a pocket full of rhinestones

My student.

2007-04-23T20:31:00.000-05:00

Just told me that I need to read his paper more slowly... because that way I would, you know, understand it better.

Are they getting more arrogant, or is it just me?

You know you've lived in Chicago too long....

2007-04-22T22:20:00.000-05:00

When you're walking to the Walgreens and a man yells a proposition across the street to you for $95.

I mean, seriously.

Ashes and Ashes and Ashes

2007-04-11T17:26:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to spend my evenings in the Regenstein.

I'm far more productive than ever before, but there is the caveat that I am now far far more lonely than ever before.

Yeah.

So I haven't updated in a loooong time

2007-04-09T18:24:00.000-05:00

Because my life has been moving reeeeallly fast.

So. here's the rocket-update.

1) The boyfriend became the Fiancee in January
2) The Fiancee left me in the first week of April
3) I am suddenly single again after 8 years.

4) and I'm thinking of moving to Madison
5) and getting a Job in academic administration
6) and getting a pair of cats (Buttons and Snaps)
7) and having romances with new people.
8) While I finish writing my dissertation.
9) and then *possibly* going to medical school
10) although at the moment I still need to finish out the quarter and the 6? 7? jobs I am currently working.

So that's the update, the info, and the scoop - and it is also why I have been dramatically incognito for the past few months.

But.... I think that things are going to be OK.
Really.

"Yay!" she shouts, "and, Shit!"

2006-11-22T05:49:00.000-06:00

Yeah,

So I think that I may have just thought up the perfect idea for my dissertation.

"Just when I think that I'm out.... They pull me back in!"

On being Broke.

2006-11-17T10:34:00.000-06:00

I am so broke. Broke like surfing the web for places to donate plasma broke. Like thinking if there are any of my possessions I can sell to make money broke. Like, fuck, broke.

And yet, somehow, I have 4 jobs and am working like, a zillion hours a day.

This is FUCKED UP. This is fucking fucked up and I'm pissed.

In fact, I am angry. Really, really, really angry. And I don't know where my anger belongs. Is this my fault? Is it the university's fault?

I am angry at the university for treating us like crap, and I am angry at myself for putting up with this. If I had known what was in store I never would have signed on in the first place. I can't believe that I signed up for this! I'm done. I'm so fucking done with this bullshit. Do I want a career where I work endless hours for almost a living wage? Do I want a career where I won't have time to have a family, much less the means to support one?

rainbows, kittens, sunshine, and lollipops

2006-10-12T22:22:00.000-05:00

No, really.

I'm currently in Florida in what appears to be THE COOLEST HOUSE ON THE PLANET. It seems to be full of the most kitsch per square inch (KSI) possible without the formation of a neutron star.

They have:

A working jukebox
An astonishing collection of vintage radios
And beer signs
Little cement dolphins that squirt water into the pool
an astonishing number of indigenous geckos
a sofa made out of the tail section of a '57 chevy
a stained glass lamp that looks like a peacock's tail
a signed Elvis poster
and a thousand other things that I haven't had time to gawk at yet.

See below for pool:

So things are good. Although I have been unconscious for most of my time here. I had no idea how sleep deprived I was.

My boy noticed that every time I pick up a book to try and work on my dissertation, I fall asleep. Apparently my body is trying to tell me something.

Hugs to everyone and I will post soon!

Bitterness

2006-09-26T22:25:00.000-05:00

People have begun to mention (in very quiet voices) that this blog is a tad bitter of late.

I believe that they are using very quiet voices out of fear that I might, at any moment, explode into teeny weeny bits.

I'm not going to actually rule this out as a possibility, because the icy rage that consumed my body this afternoon could very possibly have been, instead, liquid nitrogen. If this were the case, any sharp tap or even a loud noise might send bits of me scattering like the end of a particular sequel to a particular 80's movie.

I'm pretty sure that I'm being punished by someone up there, so I will type fast lest lightning strike me and fry this transmission along with my computer.

You see, today sucked, if possible... more than yesterday.

Because today I was financially exploited by the college. One of the programs for which I teach - let's call it, er, "Locus of my white-hot anger" or "Hot Locus" for short - is a full-year gig.

This is the first time that Hot Locus is being run, so there are some bugs with the system and things are generally being made up as we go along. Now, I worked with the Hot Locus program all summer and things went exactly as I was told that they would.

But now the administrator of Hot Locus has decided to change the rules. We'll call her Betty.

Now Betty calls me up months after I have asked her to meet with me and let me know what she expected of me this year and says "let's meet".

"Cool" say I, "I'll see you tomorrow"

Then Betty starts trying to get myself and my partner - let's call him Bob- Betty asks Bob and I what days we are free. So we tell her. Betty is displeased with what she hears and asks us if we are free any other times. Wanting to indicate to Betty that I haven't been issued the university be-in-two-classes-at-once-device but also realizing that is a bad idea, I say "sorry, Betty - those are the times that Bob and I are free"

Betty then asks if we can teach on Sundays.

Sundays?

Betty is clearly not hoeing beans in the same university fiefdom where I hoe MY beans.

Bob and I dodge this question and then agree to meet with Betty later.

Betty then starts concocting strange schedules for meetings with students that will take about, oh, 3 times the number of hours that Betty, Bob, and I agreed that we will be working this quarter.

We say "Betty - we didn't think that we would be working this many hours"

Betty seems confused "But you don't want to teach these students for 25zillion hours a week?"

No Betty, we don't - "We want to teach these students for the 4 hours a week we agreed on at the beginning of the summer"

I believe that Betty is getting bitter. We eventually agree on something vaguely close to reasonable.

Bob checks on how many, er... sacks of grain... we are supposed to get for all this teaching. We believe that we are supposed to get 7500 sacks of grain for the year. Betty says - "nono, you are only getting 6250 sacks of grain".

I'm sorry?

This is when I had a hallucination of jumping across the desk and killing Betty.

"Are you telling me that there is some "mistake" by which we are missing 1250 of our SACKS OF GRAIN? We were promised SACKS AND SACKS OF GRAIN."

Apparently, Betty informs us, we were misinformed at the beginning by someone else - not her of course, because she would never lie because Betty isn't like that...

And then Betty says "You know, I was a grad student once too and I know about being exploited. Do you feel like you are being exploited? Because I want you to tell me if you feel like you are being exploited."

Gee, Betty - you just asked me to do more work that I was supposed to do for less pay than you promised me. I NEED THIS GRAIN SO I CAN EAT THIS WINTER, BETTY. I’m feeling just a touch angry with you sitting over in your desk with a nice red leather jacket talking to me about exploitation. 1250 sacks of grain don’t mean much to you, Betty, but they mean a lot of ramen to me.

Yeah, this sounds like exploitation. Apparently there was some kind of grain blight and the program just doesn't have as many sacks as they thought they would have. Now if Betty had a sack at all she would go over and request the grain from the head of her department. But Betty has no sack.

So Bob and I are officially exploited by the University fiefdom.

I would quit, but I really need the sacks of grain (such as they are).

I promise I will post something nice the very day when nothing APPALLINGLY BAD happens to me, really.

It will be about rainbows, kittens, sunshine, and lollipops.

Poorness

2006-09-25T09:14:00.000-05:00

Yeah. I've got a little of ye olde frustration going on with the absurd pay schedule in HP.

Because I have, currently, FOUR jobs and I am still not getting paid until THE LAST DAY OF OCTOBER!

Now this, my friends, is a serious problem for me because this means that for the entirety of October I am going to be utterly poverty-stricken in the same way that I was for all of September from school / hospital bills, etc. Except with the difference that if new bills come this month I will have Jack Squat to pay them with.

Now how terrifically difficult would it be for them to pay us sometime in the month that isn't the last day of the month, i.e. the day before rent is due every single time. I'm thinking that the 15th or so would be far more reasonable - or even *gasp* getting paid bi-weekly instead of once-a-freaking-month.

Now I'm not sure about your opinions on the matter, but there is something highly wrong with a system where I have four jobs, am a full time student, and I am seriously thinking about the cash benefits of plasma donations, selling off pieces of furniture, and possibly starting a cottage industry in the department making customized laptop bags.

Or maybe I can set up a card table in the quads and draw people as comic book characters.

Or maybe I should just apply for a retail job and fuck all of this training that I've gotten, because, hey I can make WAY more than $1500 in 3 months at Target.

sheesh.

C'est la vie.

2006-09-13T21:13:00.000-05:00

I didn't get the Assistant director of the writing program job.

And so now I don't have the qualifications to apply to the job I want in Madison

And I am wretched.

New School Year, odd people, and a noisy cat.

2006-09-12T15:29:00.000-05:00

So the school year is starting to gear up.

All of a sudden there are presentations to give, meetings to attend, faculty to contact, schedules to arrange, and various pots of soup to make.

And also, all of the creepy people are loose in Chicago.

I think that this has something to do with the weather. Pretty much no one looks particularly creepy in a t-shirt and shorts, but as the wandering bands of people around my apartment layer up with their winter gear, they start to look just a little more sinister and a lot more insane. The boy has also noted that psychiatric admissions go down at the VA just because of the misty and unpleasant weather that we have been having. Reasons for this are - as yet - unknown, but conjecture suggests that either it isn't worth going to the hospital and pretending to want to kill yourself in order to have double portions of cafeteria food for a few days if it might be chilly and inclement outside on the way there, or (to our best guess) all of the rain in Chicago is actually methadone and would-be patients are merely laying face-up in the middle of parks everywhere soaking up the goodness.

In either case, fewer potentially odd people in there means more potentially odd people wandering around and I believe that they have all decided to hang out on my street. While walking to the Walgreens yesterday, the boy and I passed:

(1) a strange man with a plaid jacket over his shoulders and disheveled hair who kept stooping down by the front right tires of cars in order to touch them and look at them. He followed us most of the way home.

(2) a large old man in a checked shirt and suspenders who held up the line at Walgreens making an impulse buy of a tiny futuristic-looking back massager that was vibrating on the shelf, giving the distinct vibe that this vibe was not for it's intended upper-torso use.

(3) a rail thin man wearing a tan fedora and tan trench that was tied together at the waist, clutching a bag of some alcohol or other and having a distinctly distant expression and a distinctly Nightmare on Elm Street appearance.

Taken separately they were simply the random odd people of Chicago, taken as a group all out in the twilight wandering the 2 blocks between my house and the Walgreens to the absence of all other human beings, it was a little spooky. It's also possible that the gothic fiction has simply gotten to my head.

I'm currently reading the Woman in White and I have to say, there are few totally-repressed-lesbian-love-stories-of-the-19th-century that can shock me, but with my understanding of the euphemisms and social codes of the time, this story is the equivalent of the older lady tossing the younger across the harpsichord in Madame Aristocrat's well-attended salon and fetching the strap-on for the general amusement of the guests before dinner.

Also, there is ugliness and plainness and hideousness, which is the justifiable reason why I get to put this charmingly raunchy work in my dissertation - I love literary studies.

This aura of gothic that has been hovering in my head also led me to assume that someone was dead in my building. You see, there is this cat that has been meowing in what can only be described as a yowl for two days pretty much nonstop, really loud, although it has never made a noise before. So the boy and I decided to take up a minor snooping role and wander around the outside of the building to determine from which window this unholy noise was issuing. I, of course, assume that we're going to find a cat in a window with bloodied red mouth from eating its master (who suddenly fell and hit her head and expired of natural causes). In my over-heated imagination, this would be something out of Poe's The Black Cat, and I would probably have to offer to taken in the cat a-la-Scully and Queequeg in the second season of X-files. After locating the cat, who was, coincidentally, raven black and seemed really upset and yowled at us continually when it saw us from the darkened apartment, we got the landlord and she went to check.

Apparently the cat had been locked up with food and water and such as if the owner were on vacation and it was sitting in the window (thoughtfully open a bit for it) letting the entire world know that it was simply lonely and that it's master was gone (in the leaving sense, not in the dead sense). So, my adventure was ultimately not particularly adventuresome but worked out ok, and the cat has stopped making so much noise so that's ok too.

So, no dead people - only creepy people and my over-active imagination. This probably means that I am now in the proper mindset for proposal writing.

Summer, Fall, and musings on my future.

2006-09-01T09:03:00.000-05:00

Currently I am sitting in Dollop, one of the more exquisite coffee shops on the graduate school hierarchy of priorities. It has, (1) Metropolis Coffee (2) Is far North enough that usually people I know aren't here (3) Free wireless (4) on-street parking (5) comfy couches.

And I am contemplating my life.

So I'll chat at you about it for awhile, get everyone caught up, and perhaps get myself out of the little funk that I am currently in (not to mention avoiding work for yet another half-hour).

School:
-Dissertation proposal is going forward-ish, after a long standstill. I was so frustrated when the second iteration was rejected at the end of the Spring quarter that it took a long time for me to be able to really look at it again. I have yet another idea for yet another revision / compression of yet another angle of this damn thing, so I'm going to try and get a draft written before school starts (that’s 4 weeks, folks). I'll show it to my chair at the very beginning of the quarter and see if I can get him on my side this time.

I would show it to the entire committee at the same time again, but really - I can't handle that kind of rejection right now and last time it was beyond brutal. I've taken all their advice and restructured my ideas to be generated specifically from 19th century gothic texts and I really think that I have something this time.... Of course, last time and the time before I thought I had something too.

So yeah, I'm a little bummed about it. It's hard to get worked up about something you know will be eviscerated.

Work:
- As my method of avoiding said dissertation and making sure that I can, you know, eat this year now that my fellowship has expired I am working on 5 jobs.

(1) CAAP instructor for the incoming freshmen
(2) Preceptor for undergrauate English honors BA theses
(3) Writing intern for humanities core
(4) Hopefully a second session of writing interning for the humanities core
(5) Hopefully assistant director of the writing program (keeping fingers crossed)

With 5 jobs I just might be able to pull off a living wage and keep the wolves at bay. Ah, grad school. Of course, only one of these jobs has started as of yet, so I'm still experiencing end-of-summer-graduate-student-cash-flow. Sigh.

I'm also looking at another job out-of-state for next school year. I'll let you know more if I get it.

Home:
- Our apartment is a mess. I'm refinishing / restructuring the coffee table, painting a jewelry box for my sister, framing pictures, painting lamps, refinishing a trunk, and putting wheels on the heavy furniture. Most of this is already done, and now everything is about 2 days away from reasonability, so living in squalor is about to end. This has all been, I believe, an elaborate system to keep me from getting work done on my dissertation and allowing me a chance to unwind a bit before the year starts up again.

Health:
- But I'm still really burnt out and pretty depressed. All that hospital time served to prove that I don't have seizures, however, it still didn't go anywhere near saying what the problems I'm having may actually be. So for now I am back where I started with just a little more knowledge of what it's not and a lot of bills. If I'm going to get this figured out, I have to do it by the end of October before my insurance resets my deductible. While I'm in there I should also see someone about my feet because they hurt like a bitch all the time. I have, however, dropped a pant size and that, my friends, is a very good thing. My goal is size 10. Can we reach it? I have no idea. Will we try? Yes we will.

Family:
- My mom seems to be freaking out, again, about the fact that she and I don't have a good relationship. I find this rather strange because she was the one who wrecked it in the first place. My sister and I, on the up side, are getting along great and we are finally getting to see one another without mom. I'm really starting to get along with the boy's mom, which is a great thing - except that it's making my mom jealous and then I have to field another barrage of well-intentioned-but-ill-executed attempts to "understand me" through point-blank questioning. I really have no idea what to do about this. She's started pumping my sister for information which is turning out to be a frustrating thing, and so I'm going to have to have a conversation with my mom soon - I've just been putting it off because I'm a sissy. My boy is also depressed and very grumpy from the massive amount of work that he is doing and hours that he is putting in (and also the apartment squalor - see above), but I think (hope) things will be getting better soon.

