Derelict in my duties…

Right. So, that whole “I’m gonna’ post every day or, at the worst, ever couple days” thing has turned into an “I post when the season’s change” thing.

But no more! Good friends tell me that blogging is therapeutic and informative and interesting and I definitely need all those things, so rededicated to blog am I.

Of course, I don’t have anything to post about except not posting…

How exciting.

Fine — for your viewing pleasure I present the PETA ad that will not be aired during the Super Bowl for fear of harming our fragile sensibilities. Thanks, NBC! I feel pure!

I can’t help it…

I have to say it…

Enough with Joe the damn Plumber!!!

Apparently, that’s his only friend now…

Five-Year Old Trash Talk

OK, so, I’m a total slacker who hasn’t even been to my own blog in more than 5 months (except for once or twice to see how long ago it really was that I wrote something). Now that the teaching of a new class is done, the summer orientation season is through (as well as the Olympics), the dissertation proposal is defended, and Pkin has begun kindergarten, I should finally have some time to at least check in periodically.

To start, though, I feel it appropriate to lighten your day with a variety of Pkin trash talk. This has all resulted during the playing of Wii — primarily during Mario Cart but also sometimes via Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games. Enjoy!

 

• All right! That’s it! Party over!
• I have you now!
• I’m leaving this party!
• Huh, let’s have a better party.
• Everybody stinks.
• Well, this stinks.
• This time I’m winning all!
• That’s it! You got your boogers on me everybody!
• OK! That’s it! Pack up your backpacks and let’s head out to the shed!
• See you later, folks! I’m big!
• Try it again? Well, you can’t pancakey!
• I’m gonna’ smash on you with a big Bullet Bill! I’m gonna’ fight, fight, fight, fight, FIGHT!
• Tell it to the judge!
• Watch out everybody, I gotta’ go!
• You have burritos on your nose!
• All this stinkin’ trash in here!
• You’re the one trash talk!
• Watch the movie tomorrow night!
• I got the biggest pile!  Nah, nah, nah everybody!
• Try to catch me if you can, suckers!
• It’s gotta’ be somebody that’s fired! Everybody! Not me!
• The little brat needs a time out!
• Fire the hog! (attempting to replicate “fire in the hole”)
• Eat my cheese oatmeal!
• I’m fast! I’m slow! I’m smooth!
• Taste my toast!
• He took my tooshy!
• Kiss my oatmeal!
• It’s not you! It’s me! Alright, it’s you!
• You smell like a cheese taco!
• (very innocently) Let me try out my new Bullet Bill!
• I’m gonna’ call you butts if you do that again!
• All right, daddy! You’re going down!
• In the nose!
• You don’t know anything about it!
• (Sing song) I’m not going down, you are going down!
• I didn’t knock you any day, I knocked you now! You’re fish sticks!
• I’m gonna’ kick your butt now, donkey!

 

 

At a loss for words

There is a lot of privilege in my life. I may be female, an atheist, and have a lot of “extra padding.” I may have spent my early years very poor. I may identify as bisexual (a shock to many of my readers, I’m guessing…cat’s out of the bag!  I just happen to be in a monogamous heterosexual marriage so often “pass” whether intentionally or not). I may be part of what we consider to be a Chinese American family. But I am also white, educated, and doing OK financially. I am, generally, happy with my life. I am surrounded by wonderful friends and have a husband and daughter I adore.

Generally, I recognize (or try to recognize) that privilege and seek to serve as an advocate for those who may not have as much of it. I view it as my responsibility to use my privilege to be an ally for those who may not have as much of it or whose privilege may manifest in different ways.

Today, though, was one of those times were all that privilege and all my attempts at being a strong ally and all that work with appreciating diversity and helping others do the same just sort of flew out the window. I can’t get into specifics, but some ridiculous comments were made about a couple of my friends (one who is very dear to me) by a person or people who I wouldn’t really call friends, but people I interact with and will have to continue interacting with for the foreseeable future.

And my response when I learned this was to, literally, be speechless. I was so shocked and pissed and just — ahhhh! — that I had no clue what to say. So I said “what???”  And then I said, “yeah…just…yeah…” — and I said that a lot.

