. I feel too guilty about my work to play, but I need to play. But I’ve completely lost the art of asking friends out. I realized that instead of asking people to do stuff, I ask if they’re already doing something. I can’t initiate the plans, but I can drop in. If I ever do try to plan something, I feel like I’m becoming vulnerable to the world. I know, it’s weird.

I took baby-steps last Friday night. I got in touch with a friend who was already out at a bar. I traded my comfy clothes for cute jeans and some earrings, and headed out to Ali Baba’s. (I feel like I can mention that by name, because I’d love to drum up business for ALI BABA’S ON PENSACOLA RIGHT ON THE CUSP OF CAMPUS.) Ali Baba’s was socially safe because I knew people from school would be there, and it’s a home-y and quirk-y environment. I’m addicted to the food. Everything is homemade, and the owners will occasionally bring out some fresh pita and hummus or some other spicy, tasty concoction for us to try. I feel at home. The bartender/owner knows when I’m ready for another drink – I think he reads minds. While I hovered on the edge for the first fifteen minutes and then had some napkin-tearing awkward moments, I finally found a place to rest. I became less acquaintance-y with a few people and left feeling good. I stopped by another friend’s place on the way home. They were in an intense discussion on religion. I wrapped up in a blanket and occasionally opined. I was happy just to be there. We played cards and then I went home and crashed in the same blanket and clothes that were supposed to be my evening companions. I think they had missed me. But there will be other Friday nights for us to catch up. For now, I’ve realized (again) that as independent as I might fancy myself to be, I need the kind of quality people in my life that feel like home no matter where I go. Independent women need some lovin’, too.

I should be working.

2006-01-18T16:20:00.000-05:00

Belated greetings from the university library. I’m here to outline my thesis and marvel at how loudly my water bottle opens and my Dove dark chocolate wrapper crinkles.
I need to clear out some thoughts in my head. I like this corner of the library. I can see the sky and the tops of the trees. I'm alone in my little nerd world, and the sun is casting long shadows across my table. Notes to no one?

By now my meager readership has given up on me. (I hate to see you leave, but I love to watch you go. Oh, wait...wrong line?)

An Update:
I went home for the holidays – the first holiday sans little brother. He and his new wife were enjoying their Charlie Brown Christmas in Atlanta. We talked to him at least twice a day. Home behaved as usual - I had a wonderful time, with just enough discomfort to make me wonder if I will ever return for good. Friday night, I met up with home friends at a sports bar with bad live music with predictable cover songs, but we always see people we haven’t seen in years. One guy from high school travels Europe and the US as a professional skateboarder. It’s now more unnerving than comfortable to run into the high school acquaintances when I'm out. My mental rolodex is blurred, and I want to catch up on everything, but there's no time. I enjoyed the surreal quality of the night, but I was happy when the strange conversations could end and I could walk out of the door and make that same drive home I made so many times in high school. My room hasn’t changed. I can rely on the sage walls and dancing cherubs and my window onto the roof.

Most of my time was spent with the family. My other youngest brother and I moved easily from discussions on love and God to jokes and bad movies. My family all played board games, watched movies, and ate. For Christmas and my birthday, I got a sewing machine, a gadget-y suitcase, clothes, books, two rats, pilates DVDs, and some of my younger-ing face wash. I wonder if I’ll ever get too old for this. My brother got a handheld GPS device, and he gave us updates on our current location and speed. I didn’t have the heart to burst his Indiana-Jones-bubble and tell him about the speedometer and road signs.

After one week at home with my family, I packed up my car and drove northwest to Kentucky for New Year’s. I met the Boy’s family, ate in the first Kentucky Fried Chicken, and became addicted to a game on his brother’s PSP. (It’s like Tetris, except you make squares of colors and the boxes fill in the spaces so there are never any holes.) We also ate, watched movies, and sat around and talked. His family was kind and funny, and I got to see all of the places and people that go into his stories. It was nice.

Now I’m back at school. The Boy came down for another nice long weekend before classes started, and now I’m full-speed into another semester. It's thesis time. This is the end (“my only friend, the end”), and I feel the constant weight of upcoming colossal decisions. Someone told me today that there are no bad decisions – everything always works out. But, I want to at least minimize the damage. I don’t want to miss obvious signs about where I need to go, but it’s impossible to look in and get a full perspective. And I think too much. And these are the same neuroses that will keep me and my cats and my career cozy for the next fifty years. Care to join?

Relevations and Fusstrations

2005-12-22T23:41:00.000-05:00

I suppose I must be packing to warrant a break from packing. We’ll call this part of my routine, which is as follows: pack two sweaters, go to the kitchen for a glass of water, walk back to my room, throw 3 shoes into a bag, hunt for the fourth, check my email, find the fourth, lose the bag...

I want to pack less, but my fashion compassion refuses to yield. I’m a sucker for lonely clothes. The sweaters and skirts that never get out hopefully squeeze themselves beside my old stand-bys. The awkward skirt with so much potential. The sexy, knee-high boots that hide under my jeans. The little black dress that has only sees my bedroom mirror. They’re all coming home for the holidays. After I make an appearance at work and get a quick haircut, I’m starting on the first 400 miles of my trip. I love to drive. I hate to pack, but I love when I get behind the wheel with some Orbitz citrusmint gum, a big Diet Coke, and my finger on the "seek" button.

But I'm a bad little elf - I have two untouched boxes of Christmas cards.

When I return to my bed in two weeks, I will be a year older (and have cheaper car insurance – I think they do that to soften the blow), I will have logged over 23 hours on the road, and I will have met some new faces. I’m already tired just thinking about it.

One more thing – I made [another] important career decision. All this week at work, I have been practically alone and I have been fairly busy – until today. I got there at 9, and I was ready for a nap by 11. I thought that my downtime would result in a flurry of productivity. It was more of a lethargic hum. At the office Christmas party, the same joke about “that Secret Santa gift must be from Earl” kept circulating as common currency for funny. I heard two women coach a co-worker on suit shopping, “NO NAVY BLUE!” The office stickler/good ole boy ranted about the poor not taking time for their kids; my favorite office hippie offered an intelligent rebuttal. People on elevators talked about things people on elevators talk about – the weather, holidays, surprise over not stopping on the first floor. A few lucky ones board the elevator with an ally and avoid awkward conversations. Polite purse or shoe compliments are met with store recommendations. In the office, a mom hissed at her son for being hungry. Christmas music played softly from PCs. A certain ultra-southern cackle rang in my ears as I sat in my cubicle with nothing work-related to do. People whined in clichés about the air conditioning, holiday traffic, Christmas shopping…and other people offered just as clichéd solutions. I realize I sound hateful, and I don’t mean to be. I’m amused by the buffers we (myself included) create as we navigate social situations. But today, I was miserable. My conscience won’t let me work too much on my papers on the company’s dime. I have already worked ahead of myself in anticipation of what might be asked of me. I thought bad, non-Christmas-y thoughts. However, I have recently flirted with other jobs because of the downtime for reading and writing they seem to offer. Now, I have learned that a job with more downtime would not increase my creative output. Instead, it might just make me snippy and fat, and a little too organized. Well, maybe it would take a little more than that to get me organized…

To Know Better

2005-12-20T19:19:00.000-05:00

When I used to stay home from school, I remember the slow fade between dreams and awake to the sounds of the Smurfs, The Price is Right, and Webster. Today, I left work early to half-sleep through Bernie Mac, infomercials for great hits of the 70s and The Little Giant, and C-SPAN. I almost ordered The Little Giant “for only four easy payments of $89.99…and, if you order now, free shipping!” I used to wonder if the infomercial companies had to always know when and where they were being shown to see if they could offer “free _______ now” to whomever was on the phone based on their geography. I know better now. By the way, my stay on the couch and this cold-medicine induced blog entry is brought to you by my attempt at thriftiness. I wanted to save money so I cut off the heat in my apartment; I thought I could soldier my way through it because it's Florida. I definitely know better now.

