I must be overcompensating

Yesterday someone said "You obviously love this book," when in fact I thought it was interesting but seriously flawed, to the extent that I can judge having only barely skimmed the second half. Today after I gave a presentation someone said "This project must have been fun," when actually it was a total drag.

My pilates teacher says it gets harder as you get better at it. Today I thought I was gonna die if I had to "curl up and look at my powerhouse" one more time. (But I didn't.)

What a good blogger! You're a good, good blogger!

Obviously I have been talking to the poodles for too long.

Having been tagged weeks ago to reveal five little known facts about myself, I have decided to reveal them one at a time, as I think of them. Here's fact #1:

I almost always read the Sunday New York Times on Saturday. The magazine, my primo destination, is usually online by about 8:00 pm west coast time, and Josh won't be surprised to learn that the first part of the magazine I read is the Ethicist column, even though I think Randy Cohen's kind of a lightweight. Even more extreme, I usually read the Sunday Styles on Friday (though not the wedding announcements, because they don't post until Saturday), and also the book review.

There. Now you know.

How can you sleep when the poodles are romping?

Adventures in dog-sitting: walking around the house it's like I have two shadows, a large gray one and then a small black one, the shadow of a shadow. Last night when I arrived it was dark and strange and I didn't know what they needed or wanted. But they are very well-trained, intelligent dogs and after repeated inquiries we finally had the following conversation:

Me: Are you sure you guys don't want to go out?
Them: Incredibly excited yipping, jumping, running toward the door.

Okay then! The large gray one is more outgoing, but the smaller black one is definitely the brains of the operation. Like most mental wizards, he really likes to play fetch. This morning I taught him something, which was that I wouldn't throw his slobbery red plush bowtie unless he put it up on the deck where I was standing. I just did it so I could see him learning--I'm such a freak for education.

It was gorgeous here today, a toothy line of snow-capped mountains suddenly visible in every direction. I had a good day which included playing the guitar with two other Sarahs and a conversation with someone wiser than myself about how to respond when someone talks sincerely about "the revolution" (a dilemma I face at least weekly here).

I've also been reading about "the Wolves" (no one else resists, why should I?) and their publishing business. They didn't (at least officially) start out with grand ambitions; the press was a hobby and they were publishing books by their friends, mostly for a customer base of their friends. Right now this seems right on to me. I want to publish my friends too, and I'm thinking, before the original birdwatchers all disband and it fades to just a fond dream . . . The Owl of Palo Verde anyone?

My Electrolytes

I have a sports medicine appointment on Monday, and in anticipation of being forbidden to run any more I ran really fast for a really long time (for me) today, and then felt so sick I had to repair to my bed with a bottle of Gatorade. Things are much better now and I'm getting ready to dog-sit for Henhen's poodle cousins.

Today I was thinking about and wanting to share the best overheard cell phone conversation ever. I think about it every time I call someone else with my name. It was overheard by Emily while we were drivng up to Seattle, at a roadside attraction in olive country, and went something like this: "Judy, this is Judy. Do you like olives?"

Can you tell I am trying to model good blog behavior here? Just keep posting . . .

Tomorrow

How can you not love a man, in this case Samuel Johnson, who writes this in his diary?

To morrow:

Rise as early as I can
Put books in order
Scheme life

This was one of the epigraphs to my undergraduate thesis. I'd like it to be an epigraph to my whole life and work. I was going to write a post about funny, unintentionally mis-matched and revealing to-do lists of my own, but really Sammy J says it best.

I am large, I contain multitudes

I haven't posted in a week, and yet here I am in the library with hardly a thought in my head. Let's see.

I had a political argument this morning, the kind you can only have with a seventeen-year-old who has the makings of a good little proto-liberal, but who is also ornery as a goat and will argue whatever he thinks is the opposite of your position. It was great, and I realized that it was the first time in years I had had a substantive discussion about politics where the end point wasn't a foregone conclusion. All my peers are disillusioned and our disagreements are minor and generally concern distributing blame or creating hierarchies of impossible dreams. My interaction with people I disagree with, on the other hand, usually involves yelling at the car radio. It's a rare, rare thing to talk to someone whose mind is actually not made up, and it's especially fun if that person is quick on his feet and likes to think. (My student had, in fact, just told me that his favorite movie is "What the Bleep Do We Know," which sounds pretty intellectual, though it was supposed to be terrible, right?) He was pretty good, and I had to work to keep demolishing the idea that it was a good idea to go to war in Iraq.

Then I went to my own seminar, and vehemently argued that we shouldn't use teaching to advance our political agendas. Which is absolutely true.

Now I'm going to pick up some books about Leonard and Virginia Woolf's careers as publishers, and then go to the gym and decide whether to believe the New York Times when it says it's okay to run on a sore ligament.

California friends, I will see you one week from today!

Still okay!