Sadly, I think I’m more prepared to deal with racism (and sexism and faithism and sizism and…) when it comes from people I can label as inexperienced, uneducated, naive, and so forth. I recognize that this is the form my biases take — I assume certain viewpoints are less surprising from certain groups of people. That’s something I need to work on; I’ve been trying to see everything as a teaching moment and recognizing that I have to be willing to interact with anyone who has what I view as an incorrect viewpoint. Essentially, I’m working on my stupidism.

But when stupid comes out of the mouth of people who should know better, people who like to talk about being all understanding and supportive and touchy-feely, people who are in roles that mean their stupid could more easily be spread to others — then I find myself wondering how the hell to deal with it.

And when stupid comes from someplace that you can’t just walk away from, how do I keep interacting with the stupid person as if there is something redeemable in them.  How do I continue to retain my goal of changing that stupid into something else?

And if I can’t handle this when everyone involved is an adult (well, in age at least), then how the hell am I going to help Pkin deal with this as she gets older?

Ever have one of those weeks…?

That whole “when it rains it pours” thing sometimes seems so inadequate a description of life.  This past week or so has been a top to bottom mess (with a few EXTREMELY high spots). It started with office drama at the end of Spring Break, then there’s the deer incident I mentioned earlier, then a middle of the night work emergency last weekend. That led to more office drama on top of the already existing office drama (which just got more dramatic).

And then I hung out and chatted for a couple amazing hours with bell hooks.  She helped remind me why I love what I do so much.
And then I had to go back to the office and the drama that just keeps going (and sometimes makes me wonder if the sorts of things we talked about with bell are even possible).
Things at home are now taking on the craziness that I hoped would stay at work. Tuesday night we found that one of the new cats we adopted in January had somehow or another done something that led to a lot of dried blood on her hind leg and an inability to put even the slightest bit of weight on it (must be pay back. When we hit the deer DM said it must have been cosmic justice because when this same cat seemed very ill and went to the vet last week she was pulled through it all and on the mend. So, a deer had to be sacrificed. For those who are reading this and going, huh? The atheists believe in cosmic anything — just know that it is just a semi-satirical way of representing the fuckedupedness of the world sometimes).

DM had to rush off to the emergency vet with her while I stayed with Pkin who was a good bit stressed about the kitty (she still harbors a lot of doctor issues from my surgery and then from my complications leading to a stay in ICU and then Pepe’s couple trips to the emergency vet leading to mega meds and then death. Can’t say I blame her).

Of course, it didn’t just end with a simple cut.  First, it hurt her too much to allow anyone to look at the actual extent of the injury — even after a dose of pain meds. So that meant anesthesia and minor surgery to clean and repair. And staying up until 3am to find out from DM what the plan was and wait for him to get home safely.

And then waking up again about 5:45am when he finally came to bed after finally getting a call from the vet to tell us how the surgery went. That’s when we found out that not only did she have a big cut (about 3cm) but she also didn’t seem to have her tendon attached anymore. She’d need to be seen by the specialists to determine the extent of the injury and how to repair it.

Of course, because it wouldn’t have been my week otherwise, they determined she ruptured her Achilles tendon. Thus she required surgery to reattach it. And because she’s a kitten they can’t do the screws and pins repair since her bones are still growing. So her leg is held straight in a splint and bandaging that ends up being about as long as her body is and weighs about as much. And she has to be confined for 4-8 weeks in a small room where she can’t hurt herself. And she has to wear one of those funky collars so she doesn’t get at her bandages (of course, she’s already gotten it off twice. The first time being on the way back from the vet on the Interstate going about 65 miles an hour. And not only did she get the collar off, but she also got out of her carrier and jumped across the car into my lap, hitting the gear shift and knocking it into neutral. Did I mention this was on the Interstate!?! At 65 miles an hour!?!

In the middle of all of this (not the thing on the Interstate — but the week itself) I got some amazingly good news! But, again, because it wouldn’t be my life otherwise, the amazingly good news is a secret. I was able to tell only an incredibly small number of very specific people (those people who will be coming to a thing that has to do with the secret). Everyone else has to wait until Friday to hear about it.

And I do NOT do secrets well. Keeping things confidential — sure! Do that all the time! And keeping quiet about something negative — that’s no problem because why would I want to burden other people with it? But there’s something about a good secret — especially once being labeled such — that just makes me want to tell people. I can’t count the number of times I told DM what a present was before I gave it to him because I was so excited (I’m like a freakin’ little kid!)

