Reach out for the sunrise

Whew.  It's Friday and I'm exhausted.  Spent.  Tapped.  Sapped.  Pooped.  Tired.  Sleepy.  Groggy.  Coffee only mitigates this somewhat.  

Yesterday's meeting with the profs was strangely out of body for me.  I went in with my feathers ruffled and ready for a fight, but what I ended up with was something quite positive, if not not utterly confusing.  The person I anticipated problems with was reasonably helpful and backed off quickly from the salty stance she held the day before; among us we reshaped my project into something cool and original, and if I pull it off it should launch me into a whole new status as a writer (ie, it's completely publishable scholarly work that eschews all references to destabilized identities and paradigmatic or epistemological shifts).  A bit of shame overcomes me as I think about my gross overreaction leading up to this meeting that was based on my anxiety and previous graduate school trauma.  This morning, however, that too is mitigated by coffee and a slight inkling that I may be getting sick.  Perhaps I didn't handle the conflict well, but it was there, and I don't know that I necessarily overreacted.  The meeting yesterday went better than I could have asked for and my project has a green light; however, I'm still skeptical about working with her in the long run because I know that more conflict is coming.  My advisor tells me that this is simply a compliment of sorts, because it means that she's taking me seriously and shows that she is treating me like a scholar and not a student.  I hadn't thought of it this way, of course, but he's right.  What do I do with students who seem hopeless as writers?  I give them minimal commentary, correct their grammar, and move on; there is generally no point in engaging someone who can't engage in this way.  That's not cruel; it's self-preservation.  Students who have real promise and talent, on the other hand, I never stop criticizing and arguing with because I do want to engage them, make them better, help them to find voices.  I give myself carpal tunnel writing on their work.  I give them harsher grades because I want them to keep trying harder.  I am not entirely convinced that this woman is quite so ambitious in her aims at engaging me, but I'm willing for the moment to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I am also grateful to have a solid advisor who is not too much older than I am and yet has a great deal of experience.  After the meeting yesterday, he walked me down to Kaladi's for a cup of Earl Grey and a lovely pep talk.  He is the professor I most want to be like, and hope that to some degree I already am - the type who gets to know students, meets them on their own ground, and actually listens to what they say, and hears what it is they need.  I love that I can call this man on the phone in my momentary irrational rage, and he responds calmly with "I hear what you're saying; it's not unfounded.  But let's proceed from here, and if it goes badly, you know I'm on your side and we'll deal with it appropriately."  In a world of academics, I have to say that this kind of loyalty is typically only found among fellow students, if at all, and is the one thing I most need and he gets that.  As a student/scholar, I can definitely hold my own and in time figure out what I need, but it's really nice to have emotional support at this level.  It's what we all need and rarely get.

Gotta grade papers; there's a squirrelly but lovable group of argument/rhetoric students waiting with bated breath for the exact same kind of loving support and encouragement from me this afternoon.  I hope I don't disappoint.

Birthday Girl!

Yay.  In all of my own personal drama, I forgot to mention it is Ms. Natalie's very first birthday!  Sadly, she is sick and spent last night at the ER with a fever of over 104.  Poor baby.  

Happy B-day anyway, baby.

And I can't remember caring for an hour or so

After a night of fretful sleep, I do feel better today in that I stepped on the scale this morning to add insult to injury only to discover that I had lost about ten pounds in the past week or so.  Ten?  I actually weigh less right now than I have since before I had my daughter (about 14 years ago).  Wow.  Of course, I did recently start doing more serious workouts - I joined a strength training class and began pilates.  Apparently, both work significantly.  I can do pushups.  Even in junior high gym, when I was humiliated by being tested publicly on how many pushups and situps I could do in one minute, I couldn't do even one pushup properly.  Last night in my class, I did a series of 60.  That's right; SIXTY pushups.  Me.  Sixty.  Damn.  If only that wretched, lesbian gym teacher with the colossal ass could see me now.

