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When Gravity Fails and Negativity Don't Pull You Through

2012-02-01T08:38:00.000-08:00

Today is February 1st. I have been at my job here at the underwriting firm for just under six months now, which marks the longest time I have ever worked full-time in an office before. Generally, it's been one, two, three months stints, over Christmas and summer breaks, between degrees and adventures and teaching positions.

My week began with a man chirping, "Happy Monday!" into the phone when I answered his call early Monday morning.

We talk about traffic a lot. About the weather. About the lack of sunlight and the fact that a certain yoghurt has a certain number of WW points.

Just the other day, a woman left the office at 4:30, yelling back to those of us still inside, "see you in twelve hours!" She meant 16, but it's just as well. Sixteen hours away, eight hours here. 13.5 hours away, if you're counting commuting times & preparation for work. I am.

As the receptionist, past whom everyone must walk to get to the bathroom, I hear a lot about my co-workers' urinary habits: how much water they're drinking, how much they usually drink, and their commitments to staying hydrated. As the receptionist, I sit next to the candy jar that the semi-retired owner of the company keeps stocked with Werther's Originals, peppermint rounds, and those strawberry candies with the ooze in the middle. I hear a lot about my co-workers' lack of self-control, about the weight they've recently gained, and about how their grandmothers used to keep candy jars filled with very specific treats during their childhoods. In the words of my esteemed gentleman friend, "Shit don't change."

Since starting as the receptionist here, I have been sick approximately nine times, which--if you're counting (I am)--is four more times than the number of months I've worked here. I think I may be fighting something off right now, to add to that list. If you have been paying any attention at all to my health or my immune system in the past few years--and, of course, I have--the number of times I have been sick since starting this position is approximately seven more times than I normally get sick in an entire year.

I may be more than a little skeptical about third eyes and chakras, but I can take a hint. Oh, Lord, can I take a hint.

Snow in Seattle, Where we Name our Snowstorms

2012-01-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

Last week was "Snowpocalypse." Or "Winter Blast 2012," depending on what news station you prefer. In preparation for the week of weather, Patrick, Kili, and I spent Tuesday night in Ballard at The Sexton with Caro, a fiction writer from the program at UNH. (I recommend the brioche slider with house-ground chuck steak. I do not recommend staying for five hours, if you do not want a horrendously high bill and your clothes to smell like bar)

On SnowDayOne, we were stuck. Those hills in Seattle? They'll get you. Here is my street:

That snow closure sign has been waiting at the bottom of the 45* grade since November. NH might call us soft, but NH has things like snowplows and flat terrain.

To induce the feeling of being snowed in, but stave off any cabin fever, I decided to make pot pie for dinner, but had some dill to use.

And, it turns out, some mushrooms & onions. And garlic.And ground beef,

and. Wait. Some yoghurt.

But that, you might argue is beef stroganoff, not pot pie. Not pot pie at all.

Which is why, of course, I simmered it down and stuck it in a pie crust, baked it for a while, and served it with Scrabble. This shot is after my record-breaking eight-letter, all-tiles-using word "greedier" (I had to make up for the time I got beaten by a nine year old...).

To be honest, the pie wasn't an entire success. When the yoghurt baked with the meat, dill, and mushrooms, it kind of...disappeared? For lack of a better word. Rather than a gravy-sauce based off greek yoghurt, with meat & mushrooms in it, it turned out to be a pie full of meat & mushrooms, with a taste of yoghurt. Kili suggested that next time--because it was tasty enough to warrant a next time, even with the imperfections--we serve it with the yoghurt or sour cream on the side, so that the flavor, consistency, and plating look similar to traditional beef stroganoff, just in pie form. This leads to all kinds of exciting opportunities, like hand pies with dipping sauce! And...okay, hand pies with dipping sauce is my only idea so far. But I imagine that the possibilities are endless.

Oh! I almost forgot! It won't taste right unless you follow it up with this:

Obviously.

And finally, some pictures from our snow-week.

Adventuring

2012-01-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, Ari, Patrick and I drove east into the Cascades to find snow and sunshine. I told Patrick I wanted to get out of the city, and we were considering making the five hour trek to the ocean, or driving north to Deception Pass, but the mountains are so close by, and Ari's house was on the way, & the allure of two puppies was too much to pass up. We drove east and east and east, past the summit, past Snoqualmie pass and the skiers, past wet trees and shrunken piles of old snow.

Until this last weekend, it hadn't snowed in Seattle yet this winter. Even the mountains were dry. The slopes were sparse and the snow was probably that terrible type that is hard and crunchy--the kind that PNWers complain about, but the kind that East Coasters cut their teeth on. Possibly literally. Ari & Patrick & I drove out to one of those weird lakes that line I-90 East, the ones that have old growth tree stumps sticking out in the middle of them, one of the ones that you see on a hot day stuck sitting in the traffic over the pass and want to get out and jump in.
But we found snow, and sun--and I don't mean that heavily filtered kind that we get on ~~winter~~ most days in Seattle. The sun was bright and huge and fierce, that cold warmth that we got on the sunny days in New England. The kind where you need sunglasses, but you don't put them on because it's cold and you're cold and it's been grey for weeks and you turn your face into the sun to feel it in your eyeballs.

We spent a good while at the lake, trying to toss snowballs into a hollowed out tree trunk some distance away, and mucking around in the wet earth underneath the thin layer of snow. We drove to Snoqualmie Falls afterwards, to stand and watch the waterfall for a minute or two, and then headed back to happy hour at Tutta Bella in Issaquah.
This weekend, Patrick and I drove north and then east on Highway 2 for a ways, impatient for the snow and hoping to catch some flakes before they came to Seattle. We found it--somewhere between Monroe and Sultan--and got out of the car for a minute, before the cold and the cows chased us back west. I've been itching to get out of the city recently, wanting a break from city restaurants and bars and drivers and people. For now, while I'm broke (and still reeling from the 520 toll), short drives will have to do. I'm hoping, soon, to turn them into thrifting trips. If there are furs and vintage dresses to be had in Madison, AL, I'm sure to find at least a good coat in Verlot, WA, am I right?

On Trend

2012-01-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I wore my cardigan backwards to work. Nobody said anything, which is unusual because usually someone says something. I wore knee high knit socks to work a few weeks back, over brown tights and with a dress. One of my co-workers--a girl who is actually younger than myself, not just a stodgy old woman unwilling to except the winds of sartorial change (ha!)--said, "you look...different."

I had seen this ~~backwards~~ Kris Kross look on one of the fashion blogs I read, a girl in San Francisco who walks around in too high heels on a too-regular basis. The day I wore it to work, I saw it on several runway models in spring 2012 fashion shows, a few other blogs, and at least one "trend-spotting" site (hey, I spend eight hours a day in front of a computer. What else am I supposed to do?).

It's a funny thing, how fashion works. One weirdo in expensive clothes gets the idea to put his models' sweaters on backwards and that's "on-trend" for spring. The fashion bloggers & sartorially-minded see the runway shows and start wearing their sweaters on backwards a little early, setting the trend for the rest of us. The people like me--who peruse fashion sites and love clothes, but don't frequent NYFW--see it on models and bloggers and wear it out in real life, to their office jobs as receptionists. By the time spring 2012 is here, backwards cardigans are mainstream, normal, and so hot right now.

For me, the backwards cardigan is an easy way to remix a top, to stretch my modest wardrobe a little further, without having to go clothes shopping again. And god do I love a good low back on anything.

Clanking of Crystal

2011-12-31T14:38:00.000-08:00

A friend--who had very good fortune in her professional life in 2011--recently told me that in 2012, we would switch: In 2012, she would get her personal life on the upswing, and I would get my life in order professionally, in terms of jobs and careers.

What's important about this switch-off isn't that I'll get out of my dead-end job(s). It isn't that my hopes for 2012 are that I only have to work one job to pay my bills. What's important isn't that in 2012, I will start on the path toward my future career.

What's important is that in 2011, despite a graduate program that didn't want me to acquire a degree, despite two bratty children who love Dolce & Gabbana and refer to the homeless as "poor," despite answering phones and teaching at ITT Tech, of all places, and working online as a tutor for a corporation not necessarily invested in education, I had a wonderful year.

I graduated, for one thing. I learned to love New Hampshire, and even learned to miss it once I was gone. I traveled three thousand miles with my best friend and cat, stopping in gas stations & parks to eat and laugh and take pictures. I moved home, to a place that even though it's strange--even though I don't quite feel comfortable just yet--is the place I was born, the place I will always come home to. I moved home to my Nest, to work with Ari and see Ardith and live with Kili. 2011 brought me closer to my niece and nephews and brought me two new nephews. And ~~at the risk of sappiness~~ okay everything about this whole post is sappy, but I get to spend every day with Patrick, who in the words of my oldest nephew, is great because "he's nice and wears skinny jeans."

In short, I'm happier than I've ever been, and I'm about to be even happier because I think it's about time to open some champagne. Happy New Year!

The Graduate

2011-12-30T08:17:00.000-08:00

So I got my diploma in the mail. My student loans have gone into repayment. I also started reading a book that I wasn't assigned, that didn't feel like a chore to read.

These things may or may not be related.

Of course I did not pick up a book when my diploma arrived, in a stiff cardboard envelope forwarded from my apartment in Dover, NH. It didn't occur to me to think, "finally, some closure. Now I can pursue intellectualism, free from the restrictions of academia." But it seems fitting that, yes, finally it is secure. It is real. I have a master's degree and now I am reading a book. And, of course, if we cannot force symbolism and meaning onto our lives through blogs, where else can we do it?

I haven't wanted to read in a long while. Since moving to Seattle--which coincided nearly exactly with my the completion of my thesis, of academic reading--I have read three books, total. The first was a collection of Hemingway short stories, called In Our Time. I tried reading it aloud to Kili during our roadtrip, but we got depressed on the first page and decided Hemingway was a buzzkill. I'm sure he could throw a party like no other, but man he was a buzzkill. I labored over the thin book for weeks and weeks, stretching into two months or at least one--far too long, at any rate, for a ninety page book.

In the past month and a half, I have read two collections of David Sedaris stories, Naked & Holidays on Ice. I've read most of the latter before, and I love David Sedaris. He's a fast, easy, fun read. Yet it took me six weeks to finish his stories. Much of my excuse for not reading lies in the fact that for the entire fall, I was working three jobs and applying to graduate programs. Free time consisted of more work, in various formats.

My mind was tired, too, from the dead jobs and from working hard for two years. But I can't spend my entire post-graduate degree life collapsing on the couch after a thirteen hour day and watching My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding episodes.

Patrick's mother bought me a book for Christmas called All Over But the Shouting, by an Alabama native named Rick Bragg. It's his memoir, of a life lived in rural, dirt-poor Alabama, with an abusive & drunk father, and a mother who made do. I've read the prologue and two chapters only so far and it is beautiful and it is heart-breaking and I know, I just know, I'm going to be so sad. So, so sad. But I'm reading, and that, at least, feels wonderful.

The Phantom Tollbooth

2011-12-29T09:12:00.000-08:00

Does anyone remember this book? It was a children's book (and, according to Wikipedia, a "modern fairytale") about a boy who receives a magic tollbooth, which, when driven through, transports him to a magical land called The Kingdom of Wisdom.

That is much more fun than real tollbooths.

Tolling began today, after many months of false starts and mishaps, on the 520 bridge that connects Seattle and Bellevue. If there's one thing that didn't change throughout my two years in New Hampshire--and many things did, including my fundamental feelings for the state itself--it's my hatred for tolls.

Raise the taxes! Charge more for gas! But for heaven's sake, don't take my seventy-five cents every time I need to drive south on Highway 16. Who just has 75 cents lying around regularly?

What's even worse about the toll over the 520 bridge is that it is $3.50. Each way. The fact of the matter is, it is now going to cost me $140 a month to drive to work, not including the gas I pay for regularly (and this, coming the same month that my hefty student loans go into repayment). The fact of the matter is, this doesn't affect the wealthy, the people who can afford spontaneous expenses, the people who won't effectively be surrendering over a day's pay in order to drive to work. It affects people like me, who live paycheck to paycheck and don't have room in their budget for an added $140 every month. It affects the people who can't afford to live close their jobs, who couldn't find jobs close enough to their homes, the people who sometimes don't go out for a much needed drink because tomorrow is payday, and not today.

I cross 520 every day, twice. That is seven dollars a day, just to make it to work and back home again. I found a job in Bellevue, not because I wanted to. Not because I love driving to work. Were the bus system more user-friendly, if I did not have to wake up at 5:00 am in order to take three buses and still have to walk over a mile to work, I wouldn't be driving. From WSDOT to me, this holiday season: yet another reason to get out of Bellevue.

Seasonally Affected Native

2011-12-28T09:07:00.000-08:00

As soon as the rains came, I knew what to get Patrick for Christmas. Before the rains came, I knew, actually. Had suspicions. Ideas. But when the rains came, and Patrick got headaches and got grumpy and sometimes took two showers a day to warm up, I knew. He says it's not so much the rain as it is the grey, and he's probably right about that. It actually rains more in Huntsville, AL than it does in Seattle, but the lack of sunlight is what really gets him. The interminable grey, stretching from east to west and down into the water, too, so you can't always tell where the sky ends and the sea begins.

I bought him a SAD lamp. More specifically, a HappyLight3000 or something like that. I made him open it at 3 am the night we got back from Alabama, because the forecast was grey skies and showers from now until May.

I've lived in Washington most of my life. I was born here, moved to Las Vegas for a few years, then returned east of the mountains for a few years. At ten, I moved to Woodinville, where I stayed until moving to even drearier Bellingham. But I loved it. I still do. I'm from here, a Pacific Northwesterner through and through, though I cut my teeth on the traffic in Boston and you can tell by the way I change lanes and merge onto freeways without fear.

But I haven't lived here for three years now. Since moving to France, the longest time I had spent in Seattle was around five weeks, in the middle of the dead & cold New Hampshire winter my first year in graduate school. I lived one winter in southern France, where I swam in the Mediterranean in October & early November, and spent most days where the mistral wasn't blowing outdoors in the sun. And though the winters in New Hampshire were rough, the cold was bitter and the snow piled up in great banks alongside the roads, more than two thirds of the year is sunny in New England--beautiful & glaring & cold, but the sun shines nonetheless.

In short, I suppose I've lost my thick skin. I go to work in the dark and I get off work and it's dark and if I see the ~~sun~~ daylight at all it's on the weekends, but then only if it's not dark and cloudy, as it usually is. And it's taking its toll.

I don't know about this winter. I know the days are getting longer and soon when I drive home from work the sun won't set until I walk inside. But I might be fighting with Patrick for a position in front of the SAD lamp before too long.