Wedding proposal?
- nothing on the horison, I'll let you know if anything happens. I've given up on the bridal magazines now - I mean, what's the point?

So yeah, I'm floating out to sea right now, but I will be back in the race just as soon as I can navigate this rip tide, and those shoals, and ah... I see... sharks.

Ok. I need to list something good. Some good things. er....

(1) I get to get new school supplies.
(2) having lots of jobs structures my time
(3) they might like my dissertation this time
(4) having a better relationship with my mother could be... nice.
(5) It's not like the boy is leaving me, he is just taking his time.
(6) Soon I will have a lot of nice things in my apartment
(7) I have 4 weeks to get the proposal done, and I've been reading primary sources all summer so it will be ok
(8) Although some friends are going overseas, others are coming back soon.
(9) I'm healthier than I've been in awhile.
(10) it's not seizures.. I get to keep my drivers license.
(11) my sister is cool.

There, I feel better. Time to read "Plain and Ugly Janes: The Rise of the Ugly Woman in Contemporary American Fiction" and finish my coffee.

Oh God am I bored.

2006-08-11T15:54:00.000-05:00

So, yeah. I'm a sissy -- but there is nothing to do here.

I've already read most of a novel for my diss, surfed the internet endlessly, napped, looked at magazines, and it is only 4pm.

And I'm running out of magazines.

I was a little distressed this morning when the lady that took my food orders indicated that that little menu is the extent of my agency while here. "certainly she is exaggerating" I thought. Nope. I'm looking forward to dinner (she convinced me to get the ice cream) in a way that I have never looked forward to dinner before - as something to do.

By tomorrow I shall be insane.

Also, for the record, H. Rider Haggard's She is really, really grotesque in parts.

I'm particularly fond of the embalmed-people-torches, that will indubitably end up featured amongst the "hideous" in my dissertation.

I've also become an avid watcher of the EEG monitor. If I blink my eyes, it's recorded onscreen as a series of wiggles, and it is terrifically difficult to not play with this new understanding I have developed in order to make the monitor look interesting.

Yeah.

So. Clearly. Bored.

So i'm sitting here in the hospital

2006-08-10T21:08:00.000-05:00

Very exciting... Very, very, exciting.

Ok, not so much.

I have about 26 electrodes on my head and they have wrapped my head in gauze so that I really really look like a 19th century victim of a toothache - or possibly a battlefield casualty. I've got, like 3 different wristbands and an IV in my hand, and everything that I do is monitored by a video camera in the corner and onscreen with little wavy EEG lines.

This is pretty strange.

The boy went home for the evening (has to work tomorrow), so I'm pretty much going it solo tonight.

I have my mountain dew and a bunch of magazines to keep me company - and the internet. The internet is awesome.

So, yeah, things are strangeness on this end. On the up side I got to go out on a shopping spree today for fun stuff to entertain myself, shiny new pens, and a bunch of pajamas that don't have to be pulled on over my head (cause of the totally silly looking ponytail of wires I'm currently sporting.

You know that guy in Jabba the Hutt's ship that had what looked like a big snake wrapped around his head? That's what I look like right now.

I got my boy to promise to bring my digital camera tomorrow so I have pictures of this.

More later.

So... Yeah.

2006-08-09T13:52:00.000-05:00

I'm finishing up my last week of teaching this summer (sentences, Yay!) and trying to get everything together for some interviews and job applications and cleaning and hospital and getting my damn proposal done and stuff.

So things have been a little hectic.

Currently I'm chez writing program, waiting to interview for the assistant director position (I'll let you know if I get it).

Tonight the boy has call, so I will be catching dinner with Michael and running out to get some entertaining Belgian Beer that tastes like apples.

Tomorrow I will be going into the hospital for the weekend. (News on the seizure thing as I get it).

As an indicator of my current level of stress. I'm really REALLY looking forward to staying in the hospital. Eat whatever I want, no exercize, time to work on my dissertation, and not being able to leave the bed for, like, 4 days. I'm sure that this is just a teensy bit strange, but it sounds like heaven from this end.

I'm sure I'll update in the next day or so, so until then....

My car is haunted

2006-07-25T11:21:00.000-05:00

No, really.

Actually, come to think of it, this is the second possessed car that I have owned. The first, an Oldsmobile station wagon, had the unnerving habit of displaying anything from 36:74 to 14:29 on the clock and then slowly counting backwards.

This kind of benign creepiness generally inhabits most of the objects that I own, but yesterday was just a little bit more scary.

See, I can't turn my car off.

I drove home, put the car in park, turned it off, removed the key, got out, and locked the door. As I was walking away, I hear my Boy:

"Why is the car still running?"

me: "That's impossible, it has to be the... [here I put my head down on the hood and listen]... but I turned it off?"

"Well, it's still running."

Creeped out, we open the hood to find the radiator fan still merrily twirling.

I check the inside of the car. It's all off. Turn it on again, turn it off again, still running. I go inside and call my dad who indicates that yes, it is really strange that I car would keep running after it's been turned off, and he has no idea what has caused this strange malfunction.

I told him that if the headlights start flashing in Morse code it's going into the lake.

My father, the pragmatist, suggested that even a possessed car with only 80,000 miles on it has a long way to go before it can be junked.

So now it needs a name.
Any suggestions?

Shit + Fan =

2006-06-02T14:22:00.000-05:00

So things are looking up, or down, depending on which side of the teeter-totter you feel like jumping on.

The past few weeks have been one long swirling flush down the toilet bowl of life, but I'm pretty ok with it now.

Whining first, then explanation.

Student papers (each 6pg). Gah.
Sister moved back to Racine after I worked really hard to get her a home in Chicago.
Still no conclusive results on the epilepsy thing. They want to have me stay in the hospital for 4 days with an EEG hooked to my head and see if they can catch my brainwaves during one of my elusive (possible) seizures. No word yet on how expensive that would actually be (or if my insurance will cover it).
Committee HATED all over my proposal and B-----t shifted me over to V----r as the new director of the project.
Pinched a nerve in my shoulder which is now in constant burning pain.
Lost my driver's license somewhere on the Midway in HP
Keyboard on my computer is not working properly so I have to cut-and-paste every "a" in my writing. (like the last 6)
Gained back the weight I lost during the culinary holocaust of deliciousness this weekend

Suck.

But it's all ok, and here's how I'm rationalizing it.

I'm almost done grading, so there will be joy and celebration at the end of the day.
Sister DID get enrolled in a cool radiology program, so she will be setting herself up for a really promising future career.
I might get to spend 4 days in the hospital getting all that work done that I never have the chance to sit down and do. And maybe they'll fix my sleep apnea too!
Despite the sadness, I looked at my primary sources again and have a killer new idea for reshaping my dissertation (in a way that makes much more sense to me and makes much more sense with the literature).
Uh, no - the shoulder thing genuinely sucks.
This is the perfect opportunity to apply for an Illinois license (which I have been meaning to do anyway)
I now have the justification I need to buy a new laptop and junk the old ones.
It was delicious.

I will continue to persist in these happy thoughts no matter what else the world throws at me. I cannot be stopped. I AM A RAY OF FUCKING SUNSHINE DAMNIT, and I will KICK THE SHIT out of anything that stands in my way. TASTE THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING, BITCHES!

Ahem.

So anyway, I'm having my preceptees over this Sunday for hanging, snacks, and a 70's disaster film marathon. I'm thinking it will be rockin'. Although I'm pretty sure that they think I'm a lot more interesting than I actually am.

Oh, I almost forgot. Some really cool things have happened too! I got an award for excellence in undergraduate teaching (part of which will pay for my laptop, and part of which is a plaque I have standing right above my TV. A PLAQUE! Nifty!). On top of this, my preceptees got together and signed a card for me, and bought me a copy of Proof and popcorn. I never expected something like that from my students, and it makes me feel like a superstar teacher. I mean, presents? Rock!

Ok, I should stop procrastinating and get back to grading. Besides, these "a's" are really bugging me.

I could be, should be, would be doing something productive right now...

2006-05-23T10:04:00.000-05:00

But instead I'm blogging.

You know how diss. advisors have that knack for picking at the weak parts of your argument like an obsessive-compulsive with a bit of dirt stuck to their shoe? Yeah.

I thought that since the proposal went in on Friday I would have 1 blissful week in which to catch up on a sundry stuff before my meeting this Friday. One blissful week of cleaning, Oblivion, commenting on papers, doing laundry, and filing.

Alas. An advisor got back to me on Sunday night with a list of questions that I need to answer for Friday. Ass.

Although, I have to be thankful for the comments, interest, and effort on her part.

I'm currently hanging in the the Writing Program cubicles, and will be all week as I wait for my kiddies to stop by for individual meetings on their papers (due Friday). $5 says they all show up on Thursday afternoon. Feel free to stop by, throw m&m's over the walls, bring me bagels, rig up a pyrotechnic lights display, bring in a hovercraft, whatever... because I will be bored out of my mind.

These bitternesses aside, It is positively LOVELY outside, and I will be able to sleep with the windows open tonight. This will make me a VERY happy girl. I'm thinking that this evening I will dedicate a little bit of time to the laundry, a little bit of time to the sunroom, and a little bit of time to making sure that my Oblivion character closes the oblivion gate that opened up outside of the cave I'm currently exploring. And I wil drink cider. Cider sounds really good. Perhaps soup will be made. Soup is good too.

Ok, rambling - back to work.

Panic

2006-05-18T10:30:00.000-05:00

AKA: getting down to the point where I have to put the theory with the text nail down all those floating ideas and integrate all those books I've forgotten about reading in my proposal panic.

I have 1 day to get this done.

26 pages written,
3 theories of the ugly to destroy
5 chapters that need their theoretical background worked out / articulated
100s of sources that need to be compiled into the bibliography

all for the

3 people on my committee

and

1 chance at getting this approved before summer.

Feeling better.

2006-05-13T13:02:00.000-05:00

Better enough, that is, to realize that it will only increase my personal store of bitterness and not even be amusing to relate the absolute ridiculosity of my attempting-to-get-well experience.

On the up side I've got 20 pages of the proposal written (good pages? that remains to be determined), and nowhere that I can go until Tuesday (sorry about 13 de Mayo, I'm sure you don't all want what I've got). So I have a chance of getting the proposal in by Wednesday with a minimum of hair-pulling.

So on to something more interesting.

Doctorice and I have been batting back and forth ideas for our school's English T-shirts. Frankly, some of them have been very funny.

So I'm compiling a list. Let me know if y'all think of any others.

University of ------- English
- I would prefer not to

University of ------- English
- Heart of Darkness

University of ------- English
- It is bitter, bitter... but I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart

University of ------- English
- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

University of ------- English
- They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.

University of ------- English
- provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.

University of ------- English
- for the stress of circumstances, Fred felt, was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him with all the constructive power of suspicion.

These are, of course from Melville, Conrad, Crane, Lovecraft, Austen, and Eliot

Perhaps we should have t-shirts made or something.

Anyway, back to convalescing

Ill

2006-05-11T07:12:00.000-05:00

It figures. I'm thinking that God does not want me to finish my proposal.

Because if God wanted me to finish my proposal he would not have made me Ghastly Ill yesterday. and today.

I believe that my tonsils may close off the back of my throat.

Nice.

Proposal is due next Wednesday, and I have a headache that feels like the apocolypse.

Oh, and as an update on the loopyness thing - they think it's epilepsy. So lots of tests in my future.

I'm going to go eat pudding now. I will update more later when my keyboard is working properly and I don't have to cut-and-paste every "a" in my documents.

Hugs,
KT

What's been going on...

2006-05-05T11:38:00.000-05:00

Alright, catch-up time on my postings

Here's what's been going on with me these past weeks, and also - at the end - a CONTEST!

Self-absorption first:

(1) Saw F-------e M-----r get Knighted by the French Government in a ceremony on campus Monday. There were fewer swords than I imagined, but she did get a really cool medal (which apparently has an accompanying tack-pin for daily wear)

(shiny, isn't it?)

Anyway, her new title is Dame F-------e, which I find fairly hilarious. I'm thinking of addressing all future emails to her like that. In any case I have decided that I would like to be knighted, and I know that Doctorice is with me on this.

(2) I have been writing recommendations for my preceptees like a crazy person. I don't have any clue why we only have a week to get through all of these and somehow write letters of recommendations to the dean about how wonderful these kids are and how much they deserve honors, but I'm getting pretty burnt out.

(3) because this was the week that I was supposed to be working on my proposal - sigh.

(4) So next week is the week that I will be working on my proposal. And I really have to get it done this time too because I promised WXYZ, V----r, and B-----t taht I would have it to them by the 17th. PANIC.

(5) I'm going to the doctor today because I get so loopy. I'm hoping that they don't tell me I have an insulinoma or little tiny seizures (my current paranoias). I DO hope that they tell me I have hypothyroidism, because that would go a long way towards explaining the confusing quirks of the KT. I'll let you know if it's something tragic or anything.

OK, got all of that out and now? ON TO THE CONTEST!

(11x44)+(22x3)=506 pages of suck

Mostly done with the grading. Now that my bitterness has shifted into totally unhealthy laughter, I am proposing a contest.

(1) bottle of wine (chosen by someone with taste in wine - i.e. not me) to wash away the trauma for the person who posts the most horrifying sentence from a student paper.

That's right folks, belly up, open up those old files and drag out a winner.

Here are the rules:

- No fabrication - this must be a direct quote.
- No names (obviously)
- No more than 2 sentences (we're looking for concentrated evil here)
- Feel free to give, however, an overall gestalt of the paper and context for this horrifying quote.
- Post as many as you want.

Since we don't keep copies of papers (usually), I'll have everyone work on the honor system here - no embellishing for added crappiness.

I will choose the winner sometime at the end of next week.

Good luck!

I feel another coming on.

2006-04-25T18:17:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'm bitter, I'm rEEEEALLY bitter right now.

I stayed in Harper all day so that I could meet with my RWL students and help them through the (truly appalling) introductions and conclusions for their papers. In fact, I had TWO damn seminars today and one of them was arranged to be at 5fucking30 in the evening until 7goodamnPM so that it would fit in their oh-so-busy schedules.

And only 1 person showed up for the evening seminar. Out of, like, 6.

And so...

Dear student,

I admire the speed with which you wrote this essay, but I am fairly sure it is impolitic on your part to loudly proclaim to your friend that you wrote it 15 minutes before class right in front of me. Although I am nice, I am not deaf, and I am still grading you, you stupid, stupid moron. Besides the fact that your authorial haste is apparent from your entire lack of ideas, structure, coherence, style, and penmanship (invest in a printer), your utter ignorance of the prompts presented to the class is also a clue to your complete lack of effort on this assignment. I want you to examine the marks that I have indicated on this paper and stab yourself in the hand with a sharpened #2 pencil once for each grammatical mistake (twice if it is a homonym mistake).

If you can still write after that, hand in a revised draft.

--Me

More grading.

2006-04-25T11:59:00.000-05:00

Ok, all but 2 of the theses graded - 22 midterms to go.

More bitterness to follow:

Dear Student,

This paper exists, for me, in a state of liminality - it doesn't wholly suck, and yet, it is not good. Your argument, while wholly adequate for the task, is still appallingly benign. Your analysis, while technically complete enough to make your point, has all the enthusiasm of unflavored gelatin. Your style, while clear, is as flavorless as ginger ale. Your paper is, in fact, the kind of unoffensive clear broth given to those who have the intellectual equivalent of severe food poisoning. After reading the papers of your peers, it was just the thing to make me less angry and more sleepy. I would finish commenting, but I have fallen asleep twice while thinking of something to say.