Back to where we left off - I love Boston. I smiled politely when everyone told me that I would. Boston is notoriously cold and rude – both of which make me crabby. But I loved Boston. Our flight arrived forty minutes early, and we attempted to take the world’s best public transportation system into the city. The Boy researched the route and had our plan memorized, but we hit construction at Park Street and had to lug our suitcases up several flights of stairs and into several overcrowded shuttle buses. Rather, the Boy lugged. I attempted to argue back in my best women’s-lib, I-made-my-bed-now-I-have-to-sleep-in-it voice, but I also didn’t want to make a scene. He valiantly lugged and I felt sheepish about my big red suitcase. I'm not used to letting people help me. Finally, our lovely hosts drove through the icy streets and rescued us from the detours. The blizzard the day before left everything in a thick layer of white cold. Our hosts were brilliant snow drivers. I think I want to move to a big city just so I can have an intelligent, “you do NOT want to take MLK between 4 and 6. Take a left on 6^th, and a right on Tribune” conversation and know how to find the good parking spots. I want to be that kind of cool.

After we dug out a parking spot (and fought off a dude who tried to show us up with his fancy metal shovel), our first stop and main concern for the weekend was food. We went to an old firehouse for tasty thin crust, froo-froo pizza and beer. J-girl and I walked through the city while J-boy and the Boy sat at the restaurant where he works and watched basketball. I liked the cold. I liked that I had to kick my shoes against a wall before I walked into a building and I liked that we had to hold onto each other to not fall on the ice.

The chronology of the rest of the trip is fuzzy because it felt like a string of Saturdays and food and sights. While our hosts worked, the Boy and I explored the city. He had spent some time in Boston (and most big cities in the US) when he worked for his fraternity after college, so he knew the area. He had been planning our itinerary for weeks, and it was beautiful to have someone share my excitement for travel. We went to the MFA, the Freedom Trail, Fanueil Hall, the Old North Church, Harvard Square…We had a few big meals that I can never match – an Italian restaurant in the North End of town, a restaurant where they served sushi on boats, and the best cheeseburger I will ever taste in a small restaurant that caters to MIT. I eventually stopped wondering if I was walking next to an intellectual rockstar in normal clothes. After all, there’s no magical aura around the people who get into these big name schools.

We spent a large part of Sunday at the Bizarre Bazaar, where independent vendors arrive with their melted-record bowls, homemade purses and notebooks, kitsch-y decorations, and small business cards, and Boston stands in line for hours to purchase it. I almost bought a bag that said “Sexy, Sexy Bicycle”, but I couldn’t justify it. While some of these crafts could have been made at home, Boston wanted to reward these artists for their ingenuity. I really dug that. Every dollar we spent in Boston went to independent vendors and restaurants or towards art. We spent hours in used bookstores. I spent too much money that I didn’t have, but I felt good about the people I supported.

Now, I never really saw myself as a consumer activist; I still shop at the Gap. But I like feeling good about my purchases. Maybe it’s the strangled-artist within me that wants desperately for art to always be valued. But this person also comes up against the grad-student-on-a-stipend who really cannot afford to be a philanthropist now. My conundrum.

Anyway, it was nice to flow so effortlessly between serious conversation and goofy moments for those few days. I didn’t always feel like I had to talk or had to impress anybody. I appreciated these people for how beautiful and unique they all are. I started to miss college and the things we would do when we had nothing to do. It’s easy to forget how good friends can be. I wonder if I’ll always miss those days and the conversations that lasted until sunrise. And I wonder if I'll be brave enough to make those connections with people here.

And I think I should stop now before the nostalgia/cold medicine really kicks in and all of my hopes and dreams are vomited onto the page. I need to turn savor these rare moments by myself that seem so full of potential. And yesterday, I bought a book to teach me to play guitar...

Well, I've got "aaaawful" down pat...

2005-12-09T22:33:00.000-05:00

...for my trip to Bah-ston tomorrow. Certain words always trip off of my tongue in another accent. I can't even do a Spanish accent right, but I turn into New York every time I say "hot dawg." But my "awful" is very Bostonian. Go figure.

Many of you have requested my promised gush, and it will happen eventually...I've never wanted to be one of those "my pookie-wookie-love-muffin is the bestest!" girls giving shout-outs to their "baaaby" on their away messages. Without being that girl, I'll just say that things are really good! We were in nebulousville for almost a year and it was time to either go for it or cut it off. We decided to go. Long distance isn't very much fun, but I still get excited when I see his name on my phone. We have fun together, we're good friends. He makes me laugh and he doesn't always tell me what I want to hear - he tells me the best thing for me to hear. He's supportive and sensitive. I'm always learning new and interesting things about him, and I think he's fascinating. He's a writer. He's also handsome. (And I can only write most of this stuff because I know he doesn't read this.) This...this is a good thing.
We're flying to Boston tomorrow to visit some of his/our friends that were in school with us down here. I'll Mary-Tyler-Moore it up in the big city...perhaps I'll even post a few pics sometime soon.

By the way, I sent out six school applications, and no one has sent back an "um, is this a joke?" yet, so I should be cool. I didn't anticipate how good it would feel to not have those churning in my stomach anymore. For better or for worse, they're out there now.

I need wash clothes and pack my carefully planned wardrobe into the uber-nice luggage I borrowed from my boss.
Until then...you stay classy, planet earth. I'm freezing my Floridian cajones off up in the great Northeast.

Parable of the Perpetually Prodigal Friend

2005-12-03T13:14:00.000-05:00

Make sure you’re sitting down when I tell you this – I am not good under prolonged stress. Under momentary stress, I can juggle, skate, and duck. Now I’ve made the “stressed-out dance” – jazz hands to the sides and a couple of kick-ball-changes – my response to every question. I feel awful. I blame part of my consuming guilt on He’s Just Not That Into You, the ex-must-read answer to every “why is he doing this to me?” question. One part of the book explains that if he says that he has been too busy, that’s code for *sshole. Every time I explain why I forgot to call, write, lunch, or movie, I follow it up with a silent “and because I’m an *sshole.” But my earnest efforts at reigniting the friendship flames with some of these lovely folk has the strength of PlayDo on my end. I apologize, I make an effort, I get busy, I am inconsistent…shower, rinse, repeat.

This past Thursday, for example. I was up until 3am working on my Personal Statement and Critical Writing Sample. I woke up at 6:45 to get ready for school – a process that takes much longer as of the past two weeks. I came home from Memphis and had a 20 hour turnaround time before I left for the wedding in Tampa. I came back from Tampa and spent the next five days working on my application documents, work, school, and classes. I have yet to unpack or wash anything. The clean clothes are mingling with the dirty clothes and my shoes refuse to come anywhere near each other.