History Lesson

2011-12-27T08:51:00.000-08:00

I spent yesterday driving north from Alabama to Nashville with Patrick and his parents, visiting the places his father's family lived. We passed old log tenant homes, plantation houses, and slave-built stone walls.

There is so much history there.

On Christmas Day, Patrick's granddad came to spend the afternoon with us, telling stories from his childhood in Lynnville. We heard about someone's dog peeing on the lettuce, left outside in the shade so it would not wilt in the southern sun, and about the mayor--who was also the barber--who scolded Grandaddy Jim for taking the hill into town too fast. In the morning before we left, we had Mother Linda's--Patrick's great-grandmother's--biscuits, and headed north into Tennessee.

In 1918, Patrick's great-great grandfather died during the flu epidemic, leaving behind his wife, nine children, and an unfinished house in Lynnville, TN. Mama Brown raised her children, finished the house, and ran the family farm until her death, becoming the embodiment of a Southern matriarch. One thing that separates the south from my homeland is the connection that people have to their families, to their heritage, and to their histories. Patrick and his family have been to these old family homes, despite the fact that they are no longer in the family. The new owners are kind people, caring and respectful that others have a history on their land. The owner of Mama Brown's house restored it, furnishing it with beautiful antiques and quilts, retaining the original flooring and doors and architecture. He was sick yesterday, but he drove out to let us in to his house, so that Patrick's father could show us around, explaining where Mama Brown died, where his Uncle Bobby convalesced from tuberculosis, where the large family gathered around their piano to sing in the evenings together. When a house leaves your family in the west, it leaves your family. In Patrick's south, these places become places to share.

We ate lunch at Soda Pop Junction, where Patrick's great-uncle served as a soda jerk years and years ago, and had Tennessee's Number 1 burger, according to the Food Network and the Travel Channel and me.

Before leaving Lynnville, we went to the town cemetery, where generations of Browns & Weatherlys are buried. Like New England, there are flowers on nearly every grave. Patrick said that for the people in the south, the dead are just as much--if not more--part of the family as the living. Visiting gravesites isn't really a holiday affair in Alabama. The Brown & Weatherly gravestones are grouped together, and the large Brown stone lists name after name, child after child--most of whom lived to around a hundred years old, with the exception of one little girl who died at age three. The current owner of Mama Brown's house said that his daughter, when they lived there years ago, had a young friend who was about 3, who they couldn't see. His wife refuses to stay at the house anymore, because she wakes up to piano music and singing. When he told this to Alan, Carla, and Granddaddy Jim, he didn't know that Mama Brown and her children would sing together in the evenings in the olden days.

I know there is history here, too, in Seattle. Native history, and logging history. Fishermen and pioneers. History that is no less interesting and no less valuable or storied than the history in the south. But there's something enthralling about the south, about the family ties and sense of community. There's something about driving through somewhere that you know was built on slave labor, driving through a place that you know has struggled to grow and move past that history without forgetting, driving through a place like Lynnville, TN, where--despite its municipal neighbor of Pulaski, TN being the place the KKK was born--Patrick's granddad said he never once heard the n-word, in all his life there.

Don't go to Denver

2011-12-26T20:38:00.000-08:00

Plane delayed in Denver. Overpriced sandwich with two and half times too much meat. I am quite possibly the unluckiest traveler of all. Tomorrow, bright and early at 7:45 am--though I will get in after midnight and not be home until around 1:30 or 2:00--I will spend the day blogging about Patrick's father's family homes in east Tennessee.

Christmas Service

2011-12-25T14:45:00.000-08:00

Between yesterday and today, I have spent more time in church than I have in the past seven years. But even one minute is more than zero, so I suppose that's something. Patrick's father's service this morning was about the varying places along what he called everyone's faith journey, about right and mindful living year-round, instead of only during a specific season of giving and love. Every day should be about giving and love, about living rightly and mindfully. Which, even without stopping to think deeply or profoundly about it, is nothing to sneer at, atheist or agnostic or no.

During the offering, a banjo player and a singer performed "Jesus, Jesus Rest Your Head," and a woman told me she just loved my style (I love church.).

Tomorrow, we'll drive north to Lynnville, TN, where Patrick's grandaddy is from, to visit places like "Soda Pop Junction" and the Brown family farm. I am full, and happy, and lucky, and about to have another Martha Washington ball. Happy Christmas!

A (Business) Proposal

2011-12-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

Last winter, when I visited Tennessee, I went to an antique shop and noticed how cheap and awesome everything was. There were mink stoles for $45, beautiful crystal for pittance, and well-built, stylish shoes from the 60s in mint condition. I realized that the antique, vintage, and thrift stores in places like Tennessee are not--as they are in Seattle, or Boston--picked over and over-priced. My assumption that Alabama's antique shops would hold true to this statement as well was correct; this afternoon Patrick and I stopped at a huge antique mall in Madison to browse the old kitchen items and beaded dresses. We ended up doing some last minute Christmas shopping, and spent a good hour and a half inside, before checking out with two gay men who once befriended Patrick at a bar.

There are no hipsters in Madison, Alabama, and there were none in Kingsport, Tennessee, either. No one interested in purchasing old school suitcases and styling them in the quaint DIY wedding decor. No one interested in having an old typewriter in the corner, to, you know, bang out some poetry now and then. No one searching endlessly for that particular Chanel jacket with the pearl buttons, either. And this is what I love about these sorts of stores, anyway, is searching through what people have discarded, what no one seems to want, and finding something that I can love. A tiny cast iron pan. Costume jewelry rings made from old clip-on earrings. A ceramic juicer. White lace gloves.

In a particularly bountiful "shop" in the antique mall--which Patrick described as my perfect ten square feet of space--I found fur collars and coats, beautiful vintage dresses and petticoats, well-made shoes and handbags. I think one of the fur coats, real fur, was pricey--at $45. I told Patrick, flipping through beads and chiffon and tulle, that I should buy a bunch of vintage clothes and shoes and jewelry in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and ship it back to Seattle, where I could make a killing up-selling it to the hipsters on Capitol Hill, Fremont, Ballard, and the rich women on Queen Anne. A woman looking through the dresses with me chuckled, saying in her remarkable Alabama accent, that there weren't many hipsters around her, and that was a pretty good idea. I think I could get at least $90 for that fur coat, at any rate.

Stars Are Definitely Still Falling on Alabama

2011-12-23T17:12:00.001-08:00

Today, Patrick's father took us on a drive around Madison and into the surrounding fields, to show me what a cotton field looks like. Most of the cotton has been harvested, but there were a few stalks in the wet fields still standing, dry brown sticks with tufts of white stuck to the tops. We passed an empty lot, which Alan said used to be a cotton field. They're building houses there in the new year, but for now, the ground is torn up, and the mud is red, red and wet and clay earth that must be why crops like cotton and tobacco grow so well down here.

I am further south than I've ever been.

We drove out to Guntersville, AL for dinner tonight, to a restaurant on a lakeshore that serves the "Riverboat Special," a plate of fried catfish, fries, and hush puppies, with a side of cornbread, the best coleslaw I've ever had, pickled onions, mustard greens, and sweet tea. There is so much more food to eat.

I've seen more churches in the small town of Madison--smaller by far than Bellingham--than there probably are in all of Whatcom & Skagit counties combined. Tomorrow, I will go to Christmas Eve service at Patrick's father's church, and sing hymns and light candles--something I am not sure if I've done since I was a child living in small town Eastern Washington.

Tomorrow, I will go buy a present with Patrick for his giant beagle named Barney, a family tradition that I've heard about for two years. Every year, Patrick buys Barney a Christmas present, a toy or a bone or a ball. He wraps it, puts it under the tree, and somehow Barney always knows, every year, which present is his, and noses it and worries it and paws it until Christmas morning. Barney loves Christmas.

Way Down South in Dixie

2011-12-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

In a few short hours, I'm flying east, yet again, though this time a little southerly (Weatherly? Oh my, what a hilarious joke!), to Alabama. I'm spending Christmas with Patrick's family in Madison, just outside of Huntsville. For ~~those of~~ everyone of you unfamiliar with Alabama's geography, that's in the northern part of the state, just a little south of Nashville, TN. I'm going to eat the best catfish in the world, evidently, go to church twice to hear Patrick's father preach (and worry that I don't know how to dress for Sunday Service), pet a beagle named Barney that I've heard so much about, and hear lots of lovely accents. Doesn't that sound nice?

Birth day time story

2011-12-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

Meet Trenton. He's one of my newest nephews and he is five days old. His brother was a little sleepier, so I didn't get any pictures of him, but you can believe he is just as cute (they are twins, after all). Kyler is the little one, at 3 lbs. 13 oz. when I visited tonight after work, and Trenton is the chunky monkey at 4 lbs. 5 oz. I told April that Kyler weighs less than I eat in a day. Some days, I'm not exaggerating.

There's been a lot of birth around me lately. A lot of young things, small and squirmy and unable to survive on their own. In a matter of six days, three new lives have come into my own. I also spent a good amount of time with a 2 year old and a baby who is less than a year. They are all so tiny and helpless and were pushed into this world forcefully and violently, and they enter wet and crying.

I am so afraid of them. Not--as many are--of babies themselves. I have been around babies for nearly my whole life, it seems. Loved them, and rocked them, changed them. They all seem to think that I am some sort of mattress, flopping their arms and legs over my sides, sprawled out, sleeping, mouths open, on my chest. And children, too, they love me. Eye me in the grocery store, curls and dimples, and see something of themselves, I suppose. Smiles, waves, shy eyes for a strange girl. I am not afraid of these kids, the ones of other people, but my own.

I know I will have children. Not for many years, but before one more decade is up (for health and safety and to lower risks). They will come out screaming and covered in my body and I will love them--of course I will love them.

I listen to my sisters talk of being mothers; I listen to Alyssa, such a new mom, too. I read this story and I cry and I ache and I shake in fear and awe of those moments, those hours, and I am more afraid than I ever have been before to be a mother.

Not just for the pain of labor--but because I have a suspicion that that pain doesn't go away. It doesn't vanish when the mother heals, but changes and morphs into a lifetime of instinct and knee-jerk reflexes of love & pain & worry & fear. No one ever teaches you how to raise a child lovingly, properly, how to turn it into a human being. Perhaps someone taught you, but I don't know how.

The point of having a child is to show it all of the most amazing things in this world. The point of having a child is so that it can become a better person than you. The point of having a child is so that this world--so full of amazing things--can be full of better people, too. These are the things I know.

Chicken Pot Pie for the Soul

2011-12-20T11:36:00.000-08:00

When we were in college, Kili and I spent the last year in quite a few classes together, as we were both completing not only our English degrees, but our TESOL certifications together as well. The last quarter was a doozy. We were in an Oscar Wilde author study, which we both agree was one of the most difficult and one of the most influential classes we've ever taken. We also had to create an entire unit plan for an ESL class in a matter of weeks--including each lesson, each activity, each rubric, and profiles of each student you were going to pass and fail (okay not really...).

As I recall, we spent a good two weeks spread out over my kitchen table, papers and computers and a requisite glass of wine everywhere. See? What I remember most from those few weeks was the one night that I took a step back and stopped for a few hours. Kili kept typing away, but I moved into the kitchen, chopped some onion and carrots and potatoes and celery, rolled out some dough, and made a few chicken pot pies.

That pie saved our lives. I think we subsisted on it and Wilde witticisms for days on end, and made it out in mid-June sun-starved but full.

I pride myself on my pot pies, but I haven't been able to make one that good--before or since. I made another one last night, for Kili, Ari, Brendan, & I, and even though we each went back for seconds, it lacked that life-saving or changing factor. More butter, maybe?

Listing

2011-12-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

Confession: I think I've used this title before.

Second Confession: It is still one hundred per cent applicable.

Post: It is no secret that I love to make lists. But this time, I'm not making a list, and instead just telling you about lists. Generally, I'm a paper & pen kind of girl. I love my moleskin planner more than a Cap Hill hipster loves his black-rimmed glasses, and I wouldn't even consider purchasing a handbag that wasn't big enough for both it and at least two pens, unless it were made of glitter & sequins.

But I spend at least forty hours a week in front of a computer screen, trolling the endless fashion & kitchen blogs for ideas, inspiration, and a cure for the ever-present boredom that comes with reception. I've got a pretty good memory, but because I'm spending so much time on the internet, I just can't keep track of every fish I want to fry, every bow I want to tie, or every way to braise a brussel sprout. So I've started a few Google Docs, to try to start an archive of the crafts I want to do and the meals I want to make. I trust that I can keep coming up with my own outfit ideas, so I haven't started bookmarking individual outfit posts (But how will I style that new sccaaaarrrffff???) yet, but it is getting a little laborious to load each of my many fashion blogs every morning when I get to work. I may give Bloglovin a try soon.

I find a lot of crap on the internet. A lot of bloggers who are writing about topics only their friends will be interested in (guilty? potentially), a lot of bloggers whose DIY craft tutorials include printing off small-sized photos & giving them as gifts, a lot of bloggers whose families must hate dinnertime every single night.

What's relieving, though, is that there are an awful lot of interesting, thoughtful, creative people on the internet, too--and it's very, very easy to tell the difference between the two. I can usually tell by the end of the first post if I'm going to enjoy someone's blog. If I make it past the first page, chances are you'll find me obsessively reading through the blogger's archive back into 2009, eyes bloodshot, hours later. So now, when I've got a vegetable drawer full of leeks, some leftover feta, and a cupboard full of beans, I can pull up my Bookmarked Recipes page and see this, instead of a ragtag assembly of unrelated ingredients and the whole wide Internet at my fingertips.

All I Have to Do is Dream

2011-12-18T13:34:00.001-08:00

I have teeth dreams. I've heard and read that this is not uncommon--Kili has them, and several of my other friends do, too. Their commonplaceness (commonplacity?) does nothing to make them any less disturbing, however. I have had my teeth crumble to pieces and fall out bit by bit while talking. I have picked slivers of tooth out of my tongue and cheeks, yanking pieces out of my gums. I have been chewing gum, and had it get stuck up around all of my teeth. When I pulled the gum out, my teeth came with it. Most recently, Patrick slapped my face, causing me to lose seven teeth on both sides of my mouth. This is laughable for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that I often wake up from bad dreams in a foul mood, angry at whoever I fought with in my sub-conscious. (Patrick bought me an eggnog latte that morning after breakfast...)

Someone told me once that dreams about your teeth falling out (or crumbling out, or slivering out) are about feeling a lack of control in your life, which wouldn't surprise me in the least. When I do have teeth dreams, now, I try to remember to take a step back, put some Bailey's in my morning coffee, vacuum my carpet, and do some art. Not because I need to clean for company, or because Christmas is coming & my crafts aren't done, but because it's something I want to do.