Thanks,
Your TA

4 down 6 to go.

2006-04-21T18:37:00.000-05:00

Ok - partially through with grading theses.

2 of the ones I have graded are glorious. One of them I'm going to nominate for the prize.

The other two? Er... um... non-glorious. One was so non-glorious it made me angry.

I have also become the not-so-proud owner of 22 undergraduate RWL papers to grade. Bleah.

I do have to say this for grading papers. It has made me an absolute MASTER of saying "this paper sucks" in a really nice way. I mean, I can look at a piece of shit and extract the only glimmering piece of tinsel that the cat swallowed at Christmas and somehow wrap everything up with that tinsel as a bow.

This niceness is causing, however, frustration. We have to be nice ALL THE TIME and can't ever let the student (even if he/she has obviously written this paper at 4am high on methamphetamines and smack and the paper smells faintly of urine) see our solid professional demeanor crack.

But in private we're saving up all that bitterness in the "comments that could have been."

Thus, today I am donating my comment space on this blog to you all - to write the comment that should have been written on that horrible paper where you were nice. To let loose that one bitter, cutting snipe that would have reduced your student to tears and possibly suicide.

Think of it as our suicide prevention day.

Just to get the ball rolling, I'll post a few here:

Dear student,

This paper sucks like a whore at carnival. There is no thesis - not even by the end when most people come up with at least some lame-ass attempt at a coherent idea. If I had to choose a metaphor for your structure, I would choose a deceased morbidly obese man who has been floating in a lake for a few days getting puffy. Let me explain: the idea was over-large to begin with, but with the addition of all the watered-down prose it ballooned full of all the hot air you were blowing and is now so offensive to see it makes me want to vomit. Please resubmit when you think of something to say.

If you have any questions, contact the professor because I am too tired to talk to you,
Me

OR

Dear student,

I would like to say that the ideas in this paper are gems that you just need to show off in a nice structural setting, but I would be lying. Your ideas are more like chips of flint. They're opaque, uninteresting, dangerous, and can in theoretical extension (and the addition of a little tinder) hurt someone. Although I find your immature and vaguely misogynistic and racist style and word choice appalling, it is nothing compared to the horror that is your introduction. Don't bother rewriting it, you'll never learn.

Go away,
Me

OR

Dear student,

Although I love cotton candy, marshmallows, and fresh-out-of-the-dryer terrycloth towels, not everything fluffy and insubstantial is good. Your paper is a perfect example of this phenomenon. It's fluffy and insubstantial, but somehow I'm not smiling. Please remove everything that you lifted from "A Woman's Book of Empowering Phrases" and your fifth grade book report and resubmit with a thesis.

Thanks,
Me

Ahhhh. I feel better. You can too! Post!

I'm not a bad person.

2006-04-18T09:36:00.000-05:00

For not wanting to grade papers, right?

I have currently been avoiding about 11 thesis drafts.

The boy is on call tonight, so I may try grading them at home this evening.

I'm thinking I'll turn on my Xbox, grab a glass of wine, and every time I finish grading a paper - kill something. Ahhh catharsis.

So, the Katie update (probably more for me than you).

- Jobs: haven't heard back from the MAPH people yet - currently biting fingernails and hoping for an interview. Have to apply for other things too (although I'm not currently sure what they are)

- Writing program: a lot less stressful than the past 2 quarters, although I have a lot more students. During class I get to sit in the back, take attendance, and read. First seminar was on intros and conclusions, so I'm waiting to see what I get this Thursday with their first papers.

- Preceptees: Theses to comment on, paranoia to soothe, and last minute crises to field.

- Family: Now my mom's frustrated with me - Urk. Although my sister is in town and that means things are nice here.

- Dissertation: Actually doing much better! Met with V----- and things went very well. I think I have an idea for the intro to my proposal and the theory seems to be untangling itself rather nicely. Also there have been some spectacular finds in journals from the 1800s so there is a chance that all of this work will pay off in some good ways.

- Apartment: a disaster. I should put together the kitchen table, but that means I have to stain the table and I'm a little too lazy for that right now.

Back to the coal mines.

--kt

Joy and Bitterness.

2006-04-14T22:36:00.000-05:00

Apparently that is my new theme for this month.

A long explanation of the new craptacular bitterness I'm experiencing regarding developments in my family problems is available for those who ask me personally, but let's just say that there is a real possibility none of my stuff at the house in question will ever return home.

Crap.

Anyway.

On to JOY. There are wonderful amounts of joy this evening because:

(1) I'm not working on anything in particular
(2) I've finally converted the sunroom to an office.

This is spectacular. I have a desk that has places for everything. I found this cool filing thing by the dumpster that is awesomely perfect for sorting papers. I even reworked my metal filing cabinet to hold hanging files. Oooooooh I LOVE hanging files.

I'm not sure if the rest of the world shares my office-supply fetish (although I think that it is primarily a girl-based phenomenon) but there is something about a new pen that makes a day bright and shiny. I even recommend to my preceptees that when they are stuck for motivation they should go drop $20 at the office supply store and then return to work (apparently they have tried this and it works). So now with the advent of hanging files in my office space this is my favorite room in the house. Not to mention that it has beautiful open windows that are letting in the slightly chilly yet deliciously fresh night air - and my very hot neighbor is walking around topless.

Sigh.

Right now I am sorting files and generally getting things in order out here.

So, again, a touch of joy to sweeten the cup of bitterness.

Mary Poppins was right.

In which Katie teaches outside, goes to IKEA, and embraces hermithood.

2006-04-11T16:14:00.000-05:00

Now that the weather has gotten tolerable, I have been seduced by the siren song of class outside, much to the general amusement of my students.

I always assumed that it was merely the hard-hearted cruelness of professors that kept me inside a stuffy seminar room on days when the sunshine was warming the backs of my less attendance-scrupulous classmates. Turns out there are some actual problems with teaching disinterested students outside.

1. dirt - they just aerated the quads which makes for a rather bumpy and er... dirty space for sitting. This drove my class off of the grass onto the benches where we encountered...

2. bugs - little tiny waspy-like biting things that were freakishly albino white. I actually had a student ask me after class - "Is that was flying termites look like?" . Yipes.

3. sooo many things to fidget with - I knew that something was wrong when I was gesturing towards students and their comments with a clod of dirt.

4. Wind - speaking as someone with long hair.

5. Noise - because I'm deaf

6. general distractibility - because I'm so easily amused.

Needless to say, a timid professor would collapse in the face of such opposition. So I have revised my previous view of my professors - they're not hard-hearted, they're just sissies. As I reviewed introductions and conclusions for the 50th time with the sun beating down on my back and the happy smiles of contented students, I realized that despite the flaws, teaching outside is really much better.

From my title it is clear that I have been to IKEA. What is not clear is that I got an awesome desk that is now living in my sunroom and taking up entirely too much space. This is part of an overall plan that involves my actually getting some kind of work done on my dissertation.

I also, in a fit of desperation, emailed my professors and set up a meeting to discuss the draft of my proposal that I have not as of yet written in hopes that this will kick my ass.

Consider it kicked.

So I will try to spend a bit more time in the sunroom with my fancy new desk getting things done instead of spending a lot of time in front of the TV playing Oblivion on my new Xbox 360. Also I hope to spend a little less time and $ in my car driving to places where I procrastinate by shopping.

And I think that it's working. Yesterday (my first solid day of working in a looong time) I felt damn terrific.

Today, today is good.

Evaporation

2006-04-10T11:19:00.000-05:00

Hello all,

This is a kind of general notice that for this week (and probably part of next week) I will be disappearing into work and such. My preceptees handed in their drafts, and I need to seriously get some work done on my dissertation.

So - Hugs, and I will talk to y'all soon!

KT

WOW.

2006-03-26T12:35:00.000-06:00

Does anyone else find this highly, even horrifyingly, disturbing?

http://www.cartier.com/en/Creation,B6016216

Now, if you read the description and follow the little links on the left, you are forced to encounter a kind of really distressingly misled Story-of-O-esque somehow socially legitimate form of visible bondage.

Now I'm not saying that I'm against bondage in the fun sense, but I get the feeling that there are a lot of people out there who have no idea the valences of meaning that are attached to the idea of SCREWING A BRACELET ONTO YOUR LOVED ONE'S WRIST FOREVER LIKE A HANDCUFF. And these people wander the planet totally oblivious to the horrifying multiple (and not so nice) meanings that they are attaching to their relationship.

Since 1970. Which is a whole secondary backlash against free love.

And, not without a little cringe did I find that this same motif is also available in ring sizes - wedding ring sizes.

Now, some of you may be thinking (hell, it's just a bracelet). And that may be true. But let's just think about the material a moment.

Gold, right? Ok.
Silver? Still ok.
What if it were stainless steel? Fine.
Steel? Er...
Iron? An Iron bracelet with a key that someone else has and you can't take it off without their help?

Yikes.

Bad weeks.

2006-03-25T11:57:00.000-06:00

Ok, so the past two weeks have been very bad.

I can't really go into details on the internet, but it is full-blown family craptacularness. On my end this has resulted positively in getting to spend more time with my fantastic sister, but crappily in having to spend more time being criticized by my mother. And 10 pounds. And stress. And anger -- boiling, seething anger.

And to avoid the badness I have resorted to thrifting (time honored non-guilty pleasure)

I have purchased in the past two weeks:

- a mint green skirt
- a sexy pair of vintage brown heels
- a pair of earth shoes
- a pair of jeans
- 3 polos of various types
- a tinkerbell t-shirt
- 2 blazers
- a pair of shoes that I bought and then discarded
- sunglasses
- nearly a tiara
- a purse
- a tiffin (no kidding)
- a few shirts

I'm pretty sure that there's more, but I can't really remember. Today I'm going to spend the day commenting on my preceptees' paper drafts and collecting applications for summer jobs.

My tiffin shines like the sun as it has been through about 6 random polishings.

My sister and I also purchased matching rings... which are pretty darn cool http://www.justmetal.com/storefront/product_info.php?products_id=228

I tried mine on, and I look like a badass. Ok, maybe not a badass... more of a semi-badass with a swanky titanium ring.

I will try to post more often.

Really.

Holy dishwasher, Batman!

2006-02-12T16:49:00.000-06:00

Yes... the laziness that hovers like a cloud over my apartment has gotten thicker with the acquisition of a brand-spanking-new countertop dishwasher.

Currently it is living in the kitchen on my former jewelry cabinet munching away happily on the bits of food from last night's dishes.

I really would like to say that this won't actually change the level of cleanliness in the apartment (implying, of course, that we are merely buying the item to save time). But really it is the only thing that is currently standing between us and a wall of dishes that threatens to spill into the rest of the apartment and smother us while sleeping.

Of course, the novelty hasn't worn off yet - so we'll see how this works out.

In the meantime, the boy and I have instituted our no-holds-barred-smack-down battle against the mess in the rest of the apartment. Last night we kicked it in the nuts when we took all the furniture out of the bedroom and FINALLY laid down the Oriental rug that has been living in the corner since October. This evening we intend to step on it's neck with vicious mopping, cleaning of the bathroom, scrubbing of the kitchen, emptying of the sunroom, and possible pruning of dishware.

Hopefully it won't get too ugly.

Also, with the novelty of the new dishwasher supporting me, I have attempted to make 3 steaming pots of food in hopes that they will sustain us through the week. Currently cooking are: Curried chicken stew with butternut squash, spiced carrot soup, and spaghetti sauce. The apartment smells really good.

So, cooking and cleaning and cooking and cleaning. This weekend will suck, but man - next week will be delicious.

Katie's shuttle service.

2006-02-09T11:24:00.000-06:00

Every morning I get into my car with 1-3 passengers to make the trek to HP. Almost every morning this trip takes an HOUR AND A HALF. and I STILL DON'T MAKE IT TO MY CLASS ON TIME.

This, clearly, is insane.

I want to make it clear that I am traveling a total of 15 miles to get to hyde park. In Wisconsin if I wanted to take an hour and a half to travel 15 miles I would need to drive to this place, put my car in reverse and drive back home, and repeat this several times.

Today was a traffic nightmare. Multiple accidents on lakeshore made everything slow down to barely a crawl and when I fled for the sake of my schedule I spend a further 15 min just trying to get TO a road that wasn't jam-packed with idiots attempting to turn left from the rightmost lane in front of me.

Then it took a further 45 min to actually make the crawling trek through the city (from lawrence to fullerton) and another 15 to get back to LSD under the accident. Which really got me to where I should have been (still north of the loop on LSD) about... oh... an hour after when I should have been there.

Add this to the absolutely pathetic filling of potholes on that stretch of terror, the road crews that have been blocking off lanes for weeks on the curve in front of the drake for apparently NO reason whatsoever, and the morons who were changing a tire IN THE MIDDLE LANE of LSD (a 4 lane highway) in the middle of rush hour, and suddenly road rage is starting to make a lot of sense.

I hate to make generalizations, but Chicago drivers are psychotic.

Perhaps I should just strap Magneto to my hood and we can play Vehicular Moses.

I need a harpoon for my car.

TEACHING LITERATURE

2006-01-31T12:18:00.000-06:00

Teaching Literature (my new blog) is now online. This is what I'm doing - posting teaching worksheets, teaching ideas, etc. for teaching literature at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Steph has already mailed in something for me to post, so apparently it's going to be up and running.

'cause it's not quite er... fair of me to take up a bunch of blogspace without, you know, saying something of importance about something important to me.

So, like, visit and comment and shit.

2006-01-31T11:36:00.000-06:00

Ok - doctorice has been blogging and now I feel I must follow suit.

However, I don't really have anything happy to post -

The last 10 days have been astonishingly crappy - and for all of you that are wondering what's been going on - here is the lowdown.

1. in which I blew a tire in two places due to crappy lack of pothole management on LSD
2. in which I saw a hit-and-run accident
3. and another 6 car pileup
4. and a 2 car collision
5. all in the space of 10 min.
6. Which caused me to miss an open-bar birthday party.
7. And caused me to spend 4 hours in Farm-n-Fleet this weekend waiting for THE SLOWEST TIRE CHANGE EVER.
8. While listening to three ill behaved children and their seriously trashy mother.
9. in which I fractured? Severly bruised? my jaw.
10. and my bum.
11. and now I have an astonishing earache.
12. and got the flu.
13. in which the boyfriend's family had a tragedy
14. and we drove up to Racine.
15. after driving to HP every damn day last week because it was preceptees AND writing intern AND CoreRelations seminar time.
16. in which I leave the house at 7:30 am and arrive late to my seminar at 9.
17. in which I became highly confused about my dissertation
18. and highly irritated with my reading
19. And got a bad batch of granola that made me sick all weekend

But this week is looking up. My students are doing very well and most of them are attending the admittedly-optional-but-i'm-pretending-they're-mandatory-sessions. Which meanse that they must be learning something. Now that the flu is gone I can use my elliptical machine again (which is doing wonders for my mood). I'm planning on getting some quality work done this weekend (with nowhere to go and noone coming to visit me) and so I will have my dissertation back on track as soon as I can sit down and locate myself in my work.

In the meantime I'm blogging again, which is nice, and I'm thinking of starting up a new blog on teaching.

I'll let you know.

WXYZ will work with me!

2005-12-06T17:36:00.000-06:00

Now we are so happy, we do the dance of joy!

Done!

2005-12-01T10:46:00.000-06:00

Well, not done done, but doneish.

(sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells")

Dashing from the Reg, and running to my home.
Preceptees are gaining, but I reach the car alone.
Slam the icy door, gun the engine, go.
I skid out of my parking space and fly off through the snow.

Grading done, Lots of fun, it's been every day.
Incorrectly syntaxed words of freshman gone away.