So by far the best thing to happen to me this week (and in a lot of weeks — this thing is BIG!) and I can’t say anything until Friday.

As Pkin just said while blowing something or another up in the Star Wars game she’s playing to DM (still her reward for doing her reading each day — she’s in Level 2 of Hooked on Phonics now and going strong!) “Oh, tartar sauce!”

I think I’m ready for another Spring Break…

My cop out blog

So, I have been a total slacker on the blogging for the last few weeks. The semester has sort of gotten to be well over my head. I am swamped like crazy and every time I get something done, 3 other things have come to take their place. This week was Spring Break (yeah!) though there wasn’t much “break” involved. I took tons of work home — got some done, didn’t get other parts done, and had lots of new work added to what I planned to do. Essentially that means I’ll be going back to work on Monday with more to do than when I left for “break” even though I haven’t really done much “break”-ing.

As such, I feel the need to blog, but am not so knowing what to blog about. Could be the new tattoo I got last week. Or the deer Pkin and I killed yesterday when she sprinted right in front of the car (I was in a mopey and pissy mood all evening. And not because the car was smooshed. I don’t do violence of any sort and really hate seeing animals hurt especially when I think humans are largely culpable — beyond the hitting of them with cars — for taking up so damn much land and pushing them out of their habitats). Or the small demon that has taken up residence inside the now 5-year old Pkin. She’s been ordering us around since her birthday (literally, it started the minute she turned 5). Last night I was told “You are not a good mama!”

In the end, I’m gonna’ do a cop out meme blog. Feel free to hijack the questions for your own blog…or to just laugh at my absurd answers…

1. Who was your first prom date? Hubby DM. He was my only prom date ever. We started dating in our sophomore year of high school so I went with him to all of our high school dances, except for my sophomore homecoming (which I attended with a guy named Bill who was nice and all that but who I went with only because I had heard DM was going with some friends and thought I might be able to dance with him there. Yeah, I know. I didn’t say I was nice…)

2. Do you still talk to your first love? Not much. I know where he is…or I think I do. Last I heard he was in FL working at Starbucks. Oddly, I learned this from my dad who ended up in the same PhD program as him down there. The first conversation with dad about that was interesting…dad didn’t know I already knew that “first love” was actually gay. Dad was trying to figure out how to break it to me. I actually had a string of dating gay men back then (back then being junior high). Interestingly, I think I knew it before many of them did…

3. What was your first alcoholic drink? Not counting the sips of beer dad gave me while mowing the lawn on the driving mower (sips I now count as responsible for my not liking beer at all!) I’m guessing it would be the gin and coke that my 7th grade best friend and I drank before heading into our choir concert. Ironically, I was playing Carrie Nation in the concert…

4. What was your first job? Besides babysitting I am thinking it was working in mom’s insurance office. More accurately, working at home to file her countless piles of paper so she could take them to the insurance office.

5. What was your first car? A brown and tan 1980 Monte Carlo with a 1981 Camaro engine in it. A solid chunk of metal (aka land yacht) that served me well through a collision with a little fiberglass car — right up until the engine seized because I forgot to change the oil (the gas gauge didn’t work either so I frequently ran out of gas. Became a joke with my MIL — she gave me an empty pill bottle for carrying extra gas. It was a joke — don’t worry, she’s not an idiot.)

6. Who was the first person to text you today? Pi. She’s actually responsible for me using text much more than I used to. And now I love it!

7. Who is the first person you thought of this morning? Pkin. Considering how yesterday ended and her middle of the night session yelling at her for “teasing” her by not “listening to me better” I woke up and decided I’d keep her home from school today so we could have a mama, Pkin day together and hopefully work through some of this intense ego creation stuff she’s got going on. Yeah. That didn’t work.

8. Who was your first grade teacher? I’m thinking her name was Mrs. Wilkes, but I’m not sure why I think that or if I am right.

9. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane? From Denver, CO to Washington, DC. I was actually one of those obnoxious junior high students to flock to the District and be herded like cattle to look at all sorts of large chunks of marble and big collections of artifacts and…I only knew one person on the entire trip, Wendy, even though it was a group of people from my school (at least, I think that’s right), so Wendy and I ended up being roomies and doing everything together. That was also my first experience with actual humidity.