In any case, though, today is the prospectus meeting and I have not been able to be in touch with anyone about it (e.g., my advisor and director of the project).  I took a long walk last night with Jamison, and even though he knows nothing directly about graduate school and generally avoids advising me under such an awareness, feels I should at least stand up for myself and make it my project.  I agree with this.  Now that I'm calm and basically spent on insults to the person vexing me at the moment, I can see that what needs to happen here is I need to stand my ground.  Unless I hear from someone this morning, I plan to go through with the meeting anyway.  I awoke with a fresh perspective that I am right and I like this project; I will "defend" myself against this woman and if she doesn't like what I have to say then she can choose not to be part of this gig.  One thing I'm good at is taking charge of chaos - I'm in the driver's seat here and my director is firmly by my side; everyone else is just along for the ride as I see it.  If I meet with resistance from the back seat passengers, I'll drop one of them off at the next stop.  The bottom line is that I'm not afraid of her and I know my shit and I brought in citations to prove it to her.  At least if there is conflict and there are two other witnesses present, I will have much more cause to drop her as a reader and get a new one.

I lost ten pounds.  Still in shock over this.  Oh, and two inches around my waist.  My skinny jeans are too big.  Yay.  I wonder what it says about me that this is what makes me feel happy and stable.  I can assure you it's not vanity, but I think it must have something more to do with succeeding at taking care of myself first and foremost.  I hope anyone reading this will take this last part to heart: losing weight is easily one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I'm in a PhD program.  It's constant work and 99% of what anyone on TV (even famous doctors on Oprah) tells you about weight loss may not be the case for you.  Most will say that if you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight at the rate of 3500 calories for every pound, but I do the math (hello? OCD anyone?) religiously, and I have to create a deficit of nearly twice that to lose one pound.  Maybe my metabolism is slower, maybe it's hormonal, or maybe it's because I'm getting older - who knows these things?  I can eat one piece of cake and gain three pounds on a scale.  Most will tell you to do 20 minutes of exercise each day, but unless I'm sweating my ass off with heavy weights and running for miles, nothing at all happens at that rate.  Now I'm babbling.  Can you tell there are papers to be graded?  

Wish me luck.  I have an S on my chest today; I'm bulletproof.  Pray the bitch doesn't have kryptonite in her pocket.

...to break some ice and throw some stones

One word: rage.  This is another classic diatribe - a rant of unreasonable proportions.  Read at your own risk; no feelings shall be spared here.  I told one of my students yesterday that graduate school is 10% about what you learn there in terms of academics and 90% about being able to survive bullshit politics and insufferable people whose insecurities are shadowed only by their enormous posturing and classic over-compensating megalomaniacal behaviors.  How sad is that?  The English department at DU (save a few kind - and I assume abused - souls) quite simply eats its young and I cannot comprehend this; aren't senior scholars supposed to be refilling the ranks of scholarship with exciting new people to keep the torch burning?  Instead many of them opt to sadistically inflict a bizarre hazing ritual upon those who follow them simply because they at one time felt they had to survive a similar type of situation; maybe these people are simply the bullied who now get to be bullies; maybe they're all just crazy fuckbags who need a life.  Who knows these things?

So I'm supposed to be meeting with my committee about my dissertation tomorrow, and I made this arrangement at least a month ago and have been planning for it.  I went the first round of my prospectus draft feeling like a total idiot because my director loved it and my second reader hated it.  My second reader is one of the fucking annoying people in this department who apparently believes that all things should be done to her satisfaction and in her way regardless of interest or intent or future plans or - whatever.  Sadly, she is one of many who are currently at the head of this department and make our collective grad student lives a constant exercise in futility and frustration.  I could recount the myriad wrongs and injustices of the last three years, but I simply don't have the time to compose a list that long.  In any case, I opted to revise the prospectus with this person in mind in order to pave the way for my release from this wretched sentence of doctoral years, and I even resorted to employing writing I had done for her previously that she loved and said would make a great project.  Now, she doesn't like it.  It's enough that I'm writing about violence and allegory in early modern drama, but now she thinks I should say something about Erasmus.  ERASMUS?!  And do you know why she thinks I should write about this?  Because SHE wrote about it and suggested I read HER article that she published about it - who does this?  What kind of egomaniac resorts to such shameless self-promotion to a student at my level? 