I worked, showered, packed my computer, my bookbag, and my gym bag (I have good intentions), and I was out the door. Then I ran back in for something I forgot. I was in a great mood. I had on a pink sweater, clean pants, and cute underwear. I left the house with twenty minutes to go to Staples to make eight copies of a chapter from Strunk & White and fax my transcript request forms and buy dry-erase markers, swing through Chic-Fil-A for a morning chicken biscuit and gynormous Diet Coke, and run into school in time to meet my student for a conference. I talked with my student about story details and having a “thesis”, and ran into the room to teach the three of the eight students that actually showed up. We discussed the phrase “the elephant in the room.” I explained that it’s when there’s something in the room that most people know about but no one wants to say, and my 285 pound football player asked if it was like when there is a roach on the wall and no one wants to tell everyone else that it’s there. Is it bad to laugh at your students? :)

After class, I got my books together and ran over to the DOE and my cubicle for work. I spent the day rewriting memos, hunting down rebellious verbs, and tweaking my personal statement. My semi-boss was trying to feel out if I was coming back after my class, but I wasn’t sure if she was saying, “Don’t worry about coming back, we really don’t need you” or “It would be nice if you actually came to work all the time.” Then, something happened. I got upset about where my personal statement was going, I didn’t feel like I could remove myself from it enough to get an objective opinion, and I just kind of broke down. Midnight was my deadline. I had class at 2 and I was crying as I ran out of The DOE. I called the Boy and he couldn’t tell if I was laughing or crying at first. No one is used to hearing me cry. It wouldn’t stop. Poor guy, he tried desperately to console me. I walked into class late and sat against the wall with the other sick girl. (My office/classmates knew that I was pink, bubbly, and perfectly healthy that morning, and they weren’t fooled.) My face was so wet, I couldn’t tell the new tears from the old. Finally, my teacher turned on “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” (popular culture studies class), and I distracted myself long enough to dry up.

After class, I went to my office and tried to work. I worked until my conference with my teacher at 5, then until my class at 6:45, and then until 12:30 when I submitted my online application and, finally, went home. My roommate has law school exams right now, so neither of us are home enough to clean. I moved some dishes in the sink and almost gagged. I loaded the dishwasher, went to my room, changed into some sweats, threw my sweater in with the mess, and passed out by 2am. At 6am on Friday, I was up again.

And then, last night was the English Department party, and I don’t even feel like I went. It’s the one time when we can shed our jeans and flip-flops for our dressiest dress, drink free wine and eat what book-nerds cook, and relax. It’s when you don’t have to talk shop with your professors and catch up with everyone else who has been hiding out. I was too tired and cold to wear my red dress, so I settled on a gold mesh sweater, black pants, and strappy gold heels. I had to drive with my kahlua and pecan brie in one hand so it wouldn’t dump all over my seat (again). I bought batteries for my camera but forgot to take any pictures - even for the annual production where one of our professors ignores the protests, clears out one room, and dances for the whole department. With a minimum of three wardrobe changes. This year, she brought a whole dance troupe and we were creeped out when she tangoed with a fifteen year old boy.

I was there talking with a few people, but I felt like I was really sitting in a corner and watching everything happen. Such is life. But as I sat and watched everyone laugh and drink, I realized how far I had drifted away – how little I knew about any of them anymore. I have been going through the motions and not taking any time to play and I was miserable. I wanted to go up to each one and look at them earnestly and say “I’m sorry!” and beg for that familiarity to be back. But I realize that they’ve seen that show before. I don’t know if I can expect them to be that forgiving.

So here I am, the prodigal friend, in desperate need of the gym and some friend time and three completed twelve page papers and for things to become more manageable. And a really, really good nap.

Touched down in the land of the delta blues...

2005-11-22T23:53:00.000-05:00

Well, I’ve decided that come hell, high water, or colossal rejection, I’m applying to Ph.D. programs. I have not posted because every free moment has been spent in senseless self-analysis and drafting of what I can say about myself that makes me not sound like another book-lover who wants a high-falutin’ prefix. My recent solo journeys across the continental United States provided me with ample time to compose brilliant personal statements. Alas, that brilliance dissipated once the gleam of Quiznos and diet coke dried from my lips and I set my feet on solid ground.

It’s not just what to say, but where to apply. It’s a gigantic mind game – like when the boss asks you what you’d like to make. (I’ve never really had this experience, but I have a fellow cricket who has told me stories.) You don’t want to undersell yourself and end up with Ramen noodles and generic Kool-aid again. But you also feel foolish asking for anything too high – like they’ll read it and laugh. “Look at how much she thinks of herself!! HAHAHAHA!” Instead of a boss, I’m imagining my dear professors writing my letters of recommendation and laughing. I’m playing it safe by choosing a bouquet of schools. And when people ask, I say, “oh, all over…Hey, what’s that over there?!” and duck and run. Pick your Bluth family chicken-dance for me (ka-koo-kah-koo-kah-koo-kah); I know them all well.

The bigger question becomes what do I want. I’ve entertained many other options. I could be a carpenter in my dad’s business – I’d be in raggedy jeans and a worn long-sleeved T, my hair in a ponytail, a fine coat of white dust on my hair and eyelashes, and I'd lean my cheek against the warm, fresh wood. Beautiful calluses.

OR perhaps I could go full-time as an editor. I’d chew the ends of pens and develop a keen eye for errors and not feel foolish about hours spent arguing a verb tense or a word choice. I’d develop cute office attire and print Dilbert cartoons to put on my cubicle wall. When we’re slow, I could write and send my stories off to journals and savor the expectation of a response as my key turns in the apartment mailbox at 5:12 every evening.

OR my most recent acquisition of potential grew from the streets of Memphis, Tennessee this past weekend, despite my dearth of musical talent. I spent a beautiful five days with the Boy. (Can I slip that in there quietly and pretend he has been mentioned all along? After almost a year as a nebulous something, we have made our status official. I’ll gush more later.) Friday night, we went to a Tift Merritt concert. Tift is my poetic substitute for Linda Ronstadt’s therapy. She’s beautiful. But as we pulled up to the performing arts center, we realized we were the only ones not getting a senior citizens or under 12 discount. I didn’t care. She strutted her blond, five-foot nothing body with its deep and perfect voice all over the stage, determined to get to the lethargic crowd with its polite claps. She did. And when the only four other people under forty-five went down to cheer at the edge of the stage, I decided to swallow my fear and join them. I wanted the band to know that they were enthusiastically appreciated. They were so grateful that they decided to pull all five of us onto the stage. I graduated from claps-and-a-sidestep to a maraca before Tift handed me the tambourine. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t bright red and enjoy the energy of the moment. I tambourined like a champ. I had found my calling.

The next day, we went to Sun Studio to catch some of the residual greatness of its previous performers. The combination of the small space and the artifacts and the sound system blaring the scratchy records made me glow. I love scratchy records. I bought two guitar pics and a sticker for my case and decided (once again) that I would learn to play the guitar. The Johnny Cash movie that evening sealed the deal. I would compensate for my lack of talent by doubling my efforts. Forget graduate school – I want to be a girl with a guitar, wailing my heart out with a message for the world. I want them to feel a little less lonely because I’m singing the words they’ve almost said. I want to give tambourines to timid young girls and set them free.