Skipping Time

2011-12-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

I missed yesterday's post because babies keep popping out everywhere! Congratulations to my sister April and her partner Andie, on their lovely, teensie twin boys. At 4 lbs 1 oz and 4 lbs 8 oz, they won't fit into the onesies I'm making for them for a good...two months? At least you'll be ready then. They are going to be wonderful moms, and I'm going to continue to be a wonderful auntie.

I'm feeling a little like this commercial. Anyone? Anyone? BABIES EVERYWHERE.

Mixed Media

2011-12-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, a co-worker stopped by my desk and mentioned that he had seen a news story about circumventing illiteracy in the Egyptian elections through pictographs. The content of our conversation, however, is beside the point. What struck me about that conversation was that he began by saying, "I was watching the news last night--I won't say what channel because it will betray my political beliefs--and..."

What I found to be so astounding about this statement, so utterly confusing and absurd, was the fact that it was said unabashedly, with no hesitation or shame or even consideration for any implications such a statement may have.

I understand that media bias--liberal or conservative or Ron Paul--is unavoidable. But shouldn't our goal as responsible humans be to seek out information, not to immerse ourselves in biases that we admit freely and that do nothing to shake up or question or dispel?

Essentially, what my co-worker's conversation-starter amounted to was an admission that he knows his news aligns perfectly with his political beliefs and he likes it that way. No questions asked. No wonder America is falling apart at its seams.

Bangers & (S)Mash

2011-12-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

This was Sunday night's dinner. Growing up, we didn't really have a "Sunday night dinner" tradition. We mostly just had dinner together every single night. All seven of us. My parents usually sat on the couch, when it wasn't the holidays & the leaf wasn't in the table, and my four siblings and I sat at the round kitchen table in our ~~open concept~~ one room living room/kitchen. One of us usually sat on the butter churner, which we used for a stool.

Kili's family, when she was in high school, had a standing & open invite for Sunday night dinner at their house. Her mother is an excellent cook, and would make meals for their family and whoever else wanted to show up.

Cooking for both of our families has never been a special occasion thing--though it really was only once a year that we would make peanut butter balls & fudge--and despite my multiple jobs and Kili's job & school schedule, it is still a mostly every day thing for us, too.

On Sunday night, I made a modern version of bangers & mash, which is usually served with onions, if I'm not mistaken, Heather? Halp? We had some purple potatoes, onions, and andouille chicken sausage. I baked the potatoes and instead of putting in the work & butter to make mashed potatoes, I just smashed them down onto the plate. (Okay, I put butter on them, anyway.)

The onions were adapted from French Food at Home chef Laura Calder, and are slow-baked, over the course of about two hours. Just slice off the bottom, poke some holes in the tops, and put them right in the oven, skin & all. Serve with an egg-based vinaigrette--we substituted lemon thyme and added extra garlic. They come out soft and warm and delicious and I love them.

If you're lucky, your roommate is also the best salad dressing maker in the whole world, and you'll have a bottle of chianti in your teacart.

The Proper Preposition is "b(u)y" not "on": Accidental Sustainability

2011-12-13T15:00:00.001-08:00

Accidentally or not, I am buying almost entirely local & small-business this Christmas. Two gifts I purchased online, from larger retailers--one, admittedly, that I could have probably found in a local shop somewhere in Seattle, hand-crafted by artisans, forged by Dave Matthews and christened by John Richards of KEXP fame. Or something. But the other, from Amazon, is not the kind of thing that can be pulled from the earth in Seattle. Mum's the word on that one until December 26th.

But for the most part, I am purchasing my gifts at small stores, local businesses, and from vintage & hand-made shops on Etsy. Two of the gifts are used (although I think the word in polite company may be vintage), most are hand-made and/or upcycled, and at least two are food items from local, um, foodmakers.

I'm not bragging. Every knows I'm the most modest person of all time. No one is ever more modest or humble than me. I mean, my modesty knows no bounds, really. What I am saying is that this is so easy! And so fun! I encourage all seven of you readers (I said I was modest, didn't I?) to try to purchase gifts from places other than Best Buy or Target, or any of the other companies that don't really need your money. Also, look at these baby shoes:
Who wouldn't want a pair of vintage white baby shoes?

What's the opposite of progress

2011-12-12T19:18:00.000-08:00

Today, at work, I cut out thirty paper snowflakes, and pinched a nerve in my thumb. I only cried on the phone twice! Once was a man who was very upset with me because I could not provide him with the name of an insurance agent with whom he could get his contracting business bonded. I think, somehow, this place is not for me. Tomorrow, my goal is fifty snowflakes!

Here Comes the Sun

2011-12-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

On Friday--a particularly sunny day--I went out to lunch with Ari and Kili. I realized, when I put on the pair of spare sunglasses in Ari's car, that it had been weeks and weeks since I had seen the sun during a weekday. Generally, I wake up and drive to work before the sun rises, and it is setting as I leave in the afternoon. I spend my lunch hour indoors, both because it is too far to drive anywhere regularly and because the games of Quiddler are literally the highlight of the 40 hours I spend in that building every week. Most weekends, of course (because we live in Seattle) are overcast or raining, but the rare sunny Saturday I do try to spend outdoors as much as possible, despite the chillier temperatures. For the most part, though, I don't see the sun. It's shady back in my office park, and the trees are pretty and green but tend to block the sunlight.

But Friday, Friday was beautiful. The sun was bright and it was on my face and I know all too well not to take a dose of vitamin D for granted.

A Little Less Vitriol

2011-12-10T19:07:00.000-08:00

Two of my lovely friends had their first child early this morning. Weighing in at just a shade above five pounds, he is the littlest living thing that I love right now. Isn't that neat? I can't at to get rid of this cold so I can go stare into his little cloudy eyes

Feminism Failing

2011-12-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

I highly suggest you watch this video. This is a trailer for Jessica Valenti's film The Purity Myth, which is adapted from her book on the subject. Valenti is described as a "feminist blogger" in the snippet accompanying this trailer.

I grew up in the Northshore School District, a place where--I am learning more and more--we had excellent sex education, education that was open and honest and informative and important. But the more that I talk to Kili (who went to private school), and Patrick (who grew up smack inside in the Bible Belt, and even friends of mine who went to public schools around the country, the more I realize that my experience was an exception, and nowhere even near the norm.

There is nothing wrong with choosing to wait to have sex until marriage. There is something wrong with equating women who do choose to have sex before marriage with the morally corrupt, with the impure. There is something wrong with refusing to educate individuals who are interested in safe, healthy sexual relationships. There is something wrong with ingraining so deeply in a woman that marriage is a sacred union, that sex is wrong outside of marriage, that she stays with an abusive and disloyal husband. There is something wrong with warping our understandings of sexuality so far that adults who do finally get married and have sex are unable to have healthy and pleasurable sexual relationships because they've been taught "sex is bad sex is bad sex is bad sex is bad sex is bad." This is scary. These are things that we--women, men, people, humans--need to know about, to be happy to know about, and to be happy with.

An issue that I think gets side-stepped in most discourse surrounding abstinence-only education and the virginity or purity myth/movement is the bad rap that's been given to feminism over the course of the past decade or two. This, too, is scary. Perhaps even more so. Because it undermines any authority or confidence that a girl who may want to educate herself about sex actually can have. If sex is bad, and feminism is bad, where does that leave young women? The following are some sound bytes from the Valenti trailer:

"Young men if you are dating a woman who boasts of being a feminist, who uses every four letter word in the Marine Corps manual, who wants no children, who wants to drag you around like a dog on the end of a rope, RUN!"

"Feminism is what I oppose, and feminism is what led women astray."

"Feminism is sexism."

"And the man needs to pursue the woman. You know, some people think, 'oh that's just sexist.'...Personally, I love gender stereotyping."

What's scary about this is that this is real. This is trickling down into the consciousness of our students, of our youth, of the people who are sexually active now, and of the people who will be the future of our culture. During my last semester at UNH, I had my students read an essay by someone who probably would define herself as a feminist. She was writing about gendered language in biology texts, and when I asked the students what they thought, they all--and I do mean all, including the females and the people I thought more intelligent than this--protested that the woman was just an annoying feminist, and that they didn't "believe" in feminism, and the issues she was addressing weren't real issues.

Wait. What?

I asked who in the class identified as feminist. No one raised their hands. I asked what they thought feminism meant, and most had a skewed understanding of bra-burning, man-hating crazies. I asked how many of them thought that women should get paid the same amount of money as men for the same work. All hands raised. I asked who thought women should have the right to choose who they have sex with, and prosecute those who rape or take advantage of them sexually. All hands raised. "You're feminists." They didn't understand. Feminism has become a bad word, a concept that no one wants to be associated with, and this is problematic. There is nothing wrong with being a feminist. And planting the idea in young women's--and young men's--heads that there is something wrong with feminism, that feminism is sexist or goes against morality or represents all that is bad in America, that men shouldn't date feminist women is going to fuck with our culture so hard that we'll find ourselves back in the Victorian era so fast you won't have time to say goodbye to suffrage. Pardon my French; I realize it's not very ladylike.

So if you are reading this, and have children or will have children, you probably already are teaching them or have taught them about feminism, about sex, about being healthy and happy and about respect and equality--about how to be a human, and a good one. But unfortunately, this type of education cannot be merely on the individual level. Something needs to change globally, systemically, communally, in order for any sort of healthy understanding of feminism, of sexuality, and of the body to survive. If this means you have to do a little guerrilla parenting--sit your friends' kids and teach them what feminism really means--do it.

Because Valenti's point is that my moral compass doesn't lie anywhere between my legs, but rather in the fact that I want women, and men for that matter, to understand their worth, their bodies, and themselves.

Climate Change

2011-12-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

Sometime between Patrick's birthday and the end of November, it became winter, and it is cold. And the funny thing is, I just spent two years where at least three months out of the year were perpetually below freezing. If it's gotten below freezing in Washington, I have been safely in my bed next to a heater that does not run by oil that runs out every three weeks. I've always been one to adapt quickly to the weather where ever I'm living, which sounds like a skill but is actually just annoying: in Seattle, 38 degrees is unbearable. In Dover, I'm okay as long as it doesn't drop below 10.

To be fair, a few friends and I have recently come to the conclusion that Seattle has the coldest 40 degrees we've ever felt. It's something in the way the air is damp and gets in your lungs and bones and makes you feel like your toes might not every feel the same again.

At Fred Meyer this past week, I found a pair of green fleece-lined leggings, which Patrick got for me. I had been pining over these, but Fred Meyer's were a fraction of the cost and GREEN. Forest green! I wore them to work yesterday, along with a large sweater that hides my shape--my favorite kind--and for the first time in weeks I felt warm somewhere other than my bed or my car with the heat on full-blast. I was wrapped in a cocoon of comfort! Knits and wool and fleece and plush!

I can't help but remember those nights (and days) in New Hampshire where the temperature would dip into single digits, and think that these leggings would have kept me just as warm there as they are here.

Tripping the Lights Fantastic

2011-12-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

This morning at work, this phrase popped into my head, for no apparent reason. It might be the Christmas lights and sugarplums dancing in my head. Or maybe it's the fact that I've spent the past several nights having party party fun fun for birthdays and celebrations about jobs (more to come on that!), and homemade corndogs.

What? Corndogds are a cause for celebration, aren't they?

Either way, I logged into my computer this morning and thought, "tripping the lights fantastic." One of my morning duties as a receptionist is to send out an email detailing who will be out of the office that day, and in the past receptionists have also offered trivia questions to pass the time. I get a lot of complaints about how difficult my trivia questions are, so needless to say I did not propose an etymological inquiry to my co-workers.

I did, however, do some research of my own. It turns out that tripping the lights (or, rather, light, which is the original phrasing) has nothing to do with ecstasy or acid tabs. WEIRD. In fact, evidently I never even knew the meaning of the phrase, which means to dance, especially if you're doing it "fantastically," or imaginatively, or...let's be honest: spastically.

The apparent origins of the phrase are in a poem by John Milton, titled "L'Allegro," which reads:

Sport that wrinkled Care derives,
And Laughter holding both his sides.
Come, and trip it as you go
On the light fantastic toe.

"Trip" didn't mean stumble around drunkenly, like we may assume from the phrase's present-day connotations, but rather to dance nimbly--quite the opposite in fact. "Light" and "fantastic" refer to the movement of the feet (toe. Because we all dance with one toe). Shakespeare used a similar phrase in The Tempest, writing:

Before you can say come, and goe,

And breathe twice; and cry, so, so:

Each one tripping on his Toe,

Will be here with mop, and mowe.

Since Milton and Shakespeare, "tripping the (light and/or fantastic) toe" became a popular phrase in newspapers, poetry, prose, and accounts of cotillions and the like. It was in 1894, when the song "The Sidewalks of New York" became popular that the toe was hacked off, and the phrase morphed into "tripping the light fantastic" on the sidewalks of New York. Which, really, is probably the best place to trip the lights fantastic this time of year.

Fashion Forward (Backward?)

2011-12-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

In college, Ben & I used to poke fun at a girl that lived in his dorm who wore a skirt over her pants every. single. day. Over jeans, over leggings, over slacks. We once saw her with a jersey material over her sweatpants coming out of the rec center. What I like about that girl is that she just did it. Obviously no one else was wearing a skirt over their jeans every day. Obviously the trend was not catching on. Obviously everyone looked at her funny--especially when she was prancing on the treadmill. But every day she got up and that's how she wanted to look. So she looked that way.

It's admirable, in the very best kind of way. It's also a quality that I definitively lacked as a sixth grader, when I found a white shirt with red sleeves, similar to this, at Value Village. When I wore it to school, all of the boys who were in little leagues made merciless fun of me, asking if I wanted their old shirts from previous practices and years. (I did not.) I never wore the shirt again, even though I loved it and thought it was cute. Whatever. The joke was on everyone else when they popped up in American Eagle a few years later.

What's interesting is that even though I thought Ben's "fashion forward" dorm-mate looked lame, she managed to earn my respect just by, well, doing her, to borrow a phrase from Beach House 2010. This is, in fact, how I choose the fashion bloggers I follow. I don't care much for trendspotters or the women who troll new merchandise--at least not as much as I appreciate a good thrifter who will rock a good wool dress. I mean, I want to buy some gold pants. I don't care if metallic is so in this season. All of this to say: I'm wearing black pants and brown shoes. I can't remember if that's okay or not. (Stacy? Clinton? Help me out here) But I don't really care either way.

Imagination Station

2011-12-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

This weekend, Patrick & I were driving through Northgate after shopping for decorations when he asked if he had ever told me about his imaginary friend, Penny. When he was in preschool, and his mother picked him up at the end of the day, he spent the rides home telling her about what he and Penny had done at school that day--who they played with, what they did. His mom became suspicious when Patrick told her that Penny was a boy. She figured it out when Patrick's teacher told her she had no kids named Penny at the school (and also when Patrick began to regale her with stories of Nickel & Dime, Penny's brother and sister, and Good Dollar & Bad Dollar, Penny's cousins).