Done with class, boredom passed, seminars are done.
Gone are office hours treating papers ill begun.

I thought it would not end, my quarter filled with work
My dissertation paused until I thought I'd go bezerk.
But now the break has come, and I have time to spare
For proposal and for chapter and advisors in my hair.

Christmas break, Christmas break, I'm not going home.
Hiding from the family and working all alone.
Thrifting runs, lots of fun, hanging with my sis
'Til the quarter starts again I'll be in perfect bliss.

Being stuck here in the Reg, waiting for the preceptees to arrive although they are now an hour late has apparently inspired me to bad parody. My apologies.

In all, I have plans for this winter break. They involve spinning wool into thread (no, seriously), finally cleaning the apartment (no, seriously), and getting some work done on the dissertation (it's a little worrisome that I feel the need to write "no, seriously" here as well). I find that not working on my dissertation is actually ultimately causing me more anxiety than working on it. I never felt so much like an academic as when I noticed that little personality quirk.

I will also, hopefully, have a chance to get my random teaching materials together in some kind of order so that I don't have to rewrite them all the time.

So with big plans for this month (y'all are implied in the thrifting/ eating / fun-having, by the way) which I have now written down (and thus have to stick to) I hereby begin my holiday season.

Perhaps I will go play on ebay.

Dissertation

2005-11-28T11:03:00.000-06:00

I am currently in Le Reg, attempting to work on the dissertation that has come to a screeching halt.

Between my students, my preceptees, my family issues, and my depression I have effectively stopped all meaningful work.

So now I'm trying to start again. What was it I told my students? I have a thousand ideas for them to stay motivated. I guess it's time I started taking my own advice.

And talking to my committee

And I need to stop procrastinating by blogging now.

SO they moved.

2005-11-10T11:33:00.000-06:00

I can write this in complete certianty that my mother has no access to a computer and wouldn't know how to find my blog even if she did.

They moved - 2 weekends ago. Halloween.

Out of the family house and into some fucking 55 and older retirement community in Racine. Seriously, everyone there is 70+

In RACINE, the armpit of Wisconsin. Of course, they couldn't move elsewhere because my grandma lives there (in the same building, of course) and my dad still has his job.

I get the feeling that my parents are actually, secretly 80 years old and only pretending to be younger for show. Fuck that - they are actually 55 and act like they're 90+ and at death's door.

This is really my mother's doing. With the OCD with the Agoraphobia, with the sheltered, tiny, ever-contracting life she leads - it's no wonder that they have decided at 55 that the house is just too much for them and that they would be much happier in a less vibrant area with no lawn to mow or house to worry about. With old people having happy hour in the TV room at 4pm and a heated parking garage - the door of which a woman with dementia drove through last year because she just "didn't see it there".

They sold the piano. They sold the dining room set. They sold the dressers. They gave away hundreds of other things. They sent to my sister's house everything nice because "Katie still has her life up in the air, so we can't sent them to her - maybe when she gets a house". So they would really rather give away or sell the nice things than send them to me.

And they really didn't want Molly and me involved. I've never even seen the place. Don't know where their apartment is, don't know what it looks like, don't even really know what they brought.

Didn't help them move, didn't help them pack (they didn't want us to). Don't know where Thanksgiving will be this year.

They didn't even call.

I don't care that they left the house - I hated that house. But they didn't just leave the house, they left my sister and I behind.

Supposedly this move is going to give them more free time on the weekends to come visit us - yeah.

So yesterday was... odd.

2005-11-01T11:48:00.000-06:00

This weekend was blessedly quiet, peaceful, full of bubble baths and good food (as well as studying and cleaning of apartment). For those of you who were worried about my mental state, it has at least temporarily readjusted to sane.

I also would like to indicate that hot bubble baths are THE cure for stress. Really. I recommend flipping through bridal magazines while you soak.

Ahhh.

And then there was yesterday.

Morning - got up late and darted to where my car was parked in hopes of avoiding a ticket from the street cleaning meter maids of death - failed. $50. Ouch. I will, however, survive.

Afternoon - took off for Peets coffee and tea on North st. and was actually productive - read Plato's Republic and attempted to check email. Saw a polaroid of the "Peet's customer of the week" who apparently best "exemplifies the Peets Spirit". Spent an appalling amount of time contemplating what the "Peet's Sprit" would be, judging from the clientele and decoration it would be Fraiser with a caffeine addiction and need to sit on unreasonably high chairs.

Then I went for some retail therapy at Target.

I get a call from Al - she's down in the loop and wants me to come see the Midnight Circus production.

So I drive to the loop - attempting to find a spot, and forgetting that I am actually an hour early I hastily park my car and run to Daley plaza.

Along the way I am accosted by 4 large men who yell after me (I swear) "Junk in the TRUNK! Look at that ass! Baby get over here!" Flashing them a smile, I scampered over to the plaza to find that I had arrived and hour early.

This hour was spent wandering around lot 37 in the middle of the city, chatting with circus folk, a pit bull named Lola who only knows commands in German and a couple of men dressed as: dead bellboy, muppet, lion tamer, and I can only suppose er... lycra boy? The really unusual thing here is that they weren't dressed up this way because of Halloween, but rather – just dressed for work.

The show was rained out, so I hung out in the trailer for awhile then Al and I took off to pick up my boy at work, who indicated that he really really wanted to celebrate his internship being 1/3 over.

Off to Uncle Hulios Hacienda where we consumed vast quantities of meat, liqour, and were waited on by a man in spandex sporting a JF on his chest, a yarmulka, and a hair pick - yes, he was Jew Fro. After the liqour and flan this all started to make more sense.

And then, upon parking my car back on Winthrop, a very short Hispanic man accosts my boyfriend (with Al and I in tow)

“Hey man”
“Yes?”
“I feel a little silly asking about this, but I’m looking for…” he whispers something in my Boy’s ear very earnestly.
“Sorry man, can’t help you. Katie, let’s go”

Al and I question him later – what did he want?
“Oh, sex. He said he needed a date, a date, you know sex, sex, man.”

Ah.

Apparently he thought that Eric was clearly a pimp for Al (dressed in a flannel zip coat and jeans) and myself (in a sweater and jeans balancing a large orange Rubbermaid container on top of my head). Clearly we are the most undercover whores around.

Yeah – it was a day.

To the mattresses....

2005-10-28T11:02:00.000-05:00

Remember "The Godfather?" That's me this weekend - not for fear of being the odd man out-and-about in a Mafia war, but rather for fear of never getting anything done on my dissertation.

So this weekend I will be invisible - traceable only from the faint scent of coffee that follows my studying everywhere.

This week has been hell, and I feel a serious need to detach and work - Even the boy is taking off for Racine.

If this seems too vague, let me give you a list

6 (yes 6) writing seminars in which we analyzed every possible permutation of the idea of boredom as we slogged through one poorly thought out introduction after another.
Kafka - Tuesday was The Penal Colony and Thursday...
Teaching Kafka - as Bob was absent again, I had to somehow drag a class through The Metamorphosis (pulling teeth?)
Dissertation meeting - in which my prof. wrinkled his forehead and said - "I just don't get it...." followed by "So... how is this different from what other people have already said?"
My apartment is a disaster. I have been absorbing furniture (my parents have decided to move into an apartment) and thus my apartment looks a lot like a furniture warehouse. Anybody have a need for some opera chairs?
Depression - the drugs aren't really working very well anymore and I wake up in the morning with teeth that hurt from being clenched together all night.
Stress - Apparently I need to teach yet another of Bob's classes before the end of the quarter - this is a full 1/5 of the classes this quarter when I should be teaching somewhere around... oh.... none. In addition, although I really appreciate the drinks, being forced to take off for oldtown late Monday evening to talk about student papers lacked a certain something.
Preceptees are dropping out, and I can't help but feeling that it is somehow my fault for not helping them more at the beginning stages of their papers.
Student papers - while I'm on the subject, one student's paper (for Bob) was so blatantly offensive to not only the French in general, but my, you know, French professor, that I had to sit him down and have a chat about inappropriate and offensive writing (which he seemed to take as some kind of joke).
Weight - "Tipping the scales at nearly 1 Wisconsin unit we have in this corner, the world heavyweight boxing champion ----- Katie!" (cheers from the crowd)... yeah. It sucks

Thus, this weekend is all about the dissertation, sleeping, cleaning, pampering, exercise, and possibly a fruit fast.

Perhaps this will finally pull me together.

Today seems to be Kerri madness with studying and possibly thrifting, followed by the boy leaving for Racine, and me curling up with a nice calming appletini in a warm bubble bath.

Let's hope the bubbles clean out my head as well.

Fucker

2005-10-18T12:24:00.000-05:00

http://www.carsmart.net/used-cars/Photos/rJ27360.jpg

Someone driving (driving? no- I should say emphatically NOT driving) this vehicle double parked in my car this morning for at least an hour, causing me to miss a dissertation meeting an raise my blood pressure to the point where the look I gave her as she slowly ambled her fat ass to the car should have incenerated her body.

Instead, she waved.

Oh - for lazer beam eyes.

Other than that, things are going deceptively well today - Bob has continued her quest to avoid making any lesson plans at all by last session splitting the students into small groups and having them talk amongst themselves for half the hour and present for the other half.

They also handed in short assignments.

I had to look through these assignments, also not my job.

I am going to go get some sushi, and when I return to the world of the reasonable, I will be prepared for, er, anything.

Riot?

2005-10-07T11:22:00.000-05:00

http://www.ez-entertainment.net/interview/elf_col74-31af.jpg

nearly incited a riot in class yesterday.

She essentially did the professorial equivalent of "you two... fight to the death!"

We're reading "Last day of a Condemned Man" by Hugo

She looks around the class and says

"who agrees with the death penalty? Come on, fess up!"

A few students tenatively raise their hands

"and who here is a card-carrying Christian?"

A couple more hands... and looks of confusion.

"Who's a Jew?" she demands.

my mouth must have dropped open.

now she points at the kid who agreed with the death penalty and says

"You. Defend yourself."

This begins an attack by all the other students as this poor kid tries to defend his position. Things are getting a little heated (to say the least) and his voice is getting higher and higher.

Something must be done... and of course I'm turning red as (let's call her Bob) sits there and SMILES.

So I look at her and she says

"Let Katie talk, she looks pretty angry like she wants to say something."

angry?! what is she trying to do here?

So I say

" No, I'm not angry. Let's look at what Hugo [desperately trying to get back to some semblance of literature and normalcy] says about the death penalty."

I open my book to a page, any page.

"If everyone will look at page 13...."

And I start reading aloud in a very slow, very measured voice about whatever was on that page. The class slowly calms down and starts talking about the text and not yelling at one another.

And Bob is SMILING.

was this some crazy kind of test?

So I talk to her after class.

"wow, that was [be nice, be nice] pretty intense today"

"yeah, It was good"

"I was worried, I tried to get them back to the text"

"Oh, I wanted them to get angry"

Ah. Apparently tenure allows you to be a sadist.

huh.

yeah, she looks like that.

2005-10-05T14:03:00.000-05:00

http://www.ez-entertainment.net/interview/elf_col74-31af.jpg

is annoying me today.

Apparently I am responsible for adding students to the class, finding books for her, and generally running the show? Is it simply the case that she wants to be MY TA, and that I should be the professor? Or perhaps that I can be scut-student-not-really-TA-girl?

rrrrrr.

Also...

2005-10-04T12:06:00.000-05:00

May Bill Bennett die of a really really painful groin infection. Apalling.

The deal:

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=b7ee875cdc2d5c00d80aeffe2b1be710

Out loud (yeah, he really did say that):

http://www.bennettmornings.com/pg/jsp/charts/streamingAudioMaster.jsp?dispid=303&headerDest=/site/preview?pid=31025

Oh, I am a rockstar.

2005-10-04T11:42:00.000-05:00

Ok, so class went swimmingly - in fact, better than swimmingly, it went like an olympic swimmer who spontaneously mid-race grew gills.

We chatted about alienation. We chatted about Plato. We laughed, we made jokes. Students wanted to transfer into this section because they thought it was better than their other ones.

It was great.

Whew.

Ok, so now is the big test. Prof. M-----r comes back from France and we shall see what she thinks of my handiwork.

And like, spontaneously last night I decided to take up knitting. I highly recommend Stitch-n-Bitch 1 as an awesome way to learn. I can say this because the object that I have knitted so far (clearly destined to be a dishrag) actually looks like knitting and not, say, knots.

This is a step forward. So now I knit while the boy plays Grand Theft Auto, and then we do the exercise thing with me on my brand new elliptical machine and him on his freakish exercise bike of doom. My elliptical machine apparently has "orbital drive" which makes me feel like I'm in some kind of space program, and I can ride it while I watch Kill Bill, which makes me feel like I am some kind of stealthy elliptical ninja.

Ah the joys of video.

Today is administrative crap, class, yelling at the people at Bank One, and generally being on campus.

Tomorrow? Studying -- ooh, and I think the American cultures workshop is tomorrow - they always have really good food.

Ahhhh.

2005-09-28T15:37:00.000-05:00

So there is once more a smidgen of peace in Katie's world.

B-----t really liked my ideas. She thinks that the literature I am currently working with is a little limited by being Gothic. And I agree. She thinks I should look at Porn and realism as well as other genres. And I agree.

So basically, it's all good right now.

And I just have to write something about Plato.

And have a drink.
And drink to Plato.

Bored...

2005-09-27T13:01:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm blogging before class starts. In the classroom. There's one student in here, but apparently he's on the phone with his mother asking her questions about his Hebrew homework. Odd

I have all my papers laid out,
My soda at the ready,
My computer's background has been changed from naked woman to er... something clothed.

And, frankly, I'm a little nervous. You see, this is the first time I've ever had to teach a whole class of my own that wasn't obviously going to be a discussion.

And really, I am currently contemplating my fitness for this duty. I feel like saying to my students "Fear not! You have a nearly competent professional at the helm of this ship."

Or the kind of person who has to reluctantly has to answer "yes, I'm a doctor" when they scream "Is there a doctor on the plane?!" when really you have been working dermatology for the past 20 years.

Ok. Students arriving, gotta go.

Wish me luck!
KT

The Tower of Power

2005-09-27T09:45:00.000-05:00

You know, I do have to say that the 2 story grad. student lounge is one of the coolest things on campus. In addition to its highly outdated furniture (just old enough to be comfy), its suicide-proof windows, and the fact that it can only be found by someone who already knows where it is, this Isla de la Muerta lounge gets wireless. With the addition of a vending machine, I would never have to leave - next project? Roof access.

Anyway... So today started out kinda poorly but has been getting er... better.

And since I'm feeling very very self-centered right now I'll tell you why.

This began last night with the narcoleptic boy and Grand Theft Auto. I was attempting to explain to him the intricate movements I have found which allow me to gain virtually infinite cash (and a Sub-machine gun) while simultaneously boosting my reputation and avoiding the PoPo Bitches. I, intent on watching the screen, kept giving helpful comments like "What the hell?!" "no, right, RIGHT", "No don't blow up the car", and "why are you running in circles?" At this point I turned around to find that my charming boy had fallen asleep with his hands on the controller in such a way that his character was spinning in circles.

Gently removing (with mild resistance, he is a gamer, after all) the controller from his hands, I covered him up with a blanket, put a teddy bear on his chest, took off his glasses, and let him go to sleep. I did the same.

This morning - 6:30am

"Katie, I'm late for work"
"mmmfff?"
"work - I need a ride"
"what? why?"
"I didn't set my alarm last night -- I need to be at the hospital by 7"

ah. so much for being a sweet girlfriend. So I pull on my jeans and we head out of the house by 6:45.