And while all of these options are tempting (although impractical), their presence on this list makes the Ph.D. thing a bit more glamorous. It’s still a choice I make. It can be just as thrilling and adventurous because of the ways I must push myself to make it. And who’s to say that it can’t involve the occasional Memphis blues and tambourining.

It's Raining Rats...

2005-10-16T18:10:00.000-04:00

"I apologize for the poor treatment you feel you have received."
I have royally shot myself in the foot with my current work/school/work schedule. What's worse is that I've been too busy to come up with something more original than "shot myself in the foot" for every time I complain. And I don't care who you are, that's busy.

This weekend has been the exception. Friday, I purchased season two of Arrested Development. This purchase was originally scheduled for Thursday night, but thanks to a certain Red-Bullseye didn't stock their shelves with me in mind, I settled for Clueless and The Fray. For the record, that's strike two for the Red-Bullseye in a one week period. The first strike was in Charleston, but I think there's at least a three state range on these things. I was there last Saturday night to buy wedding shower gifts for my brother and his fiance, and when I walked out of the fitting rooms, the attendant, who had been quite apathetic in handing me my plastic number, was up and yelling into the phone.
"MOD, we NEED to close the store! MOD!...MOD!!!!...DAVID! Our friends have dropped from the ceiling and are running around the store!"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two cat-sized rats running around the Mossimo yoga pants and Champion sports bras.
I hustled through the store to do my shopping, partially because I was in a hurry, but also because every time I stopped, I imagined rats parachuting down onto my head. I did find the time to buy the happy couple a $2 white porcelain rooster for their house. I went ahead and broke the seal on useless, sit-pretty wedding gifts. I'm sure they'll thank me later.

One more story before I go...so I'm in this group project for my editing and publishing class. Fine. I am a huge fan of the teacher and some of the books we've read in there have rocked my little world. I have poured myself into every project because I want this man to respect me.
And all of that work is now for naught.
My group meeting that was supposed to be yesterday was changed to today at the last minute and I couldn't go. Our presentation is tomorrow. We had to create a fictional publishing house and book catalogue. Our all-female group was leaning towards a feminist press, and I distinctly remember saying "That's great as long as we keep it balanced." I tried to make my books not by white twenty-somethings or mothers and I tried to include two male authors (I want to give a shout-out to DP for being the first true male feminist I met.)

I got home today and opened my e-mail to find our logo - a giant, inappropriate conch shell orbited by particles. Our company name? "Quantum Ovum." My male authors had undergone a little operation to become female, along with several other moves. Tomorrow night, I have to defend my "smallest amount of [an egg] that can exist independently." Oi vey!

I apologize for the whinefest. The good news is that I had a beautiful time with friends this weekend. I relaxed and became inspired and I got to play with the babies in church on Sunday. All small eggs and rats aside, this was a really good weekend. I'm determined to make my week follow suit.
Picture me rollin'.

The Big Game

2005-09-29T17:20:00.000-04:00

It's official - this is bravery week. I sometimes face situations that make my stomach do the lambada. Swimming in public. Playing sports. Talking in class. Talking to my professors (in or out of class). These fears have grown from teensy affirmations of failure, such as the boyfriend in college who announced mid-whiffle tennis game that he hoped my children wouldn't take after my athletic abilities. Or the time I forgot my monologue at a speech tournament in high school. Or when I "um"ed an entire class presentation two weeks ago. Or when I struck out in Little League when I was 13 (that wasn't an isolated incident - it was fairly consistent.)

This week, I decided to stop being such a pansy. (Not that there's anything wrong with being a pansy. Some of my best friends are pansies!*)

Last Friday, I went to a lit colloquium. That's when there's cheese and fruit and 2 liters at the back of the room and a speaker at the front who reads a paper for anywhere from twenty minutes to two hundred minutes, and then the audience rips the speaker's arms and legs off and sits back smugly. I spend the whole time looking studious while feverishly mapping out a new life plan. Heads - Carolina. Tails - California. The key? Take notes, avoid eye contact, and look pensive.

But if there's one thing I fear more than giving a paper in front of the faculty, it's attempting casual conversation with them. And there was a reception that evening.

I called my friend and pulled the "I kind of don't want to go but I kind of do so if you want me to go, I'll go." He did. My stomach got knottier the closer we got.

We walked the perimeter of the house before settling on the front door. (We were stalling?) But I was greeted by The Coolest FSU Teacher Ever. She took my chocolate pound cake and pointed me to the wine, but it was guarded by the (mangled) speaker from that morning. He said he saw me at the speech and I managed a "uh-huh. it was interesting" and grabbed a plate. I skirted the margins with the other two grad students (who looked much more comfortable in their skin).

Gradually, the night improved. Even though I cringed at the slop that came out of my mouth when they pop quizzed me on what I want to study, I realized that I could be (almost) normal around them. I listened to anecdotes and complaints, and I walked out of the house thinking maybe I wouldn't become a full-time quibbler in Cubicleville just yet. I decided to stop trying to see myself through their eyes and hear myself through their ears.

My second act of bravery was this past Monday night. (See previous post.) I tried to call and say I wasn't coming to the volleyball game. I wasn't even going to make up an excuse - just say that I was too scared. No one answered. I was nauseated.

I got to the gym an hour early and did a preliminary peek into the gym. It was three courts deep with people of all skill levels and very few kneepads. I changed clothes for twenty minutes before I went walked into gym to the girl smacking her gum at the really big folding table. There were eight sheets with team names and blank spaces and I didn't have a clue what my team name was.

"Um, I don't know how to do this. I've never done this before. Like, ever. I'm scared."

She reassured me that it would be fine and went through several lists until she found my team name - the Martin Van Burens. I put my information in the first space and sat down halfway down the bleachers to watch and pray that no one else would come. It felt just like high school.

One by one, the friendly faces from my department joined me on the bleachers. We had natural athletes and people who had never touched a volleyball before. I felt a little better.

By the time we were playing, I silenced my personal internal soccer mom and enjoyed the feel of running hard to meet a crazy ball and sending it smoothly back into play. It didn't always happen that well and I didn't get the nerve to dust the mothballs off of my overhand serve, but I played well enough to enjoy myself. I'm slowly learning to forget my performance and play the game.

*It's probably time to retire this as my favorite joke. Hang up its jersey. It's too old for the game now and just keeps embarrassing itself with trying.

Fake Modesty or Genuine Ignorance?

2005-09-26T09:33:00.000-04:00

I've decided that more frequent updates would keep me from being too overwhelmed to write my life, so I'm attempting a qvickie post. I'm really avoiding composing the scripts for the Packaging Demonstration Video for all assessment coordinators. Riveting. My few creative suggestions were praised by one editor, and "mm-hmm"ed by the other, so I'm hoping to find a middle ground. Because this is my first solo project, I want to take this seriously, but I also don't feel good turning in something as melba-toast-y as the test administration instructions. (in a Fran Drescher voice: "Please read these instructions to yourself as I read them alooooooud." Fran will not be the voice for my directorial debut. I hope.)

Come join me in my mini-pickle.

I was honored with this assignment because 1) no one else wanted to do it, and 2) I'm young and "good with technology." They think my "no, really I'm not very good with this stuff" is fake modesty. Then my 40 year old co-worker had to give me a quick tutorial on "How to Use PowerPoint." Their golden child may be losing her Midas-touch for something a little less savory. Like mashed potatoes.