10. Who was your first best friend, and are you still friends with him/her? I’m not sure really. Somewhat surprisingly I was one of the “popular” people when I was younger so had a bunch of friends and boyfriends, but I can’t really remember who was the first or who was the best. I do know that in the latest collection of stuff my parents have sent me from my childhood there is a page that has lots of information I apparently dictated about my family, pets, etc. and it says my best friend is Joie. That was from kindergarten, so maybe she was my first? I’m not still friends with her though. Don’t actually remember her last name and didn’t remember her at all until I read the page my rents sent…

11. What was your first sport played? Baseball. And I got knocked cold trying to catch a fly. I think I quit playing then that year. A couple years later, though, I started my obsession with softball (hopefully not because I thought the balls would be softer if they hit me in the chin). I don’t play it anymore and definitely miss it. I’m hoping to teach Pkin to play this year.

12. Where was your first sleepover? In Colorado I know. I think it was at the house of a girl named Joy (I think). She had bright red, curly hair — looked like Orphan Annie. I got very homesick and got an upset stomach from it. Her parents gave me some Pepto and I promptly puked it back up. Needless to say, they called my parents and I went home. The first sleepover at my house didn’t go much better. My friend Tim came over (my parents were fairly progressive, I guess). When we went to go to sleep he tried to kiss me, so I picked him up and threw him across the room (I may have been 8 or 9, but I was pretty strong and he was pretty little).

13. Who was the first person you talked to today? DM. He got up at crazy a.m. to go into work. I told him I was going to have Pkin stay home and asked him to call her school to let them know. (The staying at home thing definitely didn’t make things any better. Right now she’s screaming and crying and saying “you guys don’t make me happy!” because we asked her to actually walk the 4 feet from the couch to the trash can to throw away her Popsicle wrapper).

14. Whose wedding were you in the first time? I think it was Uncle Richard and Aunt Pam’s. I know I wore a yellow dress with little roses at the waist. I think I was a flower girl. I’ve never been a bridesmaid. Was supposed to be matron of honor in my maid of honor’s wedding, but she and her guy broke up before the wedding

15. What was the first thing you did this morning? Snuggled Pkin.

16. What was the first concert you ever went to? Not counting all the band and choir concerts, it was Whitney Houston in 8th grade for my junior high best friend’s birthday. Three or four of us went to Red Rocks with her dad (who had his headphones on listing to his music the whole time). The people a few rows in front of us were smoking pot, so by the time the concert was over we all had a little contact high. I recall thinking my feet were just a few centimeters above the stairs the whole way out and was astounded at how I could get where I wanted to go by floating.

17. What was your first tattoo or piercing? I tried for years to get my parents to let me get my ears pierced and finally got to do it for my 13th birthday. Sometime soon after I got both ears pierced a second time. And then when I was about 14, I pierced a third hole in my left ear while on the phone with my then boyfriend. Just me, an ice cube, and a needle over the course of an hour or so. First tattoo was just last weekend as a celebration for being advanced to candidacy in my PhD program. Maybe also for turning 36 (that was just this week, so it seems like good timing). I’ve wanted a tattoo since I was 15 or so but was always sort of “eh” about actually doing it. So, about 20 years later I actually did it. And it will be my one and only!

18. What was the first foreign country you went to? Well, technically I went to Canada when I was about a year old. I was asleep in the car and they stopped to look at an overlook or something and accidentally locked their keys inside with me in the car. They got to have fun teaching me how to unlock the car door. Of course, I have no memory of this. My first memory of another country was driving to Mexico with my parents, one of my aunts, and two of my uncles in a Volkswagen Bug for a track meet.

19. What was your first run-in with the law? This one’s actually pretty bad (though at the time I didn’t really get that it was). Sometime in early Elementary school (1st to 3rd grade sometime, based on where we were living) I had a “friend”, Christine I think, who was several years older than me. She apparently had a problem with stealing things and thought I was a good accomplice because I was little. So she would break into people’s houses by pushing open unlocked windows and would put me through the window to come unlock the door for her. I told a friend (the aforementioned Joy) and she told her parents who told the police. They came to my house to talk to my parents and then to talk to me about Christine, what we did, and what was taken. I believe they used what I said against Christine, but can’t say for sure as I wasn’t allowed to see her anymore so don’t really know what happened.