7:08 we pull up outside UIC hospital and he jumps out.
7:20 stuck in traffic on lakeshore
7:30 IBID
7:45 IBID (Becoming enraged as I remember that I agreed to give Al and Ivan a ride to HP.

7:48 Park in the alley (half of which is roped off with 'caution' tape?!) throwing fears aside, I stride into my apartment just in time to get a phone call from Al asking If I'm ready

"sure, come right down" as I hastily cram objects into my bag

papers, check
er.. laptop, check

Al arrives and keeps up a helpful stream of commentary

"essentials, Katie, essentials - do you have your work?"
"yes"
"pants?"
looking down "yes"
"books?"
"yes"
"breath mints?"
"breath mints?"
"aren't they essential?"
"are they?" (I spontaneously reconsider my dental routine and have a paranoid moment of fear that people think I smell)

Paranoia mildly resolved we all leap into the car and I execute a Y turn in the alley, heading us towards the light at the end and hitting the speed humps with uncomfortable speed.

This is because a garbage truck is backing into the one free end of the alley.

I lay on the horn. They keep backing up. Ivan offers to leap from the car, and later, to slash tires.

I lay on the horn again, finally moving the sluggish steel beetle.

We blow kisses to them as we shoot out of the alley (apparently confusing / terrifying a friend of Al's)

Then traffic again

8:00
8:30 we arrive HP, dropping Ivan at the Ace and snagging a goddamn delicious croissant at the boujour.

9:21 am. I wander into the Insurance office and am told that they don't need the Walgreens register reciept for the pills, but the paper attached to the pills themselves.

9:27 I contemplate murder.

9:45 Desk copies of books

10:08 Blogging.

At 1:30 I need to teach a class of 21 students. I have not showered, and have eaten sugar for breakfast. This is being washed down with Mt. Dew. I just found out that the theme for this quarter's class is alienation.

huh. funny old world, isn't it?

Ah.

2005-09-23T08:26:00.000-05:00

So the fun continues.

I really would like to say that this week has been a delight, but frankly, it has not been all that peachy keen.

For example, I got up this morning at 6:30 because of an impassioned plea from the boy to help find his glasses (left, we found later, in the bathroom). Without them he is blind, so his solo search for glasses had already taken him 20 min. This means that he needed a ride to work - so that's ok. We pile into the car, I drive him to the hospital, and then I take off for the Bourgeois Pig (where I currently sit on a comfortable couch).

But then I get this email - you see, the person for whom I am supposed to be an intern this quarter is in France for the first week. And well, she wants me to take over the first 2 classes. Apparently the information is on the syllabus (emailed to me), but all that I can find is a list of books and dates. So I'm supposed to start teaching the Apology on Thursday? I don't know anything about how I would even begin to teach Plato. Er... And I don't know what she wants the class to know as its hello-its-the-first-day-administrative-crap. So, yeah. I don't think that this will go really well.

Tonight? Racine. Tomorrow - Racine.

Sunday - helping the charming Karin pack her house and possibly going to the countercraft fair.

And then? Teaching.

gahhh.

Anger RISING....

2005-09-22T11:06:00.000-05:00

So the student health care makes me want to vomit frogs.

I wish them all third nipples in really inconvenient places (like their right cheek), or possibly that they sit down on newly varnished benches in white pants.

So apparently, although the deadline for re-enrollment in insurance plan of crap is October 7, I went to the pharmacy today and they told me that I was not an "active" member of Aetna.

Fine.

So I go and see the nice ladies in the administrative building here on campus who sweetly tell me that I have to re-enroll in order to get my benefits (FOR WHICH I AM STILL COVERED, AND FOR WHICH I HAVE ALREADY PAID) and that even if I confirm my re-enrollment today they can't possibly cover my meds until weeks from now so I have to pay for them out of pocket and then bring reciepts back to the UofC to talk to them and get a $@#&*(%#^*( refund.

RRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrr.....

Steph - your idea sounds faboo, and if I can get away with 2 readers, my life would be exceellent - although if not, I will try to get WXYZ.

But mostly argh.

and ugh.

Currently working on thinking up something to say to my preceptees. Advice received from dept. "you'll muddle through".

need... liquor...

Sandra can't work with me.

2005-09-20T11:21:00.000-05:00

So now what do I do? Who the heck am I going to use as a third reader?

What am I going to do?

Shit.

Thanks.

2005-09-19T13:59:00.000-05:00

You're all so sweet. Thank you for your comments - really that was just a bitter rant that I needed to get out of my system.

I do, indeed, feel better now.

Part of this may be because of my increased abilitiy to kill pixellated people in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" on the Xbox.

It is actually a kind of academic vertigo for me. You see, being an upper-middle-class (although technically abysmally poor) white girl in graduate school, the idea of playing this game is, well, odd. Academically I am appalled because this game reinforces every stereotype imaginable, while being violent, bloodthristy, and generally rewarding you for being a thug. So academically this game is horrifying to me. That said, however, I really really like playing it. This is where the reality/fiction seperation comes into effect. That said, however, the fiction is still racially and socially appalling. So really I shouldn't like it.

But I was up to 2am playing it. And I really do have a nice set of hookers.

Alas - the contradictions within us all.

Other than that, I have been reviving my academic tendencies with increased fequency of contact with other graduate students and the regenstein, with extra emphasis on registration and stipend-getting.

Because I like to be able to eat.

Other than that it's working on handouts for the writing program, deciding what to do with my preceptorees, and reading (oh yeah, reading).

Random crises will be averted.

Although I'm not exactly sure what they will be yet.

But I will be there with bandaids.

I am, in fact, that person - the one with the bandaids, pliers, needle and thread, and jewelry clasps in my backpack.

On Being a Big Girl

2005-09-15T15:02:00.000-05:00

I’m an overweight person – dare I say it? Fat.

Ugh. That word is a social taboo these days. I know, I know, I’ve heard all the phrases “big is beautiful” and “curvy women are pretty women”, but of course, no one really believes that do they? Deep down?

I would like to be thin. Or, really, not even thin – I would totally go for normal-sized as in healthy, happy, physically fit and not anorexic. Like a size 8? 6? I would actually like to put on my clothes in the morning and not be appalled when I look in the mirror.

So the diet.

And the exercise.

Doesn’t help.

The reason? Oh, there’s lots of them – I’m predisposed to cheating because I hate chicken and always have. There are only so many things that people can do to chicken to make it taste less like wet tissue paper, and they all involve butter which is verboten

I’m predisposed to avoiding walking because I am lazy and hate the idea of getting home and night and dragging my overtired and sleep deprived boy out on lakeshore.

Of course, he gets upset when we don’t walk because he hates the idea of not exercising

So really I’m whining about things that are my fault. I need to be healthy. How to do it is before me, and I hesitate on the edge like a kid afraid of water. Why? Let’s think of the psychology of a fat girl for a minute. I’m probably one of the bigger people you know. I weigh in at 188 more or less. That’s a lot of me. People say things when I walk by. Nothing that I can wear will hide the fact that there are 188 pounds to me. Add an anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and you have pretty much the whole picture.

Yeah? You say. Your own damn fault, you say (of course, not the mental disease, just the weight). And really, it’s true. I have no one to blame but myself here. Really, I could have lost 20 pounds or so already since the start of this new diet – dare I say “lifestyle change”. But, you see, my lifestyle hasn’t changed, because I really believe, deep down, that I will always be a fat girl. I don’t even know what it’s like to be thin. And really, it’s scary to even think of being thin. When will it stop? Will I become one of those diet-obsessed people who exercises 3 or 4 hours a day just to maintain my new weight? And when I inevitably rebound, think of the depression. A study asked a group of people who had lost weight whether they would rather be big again or blind, and they chose blindness over being big. BLINDNESS! That is fucked up, my friends. Will I have to eat chicken forever? Of course.

Look, I will never be an athlete. My joints are so fucked up that I’m lucky I can still walk. Every time I exercise, I need to take ibuprofen to reduce the swelling in my appalling toe of stupid irritatingness. So, I can’t run a marathon. I could walk a marathon, but that’s really kind of sad.

So I will never be one of those people who can eat whatever they want and be ok. I will always be counting calories, carbs (fiber and sugar), fat grams, and nutrients. And the more weight I lose, the more obsessed I will become with these things (because, of course, I have an obsessive personality). And I will become one of those people.

And I probably can’t even aspire to being a diet-obsessed neurotic because I can’t even get that far.

Ah, well. So here I am, a skim latte in hand and a bowl of cheerios in my stomach, beginning afresh for the 30th time. Perhaps this will be the charm.

Oh Insanity...

2005-09-13T12:29:00.000-05:00

Well, we all remeber my former post where I indicated that in the near future I would somehow be able to return to a normal schedule.

This has apparently turned out to be some kind of evil fairy-tale dream sprung on my while I was sleeping by the gnomes living in my duvet (possibly in combination with the 5 or 6 Cingular demons infesting my phone and preventing me from getting my voicemail).

You see, the boy has moved from the 7 to 7 ER schedule to the (supposedly) much more sane Neurology schedule. This has turned out, however, due to a senior resident of dubious quality into an insane 7 to 10 schedule. This leaves me with:

Housework,
Shopping,
Cooking,
A grumpy boy,
And a nervous facial tic.

Supposedly all of this will resolve itself into Phsyhiatry goodness sometime around Feb. Let's all cross our fingers and clap so that this little tinkerbell of hope can fly (I understand that crossing fingers and clapping at the same time will be difficult, but isn't my sanity worth the effort?)

Anyway. With me things are pretty much clicking along.

Dissertation is in the MY GOD I HAVE A LOT OF THINGS TO READ stage, punctuated by moments of HEY THAT'S A PRETTY GOOD IDEA and OOPS, SOMEONE ALREADY DID THAT.

Thus, it is going as expected at the start. I have a bit of an idea about the Ugly, and if you really really want to know about it, you'll have to talk to me in person because I have the vague fear that if I type it out it may evaporate into a kind of strange circularity (i.e. gradualogophobia)

I am spending a lot of time chez moi and at Pause (just off the Berwyn stop), which I believe that I am supporting solely on my Latte purchases and blueberry scone fetish. Metropolis (Granville station) has better coffee (they roast it there), but Pause has a better atmosphere (think leather chairs and stained glass windows) and free wireless that ALWAYS works (although the AC never works). They serve Intellegensia coffee, which isn't bad at all, and some of the baristas are really cool (and let me sit around for hours and hours and hours).

So I highly recommend both Pause and Metropolis for the studying undercaffinated grad student.

I am apparently interning for Readings in World Lit this fall, and doing the preceptor gig for those undergrads who feel the need to write a thesis.

Also I have been in super-project-refinishing-furniture-mode, which has resulted in:

a fully refinished antique typewriting desk
a finished and stained clothing rack
a partially finished coffee table
and about 15 other random projects of the KT sort.

Next up is the jewelry cabinet. Currently: Ugly as sin and denty, Soon to be: Swanky.

I have been spending quality time with people who have the tendency to wander past the hermit hole in which I have been hiding. But this must change... soon, very soon classes will begin and normal hanging-out schedule will resume.

no, really.

Other than that, er.... Butter.

No, I'm not dead...

2005-09-02T13:12:00.000-05:00

Just in hermit mode and in a state of non-communication due to the lack of email chez moi.

Thus, this afternoon I am blogging at you from Pause, a delightful internet cafe in Edgewater. Oh so wonderful.

So here's the scoop.

The boy just finished his ER rotation which has hours that vary between the 7am to 7pm shift and the 7pm to 7am shift. Thus, my sleeping schedule has been gerfuckten. But as it is now over I can finally catch up on the snatches of sleep I have missed. And, due to a more regular schedule, perhaps I can get some work done - I know, it's a pipe dream, but it's all I've got right now.

Dissertation is ugh. I will update you with the details later.

Today, the studying has been momentarily interrupted by a visit from the Noelle @ pause, which is delightful.

Tomorrow and the rest of the weekend, my sister will be around! Yay!

write again soon,
KT

This weekend.

2005-06-27T08:24:00.000-05:00

With an amazing overabundance of things to do this weekend, my life has been pretty busy.

The Pride Parade was again, alas, not visited by me this year. Multiple excuses and / or reasons follow.

Boyfriend's birthday - that's right, folks. I have had so much marzipan in the last three days that there must be some kind of worldwide shortage - expect almond prices to spike this week.

Becky's birthday - yet another reason for the eating of the cake. Also a reason for the drinking of the mojitos (see below)

Hungover from drinking due to celebration of these birthdays @ Charlies, Hopleaf, and some place I can't remember where we had pizza and yet more beer. Mojitos, Red delicious Appletinis, various free Stoli drinks, Malibus and Coke, and white Russians were had in abundance. An entire pizza was eaten at 2am. It is impossible that one should go out drinking with Becky and not get hammered, sloshed, wasted, and variously drunk - and somehow this turns into a food craving post-drinking. I'm not sure if the pizza was good, but it was salty delicious.

Meals at Red Lobster, The Pheonix, Giordianos, and the ice-cream aisle of Jewel-Osco.

Much giggling, throwing of pillows, falling down, eating directly from the ice-cream container, and amusing conversation was had by all.

As I seem to have managed to roll the bloated corpse of my body to the Regenstein, I think that I will do some work. Or take a nap. Or work on napping. Or nap while working. You know, whatever.

Rumors of thrifting today - Yay!

Good news.

2005-06-21T10:27:00.000-05:00

All of those little rants got fixed yesterday - a squadron of people appeared in my apartment and fixed everything including things that I hadn't thought of (except the radiators, apparently the munchkins aren't done with them yet).

I am now in the Reg, spending some quality time with the Anti-Aesthetic and Ugly Feelings. Rock.

Remember Me?

2005-06-19T14:10:00.000-05:00

Ok, I am back in circulation.

Sorry for the delay in Katie-ness, but this last month has been a bit full:

-Passed my orals
-Moved into a SWANKY new apartment 2 floors underneath Al.
-Also moved in with the Boyfriend
-Got a bike
-Fixed this bike
-Drove to Madison, Racine, Racine, Racine, Kenosha, Racine.
-Unpacked, realized that we didn't have enough bookshelves, repacked, got bookshelves, unpacked again.

Now things are assuming some kind of normality and calmness. The boy is starting work tomorrow, and I start my internship-writing-class-thingy Tuesday. After that it's working on le dissertation, cleaning, and thrift shopping. Eventually there will be a combo move-in party, but not until the guests will not have to wash their hands in the bathtub.

Which leads me to a tiny rant. Now, I know the reason that my apartment was not quite finished when we moved in (long story), however, there are a few things (like 20) that need to be fixed in there.

1. Cabinetry is mobile - like, it moves around, like, it's not attached to the wall or the floor and the countertop can be opened like some crazy laundry hamper of the damned. I mean, really - why have drawers when you can just pick up the countertop to reach your meat thermometer?

2. Screens - half of the screens seem to be, for whatever reason, missing. This is particularly annoying as the area around my apartment seems to be infested with jumping spiders and scary stinging flying bees.

3. Sink leaks - when telling my landlord about this one, she thought we meant that the faucet dripped. Not quite. Actually, all water put into the sink pours out of the pipe in the bottom making a little lake in my vanity.

4. Radiators are, inexplicably, missing - apparently they have been mailed away to some secret radiator care place where they will be buffed and shined a-la the tin man in the emerald city of OZ.

5. Front doorknob CAN BE ACCIDENTALLY PULLED OFF. This is the moment when the boy and I decided that we may be in some kind of alternate twilinght zone apartment. I think as a saftey precaution I may just pull off the knob and take it in at night, thereby thwarting any would-be burgulars.