I can't complain because My S0-Called Job has the best characters. My Big Boss and my Equivalent are both no-nonsense and hard-nosed with a perfect balance of softness. On Friday, Big Boss came to tell me about how she got so angry that morning, she threw a testing manual against the wall and almost broke her porcelain cat. It's the only time, in all of these years, she has lost her temper. My Equivalent (I must come up with another name for her!) has helped me keep my perspective amid the tension and quick-change tempers. My priorities must exist outside of my cubicle on the fourth floor.

I have work this afternoon and class this evening before I, once again, prove that I have been overestimated. At the Department picnic last week, where I showcased my chocolate eclair and performed doughnuts-in-a-canoe, I became a bit overzealous and gave a "sure, why not!" to the intramural volleyball team.

"Hey, Tara, have you ever played volleyball?" asked my uber-athletic classmate.

I had, but both years of my high school volleyball career consisted of me discovering hip-hop during our warm-ups and getting good at cheering and getting mad at myself for my lack of coordination. I prayed that the coach wouldn't put me in and I'd have all eyes on me. More of me was interally shaking my head in the stands than in the game focusing on moving. I worked really hard and I was okay, but never great.
Tonight, I don my knee pads and step into formation one more time. ("NO! BACK, Tara, FALL BACK!!!" Fall back on my bottom is more like it.)

Stay tuned for more tales of great adventure in the near future. (and less food imagery. I just had some Amish pancakes - made with real Amish - so I'm not sure why it keeps sneaking in there. "If ya get tired, pull over. If ya get hungry, eat something.")

Ciao!

2005-09-23T13:08:00.000-04:00

As promised, I have included info from my old blog. Is that weird?
If you're new to the neighborhood, pull up a pineapple and enjoy.

Sunday, July 10, 2005 right here i am!
Current mood: hurricane dennis-y my sole sporadic blog reader gets my subject title, but for the rest of you figments-of-my-imagination...it references a game i used to play with my three year old cousin. in the middle of talking to her, i would act like she had just disappeared. i'd say, "hm, i wonder if she's hiding in this lampshade. or under this cookie..." she'd yank my arm or grab onto my waist to get my attention and scream, "RIGHT HERE I AM! TAAARAA!! I'M RIIIGHT HEEEERE!" when i could tell she was thoroughly fusstrated (ha), i'd suddenly "see" her again.
thanks to me, she's sure to need therapy.

and after a small break, "right here i am!!" not that you were looking, but it's nice to think it...so* i rationalized paying rent on two apartments for one month by saying that i could leisurely move box-at-a-time into my new place. i could organize my life and simplify to the bare minimum, finding various charities and women's shelters to donate my still-in-good-shape-but-not-cute-on-me-anymore clothes. perhaps i'd even sip some iced tea, listen to soothing music, and make a few resolutions...

when my mom surprised me on wednesday and told me she'd be here the next day, i retuned my reverie. i added some decorating mags, fabric swashes, and our old Singer. we could throw my furniture into the back of her car and tastefully arrange it in my new place, with iced tea still in one hand. we'd remember stories and laugh and hug - perhaps even learn something new about each other.
fast forward to friday - i got the car part right. somehow, my furniture had bred and gained weight and glared at me through a dusty haze. my mom grabbed the heaviest boxes and, when i tried to help her, she informed me that she wasn't an invalid(!!!!!) originally, i had only wanted to move the heavy, awkward pieces that couldn't fit in the back of a friend's truck. i had wanted to stay in my old place to not deal with unpacking a new place mid-semester. but my mom, a self-proclaimed "woman of action", insisted that everything be moved before she drove out of tallahassee. more friends came and helped. they were wonderful, but i didn't like to make people wade through my junk. it was my beautiful mess to suffer through. by last night, i was grumpy and sweaty and dusty and disappointed that my old apartment had vomited all over the living room of the new. but my "picked acorn" room (imagine a khaki-chocolate) is cozy and somewhat decorated. we got the internet hooked up in the new place and i'm hoping that leaving my clothes and food in the old will give me some more time with my old roommate before she leaves (and get me out of the hair of the new one while she gets used to me...) maybe i'll even lose a few pounds from my lazy aversion to walking all the way around the corner to eat. (even the word "aversion" is too active to fully express my laziness in this matter.)

either way, you're sure to hear from me more now that my life in tallahassee has significantly changed. my favorite distraction has moved and i'm taking half the classes of last session. perhaps i'll even learn to play that guitar sitting over there by Mt. Rubbermaid.
but let's not get carried away...