What is interesting about Patrick's imaginary friends is that he really didn't spend his days playing with Penny, Nickel & Dime, and Good Dollar & Bad Dollar. He had friends--real ones--at his preschool that he played with. But when he got in the car, what happened that day was not "Legos with Timmy" but hours filled with Bad Dollar pulling all the little girls' hair, and running around with Penny.

Patrick said that he did some research a while back about childhood imaginary friends, and discovered that this is not uncommon. We are, of course, most familiar with the kind like Fred. This sort of imaginary friend, where the child creates a solitary world, is the more psychologically troubling kind, the kind that indicates that the child has difficulty connecting to others, or feels isolated in some way.

Telling stories about an imaginary cast of characters, however, isn't indicative of loneliness. Rather, Penny & his family showed an active imagination, a passion to create and to keep things interesting.

After all, Timmy probably only ever built boring old towers with his Legos, anyway.

Better than a cornballer

2011-12-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, on a Saturday at 7:30, you might decide to make a homemade corndog. And if you do, you will go to the store, and buy hotdogs and cheese (um, because you can't fry corndogs and not make fried cheese) and skewers and pancake mix, and take them home. And by this time, it may be already eight o'clock, but you'll thread the skewers into the hotdogs and rectangles of cheese, and then you'll mix together the pancake batter with water, and an egg, and some cornmeal, and it will look something like this:
And you can put it in a beer stein that you won in college and use to drink water, so that the sticks don't get covered in batter, too. Then, you will be starving, and you'll take your roommate's Le Creuset, because its oval shape is the perfect shape for a corndog. Then, on Saturday nights like these, you will heat vegetable oil and drop in a hot-dog covered in batter, and watch it brown. What happens next, probably around nine pm, is delicious.

Cheer(ing Up)

2011-12-03T18:35:00.000-08:00

In an effort to bolster the Christmas spirit, and wrap up a fairly emotionally draining week (of note: do not drive north on 405 at 4:30 pm if you are already stressed, and when applying to graduate programs and fellowships simultaneously with your significant other, do what you can to choose programs with varying application deadlines), I went to do some crafts & decorations shopping at Joann Fabrics and Target today. After lights and holiday shoppers and cinnamon pinecones and glitter balls and chicken tikki and holiday scented candles, we came back to my house to finish grading for ITT Tech and do some online work for Patrick's new teaching job.

If lighting pine-forest scented candles doesn't give me the holly jollies (not those kind of jollies, jeez!), then hot-gluing felt Christmas trees to a red tree skirt sure will.

And if that doesn't, almost lighting both of our faces on fire when trying to douse a candle holder that mysteriously went up in flames (honestly, glass doesn't just...burn...does it?) will have me singing Ave Maria and wiping the tears off my sooty face.

With my luck, I've probably made some stupid mistake now, too...

2011-12-02T12:01:00.000-08:00

One of the fashion bloggers I follow recently stated, concerning a dress of hers, "It's very subtle, but this dress has rabbits on it." When I complained to Patrick, he said "It's very subtle, but these are socks," to which I replied, "It's very subtle, but I'm wearing jeans."

Another, a French model who posts her fashion blog in both French and English, translates the site herself. Her most recent update had her giving thanks for retaining old clothes: "This is when I’m really pleased I never sold one single thing of from wardrobe."

Please don't misunderstand. I'm fully aware that I am being a snob. I am also fully aware of the difficulties in speaking and writing articulately in a foreign language. Please see the Gauchedroitegauche backlogs from all of 2008 and most of 2009 for details about how I express myself with the sophistication of a five year old in French. And not a French five year old. Just a five year old.

But what baffles--and infuriates--me about these ridiculous mistakes, misuses, and general lack of attention paid to language in these blogs and others is that people are making their living off of this. Many of the fashion bloggers out there--and kitchen bloggers, and craft bloggers, too--are being paid, in advertising, sponsorships, and schwag, and they do not understand how to use the word subtle, let alone the English language.

And, ~~not~~ to be more than a little self-important, there are bloggers like me, who know how to craft a sentence and put together an outfit. Or bake a pie. Or emboss the shit out of something.

Honestly, I know that if I wanted to, I could make some sort of living this way. But I don't have the marketing background or interest to do so. I don't want to write about a scarf because I'm paid to (although I would take a paid position to travel & write up hotels and restaurants. Just saying). What I do want, however, is to see the people who are getting paid to write online do so with the same respect for language that writers in the print world have.

To Add to the List of Things That I Like, But Are Woefully Passe

2011-12-01T19:42:00.001-08:00

One: The Decembrists.

Two: Nine West handbags.

Three: CSI Las Vegas

Tonight, I apply to the University of California, Berkeley. That is the number one literature program in the country.

Tonight, I begin a month of nightly blogging, as well.

No Direction, Home or Otherwise

2011-11-22T15:27:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, Patrick and I watched the Martin Scorsese bio-pic on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, and just recently watched I'm Not There, the mash-up of real and fictionalized Dylan anecdotes, accounts, characteristics, and influences that features Marcus Carl Franklin and Cate Blanchett, among other notables. You could say we're on a kick, but I don't think it's considered a kick if it lasts our whole lives. (It will.)

I've wanted to write about the Scorsese flick for weeks, wanted to say eloquent things about the emotions it elicited, wanted to discuss Dylan's persona and genius and sartorial selections.

But I can't.

Maybe what it comes down to is utter awe. At Dylan. At Scorsese. At the 60s and at the fact that Dylan didn't hear music, but heard sounds and a feeling behind the sounds.

But probably, what it comes down to is my own direction. I've been in Seattle for just about three and a half months now, working three jobs, tripping over my own feet to attend family and friend gatherings, and lacking the brainpower to actually read in my time off--one of the things I was most looking forward to after completing my Masters degree. Just three and a half months, and I'm over it. Three and a half months, and this is entirely the wrong direction.

I'm applying to graduate schools. Again. To just a few programs, since I decided to do this pretty much yesterday and applications are due in the next three weeks. I'm not sure that I've found the exact right programs, but they are more right than wrong and that counts for something when you're working three jobs that barely pay the bills.

I'm applying to teaching positions, mostly at some online universities. Seattle is an intensely over-educated area and the competition for low-paying, low-level teaching jobs is fierce. Plus, if I work online I can teach in my pajamas! While baking bread! And I can vacuum as a break from grading papers!

And this weekend, I'm going to read a goddamn book.

Mulling (Over) Spices

2011-11-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

In my kitchen, I don't pay much attention to the expiration dates on spices. That's what fresh herbs are for. I'm probably wrong--and this is probably why I'll remain a cook and not a chef--but I don't think two week old ground nutmeg is more flavorful than two year old nutmeg; and if I really wanted fresh, I'd grate my own damn nutmeg.

I have spices that I bought in Bellingham, in college--a yellow and red canister of Greek seasoning, purchased either at the Mediterranean specialties store behind the Sehome theater or the Greek Festival that happens every September a little north of Western's campus. More recently, though still a few years back, I have spices that I bought in France. When I reach for nutmeg, you see, it's actually mouscade, and cumin is...wait, cumin is cumin...My herbes de Provence, unfortunately, is long since used up, and though I can find the mixture in grocery stores in America, I find it rather distasteful to pay $8.99 for something that's one Euro in France.

What's interesting is that I've moved, many times, and these spices are still with me. I moved from France, to Bellingham, to New Hampshire and around New Hampshire, and back to Seattle. And I stuffed my glass spice jars in socks and gloves and wrapped them in washcloths and rammed them in nooks and crannies of boxes and suitcases. They've been shipped via UPS, and USPS Media Mail, tucked sneakily in a sock under Harry Potter (you have no idea how tempted I was to write Socrates...), stuffed into U-Haul trailers being towed across America by a Ford Taurus and crammed underneath Clementine's hanging chub in a Hyundai.

To be fair, there are plenty of things that have made all of these moves with me, cookware I have owned for years, knitting needles that have traveled overseas, a birthday card given to me at age 13 by my Aunt Karin. And perhaps I should, instead, be mulling over the things that haven't made it: clothing I left at Goodwill, books I no longer want to read, love tokens and photographs, dishes I always hated. I guess instead of considering what we do and do not hold on to, though, this is more about what we choose to take with us, what we decide, purposefully, to retain.

In my case, I suppose, it's a particular spice blend called Quatre Epices, unlike any you can find in the United States.

Sentence and Solas

2011-10-20T15:38:00.000-07:00

There are many things I hate about my job, but my commute is not one of them. I do not hate the traffic, because it prolongs the time I can spend facing south on I-5, looking at the Seattle skyline between the hills and trees.

If there is rain--and there usually is--the greys are varied and textured and have a depth that has less to do with distance and more to do with intensity. And on the days when it is not raining, and I take the curve onto the 520 bridge, the sun makes mist rise off the waters of Union Bay, and glares off of Lake Washington. On those days, I can see Mount Rainier past the I-90 bridge, and my rubber-necking has resulted in more than one frantic slamming of the brakes. I do not even mind that it's getting darker and darker in the mornings, because it just means that I can see the way each side of Lake Washington--one choppy and one calm--looks in the light as the season changes.

It's funny that of all places, this is where I feel most at home since moving back to the West Coast. This commute, this drive south and then east, this place inside a car with New Hampshire plates (not for long!) moving through space on the Seattle freeways. I may be struggling to find a place in this city that I thought was already my home, but I haven't seen views like these in years.

Horses, Carriages, and the Hidden Bottle of Fernet

2011-10-18T08:21:00.002-07:00

This weekend, one of my best friends got married. When the bride & groom saw each other for the first time before the ceremony, the first thing Ari said to her almost-husband was "herro."

And it wasn't so much a big reveal as it was Brendan walking down the stairs to find Ari standing there, looking beautiful in her dress, laughing with her Nest.

Which is, incidentally, exactly how love works. There's no flashing lights or cameras or hullabaloo, no videographer zooming in on your ring finger; you find someone, standing just there, and there they are. To borrow a phrase from another Nestie, your soul settles around them, and that is all that matters.

Hoarders

2011-10-12T07:58:00.000-07:00

Last night, when driving to Patrick's apartment after playing hooky from one of my jobs (hey, a girl who skipped a total of one class in graduate school AND college has the right to play a little hooky from one of her three dead end jobs, alright?), Jack Johnson's "Flake" came on the radio. Instead of changing the channel like a normal person in the year 2011 would, I kept it on, and--yes I will admit this--sang along. It's a hard soul that can resist the line I know she loves the sunrise; no longer sees it with her sleeping eyes.

I thought about Jack Johnson, about how ten years ago I was listening to this song--on the radio, in my CD player while I walked to the bus stop, on the bus in the early morning rides to junior high and high school. I still have that Jack Johnson CD on my computer, an album among the hundreds of albums I have taking up space on my hard drive. How long has it been since I've listened to it? Or to Blink 182, or Oren Lavie?

Growing up, we had a neighbor named Mrs. Kelly, who kept dozens of cats, had a six acre garden, and a house full of stacks of newspapers, bags of Goodwill finds, boxes and boxes of junk and styrofoam containers, and crates of dried up soda. My grandmother, two houses down, was the same way, and the remnants of her penchant for antique kitchen items could be seen on the walls of my childhood home--though my father and mother did clean out her stash of used napkins before moving in. I know many people with grandparents who are this way; Patrick says that each time he visits his grandfather's house he moves around jugs of old water that his granddad refuses to get rid of.

But me? Jack Johnson, Matchbox 20, that one Bob Marley album we all loved as teenagers: these are the things I keep. While a data mp3 file may take up much less space than all the Readers' Digest issues from 1971-1977, I think the sentiment still comes from the same place.

Motivation

2011-10-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

I work for an insurance underwriting firm. Now, I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I trust that the insurance agents and underwriters I work with do, so I'm not too worried about it.

I answered the phone at work this afternoon, and the caller asked for someone who will be out of the office for quite some time. When I asked if there was someone else I could connect him to, I followed with,

"What is your question concerning?"

His reply was "Underwriting."

I mean, of course. Underwriting. I should have known.

If there's one thing I've learned in the past few weeks, it's that this in-between time is hard. It is hard to wait patiently, to pay bills in a timely fashion, to work three jobs--not one of which is at all close to what you want to be doing with your life.

But if there's a second thing that I've learned in the past few weeks, it's that working in an insurance underwriting firm can really motivate you to research new career opportunities and PhD schools.

I can see for miles, miles, miles

2011-09-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

There's something about fall that reminds me of going to the post office in France. This is weird, I know. I've spent countless falls in America, and exactly one in France, and still grey skies and wet leaves remind me of France. The leaves were hardly even wet in France. And, to be honest, there were very few trees with leaves in my part of France, either.

But there was an afternoon, once, when I lived in France, that must have been in October or November. And I needed to mail a package back home--a tiny little package that the French mail clerk eyed skeptically because it may have been too small for the international mailing labels. It was grey out--which was unusual for Perpignan--and windy, which was not at all unusual. It may have even been raining a little. And I put on my coat and walked through campus and around and up the street to the post office and missed pumpkins and fall festivals and baking and Halloween, and apples and pumpkin patches and cider.

What's interesting, though, is that even though I missed my American fall, and even though I was in the thick of my I-hate-France-and-don't-have-internet phase, it felt right. To be missing things. To be walking in the grey to the post office to mail a package to Kili. It felt right to be in a coat, and to walk back home to take it off and start making dinner.

And even though I went back home to my tiny studio, I felt expansive. Fall feels, somehow, despite sweaters and time indoors and close quarters, expansive. Like I'm lifting over something, or maybe right in the middle of it, spreading out into its edges and corners.

Also, brown sweaters just look really good on me.

One or Two Things I'm Learning

2011-09-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

1. I need a dresser in order to feel okay.
2. There are such things as goat rental businesses. They rent goats out to people.
3. I was never, ever made for a 40 hour a week desk job.
4. Three jobs might be too many.
5. Moving causes strange meals to be made, such as: leftover salmon & rice with an orange butter sauce, with a side of rice & beans.
6. It is a wise move to unpack the glasses first (wine glasses, if you have, are ideal, though a spare empty fig preserves jar will do).
7. I'm ready for some more school, please.

Something between sixteen candles and a quarter life crisis...

2011-08-31T20:29:00.000-07:00

When I turned twenty years old, all of my friends were 21. In Bellingham, Thursday nights during the school year meant 80s night, a costumed and musically-themed dance-and drink-a-thon at the local gay bar, Rumors. After a fun-filled dinner, every single one of my friends, barring my then boyfriend, left me alone to shake their asses to "Don't stop believin'."

On my 21st birthday, my parents' divorce papers went through.