First of all, good news on the academic front--I'm developing an intense adoration for one of my professors. I loved one of my professors last quarter too, and I think that class had a stealthy influence that will stay with me for a long time, but it wasn't a blow-your-mind, oh-this-is-what-I-could-aspire-to-be! kind of experience, which this might be. When I really gave her my heart was when she said "You should all--maybe not now, but someday--think about writing for a larger audience, because that's very important," and the florescent light started buzzing "Hallelujah."

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Earlier today I started Julius Caesar with my high school student. I'm really excited to teach Shakespeare, although I haven't read this particular play. My plan is that we will read it together, according to the following formula: Elizabethan language=no lesson planning for a month. Brilliant, huh? Thank you, intervening centuries.

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Soon I'm going to a meeting of my writing group. It's great--all we do is sit there and write, in this really cute local bookstore and cafe.

At these meetings, I've been working on an essay that deals among other things with the topic of rational and irrational fears, which is especially interesting to me as I've been readjusting to living in my apartment post-break-in. What makes a fear "rational"? A fear becomes more justified, but not necessarily less of a problem, when the feared event becomes more likely. The thing that is really fascinating me about this right now is that whatever the details, the basic possibilities that underlie fear--you will suffer, you will lose everything, you will die--are all in fact absolute certainties. If fear becomes "rational" when the feared outcome is likely, then constant abject terror is absolutely rational. And yet, in the course of things I spend much more time sleepy or irritable or gleeful than I do afraid.

Thanks

so much if you commented or called or emailed. I am okay--tired, but not too badly, because it snowed and Pilates was cancelled. Also, last night, as Caliban and I were lying in bed trying not to freak out, we had a realization that made us feel much safer. First of all, the whole story of what happened: I had accidentally left a window unlocked. When I heard a noise coming from it at around 2:30 in the morning, I was in my bathroom somewhat dreamily doing a crossword puzzle (an unusually tough Thursday, though I've since conquered it). I heard the noise and came out, saying something like "Hey, what's going on"? and then heard someone run away and discovered the window was about 8 inches open. That all happened very quickly. Anyway, as Caliban and I were lying in bed, we started thinking about how only a person shaped like a boa constrictor would have been able to fit through that window--it's little to begin with, and the microwave covers half of it. Then we remembered that my old Ipod had been lying on top of the microwave--so probably the thief was planning to reach in and try to get it, not to come in himself (had he succeeded, he would have discovered that all Old Poddy can do is make a sad whirring noise and then turn off in defeat, but anyway). It's still creepy as hell that someone was in my little alley looking in my window in a predatory spirit, but the kind of burglar who wants to make a surgical strike is the kind of burglar I want in my neighborhood, if I have to have one.

Freaking Out

Someone tried to break into my apartment about an hour ago, while I was awake and the lights were all on. What kind of psycho tries to break into an apartment where someone is clearly home and awake!!?? What if that's the kind of psycho who comes back? The policeman who came to inspect things said I was "relatively" safe, but it's kind of hard to imagine going to sleep. My windows are at ground level; this neighborhood is not great; I'm totally alone and my sense of being invisible and anonymous, which always makes me feel safe, is obviously not accurate tonight. Shit. I'm trying not to be melodramatic, but I'm kind of freaked. The lights make it a fishbowl in here, but I don't want to turn them off. Why do these things always happen when no one is awake to call?

Okay, rationality says, freaking out accomplishes nothing. Going about as usual + panic is not any more useful than going about as usual without panic. Except . . . if I hadn't been awake and heard him and yelled at him, the burglar would have come in. He would have taken my stuff, but he probably wouldn't have hurt me. But still. It doesn't make me want to go to sleep. It would be so easy for someone to break the window right over my bed. It's at knee level--you could look through the blinds and see me lying there, and then you could just kick it in.

I'm freaking myself out. I will be very tired for the first day of my new pilates class.

Updates

Since it was so quiet, my co-tutor and I unilaterally decided to pack it in 20 minutes early. We got all bundled up (it's 30 degrees here, and feels like 23), and then about 10 feet outside of the building, a student passed us as she ran inside, clutching a single sheet of paper. There are lots of tutoring services in the building, but our students have a certain look. My co-tutor and I looked at each other and then, with incredible dedication, I took one for the team, turned around, and ended up staying late on the quietest night of the year.

The student turned out to be a Japanese ESL student writing a paper analyzing the way The Seven Samuri demonstrates various primate behaviors, such as bonding, dominance, and locomotion (we had a long discussion about the sentence "Needless to say, the humans were bipedal.")

By the way, the Thai chicken soup is delicious, and close to how it would taste in a resturant except I went easy on the coconut milk, not being a rabid fan of it. I've been further compromising the authenticity of the soup by adding frozen peas, just because I can't resist. I'm eating a bowl of it right now and I'm so happy.

Thanks to Dr. King, no one's writing seems to need improvement tonight

It's been the quietest night ever at the tutoring center where I work, and oddly, even though I'm getting paid to sit here and blog, and for most of the evening I was getting paid to sit here and IM with Equinoctial, I still wish the powers that be would close up early and send us home.