*i know this is an awful transition, but i feel like it gives the impression that my comment either is an extension of an earlier comment, or that it connects in some other way. so i use it too much. "he who is without sin, cast the first stone." i'm not a stone-thrower in the house of good grammar.
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Sunday, July 31, 2005 junk drawers and a guitar...
Current mood: curious An honest friend (and dern good musician) was sitting in my living room the other day and remarked on the stupidity of my perfectly good guitar sitting against the wall - unplayed. I stammered a few excuses about how busy I am all of the time, but I replayed our conversation as I went to bed that night. Now, it sits firmly lodged in my ongoing, muddled discourse on pleasure and reason – play and work. This blog is part of that discourse. The reasons I have for not posting have to do with always having something more pressing that needs to get done. I blame my childhood – a pet scapegoat. We were to maximize our time with productive endeavors. I remember my parents coming behind me in my chores – pointing out places where my diligence waned and left the dust collecting on the hard-to-reach, never-seen shelves. Or did they? Has my insecurity created an overbearing sense of inadequacy quietly closed into my junk drawer? I’m always afraid of someone opening it and seeing me in the mess. And because productivity is the prerequisite for any activity to make it into my schedule, those things that have no work value are shuffled to the bottom of the list. Such as learning the guitar. Or watching movies or reading fun books. Or writing. Or creating. Obviously, something in me births these activities. It’s why the guitar was on the top of my Christmas list four years ago; it’s why one bookcase is packed tight with unopened texts. But some now-innate Protestant work ethic has forbidden these activities. Rule #1: Play happens only when work has been exhausted. Rule #2: Play must be the development of an activity that fits under “hobbies” on an application or some skill that makes you impressive. But why? I’m not promoting an entirely hedonistic existence. I’m not condoning our dangerous propensity towards instant gratification. But something about spontaneous, unregulated play keeps you sane. Another (almost) connected story – yesterday, I finally saw Almost Famous. (A good movie is when I want to look up memorable quotes on imdb while I’m still halfway through the plot.) At one point, a semi-famous musician goes on a quest for something real* and ends up at a party in the middle of Ohio(??). While he feels like his proximity to a normal party is realness, his reputation has preceded him and dictates his treatment. Every word he speaks is gospel truth because he is Russell, lead-guitarist for Stillwater. Maybe it’s more dangerous to think we’re in the midst of something real while disregarding the underlying systems that govern our interactions? His search for something “real” has him mired in the muck of illusions? But I really dig this scene because that quest is familiar. I want something more than my productive interactions that feel more political than genuine. Maybe the only way I’m going to get there is to leave my junk drawers hanging open – to not glorify the perfectly disciplined and even-keeled OR the undisciplined rebels of structure. Somewhere in-between those two, I have to dig the distinct-therefore-beautiful qualities each person possesses – even their neurotic tendencies borne out of past hurts. And maybe it’s time to dig those things about myself, too. Absolute play lets those aspects of ourselves emerge because no one else is regulating. My resolve, a la Bridgette Jones: to stop half-@$ e-mailing or calling people out of guilt, but to be real in my interactions. Not hedonistic, but also not puritanical. And I’ll start by not feeling guilty over the Restoration Lit text I put down to write this entry. Hey - sometimes, you just gotta. I’m burning the rule-book. *A teacher once told me that we read our desires into the text. While I realize there may be many other readings of this scene, this is what I want to get from it. Indulge me, please.
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Friday, August 05, 2005 "Tucson, HERE WE COME!!"
Current mood: travel-y (a la romy & michelle's.)
the mom and i are packing up the minivan for our journey north today!! we'll hit richmond and baltimore today. we're in baltimore for the weekend, and then to nyc ("moo york city??") next week.
this blog post is boring. i'll work on one when we're en route and listening to books on tape from the cracker barrel. and planning my brother's rehearsal dinner. and i'm sleeping off the exhaustion from only having eight hours of sleep total the past three nights combined.
this should be some kind of wonderful.
and how!!
_________________________________________________________ Wednesday, August 10, 2005 these vagabond shoes...
Current mood: new york-y All day, I thought about the fact that I really wanted to post this blog today. Otherwise it gets like that chunk of time between conversations with a friend when too much has happened to ever get caught up…I’m not even sure where to start because I’ve been launched on another insane tour of quickies. (“I’ve been launched.” Like it’s not completely my own doing. Puh-lease.) Once upon a time, I began my journey with a six hour drive to Charleston at midnight last Thursday. I spent four hours napping and five hours writing before finally sending my paper off to my professor at 9am on Friday. I showered, packed, and my mom and I took off for supreme-o family bonding via I-95. We were Maryland-bound with a slight detour a little bit South of the NC Border. I bought beautiful junk. I’m sure you’ve seen the signs and have turned up your pretty little nose at Pedro’s wares. Well, shame on you. That just leaves more backscratchers and thermometer magnets for the rest of us. We stopped off in Richmond and visited my friends Matt and Amber and their adorable daughter. (When Amber was pregnant, I used my powers to pick out which toy her daughter would love best. She called me a few weeks ago to tell me that her daughter spotted the toy on the shelf, asked for it, and hasn’t put it down since. Yeesssssss.) We hit traffic and a monsoon in DC and, no thanks to mapquest, finally found my aunt’s house just outside of Baltimore. C and Dan picked me up for a few days of city living. I fell in love with the rooftop decks and the warehouses-turned-apartments-or-restaurants. And lots of track-lighting. I read books with Edes in the park, dined at chic eateries, and drank from a hubcap. I love this city and the people in it. People talk to each other here. Crazy stores (with even crazier owners) sell unique and irresistible knick-knacks. I’m in*. Monday morning, mom drove us up to Reading (Red-ding), PA to see my relatives. We had a life or death experience. And then we had a big talk about turn signals. Then we had some silence. I started on Phillip Yancey’s Soul Survivor and wanted to scrawl all over my borrowed copy of the text. Dude is a respected Christian author AND he’s a bad Christian, just like me. But this trip has been too roller-coaster-y. I’m overwhelmed with optimism and then overwhelmed with hopelessness. Mostly optimism. Many of the themes from my studies are converging right in front of me! It’s simultaneously exciting and oppressive. (the arbitrary markers of race and ethnicity, physical abnormalities both glorified and ostracized, sympathy, and the social function of charity. And this all hit a climax on my NYC trip. keep reading.) Back to Reading (Red-ding) – my cousin is a cameraman for the local community television shows and I got to watch him in action. The first show was a diversity program that lacked diversity in its panel. I got so worked up about the “we must weed out all of the bad seeds of the community” combined with “our community needs to unite now”, that I almost called from the back of the room! They all thought I was a reporter anyway because I sat and nodded and took notes. We went from impassioned community world-changers to Jim’s Auto-motion show about transmissions. Then to The Insurance Guys – who sat fat-cat happy and sold church insurance. But I’ve started thinking of a plan to change the world. I’ll keep you posted. This morning, my mom, my aunt, and I arrived in NYC via Greyhound from my aunt’s house in Reading. (Note: Our car - with the fruits of my first Ikea experience – is sitting on a street in Reading, PA. My aunt’s car was “borrowed” off of this street last Friday. They found it today sans backseat, but with a year’s supply of grease.) Just so you know, train stations don’t have lockers for your luggage.
"No one does after 9/11" is what the huffy train information lady told me. Huffy people shouldn't be allowed to work in customer service.
We heaved our way over to the TKS booth and discovered that it doesn’t sell matinee shows today. Strike 2. Finally, we dropped off our luggage at the hotel/castle and started exploring the city. I’m not sure if our failed sense of direction makes the tour of the city better or worse, but it definitely adds stress. We were trying to find the Metro station on Canal Street until my mom got us off course with an excursion into Little Italy. They got mad at me when we couldn’t find the Canal Street metro anymore in Little Italy. It forgot to make the turn with us, I suppose. Bad metro station!
I’m going to play hard-to-get with the rest of today’s story. And if you know me at all, then you know it means that it will probably be told tomorrow. (that qualifies as “sorta-challenging-to-get”, I think). It’s not that I’m working on my outdated dating strategies, but rather that I just nodded off while I was typing and hit the keyboard with my hands. And that’s always when I know it’s time… Until then… XOXO. Carmen sandiego *I reserve the right to retract this statement or to change its meaning with an addendum. (Example: “I’m in…love with Quizno’s chicken carbonara flatbread sandwiches.” Or something like that.) ___________________________________________________________
Friday, August 12, 2005 homeward bound... I'm on a bus of crazy somewhere between New York City and Reading, PA. It's almost ten p.m. and I dont know if I've ever been this tired. The bus driver just told us the rules of the bus: 1) no alcohol 2) no cell phone ringers. If you can't put it on vibrate, then turn it off. 3) no loud conversations when you do answer your cell phone Thirty seconds into our journey, a cell phone rang. The lady in the row next to me couldn't quite figure out how to answer it. After three rings, she answered. Loudly. And proceeded to you-dont-talk-to-me-like-that-young-lady her daughter and make her explain, in detail, what was wrong with the car and what she was going to do about it.
I almost can't take it. But, back to my journeys...
I've discovered that most things I've heard about New York are a lie. I was in the city for three days and didn't meet a single rude person (more than I can say for my Charleston.) Everyone was friendly and cheery and polite. We had to do all of the New York-y things to make the trip authentic food, shopping, and shows. We went to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, up and down Fifth avenue, through Chinatown and Little Italy, and all through Soho (twice!). We ate at a Hungarian pastry shop, an Ethiopian restaurant, and a fantastic Chinese restaurant. I finally relived the magic of a NYCity hot dog (hah-t doig) with brown mustard and sauerkraut on our way to the show. I took pictures. I wanted to see Rent, but I didn't think my mom and aunt were ready for that, so we settled on The Producers. We didn't do any research but I figured it was mainstream enough and popular enough that it wouldn't be wildly offensive.
Wrong answer.
The girls wanted to leave at halftime and I wanted to cry. I never notice half of the sexual innuendos in something until I'm sitting with someone like my mom. They weren't laughing at the jokes; it made me nervous. They were offended by its treatment of women, anyone who is not American, and their insensitivity towards Hitler and Nazi Germany. Once we figured out that it was satirical, they enjoyed the show. I was tense the entire trip because I wanted them to be happy but I was also disappointed about being in New York City and not being able to do everything I had always wanted to do. Maybe I had all the wrong dreams. We also walked through the Met and several old churches. I had a flighty respect for Jackson Pollack before I sat before his Autumn and could feel the energy of creating a piece that size. I respect a person who can be that brave that big. I had also forgotten how much I love Rodin and the emotion and movement of his cold marble sculptures. I took pictures. I mean, I know its incredibly crass and wrong, but everybody else was doing it. I saw a museum guide tell someone "hey! No flash!" so I assumed that meant that non-flash photography is okay? I was very sneaky about it. I held my little digital camera in front of my bag and made a barely audible click. Digital cameras are the devil, by the way. I took over 400 digital pictures in three days. I had a hard time leaving Ellis Island and Coney Island. (Both played into the interesting-only-to-me research I'm doing right now.) Coney Island has the class of south Myrtle Beach meets South of the Border. I loved it. I won't bore you with a sales pitch for my latest soapbox, but it involved me talking to a sideshow performer for almost a half hour after his show. He told me about the weirdos he meets and the type of, um, recreational activities they assume he enjoys. He plays off the fact that the moment someone meets him, they jump to conclusions. ("you see, it's a mat with all of these conclusions you can jump to...") He always proves them wrong and makes them rethink their assumptions. He writes for hours every day and is going back to school after twenty-three years. He seems kind and shy a direct contrast with his geek onstage persona. I got his information and an ice cream cone for dinner and hopped back on the Subway. The city was a good kind of crazy and now I'm exhausted. A friend found a place for us to stay in a seminary just north of Central Park. It was beautiful and quiet and it was nice to see a familiar face every day. Now I just want to be home in Charleston, or home in Tallahassee. We'll leave tomorrow morning for the long trip home. For now, we're just reading and lounging around the house in Reading.
"I love puttering days", my aunt said just now as she got up from her nap.
As much as I love old faces and new places, puttering sounds like a nice place to be right now.
I thought I knew my cousins from occasional meetings at Christmas over the past twenty years. I'm off to meet them all over again. __________________________________________________________
Tuesday, August 16, 2005 bittersweet symphony a la The Verve
Current mood: stressed i think the air in my car becomes dangerously thin when i'm on these long trips. i fall into optimistic fits. i make grand resolutions. yesterday, i planned to run more, be a better friend, do whatever it takes to get into a ph.d program in nyc, give away everything i don't need, stop caring what other people think, and to act according to what i want to happen, despite how grim the circumstances may appear. (wasn't that nice and vague?)
as i got closer to my destination, these resolutions slowly dissipated until one disappointing phone call and one call that never happened made me bummed to be approaching tally again. i wanted to be back navigating the subway all by myself. or back having a food fight in cracker barrel with my mom. or back with an old friend and an orange julius in the mall. or back at home with my brother, planning the rest of our lives. but i can't keep looking back if i want to enjoy right now.
the best bit of yesterday was when i saw a storm approaching as i drove down interestate. (you can tell it's a storm because the distinction between the clouds and the sky becomes obscured by the rain.) florida storms don't mess around. they come out of nowhere, hit so hard you can't see to drive, then disappear and leave the concrete steaming. and they come like clockwork every late afternoon. when i saw the storm, i went from knee-steering to ten-and-two, kicked off the cruise, turned up the acoustic cd of a favorite gardner-webb professor, and drove a little faster.
if you can't avoid the big storms, you bear down and enjoy the ride. ____________________________________________________________
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 decisions, decisions...
Current mood: hungry post a lengthy and descriptive entry, or head to mcd's for an egg and cheese mcgriddle??
my apologies to you and to my waistband. sometimes, you just gotta. and we have no milk. ____________________________________________________________
This good song would be better IF ONLY we could get a country singer to cover it...
Current mood: listless Indulge me in a mini-rant: I heard gary allan sing vertical horizon’s “the best I ever had” on cmt. (it’s one of the three channels that our super-saver cable package provides.) I’m still searching for a reason behind this brazen robbery. Does country music really believe that their audience is too loyal to not notice that it is the same song with a little extra twang? Are the country artists station-surfing and come across these songs and think to themselves, “pshaw! I could do THAT”!?
I’m perplexed and perturbed.