September 1st, 2008 saw me sitting with a handful of friends, lamenting my imminent departure to Perpignan, France--which I was, at the time, dreading.

As a 23rd year old, I rang in my new year with a day of classes and students who barely knew me, and a lonely meal with the only person I knew within a 3,000 mile radius.

Last year, the only two people I could convince to spend time with me on my birthday were my then boyfriend and my most recent ex.

You could say I don't have the best birthday track record.

And this year, this quarter century, this big one? I'm spending it at work for seven hours, and then at a three or four hour in-service meeting for ITT Tech, all before I begin moving in to my new apartment.

Luckily, my conception of a "birthday" extends far beyond the twenty-four hour period surrounding the hour of my birth, and I have a sweet weekend planned.

Perspective

2011-08-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

I've gotten several storm warnings from UNH in the past week or so (wait...did I really graduate? Now I'm not so sure...). The East Coast is preparing for Hurricane Irene. Non-residents of the Jersey Shore are being evacuated. Lists of storm essentials are being spread across the Internet, and I am watching Treme.

Treme, for those of you on whom I have not already forced the show, is an HBO series begun in 2010 by the creators of The Wire, and is centered on life in post-Katrina New Orleans--specifically the Treme neighborhood. The show begins three months after the storm, when thousands of people were still missing, housing projects for the city's poorer (and, generally speaking, Blacker) populations were still boarded up--despite minimal flood & wind damage--effectively allowing only the wealthy (and often white) New Orleanians to return to the city.

And, at the moment, the entire nation is mobilizing to evacuate the people from the Eastern seaboard, with special attention paid to New York, arguably the seat of our nation's wealth and power. And white people.

So, perhaps I am being cynical. Perhaps I am over-emphasizing the racial aspect of Hurricane Katrina, and underestimating the degree to which a nation can learn from its past mistakes. But ~~lingering~~ outright doubts tell me otherwise. Somehow, I feel that Hurricane Katrina or no, a Category 2 or 3 hurricane hitting the business and financial epicenter of America would take hold of the nation's attention and instigate a preparedness that quite possibly would have had no precedence in our nation's history. But a Category 5? Hitting a vulnerable coastline populated by African Americans and the nation's poor? All we have for that is hindsight.

This Grind is Harshing my Groove

2011-08-17T09:21:00.000-07:00

I have had exactly twelve jobs in my life, since I started pulling weeds for Mrs. Kelly at the tender age of ten or so. In that fifteen year span of twelve jobs, I have had exactly two that I couldn't hack. No, I'm not talking about being a custodian for the summer camp facilities that your high school football team uses every summer. Nor I am referring to answering questions for inquisitive traveling Canadians ("I have my tickets for this tour, and I'm sitting in the parking lot outside the building, but I'm just not sure what to do now...").

The first time I felt like dying every time I thought about work was the beginning of last summer, when I worked for two weeks in a dentist's office that, during morning meetings, called their patients not by their names but by the dollar amount they brought in to the practice. My duties included cold-calling unsuspecting past patients and tricking them into coming back for a hygiene appointment. When I left, I lied and said I was hired to teach at a college, when in reality my other part-time position increased my hours when I told my boss that I felt like my soul was being crushed.

Unfortunately, I've found that second job, that position I can't quite hack, the one where I can't enjoy my time off because I'm anxious about having to go back to work the next day.

And people, I've only been there two days.

I'm currently nannying for a very wealthy family whose house has an elevator in it. The girl, who is nine, has informed me that her favorite brand is Dolce & Gabbana, and the little boy, who is six, wonders why I do not have a television installed in the back of my 2005 Hyundai Elantra. My first day, which was supposed to be a 5 hour shift, morphed very quickly into a 9 hour shift, when the mother kept whisking one child off to doctor's appointments, T-ball practice, ballet--the list goes on--and asking me to "work on reading" with the other. These kids fight, shove (each other, myself, strangers), yell, and have no concept of the fact that other people do not live like them. They may be fluent in French, English, and Armenian, but they do not understand why I would buy a used car. Their parents have filled their schedules with so many planned enrichment activities that even reading is something to be "worked on," and as a result they despise it. Their mother assumes I will be available at a moment's notice any time ("We're having two parties in the next few weeks--not sure when yet--on Friday and Saturday night, and we'd like you to be available for both of them."), and hasn't quite explained what I'm supposed to actually do on a day to day basis. In short, I'm living that book--you know the one. And I'd like out of it, thank you very much.

Please?

Visions of Kili and Ashley

2011-08-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

I.

My last morning in New Hampshire, we stood in a mostly empty apartment overlooking the bay, and watched three foxes hunting in the fields below. We ate eggs and English muffins at The Big Bean in the sun before getting in the car.

II.

Kili and I normally get a lot of stares. Usually, I'm not sure why--maybe it's the hand-holding, or the way we get bugs out of each other's eyes.

At a Subway outside of Madison, WI, we got a lot of stares--more than usual. For a while, we were unsure why, until a few miles down the road, when I realized what a vision we made. Picture: Five dollar footlongs. Kili, wearing the biggest sun hat I've ever seen, and I, wearing a bandana tied Aunt Jemima-style, heart-shaped sunglasses, holding a leash attached to a yowling cat. Cat, snubbing her water in a torn styrofoam cup, staring longingly at a car with New Hampshire plates.

A vision, I tell you.

III.

Two days and over 2,000 miles later, Seattle greets us with traffic and sunshine and missing brake pads and Kanye West on the stereo. I think it's time for us to have a toast.

I'm home.

On Satire and Bigotry

2011-07-27T05:37:00.000-07:00

Last night, for the first time in God only knows how long, I watched the Daily Show and the Colbert Report with Andrew and his roommate. By this, I mean I watched the reruns from the night before. Those shows air way too late for this old woman.

The Colbert Report had a segment on the recent tragedy in Norway, which can be found here, which the Colbert writers referred to as the "Norwegian Muslish Gunman's Islam-Esque Atrocity."

I suppose I may have noticed this myself, were I the type to have television, but I haven’t seen anything but Netflix streaming episodes of Buffy in weeks now, and I get my news mainly from The New York Times website (although my twenty free articles for the month are gone, so…).

Evidently, in the hours immediately following the events in Norway, though Norwegian authorities were hesitant to point fingers regarding the culprits, American newstations, reporters, and newsbloggers the country over were attributing the attacks to Al-Qaeda, and even after the Norwegian and white Breivik claimed responsibility for the attacks, American newscasters were still asking questions such as "What do you make of the fact that he looked Nordic?" and "experts" were still responding with answers such as "Maybe it was a good disguise."

Steven Colbert reminds us, of course, that "Just because Norway's confessed murderer is a blond, blue-eyed, Norwegian-born, anti-Muslim crusader doesn't mean he's not a swarthy, ululating madman."

What the hell is wrong with America? Not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all terrorists are Muslims. Hasn't any at all seen Die Hard, Die Harder, Die Hard with a Vengeance, or Live Free or Die Hard?

Rewards

2011-07-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned how much I love treats? After a percocet-less day full of thesis-writing, I feel like I deserve more than one. Several episodes of Buffy, an ice pack, and a pomegranate liqueur gin & tonic later, I am ready for round two of my reward: a modified caprese, Harry Potter 7, and a(nother) quiet night in with my chubby cheeks.

I could pretend to you that the modifications are meant to take it easy on my poor mouth. Honestly, though, the substitution of home-made ricotta--though delicious--may be slightly easier to chew than mozzarella, but really I only used it because the half-used ball of mozz in my refrigerator was sprouting...

I expect that in a few hours, I'll be ready for my third treat, which will consist of a serving of Triple Cookie Fudge Sundae and more of this girl.

Ahhh, I love treats. If only I could justify a fourth one.

A List of Things I thought I could the day after getting my wisdom teeth pulled....

2011-07-14T08:32:00.000-07:00

1. Go to work.
2. Drive myself to work.
3. Write a bunch of my thesis.
4. Clean my apartment.
5. Go to a friend's house for glasses of whiskey. Yes, plural.
6. Open my mouth.

I really had no idea, did I?

And, because I'm not proud and we've all been there before, here's a picture for your viewing pleasure.

Space Ghost, Coast-to-Coast

2011-07-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

I spent much of yesterday on the North Shore of Massachusetts Bay, an area north of the Cape that a friend once described as the Massachusett’s elephant’s brain. I suppose, if you squint, the shore of Massachusetts might look like an elephant, the Cape itself serving as a curved trunk, and if you screw your face up to the point of tears, the peninsula that is formed by Gloucester (pronounced Gloss-ter, for those West Coasters out there, or gloss-tah if you’re a Southie) and Rockport may just be considered that elephant’s occipitofrontal.

But this isn’t about elephants, or about borrowing jargon from the doctors I often spend my weekends with. This is about beaches. And the issues I tend to have with East Coast beaches, to be specific. Beach culture on the East Coast is surprisingly different from West Coast culture. You may think that water + bikinis and suntan lotion is always going to add up the same way, but it doesn’t. Especially when you throw thousands of people, hundreds of beach umbrellas, and a twenty-five dollar entrance fee into the mix. I’m going to be honest with you. I’d never even seen a beach umbrella in real life before I moved to the East Coast.

But it’s more than just the ubiquitous umbrella of the east juxtaposed with the basic beach towel of the west. The relationship that people have with the beach is drastically different on each coastline. One of the most noticeable differences is the sheer number of beach visitors on the East Coast. An utter lack of lakes (or perhaps, lakes without too many mosquitoes…) means that the coastline is one of the only places for the millions of New Englanders to beat the summer temperatures (you thought I was going to say heat, didn’t you?), which means beaches that are literally covered in humans. Two summers ago, when I first saw an East Coast beach, I must admit I was a little grossed out.

More importantly than quantity, though, is quality. And—for once—I don’t want to only endorse West Coast beaches and shout for the death of all things East Coast, because you can’t beat the sand they’ve got over here. A friend explained the difference by saying that West Coast beaches, and the Pacific in general, is just a more intense experience than the Atlantic and the coastlines of the East. The West Coast is craggy and the water is cold and often…I wouldn’t say angry but just unforgiving, perhaps. The Atlantic Ocean, with the sand on its shores and its temperatures that are actually swimmable, is a place that people use. The Pacific is a place that (and maybe this is getting back too far into my West Coast snobbery) that people respect.

While I will certainly will miss spending more than a ~~hot~~ freezing minute in the ocean water, and the feeling of sand instead of sharp rocks under my feet, I’m looking forward to views like this, something you just can’t find on this other coast.

On the Demise of Newspapers

2011-06-30T06:16:00.001-07:00

I won't pretend I have anything new or interesting to say about this topic. Print culture is dying, and no one is reading newspapers anymore, and more and more are folding under as the days pass. The usual things can be said.

But the things is, print culture isn't dying. People are going to read books. People are going to want news. And maybe, yes, the morning paper over coffee isn't what it used to be. And maybe, yes, more people are reading on their stupid iPads and phones and online, even though it hurts their eyes.

Today, I tried to open a New York Times article at work, and it seems that this IP address has already used its allotted twenty free articles this month. Twenty. My problem isn't with paying for the newspaper. Or the fact that a subscription is--for most media--necessary.

Actually, wait. My problem is with paying for the newspaper. I understand, fundamentally and integrally, that print costs money. Newsprint, newsreels, people to operate the machines as they spin around, spitting out hot paper and ink, there are costs involved with that. And there are costs involved with reporters, and servers to run www.nytimes.com But what really makes it difficult for me to swallow is the restriction of information, to those with means and access and money. Sure, I could pay 99 cents for four weeks' worth of unlimited access (including a free iPhone app!).

And someday, I'm sure I will. I'll buy the newspaper, and I'll donate money to Planned Parenthood and to public radio and the National Endowment for the Arts, and I'll make sure I only buy local produce, in order to support my community's farmers and also to reduce my carbon footprint. But for now, while I'm pinching pennies and packing my lunches with cheap leftovers, I'll go to BBC for my news, thank you very much.

Prompt: What I did on my summer vacation

2011-06-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

Response:

I am spending the month of June doing a lot of this:

combined with a little bit of transformers, remote control cars, beaches, and swingsets.

I'm currently in the middle of a short-term nannying position for the month of June, with two kids who are here visiting their father for a few weeks.

We spend most of our days outside, wandering from park to park and beach to beach. We've made bread, and strawberry freezer jam, and cookies, and colored pictures of princesses. We've played a game of marco polo and I've struggled to get over my constant need to keep beach blankets and towels from being covered in sand.

Needless to say, I'm exhausted. And taking care of two kids for ten hours a day really puts a hamper on your ability to read French theory and write a thesis. I mean, who can even think about posthumanism when you've got two actual humans to keep track of?

Cheer up sleepy (Ashley) Jean, oh what can it mean, to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen?

2011-06-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

People, I am coming home. Yet again, I am homeward bound, heading home to where my music's playing, home where my most of my loves lie waiting for me.

I can't wait.

And despite my incredibly ability to wax poetic about the jewels of the Pacific Northwest here, amongst New Englanders and Southerners and those oddballs from the mid-Atlantic area I know, I find myself incapable of pulling together a coherent blog post about the fact that I am coming home.

I guess that is perhaps due to the fact that most of you reside in the PNW anyway--and I don't need to tell you about the merciless lack of bugs, about the ways the sun sets over the water (as it should), about the way that Mallard's ice cream tastes after one of those rare hot summer days, about the way it feels to drive south on I-5 and see Seattle for the first time again--because it always is the first time, no matter how recently you've been there.

Three years away and I am coming home.

I'll see y'all on August 5th. Get. Ready.

Let Me Clear My Throat

2011-05-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the radio silence, fellas. I’ve been finishing up end of the semester matters. You know, the usual: writing a 27 page paper on the influence of 17^th and 18^th century Irish political writers on the American Revolution, via the illicit book trade between Ulster and the Colonies, chasing myself in circles around a deconstructionist approach to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, pushing 23 students to write more persuasively (even when they want to prevent the American-born children of illegal immigrants from becoming American citizens…), finding out I’m not graduating.

Erm, wait. What?

Two years should equal a Master’s degree, correct? Ah, but in the case of a clerical SNAFU, in which you are told you are ready to graduate when in actuality you have one remaining course to take (and when, exactly, did anyone expect you to fit that in there, hm?), two years decidedly does not equal a Master’s degree. In fact, it actually equals a summer spent writing a thesis paper that you did not know you needed to write. Luckily, since your Master’s degree holds no possible value on the job market anyway, you have no job, and thus plenty of free time to learn about post-humanism and apply a reading to The Road, Stripper Zombies, and Blood Car.

