All My Exes

Everything is actually bigger in Texas, including the Lumberjack Slam at Denny's.

Alright, not really. But if you, like me, came to a predominately Catholic region and attempted to go to a local business's brunch on Good Friday, you, too, would know that the Lumberjack Slam at Denny's is the one thing that is the same size in Texas as it is in Washington.

The nachos, however, are much, much smaller. On the Riverwalk in San Antonio, two fellow Popular Culture conference attendees and I sat down to a plate of eight, count 'em, eight tortilla chips on a plate, each sprinkled with one piece of beef and the smallest amount of shredded cheese. And at the price of an $8.99 appetizer, each of those tortilla chips cost us graduate students over one dollar apiece.

This weekend marked my first visit to the great state of Texas, for the Popular Culture conference Round Two. I presented this morning at 8 a.m, on the last day of the conference, to a room full of seven people, which included my two faithful friends and the Area Chair for the music panels. Two of the four presenters did not show, which meant that a tenured professor from the University of Alabama presenting on the politics of the 1980s band The Call, and I--an MA graduate student presenting on the woman who wore a meat dress to the 2010 MTV Music Video Awards--shared the stage. And while no psychoanalyst from Alabama accosted me this year, I did get heckled by a man in the back who insisted that there are such things as ground-breaking technological and scientific discoveries.

My paper had nothing to do with science or technology.

What I've learned since I started coming to academic conferences since last year is that not all of the papers you think are going to be intelligent and interesting are going to be intelligent or interesting. I've also learned that this is okay, and it is also okay to go to a Mexican food lunch by yourself instead of attending ALL THE PANELS IN THE WORLD. On the other hand, I have attended several really interesting panels, including one on post-modern revisionist myth and one on "Disney Dads." It's not all Buffy fan-fic, that's for sure.

And finally, I have learned that the heat and humidity in Texas does wonderful and horrible things to my hair at the same time. It's like my hair inhabits this weird "grey space" between bad and good that I kept hearing graduate students attempt to theorize about for the first time, at this conference. I don't think they'd ever heard of liminality. Or, quite possibly, deconstruction.

A Good Rule of Thumb

If you have been researching the inane topic given (yes given) to you by your professor for a total of six hours on a given Sunday, and you find yourself in tears, surrounded by books that probably won't be of any help to you and week- old pizza, it's probably time to take a break.

Take a break, finish re-reading Heart of Darkness, and begin researching your other paper that you have to write before May 13th.

It's that time of year again, folks. I might not make it this time.

You can call me flower if you want to

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine texted to see if I had been living, teaching, and going to class underground, since he hadn’t seen me for several weeks. In jest, I responded that I had, and that I had also forgotten the taste of bread.

Cheesy Lord of the Rings references aside (points to anyone who got that before the aside. Nerd points.), it turns out that through this long New England winter, I had forgotten something. Sometime late last month, on one of the first days the temperature climbed above 45 degrees, and the sun was out, melting the piles of driven snow that are littered with a winter’s worth of fast food wrappers and—inexplicably—empty oil cans, I woke up to the sound of birds. Birds.

I can’t remember the last time I woke up to birds chirping. But there they were, making noise outside my window. After so many months, despite the persistent lack of leaves on the trees (I want to punch all the Northwesterners complaining about their “long” winter and grey weather—at least they’ve seen grass and green in the past six months…), spring is here and it feels fresh and new and exciting, which is—I suppose—exactly the point of spring.

And today, it is warm out. Really warm. Almost seventy degrees. And even though it is raining, and even though it is grey, I am wearing a sundress and it feels weird and good to have a breeze around my bare legs. And it hardly even matters that I look like a kindergartner in my dress and rain boots. My feet are dry and I am happy.

(Intro)Prospecting the Future and the Past

When I was nineteen years old, I spent the summer in Bellingham, working full-time as a custodian for the University. The pay was good--nine dollars an hour for very simple work, and I could walk there from my apartment, located in what Ian used to fondly call the "South Campus Apartment Ghetto."

As a summertime custodian, our job was to clean the rooms and bathrooms in the dorms on campus--my team stuck in Nash and Mathes Hall. Throughout the summer, the dorms are rented out to clubs, camps, sports teams and conferences, who make use of the rooms, the lounges, and the dining halls on campus for their activities.

Cleaning Nash one day, I moved to step out of the elevator and my high school P.E. teacher stood there with the entire Bothell High School football team--many of whom I knew, since I was only one year into college.

And there I was, a recent high school graduate carrying a mop bucket and wearing gloves up to my elbows.

I've been thinking recently, with my graduation from this masters program imminent, about accomplishments, and what I have actually done since I've been an adult, since I've been out, in the world, doing what humans do.

Facebook has made this introspection an all the more self-conscious act, oddly enough, because I can follow the paths of my classmates from high school and college closely and creepily. I see marriages and children (!) and funerals and real jobs and vacations they've paid for themselves to Maui, to Thailand, to Europe.

And recently, when I went back to Seattle for a wedding, one of my best friends mentioned that a boy we had gone to junior high and high school with, a boy who I spent sixth grade in "divorce counseling" at our elementary with, had killed himself in the past year. As far as I am aware, this is the first death of anyone from our graduating class and it is odd and frightening to think that there is a life that I knew once that is gone. More frightening than knowing that people I scolded in Model United Nations for not following protocol are makin' babies (not to mention whoopie).

And what have I done? I am, as a recent hospital bill and application to financial assistance informed me, below the poverty line thanks to the minimal stipend I receive from the University. I have no nine to five job or child or husband and I certainly can't afford a vacation away from the stress of school and work, despite desperately needing a break.

But I am alive and that is something and I am writing and reading and that is something too. And as an added bonus, the only toilet I have to clean anymore is my own.