And now for some good things…I started my new job. It feels like a real job, complete with cubicles and eavesdropping on conversations and a lot of people whose names can easily be found in personalized mini-license plates at a souvenir shop. We had salads in a big conference room, discussed smoking habits, movies, and plans to veg over the weekend.

One co-worker showed me her bling-bling frog that sings “it’s yo birfday” and bobs his head. Today, in our over-the-cubicle conversation, I discovered that she and her husband lived in my neighborhood when I was ten years old! (Bust out your lederhosen, ‘cause it is a small world.) She talked about her brother-in-law fixing up his blue nova. I knew that nova. The Blue Nova lived at the yellow house at The Corner. I was only allowed to roam as far as the house with the golden retrievers right before The Corner. The grease-shiny Boys would fix their cars and rev their engines. I’d lay in bed, terrified of their bass as they spent all night leaving black tire streaks on the street outside of my house. They shot bottle-rockets at the nursing home and spray-painted the bridge with numbers and pictures I didn’t understand. They fascinated me. And even though it’s years later and I now understand most of the graffiti, it still earns my new office-mate some major cool points.

Otherwise, it’s a good gig. It’s grey and office-y and I love it. And, my swingline stapler is on order. “dang it feels good to be a gangsta.” Saving the world one comma splice at a time.

On our next episode, I’ll detail more of my recent adventures in the City and with my compadres (including jotah!)

“If you get tired, pull over. If you get hungry, eat something.”
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Monday, August 22, 2005 WANTED: Punctuation Marks Please note: for some reason, many of my punctuation marks aren't carrying over from my Word document to the blog. so it's not that i'm getting my m.a. in English and I don't understand apostrophes...it's that they disappeared on me. (and no one's perfect. let's be honest!)
and only a truly dorky person would even make such a comment.