20. When was your first detention? Never had one.

21. What was the first state you lived in? Colorado.

22. Who was the first person to break your heart? The aforementioned gay guy (not formerly gay, cuz he is still gay) who was my first love. He found out I was also seeing another guy and so he broke up with me. I remember sobbing hysterically at the end of my waterbed while listening to Air Supply.

23. Who was your first roommate? DM, Zach, Jack, Madeline, and, occasionally, Madeline’s sometimes boyfriend Lane. That lasted for about 6 months, I think. Then DM and I moved out. I am definitely not one for living with other people.

24. Where did you go on your first limo ride? I think it was from our wedding to our reception. We cruised up the main street in my home town and by the community theatre where my parents, DM, and I did a lot of plays and such. My dad had put a congratulatory message about our wedding up on the marquis to surprise us, so the driver drove by it and made some sort of funky remark to get us to look out the window (otherwise, we would have just kept talking to each other).

And in my spare time…

Today (well, this week really, but today works) has been one of those days when I think I just may try to cram too damn much stuff into my schedule.

So, this week (in addition to working full-time and teaching and consulting and attending school events and generally being a mom and a wife and taking care of a little girl who had two teeth pulled all that, I also defended my field statements which means all I have left to do for my PhD is my dissertation…and, yes, I recognize that saying something silly like “all I have left to do” about a dissertation clearly displays how out of touch with reality I am right now…) we also had Pkin’s birthday party.

And for some not particularly known reason, I decided long ago that I would make her birthday cake every year (as I do with her Halloween costume) until such time as she would be mortified if I did it. That means yesterday evening was spent baking the cakes and this morning was spent decorating them. And no matter how many times I do this, I never accurately estimate how long it takes.

So, once again, I started the day decorating (two difference purse cakes this year — one pink, white and purple, the other yellow and multi-spotted) at about 9am (after finally going to bed sometime after 1am because the baking of cakes meant I didn’t get anything else I wanted to get done done and, therefore, I had to stay up later than I planned…you see the cycle). Still I found myself not finishing up until almost 1pm and I still had to take a shower before driving the 15 miles or so to the party location where we were supposed to be by 1:15 (thankfully I’m not crazy enough to try to have it at our house, because then I’d actually have to clean too!) I was even one of those women I make fun of who was putting on make-up in the car (not while drivin, mind you. DM did that — because I had two cakes in my lap. It would have made for quite a mess if I has dropped the mascara).

Now that we’ve returned home with the haul and I have hours of opening of little boxes full of ponies and princesses with those tiny little twist ties and rubber bands that make things look good while they’re sitting on a shelf but require a PhD to open (which I don’t have yet since “all I have left…”), I will also be making 4 dozen cupcakes to bring to the office tomorrow to thank all the people who helped me in the process of getting through my field statements so I can have only the dissertation left…

And I think next week I’m getting a tatoo…

A friend of ours once said to DM and I, “You know that what you guys call taking it easy is what most people call insanely busy, right?” I think we may need to work on taking it even easier…

Why do I like Virginia again?

Sometimes I just don’t get this place. This interesting post by Dana tracks yet another page in the illustrious book that is Virginia’s worldview. Yes, children need to have an adult explain how two male penguins could raise a a baby penguin or those little children heads might just explode! I suppose we should also take away any other book that doesn’t maintain the white, Christian, biological, heteronormative, experience that is “everyone’s” family…

I often comfort myself by saying northern Virginia should secede and leave the rest of Virginia to fend for itself (since we have the majority of the tax base, we’d be OK — good even!) But then a county just a few miles down the road goes all Deliverance and I’m left shaking my head and wondering when I’ll get to live in a place that has a flippin’ brain!

I Am A Full-on Theory Whore!

And lovin’ every minute of it.

I made a rather big mess for myself last week when I canceled my class due to being sick. At the time I thought “Well, it’s not that much reading so we can just cover it all next week.”

When I started to feel better a day or so later, I thought “Well, we’ll be tackling memory in the Enlightenment and Romantic eras as well as in the Late Modern period, so that’s a lot, but that’ll be workable. And there are close connections to be made, so maybe it’ll all actually flow better this way.”