6. The Closet - We only have one closet and the longest bar in there decided to come crashing down in the middle of the night leaving a pile of clothes, drywall, and a hole in the wall big enough to put my finger through. Upon further inspection we realized that this rod was held up by screws 1 in long put into the drywall (no studs). Apparently that bar was just for show or something.

7. The floors - actually, there is nothing wrong with the floors. They are freshly sanded and stained oak boards perfectly maintained. They are, however, also protected by the gods of lease-rider and everything that rests on them must be on little felt pads. Hundreds of chair cups and pieces of felt have invaded my home to protect the FRIGGING FLOOR from things like, you know, walking on them. Argggh.

Ok - that's all I have the strength for now. I am sure that these things will be fixed in a timely manner.

Hugs to everyone. I will be seeing you all soon, I'm sure.
KT

Yo.

2005-05-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

So I'm back in action after severe gastrointestinal trials and a lot of driving. Currently sitting in Le Reg waiting for my delightful study partner (Karin). Apologies all around for not calling, visiting, hugging, variously seeing, and talking to all of you delightful people. I promise that I will be about as much company as anyone can stand come June. If, however, you are inclined ever so slightly to study until your eyes bleed (or watch me do so) feel free to seek me out in my random hiding places. This week has been very eventful actually: dinner with Al, lunch with Karin, an evening with Derrida and Hegel.

This weekend, however, I will be at the 5 de mayo party. If only because the party is always, without fail, fantastic.

Big hugs to everyone.

Hey

2005-04-26T13:02:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm in Madison.

I came up here Sunday night because the boy was in the ER with severe dehydration due to a nasty case of the stomach flu. He's much better now, (although his stomach is still "wubbly".) I am going to be gone for awhile in Madison taking care of him and trying to get some reading done. I will be back in town this weekend. I miss you all!

Later,
KT

I should be sleeping.

2005-04-20T01:03:00.000-05:00

But really, what is the point if I'm going to wake up every two hours coughing?

Yes, it's true - all that stale library air, fluorescent lighting, and bad nutrition has made me sick. Standing on the very threshold to the wide-open porch of spring, I boldly step forward and -- sneeze.

to repent for current grumpiness and the bitter rant that I wrote, posted, and then took down after realizing it was pointless and sad, I will direct you to a site that has the most eerily horrifying things I have ever seen, and which I really thought only existed in obscure Buffy episodes or really really bad xxx fanfic about androids.

And no, it's not a virgin mary - but I bet that they could custom make one for you.

DO NOT open this page in the library. Seriously. It is offensive and pornographic.

It's the realdoll.

I am particulary amused by the FAQ page - ok, who would want to open their closet and find one of these hanging by its neck-loop on a peg on the wall? Also, as pointed out to me earlier - why buy the doll for $5000 when handjobs go for $20 on the street (and from real ladies too?)

News and entertainment.

2005-04-16T21:40:00.000-05:00

Ok, I can't really back that last part up, but I do have news.

I signed a lease this morning. That's right, folks, the apartment hunt is over. Location is perfect - 2 blocks from Lakeshore Drive and the red line. Price is perfect. Interior has 10 ft ceilings, hwf in living room and bedroom, nice kitchen, 12 panel oak doors with original hardware and a SUNROOM. That's right, I will be able to get skin cancer INDOORS (aren't you jealous?) So anyways, the boy came down to see me this morning and we signed the lease (yay! boy is finally actually really really for sure moving to Chicago because I HAVE HIS NAME ON A LEGAL DOCUMENT (and suddenly all my little pipe-dreams that have been floating around about how cool it would be for the both of us to be in the same city are actually coming true).

Ok, so I'm sappy about it, but you should see the smile on my face right now.

So that was my morning - Ahhhhh...

And this afternoon Kerri, Allyson and I went off to Oak Park for a vintage clothing and jewelry show. Fun... expensive, but fun. Kerri, of course, looks just great in everything and I hate her for it, while nothing fits me (all those people from non-modern midwestern America are so small!). The tiaras, however, were amazing.

Then back to HP for dinner with the ever-charming and totally spiritually uplifting Noelle. Man, when you are fried, she is always the nicest person to hang out with. So, I would just like to indicate that Noelle rocks. Post dinner we went and did naughty decadent book shopping at Powells (myself ending up with the Joy of Cooking and Mimesis, while she found two cookbooks that look delicious). Ah, extravagant expenditures on the self.

I just got home about an hour ago, called the parents, and generally am giving myself the night off. It's been a book a day this week and I really really needed some moments for the eyes to regain function. Ahhh De Man, will I ever forget you? Not without drugs, I'm afraid.

So this week,

Tess
Frankenstein
Mysterious Stranger
Aesthetic Ideology
Walden
Ideology of the Aesthetic (pending)
Of One Blood (pending) or Beyond Aesthetics (pending)

gah. That's about... er... 2000 pages. Oh my eyes bleed.

Weekend madness and ensuing hermitage

2005-04-13T13:09:00.000-05:00

My sister came to visit me in Chicago this weekend! Yay! It was great to see her again (we live way too far apart) and we had a lot of fun.

Friday evening: she arrived chez moi about 5ish and we scampered down to Pizza Capri on Sheffield and Belmont in order to grab some delightful "shroom" pizza. It's always fun going out in the city with my sister because everything makes her happy (and she gets these really wide eyes). Dinner was, obviously, delightful and then we were going to meet up with Jett for drinks. He was delayed so we drove down to the loop to scope out a place called Sugar, which, unfortunately, had a $10 cover. Clearly I am too poor to be payin for the priviledge of sitting inside some bar, so we wandered back up to Boystown to meet Jett. We arrived @ the Twisted Spoke a few min. before he did, so we grabbed some drinks and hid in the back room. Jett arrived and I thought, hell, I need another drink. Upon wandering up to the bar and waiting for the drink, I encountered a very very drunk fellow (about 25) that wanted to arm-wrestle. Inexplicably. I couldn't get away from him, so I thought, "why not", and proceeded to whup his ass. The first time he wasn't trying (of which I informed him) and the second time he just wasn't strong enough. Rather annoyed at his loss, he turned back to the group of friends who saw this happen and encountered a mocking. I was busy paying for my drink, and apparently in the meantime he had concocted the scheme that in order to save face he was going to MOON me. I'm not sure how the logic of this works, as it really isn't saving face to drop trou' in the middle of a biker bar on a Friday night, but that's what happened. He pulled those fuckers all the way down to his knees and bent over.

Upon hearing about this, my friends have all asked the same question. You would think it would be something like "did anyone else see him?" answer: the whole bar, or perhaps "what did you do?" answer: took my drink and walked right around him back to my table, instead the FIRST question everyone asks was "was it a hairy ass?" answer: no, dears, it was as beautifully smooth as a baby's bottom. How this gets to be the first (and usually the only) question is beyond my comprehension, but there it is.

Post this debacle, we abandoned the Spoke and headed down for some dancing at Roscoe's (a really really cool gay bar with "the most good-looking men I have ever seen in one place" according to my sister). This is so true. We had a blast, I haven't danced so much in my entire life.

After crashing back at my place we awoke early Saturday to catch Kerri in the loop. A bit fuzzy headed and bleary-eyed, we arrived at the Art Institute and picked up the ever-perky Kerri (especially when thrifting is concerned). We hit all of our major stops (Village on Roscoe and Unique on Sheridan) before meeting up with Al for some delicious Indian goodness at Tiffin. After that, more thrifting (unbelieveable deals) and my buy of the day which is a brand-new-still-has-the-tag-on Kenneth Cole silk dress in brown for $5. Swanky! We couldn't meet up with Karin and Eric for dinner, so we caught food and watched Kill Bill vol. 1 and 2.

Sunday we did the shopping thing, hitting all the major oraganizational shops and Trader Joe's before I had to send my sister back off to the wilds of Wisconsin.

Monday: Reading, like, all day (Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Frankenstien)

Tuesday: Studying in HP with Karin, lunch at Salonica, dinner at Noodles etc. (Eagleton's Ideology of the Aesthetic, and De Man's Aesthetic Ideology)

Today: Reading Walden and meeting up with Becky in Gurnee for dinner.

Tomorrow and all weekend: Study Study Study Study - I will be a hermit and actually get what I have to get done, done.

Oh, and I forgot.

2005-04-06T22:40:00.000-05:00

Got my class evals back... They Like me! I mean they really Like me!

I know, I know - I haven't posted in awhile.

2005-04-06T20:47:00.000-05:00

And, of course it would be really really pointless for me to give a "catch up" post now because nothing too exciting has happened. Essentially it would be a long list of possible apartments visited, times drunk, food eaten with friends, and, sadly, primarily lists of books read.

Thus I will begin anew. As I push myself deeper into the elusive hermit-life of the orals-student, I have begun to miss people more. This is strange because really, I see everyone all the time. My problem is that I have become so used to seeing everyone all the time that any non-seeing of people (perhaps my 8-hour stretches in the Regenstein) tend to excite a kind of anxious loneliness. This is in complete contradistinction to my previous undergraduate hermitage where I really had no problem disappearing for weeks at a time (communicating with others only at meals and the occasional passage in the hall). Actually, I only really became a social person when I managed (through heavy medication) to control my constant anxiety about studying which made me work way, way too hard on everything. This is probably uninteresting in the most part, but what is interesting is the result.

The past few weeks I have feel the need, nay, the compulsion to tell people how wonderful they are, how much I love them, and what good people they really are-and-they-should-know-that-because-they-are-just-too-cool-for-words. This isn't to say that I don't truly feel that these people are all that I say they are, but rather that I think I'm freaking everyone out or perhaps making them think that I am secretly in love with them. Apparently I am afraid that as soon as I drift out of the picture for a few weeks everyone will forget me. Or perhaps it is because I am so invested in the idea of really letting people know the good things that you think about them, that I feel compelled to deliver all of my encouragement at once before I have to run away again. Odd

Anyways.

Other than my random compulsive friendliness, I've been studying a lot - met with my orals advisors sequentially MTW, so I am pretty fried right now. I'm on a 6.6 item a week schedule, so I will be disappearing more and more often into the oblivion of the library. Today was Algic Researches (Native American Folklore) and 100 Years of Folklore Study by the American Folklore Society. yay. I also read some De Man.

Also, I am currently in spring-food-mode which includes: seafood, chicken (a little), fresh veggies, fruit, and soda. I've been eating faux-seafood all week and craving salad. Things that are out: Beef, pork, cream, soup, coffee, desserts, and any bread that is not in sandwich form. This happens to me every year about this time (I gain weight over the winter, I lose it over the summer - such is the cycle of the depressive academic Wisconsinite)
Oh dear. This is why I haven't been posting. Well - I will keep you updated with random viscissitudes and the excitement of my sister's visit this weekend! YaY!

Trauma diverted.

2005-03-29T13:39:00.000-06:00

There is this possibility... I'm not getting my hopes up too high - that the aforementioned orals will be rescheduled for the 27th of May, thus giving me 2 extra weeks to study. Rock.

sigh. That would be the best thing that has come out of this whole affair.

2005-03-28T23:12:00.000-06:00

ARRRRRRGH!

So a particular orals advisor who shall remain nameless has decided that he can't make the meeting time we agreed on to take my exam and so I will have to reschedule. Again. Or, as he helpfully suggested, "find someone else to do your list with" -- in what, like, 6 weeks? the fuck?

Fuck. Fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck.

IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! YAY!

2005-03-27T12:02:00.000-06:00

I will not be stressed.. I will not be stressed... I will not be...

2005-03-24T19:59:00.000-06:00

So here's why I've been underground for the past week or two... verbally, at least. Pardon the stream - of - consciousness.

Match day- Boyfriend is coming to Chicago! Good News! now frantic looking for apartments is beginning.

Parents - causing massive amounts of stress in the apartment getting process as they refuse to remember that I am 26, know my way around Chicago, and can choose a safe place to live - Fights pending...

Birthday - causing a string of houseguests that are both a welcome distraction and causes of a compulsive need to clean and procrastinate

Orals - consuming life force... 7 weeks, 3 days to go. Unholy number of books to read. Impossible and irritating tendency to avoid working on them at all costs.

Car - Accident (minor), which lost air resonator; Bent rim on right front tire, losing air; gas prices rising as I have to drive more. Cost: er... upwards of $200.

Money - always a crappy situation - thinking of getting a job as a bartender in the evenings (although I have no skills whatsoever); taxes; bills; debt; emergency room bills; car insurance; gas; repairs; etc. etc.

Crafts - sudden overwhelming desire to be extremely crafty that is intefering with everything. Messenger bag of denim, soap, presents for friends, soup, drawing, painting, etc.

Friends - Kerri -- give her big hugs whenever you see her, her poor poor abused tooth is being cruel to her; Allyson, Karin, Noelle, Stephanie, Amber, Jett, and all of the other wonderful people that I want to spend more time with and who I have been neglecting - I love you all.

Stress - cropping up in the strangest of places, but becoming all pervasive and consuming (most of which I cannot discuss on this public forum). Pardon the facial tics - I am here, I am working, I am holding on to sanity and that is what matters.

So -- I beg you to humor me for awhile and just let me be as strange as I am - I will be normal(ish) again soon, I promise.

Hugs,
Katie

Ugh.

2005-03-15T15:58:00.001-06:00

I am currently grading papers

I am eating lunch from frozen freezer leftovers

I am drinking apple-cranberry juice

I did some math and found out I need to read 7 items a week

I am exhausted

I am also, strangely, bored

I am Ugh

Ugh.

2005-03-15T15:58:00.000-06:00

Ok folks.

2005-03-11T16:39:00.000-06:00

So I'm sick - like, friggin flu sick - like I don't even care that I used the word "friggin" a moment ago sick.

I don't usually get sick, so when I do, I go down hard. Like a watermelon set atop a stack of marshmallows.

I also had my last class today, which was really very fun. We sat around and chatted and ate candy and pretzels and drank Diet Coke (which has been pointed out by one of my students as the academic beverage of choice - seriously, look around the department - what is everyone drinking? Diet Coke).

Anyway - I will miss them all, as they are delightful and wonderfully smart and my first class ever --- sigh...

But I'm sure that I won't be that nostalgic when I get their final papers to grade.

Currently, I am in the reg and thinking about how tired I am and how I'm going to curl up when I get home. On my nice, comfy, couch -- with a cup of soup -- and, er... soda -- oooh, and ice-cream. That sounds delicious.

For now? Hunting books - I'm going to try the sneak-attack this time. Every time I let them know I'm coming they scamper away.

Spring.

2005-03-06T21:08:00.000-06:00

So this morning I look out the window (actually it was this afternoon, as I am a late sleeper) and see someone walking by in a T-SHIRT! I throw open the window and breathe the warmish 60 degree semi-spring air.

And then I couldn't get anything done for the rest of the day. I read the stories that my students are writing on for their final papers and got through the intro to Burke's Philosophical Inquiry into blah blah blah Sublime and Beautiful.

I had a small vision in the shower of how to map out my counter-aesthetics. I ate soup. I played on the internet. I called friends. I went to the store to get ice-cream. I watched "Event Horizon" (a fairly amusing 90's sci-fi horror flick about a ship that opens up interdimensional space). I jumped on my bed. I cleaned my kitchen. I thought up a way to make tiaras from any of my necklaces -- and pins. I hopped around my apartment on one foot. Spring makes me jumpy.

In all about 3 hours of work in my whole day. I couldn't even sit still enough to grade rewrites. I hear that it's supposed to get very cold very soon. The icy cold makes me hide in my bedroom under layers of covers and eat soup - the spring air makes me run all around my apartment and do crafts. If this weather keeps changing like this I won't even be able to write a sentence without stopping to jump up and down on my bed.

Hello folks.

2005-03-05T20:15:00.000-06:00

This is my massive "what the hell has been up with KT" post.