Furthermore and while I'm at it - fuck rhetoric and theory too.  Several people in this department are certain that all things are about rhetoric and that we should all be rhetoricians and that we should care about rhetorical theory and critical inquiry models and teaching students what enthymemes are - AUGH!  So really, what this $40,000 a year in tuition, private-school education is getting me is the same shit as any other public university might offer except that these folks are even more self-involved and pretentious.  I simply cannot wait to have my degree and a position somewhere at a university where I can promise to NEVER be this way.  Sorry if you're not following this anymore - DU folk will get it, others won't, but suffice it to say I'm sick to death of having to fight my way through shit.  I never asked for easy; I just want things to be doable.  I work hard, I teach well, and all I want is to do the work and graduate and go about my business of teaching and writing - what is so hard about that? 

Now, this second reader of mine - less than 24 hours before our meeting (which she calls a "defense" by the way) - she sends me notes on my draft so that I "can be prepared for her questions tomorrow" - like I'm defending myself against her or something because she's decided that my project isn't what she would have it be?  Because I haven't applied "rhetorical theory" or included Erasmus or read her fucking article?  Then I read the comments and they're ridiculously out of touch, don't make any sense, and frankly only prove that she has no idea what I'm writing about.  And oh, by the way, she's the only fucking one who doesn't!  I don't often brag, but what I'm writing about is cool shit even by academic standards and it's interesting and edgy and I have no intention whatsoever in fighting this woman all the way to her ultimate rejection of my dissertation because she sees the world differently.  AHHHHHHGGGG.  (<--That's a frustrated scream, by the way).  I should cancel the meeting tomorrow, but I don't know what I'll say, and if I change readers at this point I have to explain myself; once I explain myself, it's my master's program all over again.  Me, the boat-rocker, the rabble-rouser, the one who can't just shut her fucking mouth and go on about it.  Oh no.  I have to be the one who makes a statement, who says "you're a fucking jerk and I won't suffer you any longer" and then I can be black-listed at yet another Colorado university.  Not that I would have anything to do with DU once I'm out of here, but still.  I don't want to be that person.  But I have to stand up for myself and I won't let someone bully me.  That was third-grade me; 36-year-old me is pissed as shit and taking names.  If I have to draw a line in the sand, then by god I'll do it.

And this is me after a long walk and a hard gym workout; you should have heard me before that.

AHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH. 

Enterprises of great pitch and moment

It turns out that I've been staring at this blinking cursor for about ten minutes, trying to remember what it was I planned to write about this afternoon.  Whilst wandering about Super Target (which is, in fact, quite super), trying not to spend a million dollars on birthday presents for my soon-to-be one-year-old niece - she is already getting books, a Little People car, and some loud, ball-popping contraption that looks like a helluva lot of fun for her and a nightmare for her parents, but hey, we all must suffer in this regard - I had some great idea that I thought I'd expound upon in this space and alas, nothing.  Notice that this does not prevent me from posting anyway, wasting your time to read this far (given that you still are), and babbling ever onward, if only to prove that verbosity is underrated.

Random thought: I love apple butter.  

I'm watching the news, and I have to say that I am not a sports person - I hate football, but the rest of it us just of no particular interest to me.  No judgment, but damn!  Why do they interview these people?  What's-his-name Iverson from the Nuggets may play great basketball but he is a perfect moron, incapable of even the most basic coherent sentences.  And I love to listen to them talk strategy and such when they're playing a game.  It's not battle, not economic mergers, legislative acts, or even politics, but a game.  And clearly this fellow (and apparently many of his teammates) have skills to play said game, but that's it; it may be lucrative, but why do I have to suffer this fool on my evening news?

Okay.  That was my feeble attempt at something to say, and it wasn't even all that revelatory or particularly interesting.  Ah well.  I still sound better than that guy.

A loaded god complex

It's quarter past midnight on a Friday and not only am I awake, but I just returned home from (gasp!) a social outing.  Who says misanthropic agoraphobics can't improve with a pint or two of Guinness?