That's probably mostly because I'm hungry; I almost always go to the gym before my shift starts at 7, and I almost never leave enough time to get dinner. As usual, today I don't even have enough cash to use the vending machines; when leaving the gym four hours ago, I decadently bought an ice cream sandwich, but the little pusher-thing didn't advance far enough and I had to put in my last dollar to get the sandwich out. It was delicious, though . . . it had coffee ice cream and little almond shards in it.

Speaking of the gym, I have a sports injury! My right iliotibial band (the tendon that runs down the side of your leg between your hip and your knee) is wacked-out somehow and it's been hurting for months. Oddly, this makes me feel like I've really arrived as an athlete (even though the problem was probably caused by my poor running form).

The last student who came in said the number one thing a teacher likes to hear: "I like that you make me think." (And I thought, well, good, cause it looked like you weren't liking it at all.)

Let me just say this and get it over with:

Some freaky weather we're having this year in Seattle!

Since external surroundings are important to me, and I'm also not great at small talk and tend to go for the easy topics, I have had the conversation about the weather approximately ten thousand times now. I had it quite a bit over break ("How's Seattle?" "Oh, you know, rain of toads") and now I'm having it here, though I also sometimes spice things up by moving it into the meta conversation about how everyone is talking about nothing but the weather.

All that to say, it's snowing right now and I'm super cozy, making Thai chicken soup (without a recipe, so if it turns out well I'm inducting myself into the Improvisitory Cooks of America), doing a bit of my reading here and there, and puttering around my warm, delightful apartment.

I will be sad to leave it next year, though none of the possible scenarios involve keeping it (except the one where I win the lottery). If (and everyone I talked to over break knows this is a real if) I survive to fight another year in this program, one of the bright spots would be getting a house with a couple of other grad students. In the context of a discussion about finding a fourth roommate in sync with his values, one of the group told me about quitting his job at a golf course earlier this fall. On his last day, he said he was getting stressed about mowing perfectly, and then he realized just how he felt about the whole golf culture and started mowing unevenly, singing a little song that went "Class enemies, class enemies, class enemies!" I'm choosing to find this funny and endearing.

What did I learn in grad school?

I think the most important skill, the one I'm called upon to use most frequently and the one I struggle most with, is projecting interested neutrality while feeling so frustrated I'd like to beat the seminar table with my fists.

I dropped the one class I mentioned a few posts back, and found out today that the professor scornfully told the class that "someone dropped because she thought she already knew how to read poetry." This is insulting on so many levels . . . for instance, 1) That's far from what I said in my very carefully worded email, and 2) Why would it have been so bad for me to say I know how to read poetry? It's a lifelong process, and all that, but I don't see why you should have to pretend you're a beginner if you're not.

Meanwhile, I sat through class #2 today also wishing I could drop it. It has been consistently totally soporific. Someone would pose an interesting question, and then the professor would jump in and without even acknowledging the point lull us back to passivity by, for example, lecturing about primogeniture (which I distinctly remember learning about at about the same level of sophistication in 10th grade) for 15 minutes (that's 900 seconds, if you're counting each one).

I can't tell if I'm too hard to please or just unlucky this term.

Who dreams about pedagogy?

HenHen's tagging of me to share 5 "little-known facts" about myself has thrown me into a crisis. Maybe everything about me is little-known, even to myself! Or maybe I am completely transparent, unknowingly wearing all my secrets on my sleeve! Obviously, I think too much (but that's not a little-known fact).

Last night I had an odd nightmare. I was walking with my favorite professor from last quarter on the way for him to observe me teaching my class (though I don't actually have a class right now). He showed me how to whip my head around in a weird way, and then said, "Your class will think that's really funny."

I said, "I'm not the kind of teacher who does tricks."

He said, "Doesn't your class have any social interaction?"

I said, "The social interaction occurs in connection with learning. I have them do group work . . ."

He expressed extreme skepticism about this, and I felt very much not-among-friends. I have to say, though, that I'm kind of impressed with dream-me. She knew what to say and said it.

Extra Brainy

On the way to Day 1 of my second class today I realized I made a terrible mistake shortly after I woke up this morning: I took what I thought was a daytime decongestant for my cold, but it was actually Nyquil. Suddenly, my whole day made sense, but it was too late. I floated through class without incident on my medicine cloud, but if the cloud doesn't land soon, no pub for me.

Seminar most foul

I have never had such strong mixed feelings about the first day of a class; half the time I was thinking "I'm going to love this class!" and the other half "I have to drop this class!" I won't belabor the details, but three separate times, with three different people, minor or imagined disagreements about unimportant points led to angry confrontations with the professor. This dynamic makes a class both tense and boring, so I hope it won't continue. As often happens to me, I'm really excited about the books and may have trouble keeping my equanimity if we don't actually get to discuss them.

In a totally unexpected turn of events, I'm feeling excited again about books in general. I had a really nice break, but after two weeks of catching people up on my life, I am really sick of hearing myself talk. This state makes me eager to write (to try and say things better) and to shut the fuck up (a new family slogan!) entirely.