Now that the bad news is out of the way, let’s put the cynicism on ice, shall we? I am, in fact, graduating in one week, meaning that I will be walking in the ceremony and my diploma, once I receive it, will have May 2011 on it. But I won’t receive it, until I hand in my thesis, which I intend to have completed around mid-August. And I am, actually, looking forward to writing a paper; I love that I have the freedom to write about whatever I want, and that I don’t have to sit through classes and readings and tailor my scholarship to someone else’s requirements.

And while I remain jobless, I’ve had two interviews (at Harvard, no less), both of which have asked my back for second interviews, and there’s a mother on Mercer Island who would love for me to nanny her children (for the benefit of Mr. Kite. I mean, those of you who are aching for me to get back to Seattle). I have been applying for jobs in the Seattle and Boston/New Hampshire areas since March, in my spare time away from academia, and now that I am (for the moment) jobless and (mostly) school-less, I will be devoting more time to finding that perfect position.*

And tomorrow, after a brief pit-stop in Cambridge to complete a second round of interviews and to grab a drink with Alice, I am headed to the very tip of Cape Code, to Provincetown, with many, many friends from my program here. We’re staying in a rental on the beach for a week, and plan to cook good food, eat oysters, drink champagne daily, read, make music and fun and laughs, and have an all around wonderful end to this year, to this program, to this chapter of our lives. And while I may still have 23 (not very)persuasive essays to read, I’m looking forward to this week, to forgetting about Jonathan Swift and Joseph Conrad, about finishing up theses, about looming unemployment, about the uncertainty of my next move as a person. If I were more cliché, I would say that I’m looking forward to digging my toes into the sand and listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. However, despite the fact that I may, in fact, be looking forward to that, suffice it to say that I’m just ready to get the hell out of New Hampshire for a week.

*I have experience teaching English composition, teaching ESL, in French/English translation, and office work, in case you were looking to hire me. I may, in fact, be the perfect person to translate your French fashion blog into English, full-time, at a starting salary of $50,000.

All My Exes

2011-04-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-02T07:39:00.000-07:00

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.

On Rendering Compotes

2011-03-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

Sally Mann's Candy Cigarette

When I was a child, my sisters and I had a schedule. For everything, it seems. Feeding the chickens, watering the flowers, washing dishes, taking showers. In a household with hardwood floors, no dishwasher, five children, usually around seventeen pets, and a well instead of a water main, a schedule was often a necessity to keep things in order.

We also had a schedule for breakfast.

Mondays and Tuesdays were "egg days." Eggs and toast. And a glass of milk, of course. Wednesday through Sunday was oatmeal and toast. And a glass of milk, of course. We could have fruit, if we wanted, but trying to shove a fried egg and two pieces of toast down one's throat at six in the morning on schooldays was often all our stomachs could handle.

On weekends, if we wanted to, we could have pancakes. The hitch was that we had to make them from scratch--which, now that I actually know what Bisquick tastes like, I am very thankful for--and so instead of getting up at our normal nine a.m. rising time, we had to get up at seven a.m.

Presumably, this was to ensure that the preparation and clean-up didn't extend too far past the nine a.m. wake-up call we would normally be subjected to.

I know many people who were denied foodstuff as children who cannot get enough of it, now, or people who were forced to eat a certain thing and will no longer touch it: adults who guzzle whole milk because their parents forced them to drink non, parents of children who refuse to feed them macaroni and cheese because of childhoods spent eating Kraft night after night. I, however, have stuck pretty close to my childhood's imposed eating habits. I drink non-fat milk--because anything with a higher milk fat makes my lips feel greasy--I eat oatmeal or eggs and toast most days of the week, I still find tuna melts extraordinarily satisfying. I will not, however, eat baloney in any shape or form, but that is a story for another day. I grew up in a household where boxed, sugared cereal was a treat, and because of that I rarely--if ever--have boxed cereal in my house. And as a rule, we also had no store-bought jams or sweets (aside from the occasional box of dough-nuts brought over by my grandfather), including syrup.

So in the summer, our early morning weekends spent sifting and measuring pancake ingredients usually also required a trip out to the backyard, where we filled an old orange plastic measuring cup (that looked something like this) with blackberries, with raspberries, with huckleberries, with currants, with apples. Instead of maple syrup, we chopped, we stewed, we simmered, and we rendered the fruit into a compote, and served it with the pancakes, usually before nine a.m.

When I first told this story to Jess, a poet in the program here, she insisted I take the memoir class here at UNH--or at the very least start writing about my childhood more on my blog. I suppose it had never occurred to me that people didn't have schedules about the foods they could and couldn't eat for breakfast growing up, or that I could add to the world of memoir and creative non-fiction by writing about boiling down fruit.

I still do it, by the way. Though I usually take advantage of the pure maple syrup produced 'round these parts in New Hampshire and Vermont, sometimes nothing can beat a good old fashioned rendered compote on top of my pancakes.

Notes from the Soon-to-Be Reverend Ashley J Benson, MA.

2011-03-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

The air in Montréal is so dry that my nose was raw and painful the entire time I was in the province. I'm still rubbing it now, despite my return to the sweet humidity of the seacoast in New Hampshire. I guess Boulder, CO is out of the question for life choices.

I went to Montréal for a conference the first weekend of Spring Break, and presented a paper I wrote last fall about Derek Walcott’s poem “The Schooner Flight” and conceptions of Caribbean essential identity. The extended length seminar paper required a lot of research on my own concerning phenomenology, Heidegger, and essentialism. Not generally my cup of tea, but luckily I was able to swing some post-structuralism in there for good measure. I won’t bore you with the details.

The conference was hosted by the Université of Montréal’s English Studies graduate department and focused on “Literature on the Margins.” It was a small conference—geared toward graduate students—and consequently I felt obligated to go to the majority of the panels, whether or not I was interested in them academically. And, while YA literature is a fascinating field, I am not necessarily invested in what everyone kept referring to as “Canadian Ideology.”

Did you know there is a whole canon of Canadian Literature out there?

Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the Canuck jokes. You must get at least two freebies once you’ve put this in your mouth, though, right?

While the conference took up most of our time, we did manage to see a little bit of the city. Montréal is shaped kind of like a doughnut, with a “mountain” (hill. I couldn’t see it from where we were…) in the center, and evidently we found ourselves on the boring side of the mountain. After a trip to St. Joseph’s Oratory—a beautiful basilica up against said mountain—to SEE A SAINT’S HEART IN A RELIQUARY, Andrew and I took the metro to the downtown area. We ate in Chinatown, after wandering around following smells for a while, and meandered through Vieux Port (Old Port), looking at the old architecture and the restaurants that were too fancy to post their prices on their outdoor menus.

A couple of real-honest-to-goodness-French-style croissants and three blocks of unpasteurized cheese later, I’m back in the States, sloughing through the final half of my final semester of my Masters program.

Shirley Temple Wasn't a Slut

2011-02-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

This morning, I had my hair cut for the first time in over a year. This was partly due to financial reasons--a good salon haircut will run me a whopping sixty dollars, and some months I'd rather keep my cell phone and my split ends, thank you very much.

Partially, though, this is because I am terrified of anyone touching my hair. Terrified.

When I was eighteen, my mother took me to get a haircut on my birthday, which was about three weeks before I left for college. I left looking something like a mulleted cocker spaniel. You know how the fur on their ears is curly, with straight stuff underneath that hangs below? Yeah...That's what I looked like.

Growing up, my mother didn't allow me to have curly hair. You read it right. Both my sister Scarlet and I have curly hair, but we weren't allowed to wear it curly; we were told to brush it out, or blow dry it, or anything but let the curls do what they wanted to do. I read somewhere once that this is common for parents who have children with curly hair. Mothers don't like to see their 14 year old daughters with big, bouncy, luscious curls because something about it is too sexual, too primal, too bed-heady. Despite the fact that my hair grew that way, and it was big and messy not because I was rolling under the covers, but because I was rolling around in the grass. Playing. Like a kid does.

So I brushed it. And it was huge. And frizzy. And not at all curly, because you don't brush curls. If you do, they aren't curls anymore. Because of my mother's odd reaction to my natural hair, I didn't learn how to love my hair until rather late in the game, and it took a few tries even in college to figure it out, and to find a stylist that I could trust not to turn me into a dog. Or give me a mom hair cut. (no offense, Moms. None of you actually have mom hair cuts, anyway. You know the kind I'm talking about.)

When I first moved to New Hampshire, I scheduled a hair appointment for when I would be back in the Seattle/Bellingham area, but that's not managed to happen since last Christmas.

My cut today was with a woman who claims she is a "curly hair specialist," so I have high hopes. She gave me a blowout, so I haven't seen it curly yet, but at the very least it's gotta look better than the brushed out look I was forced to rock in high school.

Revelations

2011-01-29T08:48:00.001-08:00

Last night, I dreamt that I had to help Jesus, Mary, and Joseph escape persecution in Bellevue, WA. Mary was crying, and it was raining, and her hair was wisping out from her veil and plastering itself to her face. She was worried she would look unkempt, so I kept turning back to brush her stray hair back under her veil. At one point, Joseph changed into disguise, emerging something like Brad Pitt in a period film circa the 1920s. At another point, I think I might have become Jesus, or lost him in the crowded streets of Bellevue.

Andrew says that God has visited me in a dream, and that I shall bear a child and name Him Immanuel. I just think it's a sign that Jesus and Marshawn Lynch walking into a bar is a stellar beginning to a joke.

Oh, New England, Revisited

2011-01-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

The other afternoon, I was brushing snow off my car for what seemed like the billionth time since I have been back this January, and scraping the ice from my windshield and rear windows. The snow piles up, three, four, five, six inches--fourteen during the blizzard--and when it stops, I brush it off with a long-handled brush that sits outside my mudroom door for this express purpose. And when, five to ten minutes later, I get down to the car that is buried underneath, I find that it's so cold out that the last layer of snow is actually ice, and I have to scrape it off. And then, if the plowman hasn't come, or if I wasn't there to move my car when the plowman came, I have to shovel out my wheel-wells and around my driver's side door in order to get in. It's only then that I can slip and slide out of my driveway onto the slushy roads on my way to work, on my way to buy milk, on my way out.

And that billionth time? That time, I stopped, and I asked out loud when anyone in their god-forsaken right mind would choose to live in New Hampshire, choose to repeat this laborious process day in and day out--sometimes multiple times a day--year after year for their entire lives. I am aching for spring.

And then, yesterday, I drove northwest to a place called Stonehouse with Andrew and another fiction writer. We got out of the car, we trudged along a snow-covered road for about ten minutes, and climbed up on a rock outcropping that overlooked a clearing in the forest. And then we stepped out onto the frozen pond, and walked across it, our footsteps leaving tracks in the deep snow. Across the pond is a giant granite cliff, with ice formations on it that Andrew sometimes climbs up, and from the top of the cliff, we could see hills that were further away, although the tallest were mostly obscured by the thickly falling snow.

And then today, I drove along a highway between Durham and Portsmouth, a highway that snakes across an inlet of the Great Bay that is churning with chunks of semi-frozen ice, and through some farmland with fields that are covered in snow without footsteps.

And I realized why.

On Life and Death

2011-01-16T06:38:00.000-08:00

First, I've discovered my ideal job. That is, until I can become a professor.

I've already lamented the fact that I don't have a blog that can really garner readers. The lack of niche means that strangers probably don't care about that store in Seattle, the fact that I wanted clam chowder, or that I had to write 35 pages last semester. So while I would love to tinker around on this little corner of the web and clack away to my heart's content for money, it's probably next to impossible--at least with this incarnation of my blog.

What I do think there is a market for, however, is a translator for the French women's fashion blogs that I read occasionally. It seems like most of them do their own translations to English, and with many it certainly shows. While they still do garner a significant readership in English-speaking countries, despite their lack of polished language, I think that syntactically and grammatically correct English (while still maintaining the interest of non-native speaker language) could remarkably increase their scope. I'm thinking I charge $50 an hour and find twenty or twenty five French people whose English needs some help. Now I just need to find a way to not offend the style bloggers when I tell them their English is horrendous...

Second:

When I die, I want my gravestone (even though I don't want a gravestone and I want to be cremated and scattered somewhere) to read: She was a voracious reader and a fantastic dancer.

That's what I'd like to be remembered for.

A La Recherche du Temps Perdus

2011-01-15T10:29:00.001-08:00

There was a cartoon in my office last year, and while I can't remember exactly what it said, the gist was this: Marcel Proust is sitting alone in a classroom, pen in hand, with a blank sheet of paper in front of him. The caption states something about Proust still agonizing over what to write in response to the teacher's "what I did on my summer vacation" prompt.

I guess it was in reference to his A La Recherche du Temps Perdus, his monumental seven volume work, the title of which translates to Remembrance of Things Past, or more literally In Search of Lost Time. I suppose that is all the usual September writing prompt is, really, is a remembrance of things past, a search for time that was spent---or lost, perhaps. While Deleuze might disagree (he always does. tsk tsk.), the novel is preoccupied with memory, with time past.

All of this is just to say here's what I did on my (Christmas) vacation:

After leaving Tennessee, Andrew and I drove northeastish to Virginia, through the Shenandoah Valley, toward D.C. It's beautiful country--miles of roads and hills and meadows and farmhouses dotting the landscape. When the sun set, the sky was this shade of lavender that I didn't really know could exist up there. I also saw half a bloody deer pushed off to the side of the road.

We made it to D.C. just in time to watch the final quarter of the Hawks game, eat enchiladas and fall in love with Marshawn Lynch.

Andrew's aunt and uncle have lived in D.C. for years and years now, and the two of them took us on a tour of all of the monuments so that we could see them illuminated at night. And even though it was bitter cold, shouting the quotations on the Jefferson memorial with no one around was well worth it. The acoustics in there are phenomenal!

The next day in D.C. we wandered around museums and memorials, and ate a hot dog from a stand on the side of the road. Here are some things I learned: Prehistoric whales--as in, the dinosaur era ancestors of creatures like Keiko--had BACK LEGS. The Natural History museum has several fossils of these huge huge old whale skeletons, and towards the end of their bodies they have tiny little appendages like shrunken legs. The National Gallery of Art taught me that Picasso's blue period actually was just blue, as in the color. I could have guessed, but still. Oh, and I still don't like Dutch painting, even if the perspective and lines are superhuman. Orville Wright never graduated high school, either, and the Korean and Vietnam War memorials are infinitely sad.

We left early the next day to beat D.C. traffic, and drove through Baltimore, and, after having done so, I can perhaps see more clearly why they haven't started The Wire tours like they did with Twilight tours in Forks, WA. North and further north still took us through New Jersey, where the whole state smells like Italian food. I am deadly serious. When we first drove in, through factories and industrial districts--where there were no restaurants serving lunch anywhere nearby--all we could smell was garlic bread. Later, when we stopped in Hoboken to grab a cannoli from the Cake Boss bakery, there was tomato based sauce in the air. Unfortunately, as it was only ten in the morning, I didn't get any cold cuts for lunch. And no sighting of Snookie, although we did have a beautiful view of the New York City skyline as we drove on the Jersey side of the Hudson River.