My rubbish day yesterday faded into a rubbish night; however, I am nothing if not resilient and one thing I really like about myself is the ability to pick up the pieces of myself and put them together in some kind of order no matter how shattered they are.  Days of crying almost always lead to subsequent days of productivity and optimism on my part; I wonder if that thing about purging your body of toxins in tears is real.  Kinda seems that way.  I got up this morning after some deep lunesta sleep (sans the creepy glowing butterfly), went to my pilates class, ran three miles, came back home and went to school, where I also had an alarmingly good day teaching.  I even opted not to kill my irritating student and instead jokingly berated him, and being a pretty smart kid, he got the not-so-subtle hint.  I swear I'd kick him out of the class, but he's a damn good writer and super smart, and I can't help recalling people I know who could never seem to make those two things line up with standardized expectations of achievement.  I get this, and I'd probably be the same way if I didn't have some overriding OCD perfectionistic isms which dictate that failure is never an option, even if I don't believe in the definition of success.  Don't ask me to explain it; therapists can't and there is no medication to cure it so there you go.  Why do any of us have to subscribe to psychological norms anyway?  Like there's such a thing.

Anyway, that isn't why I chose the title of this entry.  Tonight I went to hear Laura read her amazing, poetic fiction at Naropa in Boulder.  I normally eschew all such events with vigor, because the one thing I cannot stand most of all about readings of creative work is the complete claustrophobia I suffer in a room with so many enormous egos.  Some of these people - despite their quasi-Buddhist, Indian fabric, layered linen attire and airy, dreamy voices accompanied by vapid stares and overuse of words like "juxtaposition" - are really just talentless egomaniacs in disguised as gentle neo-hippies writing political and nature poetry.  I have no patience whatsoever for stories about going to India to have transcendental experiences and learning about osmosis in the process, or women who wear ridiculous sparkly purple tunics with butterfly belts and comically over-large plastic earrings that don't match with chips on their shoulders about "turf" and other such nonsense.  There were three other people reading tonight, and sadly, Laura went last.  While this proved beneficial for her to read her great work after we're all exhausted from the shite we had to sit through the previous 45 minutes, it was still largely painful.  The first woman is one of those breathy-speaking, seeming lesbian but not women who just desperately want to be loved but are so utterly neurotic that being just an audience member is frightening; standing in her immediate presence must be akin to the approach of Harry Potter's dementors - like all the joy has been sucked from the immediate area and everything grows cold.  She wrote a piece about fucking herself with tulips (which I still can't quite wrap my brain around in terms of physics, and don't want to but can't let it go), and the best line was her reference to her "cunt that smells of soup and bread" - it's one of those phrases that I will remember until my death bed as "what in the holy fuck is this woman talking about and, more to the point, why?"  Worse yet, she said the C-word like she was ashamed of it, was coerced into using it for effect and when it came time to utter the word into the microphone, she just wasn't sure.  Guh.  I hate the word myself, but dammit, if you're going to use it (and let's face it - there's only one reason to and that's shock value), then do it - say it without reservation and let the sharpness of the hard "c" resound in the ears of those listening.  This poor woman blathered on forever and the piece got weirder by the second to the point I stopped listening.  

The second woman (the aforementioned sparkly purple affair) had a piece that was perhaps more interesting, but so incredibly self-indulgent, and she read it in a complete monotone that made me want to slap her, particularly since she went up there with the kind of confidence of someone who's convinced she's a rock star writer.  Maybe she is, and I would probably have liked her writing if she had any skill to read it at all.  The poet was utterly forgettable; he was sweet and I'm sure he's a nice guy, but bland poems that 8th-graders can write with a good thesaurus and a google search are of no interest to me.  I'm not even sure anymore what constitutes good poetry.  I can't remember the last batch I've read from the last decade that didn't make me either scratch my head and say "huh?" or want to chuck it out the window.  Since when is a list of pseudo-existential questions a poem?  I admit that while I've written perhaps a few poems I would consider good, I am not a poet.  I don't have the flair or the continued patience it takes to - as Oscar Wilde says - "spend all morning putting a word in, and all afternoon taking it back out."  

As we sat at the bar afterward, having delightful conversation filled with irony and laughter, I thought about a few things that suddenly put my life back into some perspective: (1) I really love what I do - I love teaching and I love learning and I'm blessed that I get to go to work and talk about Elizabethan revenge tragedy and Boondock Saints in the same hour; (2) I would like to find time to write more because I'm good at that too.  I can't say that about a lot of things because certain insecurities scarcely permit the aforementioned affirmations, so this is huge.