Ok... er.... I've got nothing.

I've gotten to that point in the quarter where the weeks seem to really fly by, the days go really slow, and the months are eons.

I'm not really sure what happened last week - was that the weekend I went up to Madison? Yeah. I was up in Madison last weekend... For Scott's birthday party, and to see the Boyfriend... And I crashed my car... It's coming back to me now. Ok - last weekend, drove up to Madison Saturday and ended up waiting around for Scott and Molly (my sister and her husband) at a bar called, literally "Sports Pub". Despite the name sounding a teensey bit sketchy, it was really very nice and the liquor was cheap cheap cheap (ahhh Madison). So a good, dancing, cake-eating, boot-stompin' time was had by all. It was a blast.

Then I ended up at the Boyfriend's that night and the next morning some idiot backed his car into mine in the Barnes-n-Noble parking lot. Alas. My car was not significantly damaged except for this mysterious black box that fell out of the front right corner. I don't know if the people at Saturn have just started making up shit to put under the hoods of cars, but this is apparently (from my insurance company) an "air resonator". This is a made up part, I swear to God. What the hell would the air in my car need to be resonated for? There is no fluid in the box, only a couple of dead leaves. The car seems to run just fine without it. Eh?

Ah well. So post that I returned to Chicago for Monday then back up to Racine on Tuesday to meet with said insurance company. $25 to replace this thing, and they can't tell me what it does.

Did some thrifting, came back to Chicago, and worked my ass off all week until last night. Last night was dinner with Allyson and Ivan for Ivan's birthday at Hulio's Hacienda on North St. Damn damn damn damn damn fine food. This was unbelievably good.

Today, Saturday, was thrifting with Kerri in which I snagged such a cool pair of black suede pants that I'm going to name them - perhaps "Shirley?" I also grabbed a really cool faux 50's dress that is a nude base and a black mesh overlay that is difficult to describe in text. Needless to say - very cool. Total with red cashmere sweater? $12. I love thrifting.

Oh, and I've been making soap - so the past few days have been spent carefully shredding Ivory and then Dial Natural bars and boiling them down in a double boiler, adding random delightful and fun-scented things to them and re-molding them. Sounds strange, but it's quite fun.

Current soap recipe:

4 - 4.5oz Dial Natural bars shredded
2 tsp sesame seed oil
1 tsp coco butter
1 tsp sunblock
1 tsp moisturizer
2 tsp aloe vera
4 drops peach colorant
1.5 tsp honey fragrance oil

Seems to work well.

Of course I am also thinking of a morning face bar with crushed apricot seed, peppermint scent, and eucalyptus.

That was Thursday. Today I'm making soups - Black lentil with sausage and split pea with ham.
That means lunches for the rest of this and next week. Yipee!

Ok. So this sounds a little manic, but at least I'm getting stuff done.

He changed.

2005-02-20T12:43:00.000-06:00

He chose Chicago - He chose Us.

He chose...

2005-02-20T11:11:00.000-06:00

madison.

Aw, piss.

2005-02-18T16:50:00.000-06:00

Discussion was like pulling teeth today - Little suprise that I, of course, had to be observed by my instructor on the day I taught Kafka.

The students stared politely at me as I asked incoherent question after incoherent question. This culminated with a hurried interview with my Prof. who stated "It was a good enough section, especially considering the difficulty of the work". And they had to fill out evals today.

Ga. I hang my head in shame.

To Drink!

So I'm going to complain a little.

2005-02-14T12:07:00.000-06:00

This has been a bad day.

It is currently 11: 29, but by the time I finish this it will probably be Valentine's day. This is particularly depressing as I had to send the boy back to Wisconsin for a six week torment in the wastes of Shawano - which is known for its excellent trapping. Yes trapping. Like trapping with steel jawed traps and snares and things. Like this is the recommended "fun" attraction to Shawano. He is noticeably unhappy about this, and I am unhappy about it, and I'm not even sure that he will get cell phone reception out there. This means 6 weeks sans boy starting on Valentines day. bleah.

To add to this, I just finished grading 15 student papers on the same 8 page work. Yay.

And my family's cat of 15 years - Shadow - had to be put to sleep on Friday. She could be nasty and unpleasant, but when you walked in she was always there waiting to say hello to you. She would stretch out in the sunshine on the porch and just bake (her fur was all black), then she would crawl up in your lap and spread herself out - the perfect, purring, heating blanket. We used to slide kitty-treats all the way down the kitchen so that she would go sliding after them on the linoleum. She was just as opinionated and stubborn as the rest of the family - which is probably why I liked her so much even when she was evil. I think the last time I saw her was at Christmas - I think I gave her some treats and she sat in my lap awhile. My dad is really sweet - he took her to the vet to have her put down and stayed with her until the end, petting her. She was really sick - she had been having problems for years and it was finally getting to her. We got her from the shelter when she was 2 or so, and I remember seeing her come home in a little cardboard box Sometimes she was really the only one in the house that I could talk to that wouldn't drive me insane with questions or badger me. She would just patiently sit and listen, and then purr and rub her head against my hand. "It's ok" she would say with her gestures "at least you don't have to live here all the time - hey, scratch the back of my head, will you?" She had big green eyes that looked red in pictures, and yellow at night - and we could never see her when we walked down the stairs. She fought with my mom over the corner seat on the couch until my parents finally gave up and got her a chair of her own.

It's a good thing that I have a strong sense of spirituality for all things- I don't have to know where she is to know that she is somewhere and happy. That cat had more class than a lot of people I have known.

Now I'm sitting here on my couch in my filthy apartment with all the detritus of a week-long abandonment of responsibility crying and planning how early I have to get up tomorrow to grade more papers.

Damn - Happy Valentine's day.

Borges

2005-02-04T16:33:00.000-06:00

I would like to informally note that Borges is one of the more difficult things to teach.

I have an intro lit class, and was faced with the task of tackling "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" today in discussion.

A sea of blank faces stared back at me as I found myself asking "so as an intelligent reader responding to the response that the narrator gives to Menard's possible intentional expression in these lines of the Quixote when we know that Menard doesn't actually exist - what can one say about Borges's project for this text?" And this was one of the less complicated sentences. The problem with multi-layered texts (especially satire) is that one must address all the layers in order to make any sense of it at all.

The beauty of my class is that they generally understood my ramblings and made nice work of the most complicated story that I have yet had to teach. I am so impressed with them - partially because I'm absolutely sure that I was not that smart as an undergrad.

Walking to the library with Kerri, I mentioned the multi-layered-ness of Borges and said (in what I find to be a very apt metaphor) that "reading Borges is like pureeing an entire dinner and drinking it in 5 seconds through a straw - then you have to somehow discern between the carrot, steak, and chocolate cake tastes, examining each one critically." She said that my analysis was a bit gross (admitted) and that she would liken it to fine wine. And that, folks, is the difference between my take on literature and everyone else's take on literature - they think of wine, I think of Hungry Jack.

In any case - today was also, inexplicably, spent at IKEA where Kerri and I helped Noelle to procure a fancy schmancy new dresser for her new apartment. This was followed by a frantic drive back to HP in hopes that I would make it before class. Ahhhh Chicago traffic.

Now I'm off to pick up Allyson for dinner and movie watching.

But enough of this bitterness.

2005-02-01T19:06:00.000-06:00

I'm generally a very laid-back person. And I don't usually lose my temper - so to my readers I apologise for my outburst. Frankly, nerves had been twanging all week and I snapped. Thus, you all have a fine example of KT on a very bad day.

Beautifully, I got to spend the weekend with both my sister and the boyfriend, which means that stress drifted away in a lovely haze of good cookery and thrifting.

I haven't seen her since Christmas, and we had a blast - vegetarian indian buffet, Salvation Army, St. Vinnies, chicken and pasta, much liqour, etc. It was fun for the whole family.

Speaking of fun, we went to the St. Vinnies "Dig and Save" outlet in Madison. Folks, I have to say that if you are into the most hardcore of thrifting experiences, this is it. This is where they ship all the clothes that didn't sell (for one reason or another) in the other thrift stores. It's priced by the pound. So the thrift shopper walks in the store, approaches on of the 30 or so HUGE cardboard boxes filled to the brim with clothing and starts digging. There's also a junk room with furniture, glassware, pots and pans, and sundries. We walked away with a leather jacket, a North Face coat, an alpaca wool sweater, a shirt, a stuffed snowman (not mine), and a headboard for $8.00. This puts even my previous cheapness to shame.

It's a little psycho in there. People hover over their "lucky" box and fight over clothing - totally strange.

I would also like to indicate that my sister, despite her back pain, woke up early and made me pancakes. She is so cool.

Late Sunday evening I drove over to see the boyfriend, we ate dinner and I crashed at his place . Monday morning I left at 7am to drive back to Chicago and experience office hours that lasted, sadly, from 11am to 5pm (student paper rewrites).

and that's why I love him. (see previous comments)

2005-02-01T17:57:00.000-06:00

for another example of a pointless blog - please see Jett. He sends his regards.

And if you would like to defend the pointedness of YOUR blog, you might want to send me a link.

Thanks,
KT

My blog is pointless.

2005-01-27T23:34:00.000-06:00

What a wonderful thing to read after having yet another conversation about my current state of depression and frustration with the bullshit that makes up a graduate career (see comment on previous post).

I'm attempting to not slip back into the bitterness that consumed my personality at the UofC, but frankly, I'm having a rough time of it.

So - Coxxy, Fuck you. I write because this is one of the few places where I can say a few nice things, entertain my friends, and waste time while I attempt to avoid grading papers, reading for my orals, and dealing with pedagogical bullshit. In addition, fuck you because you made me feel even more crappy on a day when I really didn't need to feel crappy. And Fuck you because not everything that I write has to be politically, anthropologically, sociologically, historically, morally, or even entertainingly relevant - I write enough on enough depressing history and politics during the day (see: gothicist) for that shit to completely control my outside life too.

Case in point, I just had to ask the boyfriend for a detailed account of how one is "hanged by the neck until dead" so that I can relate the subtleties inherent in Bierce's telling of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Speaking of which - the force of a70kg man falling about 1.5 meters is about 686 newtons, which shoves your odontiod process [bony appendage to 2nd cervical vertebrae] through your spinal column. If it doesn’t work on the first drop (the major force), then you strangle to death. I have to know this bullshit to back up my reading of the subtleties of the speaker's relationship to his strangulation vs. actual hanging as it relates to his vision of the grey eyes of the federal solider that shoots at him (the confederate vs. federal troops in the civil war) and his obsession with "grey"- thus his obsession with the south destroying itself perhaps because he is secretly opposed to slavery (because really he should have been in the military). Blah Blah Blah. All for my students all for tomorrow - what a charming conversation to have with my love - and he knows all of this because he had to take apart a human being piece by piece.

So if my life isn't depressing enough - then you come along to make it just a little more shitty. I am not required to account for my usage of this free webspace, nor am I required to live up to some random blogging standard.

So fucking fuck off you arrogant fucker.

And don't read my blog.

Let's talk about brand loyalty...

2005-01-25T23:13:00.000-06:00

So usually I don't care a bit if the stuff I'm using comes from one place or another. I'm too poor for moral scruples and I don't usually have the patience for department store sales.

But my pen - my pen is important to me.

So I was thinking - gosh, Katie, you're almost out of ink in your favorite pen!

That was darn right - I was almost out of ink in my favorite Pilot V5 Rollerball liquid ink Extra Fine Pink Pen.

Yes, pink.

So I'm looking around online and can't seem to find the cool 3-pak of pink, turquoise and violet that I bought before. Maybe it was just the office supply store I was looking at...

Tried another, nope.

And another.

Turns out that they don't actually sell these pens in the US (I learn via the Pilot pen website). The only place to get them is the UK, and that the fact that I got it in the first place was a total fluke.

Now I'm determined - I want my damn pens. So I look at UK office supply stores but overseas shipping costs are prohibitive - like 40GBP i.e. $74.58. Damn! For a split second I contemplate actually buying them - but that would be truly insane.
Art stores? No!
Specialty stationary stores? Shit, no!

And then I finally found an obscure auction of V5 pens on ebay, I just bought 14 pens for the delightful price of $10.75. I’m currently contemplating going and getting the other posted set.

After 3 hours of searching I breathed a sigh of relief. My pens are on their way. Some may think this to be perhaps a little odd, but think of how assiduously you search for that one sweater or that particular brand of hand moisturizer. Now, when the sweet, unblemished, pastel lines of my pens mark my students' papers; I know that both they and I am getting the best markings that writing implements can make.

On Freaking Out.

2005-01-24T21:24:00.000-06:00

Hello all,

This is just a friendly note to inform you that KT is babbling incoherently on the floor. She sat down with a calendar and her orals lists today and figured out that she needs to read 4.8 items a week to read everything for her orals.

She is currently reading Last of the Mohicans while shoveling beef stew into her mouth and muttering something about instantiating the sublimity of the supernatural in Native American mythos.

She also would like to inform you that she will now be living in the Regenstein on the 2nd floor instead of the departmental lounge (except for Mondays - when she abandons all hope for productivity).

I'm sure this will pass - or she will pass out. You know, whichever.

Signed,
Her Computer

I feel like the biggest bitch right now.

2005-01-24T18:01:00.000-06:00

I had to smack 'em hard today. Papers were handed back and I saw misty eyes hurrying for the door.

If only my students knew that giving them bad grades makes me feel shitty too.

I also had to lay down the law about attendance and assignments, as well as personally remind people that they are slacking.

Shiiiit.

So I'm in the Reg, contemplating work I must do and what I'm going to say to all of them on Friday...

Urk - wish me luck.

Weekend fun.

2005-01-23T15:00:00.000-06:00

I currently have a headache. But I feel that this headache was so well earned with fun yesterday and this morning that frankly - it almost feels good.

Last night I grabbed the train down to meet the ever-convivial prenebriated Jett and his charming roommate Jacob for dinner @ Leonas. The sign, I am told, has slowly been losing letters - so Leonas became Leons and now it is simply eons - which is apparently a warning to indicate to prospective patrons how long it will take for your waitress to arrive.

Ok, so the help wasn't great, but the food was amazing (some complicated chicken-pico-avacado-mayo-sandwich-thingy with a side of pesto pasta). Yum. This was preceded by the most obscenely large long island I have ever seen. This bugger was three times the size of a bar long island and was flavored with peach schnapps - making it delicious and deceptively non-alcoholic tasting.

Post dinner we headed down to meet Steph and Carl for further inebriation at a bar whose name I cannot remember, but which had really good lemon drops. At some point during the evening I decided I needed a cigar - so Steph and I ran over to the Walgreens to grab something cheap. After wandering (quite drunk by this time) into the store and being vaguely confused at the utter lack of clerks, we began to wander around - eventually coming up0n a rather shocked stocker who informed us that they were already closed for the evening and how did we get in there anyways? (I probably would have been more embarrassed about the whole deal, but frankly this did not seem odd to me at the time, and I imagine that we didn't look all that threatening in matching knit black-cat hats with ears and pom-poms.) Making a hasty retreat, we ran to the liquor store across the street where the man behind the counter insisted on petting the ears. Odd.

Aaaaanyways, we had a great evening - there was impromptu dancing, and I crashed Chez Steph and Carl on a very comfortable futon. (I also had my very first ride in a cab! Yippee!) This morning, vaguely hungover, we all watched TV and my charming hosts concocted something ultra delicious for breakfast using tortillas and french fries and eggs and salsa and cheese and sour cream, and really - it was astonishingly good. Steph and Carl are so cool.

So I am back at my apartment, thinking about curling up for an afternoon nap and then reading for Monday. What a delightful weekend.

Since I seem to be posting a lot today why stop now?