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Monday, August 29, 2005 Goodwill and Linda Ronstadt
Current mood: determined Maybe I know that I’m where I’m supposed to be because of the beautiful sense of expectation in even my sad moments. There’s something annoyingly refreshing about doing what you know you’re supposed to do, despite what might make you happy for the moment. I want to capture some of the good things from the past few weeks before they slip away. I went out and danced like no one was watching (“unknown” would be so proud) with some girls from the department. Bamboo ceiling. Red, green, and yellow lights. Water running down the windows. A few carefree souls didn’t set the bar very high for dancing skills so I lost my (few) inhibitions. That’s a moment I’d like to keep. I also got caught in a downpour a few days ago. I gave up on staying dry, rolled up my pants, and walked slowly into the next store. Even the gloomy weather is perfect.
Walker Percy has been tainting everything for me. (I’m like Ahmad Rashad promoting this book.) It captures where I am and where I’d like to be. “But things have suddenly changed. My peaceful existence in Gentilly has been complicated. This morning, for the first time in years, there occurred to me the possibility of a search… …there awoke in me an immense curiosity. I was onto something. I vowed that if I ever got out of this fix, I would pursue the search. Naturally, as soon as I recovered and got home, I forgot all about it… …The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a castaway do? Why, he pokes around the neighborhood and he doesn’t miss a trick. To become aware of the possibility of a search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair” (16,18 The Moviegoer). “What is a repetition? A repetition is re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. Last week, for example, I experienced an accidental repetition. I picked up a German-language weekly in the library. In it I noticed an advertisement for Nivea Crème, showing a woman with a grainy face turned up to the sun. Then I remembered that twenty years ago I saw the same advertisement in a magazine on my father’s desk, the same woman, the same grainy face, the same Nivea Crème. The events of the intervening twenty years were neutralized, the thirty million deaths, the countless torturings, uprootings and wanderings to and fro. Nothing of consequences could have happened because Nivea Crème was exactly as it was before. There remained only time itself, like a yard of smooth peanut brittle” (68).

But right now, the greatness I’m enjoying involves an old Toshiba stereo with only one working speaker. I picked it up for $20 and started playing the hits from “The Wall of Greatness” (see profile photos). Right now, I’m sitting on the abandoned 1920s chair we dressed up in leather, and I’m listening to Linda Ronstadt’s heart break through the scratchy beauty of the record player. It’s a good way to start the new semester – fresh with the sense of something bigger than myself. (And a full box of Lucky Charms.)
“What a discovery! One minute I am straining every nerve to be the sort of person I was expected to be and shaking in my boots for fear I would fail – and the next minute to know with the calmest certitude that even if I could succeed and be good enough for me and that I had something better, I was free...And I walked out, as free as a bird for the first time in my life, twenty-five years old, healthy as a horse, rich as cream, and with the world before me” (95).

2005-09-23T04:06:00.000-04:00

It's not that I haven't been writing any posts; it's that I can't seem to finish them.
I think I have low-grade narcolepsy. (not that there's anything wrong with that! i mean, some of my best friends have narcolepsy.)
But in college, I would insist on taking a textbook to bed with me so I'd capitalize on every minute until I passed out. One time when I was napping, C came in the room and saw me passed out, my eyes closed, turning the pages of a book. That's what it was like to type these posts - I took my laptop to bed and started to type. (BAD idea, by the way. one time i fell asleep and sent it flying into the wall.) But I'd fall asleep mid-sentence and leave everything hanging.

I've decided to include some of these fragments for your enjoyment. (or, not.)

Fragment 1:
The problem with keeping this thing is that, when i want to write, i want to say everything. but i must pick and choose and half of it's more for my amusement anyway. (One friend compares my stories to lawn darts. Another says that I'm the only person she knows that gets bored and stops her own story. Sad, but true.)

long ago, i promised more stories about new york city and baltimore and richmond and pennslyvania and everywhere else carmen sandiego has been. (and, of course, jotah.)

i'll just catch you up on right now. this semester, i'm taking pop culture studies, multi-ethnic lit, and editing and publishing. i had really hoped that as i got older, i might get a bit cooler. but all of a sudden i'm a kid again, and mrs. robinson, mrs. blakeney, ms. barker and mr. wheat are my favorite people in the world. i want to make them happy and do all of my work and
i decided to pretend i was responsible and confident and to be the pioneer in class presentations instead of waiting until the very last day of class, as is usually my trend. big mistake.

Fragment 2:

One funny little tidbit before I begin – my mom was cleaning my dad’s office and she found one of my old spiral notebooks. It was the start of my great novel. I called it “Flerting” and broke the plot down into fifteen chapter headings that covered my marriage to my second grade crush (referred to as a “hunk” at one point) until I grew old and wobbly. Of course and fortunately, I only got as far as the table of contents.

I never thought I’d be so happy to meet the weekend. It feels like the past two weeks have been a steady sprint. Between work in the Gray Cubicle

The two best bits of advice I received this week are as follows:

1) RELAX

2) Get your head out of your… (@$$)

I was so tired but so busy that any potential unwinding time would only give me time to contemplate everything else, so

Back to the Present:

The past two weeks beat me and left me with an obstacle course of dirty clothes and ambitious half-starts. My work ethic isn't enough sometimes. (And, if I'm honest, sometimes it isn't at all.) Yesterday, I left my house at 7:30am and came home at 11:30 pm. I had conferences with my students from 8:15 to 11:00, then I ran to Publix to get food for the movie. I worked from noon until 5:00, then showed up for class at 5:15. (It was a day with lots of hand-wringings.) I put together the spinach & artichoke dip in a bread bowl for the class movie that ran from 7-9:40. I showed up almost an hour late to the grad student bible study. It was my first time. We talked until almost 11, and then I went home to crash. Enough whining for now. I just wanted to provide an explanation to all (both?) of you out there who wonder if one of the following is true:
a) I'm dead and bleeding somewhere,
b) I don't like you
c) I finally picked up my keys and walked out of my life

The answer is:
d) none of the above. but, seriously, you're starting to sound like me with your second answer. time to pull your head out of your...

...which brings me back to my earlier fragment. I have funny aversions to commitment in some areas. My thesis is no exception. I sent up a little rendezvous with my impressive/intimidating/supernice major professor to give me a deadline for making some decisions. I said, "Can we meet in two weeks?" He said, "Meet me on Thursday."
I panicked. Every class I've taken has given me a new potential thesis. If I put them all together, I could write a brilliant paper about the socialfunctionofthesideshow-
visualrhetoricofhumanitarianorganizations-
sympathyandthepoliticsofidentity-K.Dunn'streatmentofthebodyinGeekLove-
ellisislandandissuesofidentity.
But I have to pick one. I could never choose between the stuffed animals on my bed, so they all slept with me. And I can't take all of these topics to bed with me.
I already felt like an idiot because I had managed to completely blank out during a presentation, submit an "eh" analysis for the whole class to read, and in that analysis, I said "levi-strauss" as "lee-vi strowse." FYI, that's wrong. I felt like an idiot and unworthy of grad school and a ph.d. One of my friends finally told me to get my head out of my @$$. And I did. (Or, at least, I tried to.)

The next day, I came to the big guy with three possible ideas. He ran with the first one. (drumroll) My thesis will center around Ellis Island and the role it played in issues of identity formation up to the present.

I'm sure there's a more thorough explanation, but for now, I keep falling asleep mid-sentence. It's ime to give in to my narcoleptic vice.

2005-09-14T23:44:00.000-04:00

Upon realizing that my painfully produced blogs on myspace were disappearing, I decided it was time to switch things up a little bit. So, once again, "right here I am!" (and hopefully I won't disappear this time.)

I shouldn't be here and I shouldn't be doing this. I've spent the past three days in a mad dash, fueled by naps at night and Balance bars. Three papers, two presentations, and a lot of bad (probably imagined) karma. But the pile of overdue library books I need to skim before I meet with my major professor tomorrow will have to be content to sit and gather fifty-cent pieces. For now, I just wanted to make my little impression on this world. I'm off to continue my night of protest against the bed I've made for myself.
And, out of laziness, I'm also posting my old blogs from the negligent website.
I look forward to continue talking about this conversation later.