We stopped in Boston, of course, to have dinner with Scarlet before she went to work, and then made our way back to New Hampshire, where we were greeted by a blizzard a short two days later.

I suppose if Monty Python can parody A La Recherche du Temps Perdus in a mere fifteen seconds, I could try to summarize my past six days in less than six hundred words. No one ever said concision was my forte, though, and it certainly wasn't Proust's either. And he did okay.

Country Roads Take Me Home

2011-01-07T15:50:00.000-08:00

By the time I had been in The South (yes, I'm pretty certain the capitals are required) for just over twenty four hours, I had driven past Billy Graham Parkway, had grits for breakfast, eaten barbecue at an off-the-road joint that locals drive long distances to, listened to Jesus on the radio (or, rather, his followers, I suppose), driven ON the Bristol Motor Speedway (the favored track for NASCAR fans, and yes I said on it), and heard the most amazing accents ever. The people here are fabulously nice, and many of them have fabulously large hair.

Tomorrow, we are driving to Washington, D.C., where we will find a sports bar, hole up, and watch the Seahawks (lose? I hope not). Did you know that museums in D.C. are free? Paris could learn a thing or two from that city.

Where the Sun Sets Over the Water

2010-12-30T09:42:00.000-08:00

There is shop, as Ian would say, in the bowels of Pike Place Market. I do not know what it is called.

I know that if you walk down a slippery ramp, and pass by the gummy bear giant made out of smaller gummy bears, and take a left once you see the stacks of vintage Playboys, you'll see it.

It's the kind of shop that I love, the kind that I can spend hours in, looking at every piece of merchandise they have. There are antique shops in Bellingham with crates of old clothes and stacks of ceramic dishes and boxes of photographs that Kili and I have literally gotten lost in, accidentally wandering out two hours after we went in, thinking we had been there for half an hour, forty five minutes.

The shop in Pike Place is filled with vintage posters, old photographs, mimeographs and originals of 1924 Sports pages. Propaganda posters from the two world wars--DESTROY THIS MAD BRUTE: ENLIST below a gorilla certainly makes me want to fight the Huns. Early editions of Time and Newsweek and Rolling Stone magazines, in protective plastic envelopes to keep my greasy fingers off the delicate pages. Advertisements from the 40s and 50s--who wouldn't want a new pair of boots for $2.45? French nudie pics--Sarah Bernhardt and Josephine Baker, scantily clad. Art deco and art noveau--and not just the requisite Tournee du Chat Noir, either.

We spent a long while in there, sharing the funniest magazine covers and posters, thumbing through old photographs of people who are long dead or now dying. I saw a photograph of a four year old in a camel colored seventies style suit, and I wondered where he is now. Dead? A father? Passing me by on the street?

We left only when we realized we were famished, odd cravings for clam chowder before our visit to the aquarium.

Christmas Cheer, a la cupofchi

2010-12-21T07:31:00.001-08:00

Two weekends ago, two of the MFA students hosted a Christmas party. We were told there would be cake, and to wear sweaters. I wore a party dress, red lipstick and an ugly snowflake broach as a hairpin. Way better as a hairpin.

We drank Bailey's and coffee and champagne and did not sing Christmas carols, but had a raucous good time nonetheless. I bought two pounds of chestnuts that afternoon, and took them over to roast for a party snack. It might not have been over an open fire, but I think it still put us in that Christmas spirit.

When we peeled the chestnuts, crouched around the coffee table together, I told them about France, how you can buy a newspaper cone full of hot roasted chestnuts from street vendors. Two years ago, I was in Avignon the day after Christmas, and I remember dropping chestnut shells onto the ground as we walked around, looking at the city lit up for the holidays (biodegradable! it isn't litter!). Something about it always felt so festive, so old-timey. Like I was a part of something that had already happened.

I'm hoping to roast some more this weekend at Scarlet's house, while I plan our Christmas dinner, and then bake some of these to leave out for Carl....errrr, Santa. At any rate, it's about time that I skidaddle and make some Christmas cheer somewhere else, because my tree is about as dry as a bone, and crinkles unpleasantly before dropping needles every time I walk by it.

No matter. Scarlet's got a fiberoptic one put up whose branches will never droop.

It Turns Out...

2010-12-07T13:31:00.000-08:00

That in the event of a frigid finals week, washing dishes offers not only a respite from typing, but also serves to warm at least ten of your extremities. I try to leave the toes out of it.

If you can't tell, I'm going a bit whacko with writing, but that's normal, and I'm usually back to my old self a week or two after finals are over.

Only 23 pages left. I'm making excellent time.

Next on AMC

2010-12-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

Fourteen days.

Thirty five pages.

An epic showdown.

Who will triumph?

Stay tuned to find out!

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming of turkey noodle soup, tree trimming, and toddies.

Fah Who Foraze

2010-12-02T09:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome, December. I'm glad you are here. Good riddance to a terribly busy month (with a lovely time with Emma, of course, but busy nonetheless) and a horrible academic time in November.

Good riddance to writing a blog post a day in the worst possible month of the year to do so, and good riddance to pumpkins.

Welcome, snowflakes and reindeer and Santa Claus hats. Welcome, final two weeks of the semester and deadlines. Welcome cinnamon and toddies (okay, fine, I've already welcomed you several times over in November), welcome Baby Jesus and fir trees. Welcome frigid temperatures and hats and boots.

I'm so happy to see all of you.

Back to the Grind

2010-11-30T16:33:00.001-08:00

There really is something slightly melancholy about the four o'clock hour in the winter.

It's the way the light's slanting and filtering through the grey.

It's the way you can feel the chill coming back into the air after the sun from the afternoon.

Or maybe it's the solitary drive back home, listening to sad love songs after dropping one of your best friends off at the airport, not knowing when you'll see her again.

Da-now-now-now. I got the blues.

Tonight there will be celebrations

2010-11-29T22:40:00.000-08:00

Tonight, I went to a bar called the Red Door in Portsmouth, for a drink with Emma and Ollie and several friends before the two leave for England tomorrow.

We were lucky enough for it to be a Monday night, and every Monday night at the Red Door is live music night, and Tristan, the man in charge of booking, always manages to find the best bands.

I suggest you all check out The Caravan of Thieves, which I'd like to call a mixture of gypsy circus music. They are fantastic.

An Open Letter to Comcast

2010-11-28T19:57:00.000-08:00

Dear Comcast,

I just spent the last hour pressing the "Try Again" button on my computer, and waiting for the same screen to load again, so that I could finally update my blog and finish grading my student papers. An hour.

I would really appreciate it if you could figure the internet out. I mean, it's kind of what you're there for.

Okay thanks bye.

Phone Conversation, Last Night, in my Lulus, on the Couch:

2010-11-27T05:30:00.000-08:00

Me: Hello?
Hobbes: Ashley?
Me: Yeah! How are you?!
Hobbes: Good. Ummm...do you still live on the East Coast?
Me: Uh, yeah. Why?
Hobbes: I'm down at the Barley Pub, actually, which I think is right where you are?
Me: Ha! Yeah, Ian and I will be there in 20.

And so ensued a lovely few hours over a glass of wine with Hobbes, whom I have not seen in almost one year. His dreads are almost a foot longer, I think, then I remember.

The Morning After (not the pill)

2010-11-26T06:50:00.000-08:00

Growing up in a household of seven people with no dishwasher meant that Thanksgiving night left not a dry or clean kitchen towel in the entire house. We baked and we baked and we cooked and we cooked. And, thanks to insistent parental admonishments, we cleaned while we cooked--periodically, every time a mess was made, every time a spilled happened, every time we finished a dish, we cleaned.

After dinner, we washed all the dishes almost immediately, taking it in turns to get all the forks and knives and plates clean for the round of desserts. The process was then repeated. We had it down. We had a schedule tacked to the fridge.

I should have made a schedule. I am now taking a break from washing glasses. Just the glasses! Of course, my family never had a Thanksgiving meal of 14, so...

Friendsgiving was a resounding success, at any rate. I've mentioned before that nearly everyone I know in this program is an avid cook, and no meal can better demonstrate that than yesterday's Thanksgiving feast. Turkey (by the way: always brine the turkey. Man!), gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potato souffle, The Best Pecan Pie Ever, my apple sausage stuffing, hashbrown casserole, homemade rolls, and more and more and more. Which is why today, I am eating only grapefruit and drinking only green tea in between my cleaning and cooking breaks.

I mean, I've gotta be ready to do this again in just over 24 hours. Thanksgiving, Round 2.

2010-11-25T13:41:00.001-08:00

Gobble.

(yes, it counts.)

Apples to Apples, Dust to Dust

2010-11-24T14:42:00.000-08:00

The best adjective to pair with the word wheat is "luscious" and when I think of the word "hot," I think "boy scouts."

Sometimes all you need is a round or two of Apples to Apples, a gin and tonic, and a pumpkin pie in the oven.

Six Hours and Counting

2010-11-23T09:37:00.000-08:00

Just six hours of a work/school combo and 400 words of a paper proposal separate me from a cup of tea, pajamas, a movie, and a wonderful start to a long Thanksgiving weekend.

Of course, Thanksgiving weekend will include copious amounts of baking, reading for school, 22 student papers, paper preparation, and guest entertainment, but at least I can do it all while wearing slippers and an apron.

At least there's that.

White Winter Hymnal

2010-11-22T08:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was spent in Portsmouth with Emma, Alice, and Ollie, "popping into shops" and wandering from coffee shop to restaurant to coffee shop, trying to stay warm by coveting the sweaters in windows.

Alice and I made the mistake of wearing tights and dresses, and we realized that the weather has made its decision. It's only been the past week, but it is now way, way too cold to wander around in anything less than an eskimo parka.

From Facebook and a lovely cell phone picture of Kili all bundled up, I've gathered that it is snowing back home. I can just see Bellingham covered in snow, that yellowish glow that lights up the sky at night and allows drunk college students to sled late into the night. I can see Red Square as it is when the snow starts to fall, before anyone else is outside and there's only your own footprints leading into the middle of the fountain. I can see Ian's parents' cars at the bottom of their treacherous driveway, anticipating the sheet of ice that will cover it in the next few days. I can see Clementine's little footprints on the balcony the first time she ever saw snow, hesitant and leading to her hiding place under Seamus's old silver chair.

I thought that in moving to New England I would be moving somewhere where snow is more common, but we haven't gotten a flake yet this season, despite it being below freezing come nightfall. I suppose I shouldn't be too jealous. I suppose I shouldn't complain. Once it starts snowing here, it won't stop. We'll have cold and snow for months and months, and it will melt down to those awful snowbanks on the sides of the road that are dirty and solid packed ice.

But I've always held that if it's going to be this cold anyway, it might as well snow. If I'm walking around in boots and heavy coats, I at least want it to be a damn winter wonderland outside, otherwise I'm just freezing cold for no good reason.

Even the Moon is Bigger in America

2010-11-21T15:27:00.001-08:00

The posts for the next few days might be lacking. I'm too busy sorting out the difference between Wotsits and Cheez-it, and explaining what Cracker Jack is.

On a side note, America really is big. Even the moon.

Twofer

2010-11-20T06:39:00.000-08:00

Then again, sometimes five minutes after you post a slightly melancholic post about your morning, you find the most intelligent and eloquent idea for your paper ever.

It is going to be a great week.

Some Days...

2010-11-20T06:26:00.000-08:00

Some days it takes two tries to poach an egg.

It's been a "I've just cleaned my house, and mopped my floors, and Clementine just walked all over the clean surfaces of tables and tea carts with her wet cat litter paws" kind of morning. A "I'm tired and I know I only have a few hours in which to do research but I can't motivate myself to crack one more book" kind of morning.

But my latte turned out beautifully, the sun is shining, and in a few hours, I am driving south to Boston to have lunch with my sister and pick up Emma from the airport--Emma, whom I have not seen in 18 months. It's going to be a good week.

Harry Potter Harry Potter Harry Potter

2010-11-19T23:32:00.000-08:00

MAN! I'm too sad about Dobby and too excited about the insanity of Bellatrix Lestrange a la Helena Bonham Carter to say anything worthwhile.

Can't wait for the second go-round.

On Writing...Wait, did I just plagiarize Stephen King?

2010-11-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went to Ballard's, a bar in Durham, after work, to meet Ian and another MFA student and study. What? Sometimes I need a Bloody Mary when I plan class.

When Ian and Caro had left to go teach their 401 classes (yes, they both had just planned them the hour beforehand. Over wine and a beer), I stayed behind to linger over Edith Wharton's Twilight Sleep (what I like about 1920s literature is the way the authors all just stopped their stories. Not ended. Just stopped.)

I had been there about an hour when the novel writing class, composed of MFA fiction writers and Andrew, a poet, came in, together with their professor, their bookbags, and assorted papers.

They then proceeded to take over my table (the large wooden one near the fireplace) and have class.

It was a very interesting experience for me, seeing a workshop in the MFA program. I've never really seen what the MFAers do in their classes, nor read much of what they write. Gradually, and inevitably, my interest turned to envy. AND THEN MY ENVY TURNED TO HATE. Okay not really. Mostly just envy.

They had class in a bar! And had beers! And fun! And all class was was giving the writer advice about how to make her story better, and asking her questions they thought needed clarification in her novel's structure!

What. The. Hell.

I've never had class in a bar. I've never had a beer in class. Not that I'd want to, but a glass of wine might be nice.

You know what else might be nice? Writing a story--or a creative non-fiction essay, maybe?--for class every other week, instead of teaching myself phenomenology and cranking out a 20 page paper in two weeks.

I have degree envy.

What I'm Looking Forward to

2010-11-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

Because I am generally in a tizzy these days about time and schedules and how much I have to do in terms of schoolwork before December 18th, I thought it would do me well to make a list of the things that I am looking forward to in the next few weeks. Because, not only will this remind me that I am doing this for a reason, and that I am going to have so much fun soon, but also I just really love making lists.

one. Emma, a Englishwoman (haha) I met in France, is coming to visit this Saturday with her boyfriend.

two. Thanksgiving is next week, which means delicious food, wonderful company, and also time with Bailey the dog.

three. Harry Potter comes out this Friday.

four. I get to spend Christmas with Scarlet and Carl and Bailey the dog, and we are going skiing in Vermont. Which sounds so holiday-y.

five. Immediately after Christmas, I am so so grateful to be able to go back to Seattle, to spend two weeks amongst friends & family I didn't think I'd be able to see.

six. An opportunity to work on my thesis, which may or may not include Hemingway, generational make-ups, Madonna, and Lady Gaga. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom.

seven. New Years Eve with The Nest! We've never done that!

eight. A brief trip to the South, to visit Andrew. The South! I've never been there.

nine. A roadtrip from Tennessee to New Hampshire.

and ten. Snow and Christmas and baking and love and giving and cooking and feeling cozy.