2005-01-20T21:10:00.000-06:00

Allyson played me this song, and I think the world should hear it.

http://www.deirdreflint.com/media/The_Boob_Fairy.mp3

it is positively hysterical.

do you remember me?

2005-01-20T20:24:00.000-06:00

I looked at myself in the mirror this morning

"self, you're looking pretty crappy"
"thanks, brat, you're looking pretty unpleasant yourself this morning."
"do you even remember who I am anymore?"
"Of course - you're KT"
"and..."
"a grad student"
"great - I always wanted that as my marker in the world"
"well, what do you want?"
"I want to be a grown-up"
"sorry babe, you have a few years to wait"
"I WANT TO BE A GROWN UP!"
"you're acting childish."
"I WANT A LIFE RIGHT NOW! - I DEMAND A LIFE OF MY OWN RIGHT NOW!"
"wait"
"wait?"
"yes, wait."
"I'm always waiting - I've been waiting"
"doesn't matter - you have to wait"
"and a house?"
"wait"
"and a husband?"
"wait"
"and a job?"
"wait"
"and children?"
"wait"
"and not moving every year or two?"
"wait"
"are we there yet?"
"no."
"will we ever be?"
"wait and see"

I just finished grading papers.

2005-01-20T17:39:00.000-06:00

I would go into the subjectiveness of grading, but my students might come upon this blog and I don't want to deal with the fallout.

I am currently in my bathrobe and jammies, wrapped in a duckie blanket and doing a little foot dance.

I often wondered what my professors wore / did while grading my papers - so for those of you interested, I procrastinated by:

Making tea
Making bread
Singing in the shower
Falling asleep
Jumping on my sofa
Jumping on my bed
Running around in circles in my living room
Doing a headstand (that turned out rather poorly - I should check the wall for nails first)
Making beef stew
Making salmon salad
Painting my toenails
Surfing on Ebay
Sewing a quilt
Blogging
Designing a little sheet on excel to house my students' names and grades
etc.

I have decided that paper grading leads to cooking as an inevitable consequence. I haven't cooked so much in a week since, ever. Everyone I know is welcome to come share in my culinary excesses - just let me know first so I can clean my whipping-worthy apartment of shame. It has sprouted what I like to call "work centers" but what are actually "projects I haven't bothered to clean up." These tend to dominate all surfaces of the apartment and are usually composed of paper, fabric, and sharp things with handles.

Now all I have to do is think up something interesting to say about "Gorilla, My Love," which frankly, I don't understand at all. I have to teach this to a room full of anxious students who just really want to know how they did on their paper (which I have now graded but have to give to Veeder for a 2nd grade). Maybe I'll pull a "what did you think?" or "how do the names the main character adopts change / mitigate / instantiate her personality?"

Maybe if I use a lot of jargon they won't notice.

I would work on this tonight, but really, I'm tired out and need to relax. I think I'll read Last of the Mohicans (orals), which Berlant calls "Last of the Moes" for which I will always love her .

Ooooh - stew's ready!

Headache.

2005-01-18T17:04:00.000-06:00

I have just found out that reading poor prose has the ability to cause me physical pain. Thus - grading papers has given me a headache.

Aw, piss.

If I finish 5 every day, then I will have them all done by Friday. 4 down, 1 to go.

How long should I be spending grading a paper? I'm down to about 1 hour per... but I think that this is probably too long.

Anyway - Happy Birthday to Allyson who is currently in class. You are the scholar I could never be. I wish you much drunkenness in the next few days.

Ok... I'm better now.

2005-01-17T23:02:00.000-06:00

Peppermint has rendered me incapable of smelling anything.

While talking to the boyfriend on the phone he murmurs something about "psychotic break" and "phantom smells". - That's what you get for dating a psychiatrist.

Of course, I'm still jacked up on caffine - so I can't sleep yet. Maybe I'll grade papers until I get tired (that shouldn't take too long).

There's this smell.

2005-01-17T20:47:00.001-06:00

I don't know if it's because I've been grading papers for 4 hours, or because I drank a lot of coffee today, or perhaps a combination of the two - but smells are totally driving me nuts.

I readily agree that some of my senses don't work so well. I can't hear for shit, I have lost feeling in the tips of most of my fingers (metalsmithing will do that to you), and I have a palate as advanced as the next ravenous wolf.

But sight and smell are the two that actually function with some kind of accuracy.

Except today, or, especially today.

I could smell the gasoline off the car in front of me on the freeway, I could smell the coffee I drank on my skin 2 hours later, I could smell the inkjet vs. lazer ink on the papers I have to grade. My kitchen smells of gas although all the burners are off, and my radiators smell hot. And there is some mysterious smell from this particular kind of really annoying decaying berry on the tree outside that is driving me batshit insane and caused me to crawl around my apartment like a bloodhound with my nose to the floor trying to detect the funk.

If this seems odd, that's because it is - Currently I'm going the carpetbombing route of full on burning peppermint oil strikes. If the funk persists, I may have to get the flamethrower.

wait -- is... my... neighbor... making...fried... rice... again? NOOOOOOOO!

Peanut Butter and Jelly.

2005-01-16T19:28:00.000-06:00

I think that this delighful food has been woefully ignored by the elite culinary world for too long.

maybe I have been watching too much Iron Chef.

I was in Trader Joe's the other day and found a jar of cashew butter. Failing to buy it, and then kicking myself for having failed to buy it; I went home to seek what little solace I could find in the humble creamy Jif. Being health-conscious (although what level of consciousness remains to be determined), I had bought the reduced-fat variety one day at the store. I also had some sugar-free strawberry jam and potato bread from my breadmaker.

I have resolutely avoided the PB&J since childhood when my father (believing it to be the world's most perfect food) made us sandwiches for any meal of which he was in charge.

Somehow, however, this particular sandwich was really good. Really really good. I started thinking about how shocking it would be to go to a chef and say "I want crushed exotic nuts creamed with sugar and spread over freshly baked bread- served with sweetened crushed vine-ripened fruit." THAT sounds exquisite. In fact, the PB&J is downright decadent.

Clearly I am killing time. You see - I talk to the boyfriend at 9, and it is currently 7:30, which means that I only have 1.5 hours before I go run on the treadmill. This is not enough time to do really anything except perhaps blog and fool around on the internet. I'm feeling way way too lazy for a craft project, and I have nowhere to dry cashmere. I don't want to read, can't sleep, and I'm not hungry. I just took a shower, and it's Sunday so everything is closed.

You know what I'm talking about right? One of THOSE evenings - where you are bored and restless.

So perhaps I'll plan my week:

Orals: Last of the Mohicans, Kant (really, this week I'll actually do it), Edgar Huntly or Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and probably Lefanu or Poe or someone easy.

Teaching: Read Carver and whatever I'm supposed to teach on Friday (oh I am such a slacker) - grade papers

Office hours: tomorrow, which will either be swamped or deserted depending (as there is a paper due that day).

Social: Nothin' yet.

Crafts: Work on the throw, start on Theoden crown for Brian, and storyboards - yes - storyboards.

I am not a super-spy.

2005-01-14T20:01:00.000-06:00

I am, however, after a visit to Amber's fantastic bar "Old Town Pub" in - you guessed it - Old Town, and the liberal application of post-driving booze chez moi - drunk.

Which means that if I can coordinate my fingers and such to type I will probably say something interesting, or - most likely, not.

And since I currently have a drink in hand (actually it's still in the bottle - so I am inhabiting a persona here - or rather I am inhabiting the futurity of myself - soon to be more drunk) I raise this metaphorical glass in a toast to:

1) my brilliant class of undergrads - who, although initially reluctant to speak, are some of the smartest little buggers in the history of undergrads and continually make discussion a joy and a treat.

2) to Noelle - who has had a crappy holiday and really deserves some kind of toast in her honor (even if the super-spy event has collapsed).

3) to foot baths - because you keep my feet warm and frisky and relaxed.

4) to appletinis - because (although I agree with Jett that you are not real drinks) you are, however, delicious and oh so alcoholic.

5) to anyone, anywhere who thinks that a good smack on the ass is a little bit fun

6) to the abject object in the back of my refrigerator that constantly avoids my "gaze" in an attempt to avoid the instantiation of rejection and thus refuse or "garbage".

7) to my sister, of whom I have seen neither hide nor hair for many days - in hopes that her muffin baking exploits are going well.

8) to my boy's "Knights of the Old Republic" Jedi character who has apparently blown up a man-eating shark -- you go girl --

9) to drink to drink to drink to drink to drink!

10) to talking to friends who are progressively becoming more drunk on the phone.

11) And also, with a parting bow, to cashmere - soft, sweet, brushed from the bellies of goats, and the most delightful and cosy garment on the planet. (I am currently on an expedition? exploit? excursion? to get my sister to raise cashmere goats on her farm - thus creating a never-ending cycle of cashmere goodness. Is this over the top? totally - Am I over the top? yes Am I sane? not tonight).

Cheers!

Duh.

2005-01-12T18:14:00.000-06:00

So apparently somewhere along the way I forgot that graduate school is supposed to be a LEARNING experience. Apparently my brain found no room for mistakes of any kind and believed that all profs. expected me to come to school with a complete working knowledge of everything and the ability to write perfect prose.

Clearly this is wrong - and I figured out just how wrong today.

So I went to see Berlant - hanging my head in shame for this horrible (and upon rereading, incomprehensible) paper that I had written for her. And she was really nice and listened to me as I babbled on about how I usually don't write this poorly, and that I think I became obsessed with my archive etc. for, like, half an hour. And then she leans over and says what has obviously been on my mind the entire time "don't worry, I still respect you"

And I ran into the lounge and told a fellow student "she still respects me, even after that shitty paper!". At this moment, a professor who had been sitting in the lounge (unseen by me) started laughing aloud. And it comes to me in a triple shock 1) they expect us to make mistakes 2) the reason I was so upset about the paper isn't that I did poorly, but rather that I was tryingt to impress her and failed, and 3) she knew all that and said just the right thing to make me feel better.

Rock. and yet - Duh.

Damn I can be thickheaded sometimes.

Weekend.

2005-01-09T21:32:00.000-06:00

Picked up the boyfriend in Milwaukee on Saturday evening and met Ivan and Al for dinner and movies @ my place. Mulan was watched, some extrodinary vodka-cream-spinach-pasta was had and merry conversation escaped from the lips of happy friends. This morning we all went out for Tiffin goodness surmounted by marzipans dipped in chocolate. Then I drove back up to Milwaukee to drop the boy back off at the Badger Bus terminal (sadly sending him back to Madisonia).

Alas.

Tonight I will drink an appletini, crawl in bed, plan my week, and possibly read - all else failing I will sleep.

Tomorrow I will awake refreshed and ready to attack the Regenstein with the full force of my studious nature - or a stick, you know, whichever

Captain's log, stardate er... whenever: addendum

2005-01-07T21:53:00.000-06:00

So after writing my perky post-teaching post I attempted to remove a zip-tie from some packaging material using a trusty folding knife.

I bet you all know what's coming.

Of course I cut myself with said knife for about 1in across my thumb (1/8 in deep). I pull out the knife and walk over to the bathroom and have this internal conversation:

"self, that has to be one of the moronic things that you have ever done"
"tops off a great day, don't it?"
"yeah - um... this doesn't look so good"
"no, it doesn't"
"should we go to the ER?"
"call the boyfriend - he'll know what to do"

having formed this resolution staring at my reflection in the mirror, I grabbed a clean towel, put my thumb way way above my head and grabbed the cell.

My wonderful and concerned boy thought I would need stitches for that size cut.

piss.

So I change clothes, pack up some books, and wander over to the Northwestern ER. - The people were delightful, and they had me out of there in less than an hour (not a busy night).

There was really only one problem. I'm allergic to lidocane. That means no anesthetic, folks. I can say with absolute certainty that really - stitches hurt like a bitch.

now I am back at home and my whole arm aches. And I need to get dinner. And I didn't get my liquor. I think I can think of a good way to solve all of these problems together. It's off to a pub for me tonight.

Teaching.

2005-01-07T19:35:00.000-06:00

So I taught my first ever discussion section today. I think it went pretty well, but there were a few minor snags that I should note - since I am tired and about to hit the sauce... I will make it as brief as possible.

1. I accidentally insulted a student.
2. They hated my interpretation and thought it was untenable.
3. I believe that they think I am a moron.
4. I have no idea what we talked about or if it made any sense whatsoever.

On the good side...

1. they talked ALL HOUR!
2. they talked to one another and not just to me (there was, like, a real discussion)
3. People laughed at my jokes.
4. They smiled.
5. I let them go home early.
6. Someone who was being annoying apologized for his annoyingness after class!
7. Someone came up after class and said that she secretly agreed with my interpretation all along.

Thus, good outnumbered bad almost 2 to 1 and I am happy. Thanks to Steph for calming me down afterwards and offering helpful advice. Thanks to Amber who so graciously hosted me in her apartment the evening before after we abandoned the Evanston bar scene (oh so sad) for the exotic banana-vanilla rum in her cupboard.
Ah winter quarter - you will be survived.

My mother.

2005-01-05T18:40:00.000-06:00

My mother is one of the most charmingly wonderful yet strangely helpfully annoying people on the planet.

Let me relate to you a conversation that happened this morning:

9:05 am (if you are a grad student you understand that I am NEVER awake this early) [home phone rings 10 times]

[I roll over and pull my pillow over my head in a vain attempt to recapture that delightful dream about beaches, and boats and some kind of entertaining nightlife]

9:06 am [cell phone rings] since it is plugged in near my head there is now no chance whatsoever of remembering what I was dreaming so a hand emerges from the blanket-cocoon and grasps the cell

"Hello?"
"Katie, it's your mother" (tones of urgency in her voice)
"Hi" (muzzy thinking is just registering the idea that mom=parent=someone I should talk to
"You didn't answer your home phone - I let it ring a long time"
"I was asleep"
"Oh no! I'm so sorry (is she really sorry? who can tell?) I just wanted to give you a call and let you know what's going on"
(suddenly wide awake) "what's the matter?"
"it's snowing"
"..."
"Katie? It's snowing"
"yes... and..."
"and its supposed to get worse through the day - I've been watching the TV, and you are supposed to get a lot of snow this afternoon - its a winterweatheradvisorysoyoushouldprobablypacksomeclothesinyourcarjustincaseyougettrappeddown inhydepark"
"uh.."
"so you can stay with a friend because by the time the plows come through your car may be buried in snow and then you won't have anything to get yourself out with"
"I keep a shovel in my trunk?"
"you should call someone just in case and really you should get down there soon because you're in the window of less snow right now and soon it's going to start snowing harder and you'll have a hard time getting down there so you don't want to miss your window."
"window?"
"window when its not snowing - you might want to think about heading out soon - your class is over late, isn't it - it might be too snowy to drive home so you should think about staying at a friend's house"
"ok mom, I'll pack some underwear"
"you might be stuck for a few days" (seriously)
"ok."
"sorry I called you so early"
"ok"
"I love you"
"I love you too, mom"
"you know I just worry about you"
"I know"
etc...

**sigh**

It would be more charming if this didn't happen all the time. She finally stopped calling me about the severe thunderstorm watches and warnings, tornado watches and warnings, heavy fog, and freezing rain... but there's something about snow that lingers. Of course, now she's intensly apologetic when she calls - knowing that it is annoying, but also torn with the idea that if she doesn't warn me then if something happens to me she will be responsible (how this works, I'm not sure). Although I would prefer to have a mother that thought about me enough to make sure I am safe compared to someone who didn't - I've come to treasure these little moments in the morning. They aren't as annoying as they used to be, somehow. I think that this is her version of still tucking me in at night and making sure that there aren't any monsters in my closet or under my bed.