Then, as I was preparing for today’s class, I started to realize just how much I had bit off. I refreshed my memory on who the authors are in this section and thought “Crap!” Then, as I reread the readings and reworked my initial notes to take into consideration where we were, what things we’d tackled that I wanted to harken back to, what issues I knew we would be covering that I wanted to foreshadow, I started to realize what a big task I had before me. And I said “Shit!”

Let me interject here to say I am not a lecturer. I never learned well from lectures, never saw a particularly good lecture (a presentation at an adoption-related conference I attended in October was probably the closest I’ve come), and do not generally enjoy the sort of nonstop listening to myself talk that is needed for a good lecture. I am much more a conversation, asking interesting questions and hearing interesting answers, dialogue sort of instructor. Maybe if I had found a better way to incorporate my perpetual sarcasm into a lecture without seeming like a poseur…

Anyway, today I found myself not only needing to tackle a number of philosophers ideas on fairly complex matters, but I also needed to do some lecturing around things like phenomenology, semiotics, the role of history, etc.  Thus you see why the “Shit!”

I will admit I headed to class today with a bit of trepidation — and not only because I was going to have to cover all this but also because students in my program don’t generally take kindly to lectures. While I didn’t expect an all out revolt, I did expect some…shall we say…displeasure.

And it was definitely there. Some people had scowls throughout the day (well, until I gave out candy for answers about the readings. Though many of those scowls came back as we made decisions about a group commemoration project. Rather than simply assigning them what to do and how to do it, I let them be actively involved in the decision. The idea was they would be more invested and would be able to learn not only by doing the project but also through the process of deciding what it is. The jury is still out on whether any of that was achieved).

Many people, though, went with me. That’s not to say they got what I was saying all the time (some of fabulously expressive faces that I’ve learned to read over years of knowing them, so I can tell when they just have no clue what I am trying to convey. Great thing is, if I’m tuned into that, I know right away that I need to try to explain it another way).

What surprised me the most, though, was how much fun I had teaching theory.  My dear friend Pi and I have often joked about being theory whores (a term of endearment, in our view) but I’ve never really tried to teach much of that theory before. Today I found myself understanding things in a much deeper way (what’s the old saying about really needing to know something to teach it?). I found myself loving the theory I was teaching. And I found myself really, REALLY wanting them to understand it (of course, I always want my students to understand what I’m teaching, but today was something even more than that — I wanted them to know they understood it and to like learning it).

I can’t say how successful I was at all of that, but I can say I got to watch several of those a-ha moments — where someone’ face went from the frown and furrowed brow of confusion to the wide grin and lit-up eyes of comprehension. One student even said that semiotics sounded fun (gotta’ love it!)

Maybe the true measure of a theory whore isn’t how incomprehensibly they can write, but how well they can help form those theory whores who come along behind them.

Sick sucks

So, the sluggomarie family has been down and out from various ailments and maladies for almost 2 weeks now. It started with Pkin (as such things often do — kids and schools are walking germ factories) and the stomach flu. I discovered then not to say she had a stomach “bug” as she was then highly concerned about the insect crawling around inside her (lesson learned…)

Four days later, it hit DM — still stomach flu, but of a slightly different variety (I shall spare you the details). Though he was down and out, I was fine. I started getting a little optimistic that it wouldn’t get me. I then calculated everything out and figured if I made it through last Saturday, I was in the clear as that would be more than 4 days since DM got it. So, of course, got it late Friday. That’s what I get for counting.

I spent the weekend in bed and then headed to the office on Monday partly because that’s what people do on Monday’s and partly because I teach on Monday’s and wanted/needed to be there for class. That worked for about an hour before I knew it wasn’t gonna’ work. Of course, it took another 3 hours to actually get out of the office…

As the stomach insect was passing, I found I had another cold alongside/underneath/immediately following it. Took me out of the office again today (along with crazy ice). Home sick for two days in one week is crazy! I just don’t take sick days. I love my job, love my co-workers, love my students — I just don’t take sick days! I have something like 3 weeks of sick time backed up because I just don’t use it. And did I mention that I don’t use it?

Now I not only feel like crap and am ticked off at being out of the office, but I also have almost no voice. And I like to talk! That’s just not right…