I feel so, so much better. Y'all should try this. You have no idea.

Very Smart and Not Trite

2010-11-16T13:13:00.000-08:00

Today, as I was working on a proposal for one of my papers, I sent a portion of it to Kili, and told her I was having issues because I felt it was trite.

And, to be honest, when one is writing about identity, one is apt to feel trite. Who am I? is perhaps one of the most cliche questions that can be asked.

When I sent her the revised version, however, she let me know that it was better, "very smart and not trite." And I decided that if I ever start an academic blog, it will be called "Very Smart and Note Trite" with a subtitle of "or at least trying to be." I think it's pretty apt, and what I'd like to be known for in my academics.

At the very least, I have a framework for how I'd like to approach my academics as a whole, which is more than I can say for my two papers I have to write before mid-December. That's forty pages. And who knows how many I have to read before then.

What I am struggling with right now is a lack of framework. This whole semester, I've been reading wonderful books and poems, and thinking hard about them. But what I haven't been doing is understanding these texts in terms of any theoretical framework.

Which is why I've spent the last few days holed up trying to understand what phenomenology is and how eidetic singularities and transcendent philosophy have anything at all to do with one another. Trying to figure out what those words even mean is already hard enough.

This being my first Masters degree (unlike Ian's second), I am unsure if this is because my program is lacking, or if I myself am lacking the initiative to go out and read Deleuze and Guattari on my own (here's looking at you, Chels).

Either way, I've got to get a chokehold on Heidegger before I can focus on being very smart and not at all trite.

Some Postman is Groovin'

2010-11-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Heather,

I promise I will start an email to you tomorrow. I can't promise I will finish it, but I generally don't like leaving things unfinished for too long, so you can expect it shortly.

At the moment, I am gulping down soup, writing a blog post that shouldn't really count as part of my NaBloPoMo, as it is more of a personal letter, and tapping away at the keys furiously so that I can get back to piecing together an understanding of Phenomenology and Heidegger on my own (more about that issue to come, I'd wager). I've got two paper proposals and bibliographies to write in the next 10 days (one of which I haven't even begun to think about), 22 student papers sitting on my desk to grade, a class to plan for this Wednesday and Friday, and two out-of-country guests coming this Saturday for a ten day visit.

Needless to say, I'm swamped. But I'm making lists and ticking things off as quickly as possible. I've owed you an email for over two months now. And Tuesday, I promise that on Tuesday I will write one for you.

Love,

Ashley

Making Martha Proud

2010-11-14T06:23:00.000-08:00

This year, I am hosting the Friendsgiving in NH, for those of us who live too far away from home to fly back for just a few days. Last year's was just a handful of us, but between the new MFA students and my English friends coming to visit, I think we're going to have a houseful.

While I may delight in cooking elaborate meals, I am a little nervous about Thanksgiving. I've never roasted a turkey before (do I brine it?! deep-fry it?! stuff it or cook the stuffing outside of it?!), nor have I had to coordinate such a large meal for so many people.

So I have, of course, made a spreadsheet, including invitees, the dish they are bringing, the drinks they are bringing, and the corresponding poundage of turkey I'll be required to provide.

Next thing you know I'll be fussing over place settings and buying napkin rings (I really want napkin rings).

Reflections of a Time-Starved Grad Student

2010-11-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine in the Masters in Linguistics program here at UNH remarked recently that graduate school represents an incredibly unique and strange period in a person's life, because there is literally always something you could be doing.

This is not an exaggeration. No matter when in the semester, what time of day or day of the week--even on vacations, too--there is something I could, or even should, be doing that is school-related. I should be doing work right now. This very second.

Even the times when I am on top of my schoolwork, have all my papers graded, and have finished the week's readings, I should be doing research for my final papers, or preparing for my thesis in some way. I shouldn't be wandering the kitchen section of Goodwill, or perusing page after page on various fashion and kitchen blogs.

The thing is, though, we all need a little down time. I have recently spoken with two of my freshmen who are feeling overwhelmed with their coursework. Both complained that there just isn't enough time, that they feel completely cut off from their friends, and that they still aren't managing to get all of their work done.

My advice? Stop doing your homework. Make time to be social, to forget about your schoolwork for a few hours. And then, of course, get back into your damn dorm room and finish that response paper you owe me.

On that note, I'm off to have dinner with a friend. I need a break.

What I like about routine

2010-11-12T23:34:00.000-08:00

What I like about routine is that once you start doing something everyday, it starts to become weird if you don't do it. Your body itches and you can feel your feet wondering when you haven't run, or your brain is constantly trying to figure out something to put on your blog.

It never really gets any easier, but it does become necessary.

War Stories

2010-11-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

My grandfather was in World War II. He told us that he never killed anyone, and I think he was in the Aleutian Islands during the majority of the actual action in Europe.

I remember once, though, a story he told us from when he was driving trucks in Europe--I believe it was either Germany or France, and it must have been after things had quieted down a bit, at least in that part of the world.

They used to warm cans of food up on the engines of the trucks as they drove around, delivering supplies or what have you. Once, when they were driving around, they decided to heat up some food on the engine, as usual. Probably it was a can of beans.

This time, though, they forgot about it, and left it on the engine. Of course, it kept getting hotter and hotter, until eventually it exploded, bursting and ricocheting noise and beans all over the inside of the truck.

It being wartime, an explosion of any kind was probably terrifying, but once they found out that it was beans and not enemy fire, I'd wager they had a good laugh about it, while hosing down the inside of the truck's engine.

My grandpa used to wear a hat that said WWII Vet on it. It was dark blue and had gold lettering and I am proud of him.

Nice Things to Yell at Strangers

2010-11-10T06:39:00.000-08:00

This summer, I was walking down Central Ave in Dover with Andrew, and a twenty-something man leaned out of his car window to yell something at us.

Ahem.

I should say, the man leaned out of his car window to yell something at Andrew, because what came out of his mouth was, "Your girlfriend is very beautiful!"

This was funny on multiple levels. It also ranks as the nicest catcall I have ever received.

Recently, I was driving in the car with Andrew and another twenty-something walked in front of us. Something about him was incredibly attractive, and we spent a few moments detailing exactly what we liked about him, from his jacket to his gait to the bag he was carrying. As we were driving away, Andrew yelled, "Hey! Hey! I like your deal!" and although the window was up and the fashionable young man probably heard nothing, we got to thinking about compliments from strangers.

There are creepy compliments from strangers, of course. Kili often gets, "I like your hair. You look exotic. Where are you from?" which is not only creepy but vaguely offensive. But what Andrew and I are interested in are the nice things that you can yell at strangers, the things that people will remember from months afterward because they were genuine and sincere, or sometimes because they were more polite than usual catcalls are.

Here's our plan:

Step 1. Start tumblr
Step 2. Write down nice things to yell at strangers
Step 3. PROFIT!

Confessions of a Masochistic English Major

2010-11-09T11:02:00.000-08:00

One of my biggest secrets is what happens to me when I go to libraries or bookstores. I'll share it with you today because I'm feeling open, and also because it just happened to me and I'm too tired now to think of anything else to blog about.

The thing is, I overheat. I hyperventilate, and get faint, and out of breath, and sweaty, and I almost pass out. And I'm an English major. I have to go to the library or a bookstore fairly often. I mean, it's required. And nearly every single time, I leave feeling weak and exhausted from the ordeal.

Don't get me wrong, I like books. I love them. If I could curl up on top of a pile of books or sit on a thrones of books like the women from these photos, I totally would. It's not like being around books gives me hives or anything.

Actually, it's quite the opposite. I think that being around literally thousands of books I can't read and won't have time to ever read kind of stresses me out. And by kind of, I mean to the point where I feel flustered and faint and lightheaded.

It also might have something to do with the fact that I leave my library visits until the last minute, and end up hauling fifty pounds of books around in bags, while I stoop, rifle through the stacks, and walk endlessly back and forth trying to locate PS561.T78 2004.

You are all a lost generation.

2010-11-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

I have been reading a lot of literature from the post World War I era recently--Wharton, Cather, Hemingway, and I'll be reading a Fitzgerald book soon as well.

The Sun Also Rises is set (so far) in Paris, and in Willa Cather's The Professor's House, the City of Lights maintains a shadowy background presence throughout the entire book. I miss Paris. And though I couldn't ever afford (or fit into) the Closerie des Lilas while I was in Paris, I still felt a vague and nostalgic longing for those ex-pats that spent their days together drinking whiskey and soda, wandering from bistro to bistro having jolly times, and writing passionately and haphazardly as the fancy struck them.

I whined to someone recently about how I wanted to be a part of that lost generation, spending my days in Paris amongst Americans who didn't want to be in America, and how it is a damnable sin that I was born too late, and decidedly in the wrong sort of society. I might not be able to smoke a cigarette (though, I suppose, if one never tries one never knows) but I can ruddy well handle my gin. Hemingway would have to like me on principle, I think.

The Ocean Breathes Salty, Revisited

2010-11-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to the beach with Andrew, who writes poems, and watched the waves from inside his car.

It was cold, and grey, because it is almost winter, and the waves were crashing and violent and I wanted to be inside the ocean and be a part of it.

I had no idea that winter tides had so much more force and ferocity than summer tides, and I stared for a long while, mesmerized at the way the water crashed up on the rocks.

There were a handful of surfers out there, tumbling in the waves, little black specks bobbing up and down and occasionally popping up to ride the crest of a waves before it spread out too thin on the beach.

They looked so cold, and I thought about how the only time I have ever been comfortable enough in the frigid Atlantic Ocean to stay in it for longer than an invigoration three minutes was when the temperatures were in the 90s the first week of school this past September. I also thought about that sweet movie Point Break.

To Patrick Mahoney, on Your Birthday

2010-11-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

Almost two weeks ago, a new MFA student who entered the poetry program this fall was struck by a car on a nighttime bike ride to his home on the coast of New Hampshire. He has since been in the hospital in a coma.

Today, he is 27 years old. Today, he should be attending a party being held in his honor (1/3 of it, I suppose, since we have a few birthdays around this time of year), and showing us some Irish dance steps, but he has not made it out of the ICU.

He has many more students to teach, many more poems to write, and a closetful (I'm assuming) of wonderful knits that I am looking forward to seeing this winter.

Just keep wiggling your big toe, Patrick.

Eavesdropping

2010-11-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a conversation that I overheard on the third floor of Kingsbury Hall (which houses all of the engineering departments, as well as the mathematics departments), between two college boys playing ping pong ball:

Deep Thinker One: Do you think there is a rational explanation for why people do evil things?

Deep Thinker Two: A rational explanation? Because it's probable.

I just thought that was some food for thought. What a life it must be, to view the world rationally based on what you are studying in college. Mostly my college studies just made the world seem that much more irrational.

Let's Be Positive

2010-11-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

I realize, in looking at my past two blog posts, that they have been rather...negative, shall we say? And, it being the month of November, which is not only

1. National Blog Posting Month
2. National Pomegranate Month
and
3. National Novel Writing Month

but also the month of Thanksgiving, I thought I needed to change things up. It is a time, of course, for being thankful and for being positive and loving instead of complaining about highlighters and herstories.

(As an interesting sidenote, in ninth grade I wrote a column for the school newspaper called "Rita's Rants & Raves." The nom de plume was to protect the innocent. I mostly just complained a lot, and once tried to write a "rave" to balance things out. It was a total and utter failure.)

A few people I know are updating their facebook statuses daily with something new they are thankful for each day, and while I refuse to spend all of NaBloPoMo listing things like "pumpkins," "kitchen blogs," and "hours under blankets watching movies," I will spend today telling you why I am most anxious to return home, and also why I am thankful for a home to return home to.

This morning before leaving for work, I put together this, which I intend to pair with this and some incredibly hard to come by--in New Hampshire anyway--corn tortillas. I am heading home after a long 8 hour day combination of school and class and shuttling back in forth with a delicious meal, and I will share it with a friend of mine, while I tutor him in French for his upcoming language exam. We will also drink a bottle of Nick Cage's uncle's wine, which was on sale at Hannaford yesterday, and it will be lovely.

And that, my friends, is what a wonderful day looks like. I might dread the remaining seven hours I have left on campus, but it will make walking into an apartment full of delicious ropa vieja even more satisfying, no?

Let Me Tell You a Little (Her)Story

2010-11-03T15:49:00.000-07:00

Today, while doing the reading for my British poetry class, I was reading an essay by Meena Alexander, titled "The Poetics of Dislocation." I found the work to be fascinating, and intend on using it for my final paper for the course, but I was irked when I came across this sentence (And, as it occurred rather early on in the essay, I am actually quite surprised that I continued to read it...) :

"The new American poet thinks in many tongues, all of which flow into the English she uses: a language that blossoms for her."

What I dislike about this sentence, of course, is the pronouns "she" and "her" used in a general, impersonal fashion. To put it quite simply, that is just not how things are done, and it looks wrong. It feels wrong. My whole body jolts when I come across it in print. Now, I am a feminist. Let me make that clear. I do what I want. What infuriates me about such a usage is that language as a space is gendered in through the use of "she" or "her," and I adamantly argue that the use of the masculine pronoun is non-gendered in that context. Not only is it contrary to the forms and conventions of language to use the feminine pronoun in such as context, but I find it specifically sexist when one does so.

Because what lies implicitly in asserting the femininity of the non-gendered pronoun is that one agrees that language is a traditionally masculine space. I do not feel the need to claim a feminine space with language, but what I do feel the need to do is reclaim that space as gender neutral. Because it is.

Language isn't a masculine space and women don't need to make a space for themselves within it. The space is already there, because it is gender neutral. I suppose that a large part of my problem with such a usage of the feminine pronoun is that when women change the conventions of language to make it "woman's space" they look, to put it frankly, like fools. It represents a rebellion against conventional language in a way that signals nothing more than a perverse and onerous stubbornness. And I say that, not because it is stubborn for women to assert themselves, but because there is no reason to assert a feminine space in an already non-gendered one.

And that is just...superfluous. And ignorant. And self-defeating, as well.

Let's assume, for a moment, that the general "he" also signifies a white person, in addition to a male, and that language is considered a white masculine space

Do we then say "The new American poet thinks in many tongues, all of which flow into the English she, the Black woman, uses: a language that blossoms for her, a Black woman" ?

My point is that merely because the arenas of literature and thought have traditionally been male (and white, for that matter. Because let's be honest here.) does not mean that language as a rhetorical space is one that is masculine, or is one that needs to be reclaimed by the female voice. Herstory sounds just as stupid as placing the modifier "African-American" before each appearance of the word "person," in order to create a racially neutral space within a language.