One of the best moments, of course, was when Sparkly Purple Affair graced us with her presence at the Boulderado by coming upstairs to tell Laura that the bar was Sparkly's "turf" because (I'm sure) she felt like Queen of the Hill as the only one of the four from Boulder and Naropa.  Laura naturally told her that most of the people at our table had already graduated Naropa years before (and nearly every person at the table is now a professor... ahem and thank you very much Ms. Not-Yet-Obtained-Advanced-Degree), and I don't know what was said after that.  Sparkly did tell Laura that her work was like Chuck Palahniuk, which still makes me shake my head quizzically and confirms my suspicion that Sparkly may be able to put words together prettily or interestingly, but she's still an amateur.  Laura's work is nothing at all like Palahniuk's, and even though I adore his work, I would daresay Laura's fiction is more compelling and certainly more artistic than Palahniuk, Times Bestseller and big movie deals or not.  Take that, Sparkly.  

I started crying and I couldn't stop myself

It is as I feared; my anger hit a wall that required I either (a) start randomly killing people; or (b) decide to face down whatever demon is haunting me and hope I'm bigger and stronger.  I've been told that if you encounter a mountain lion whilst hiking, you should make yourself as big as possible and make loud noises so that the lion thinks you are a formidable enemy and decides it's not worth the trouble to kill you.  Frankly, the thought of facing down a mountain lion in such a situation is so utterly terrifying to me that I have to put it out of my mind in order to hike and pretend I don't sense things stalking me when we're in remote areas.  In any case, the emotional equivalent occurred this morning in my therapy session.  I feel funny writing about it, but writing is one of my power tools, so to speak, and one should always stick with one's strengths.  

I'm having a rubbish day that began all wrong and has continued to be off kilter.  I won't babble on about it now, but suffice it to say that I have been awake and angry and frustrated since 2:30 this morning, save the nap I got between 6 and 6:30 during which I had a disturbing and lengthy nightmare that has given me the uncanny heebie jeebies all day.  The moment I walked into my session I unloaded about everything and when she responded with "I see you're angry, but you also seem very sad" I - quite unexpectedly - burst into tears in the most embarrassing fashion.  I hate to cry in front of others unless I'm watching a movie; it makes me feel weak and silly and that it makes me feel that way when it shouldn't only creates more panic about weakness and stupidity.  You get the idea.  It sucks when your neuroses get the best of you, and it turns out that I don't have a single demon to face but a whole Pandora's box of them and I'm exhausted.  

Maybe I don't want to write about this as much as I thought I did.  Maybe later.  Maybe not.

Punk Rock Girl

Did I mention that I'm in love with my niece?  Yesterday afternoon, just before her parents returned home from their weekend break, she took her first set of consecutive steps.  Quite momentous, really, and the best part was that she wasn't even trying.  For a month or so now, she's been taking a single, hesitant step before realizing that she can crawl faster than a junebug.  She was handing me a framed picture when she just walked, six or so steps, over to me.  It was amazing; I was there when she came into the world, and I've been fortunate enough to be there when she took her first step in it...

Don't worry; she did it again just after they got home so they didn't miss the moment, per se, as they feared.  Can you imagine - the first time you leave your kid in almost a year and she does something major just before you get home?  That's a child for you; they make liars of us, only behave angelically for others, and forget to say 'thanks' for all that you do until, if you're lucky, much later in life, but somehow it's all worth it.

Funny little girl...

Here's my niece, Natalie.  I'm at my sister's house tonight babysitting whilst she and her husband are off for an overnight for the first time since this little one was born.  It's amazing to think that I can love someone almost as much as my own child, but I do, and what's more is there's guilt associated with the fact that I enjoy my time with the baby more than I enjoyed being mommy.  That makes perfect sense, of course, because my time with Natty is all about fun - it's not up to me to make sure she grows up to be a good person or that she gets an education or that she's well-nourished.  I get to be just fun; when she gets older, I can stuff her full of candy and say yes to her every whim, swing her by her feet until she's almost sick, and most of all, I can drop her off at home when she's sugar-crashing, and acting spoiled.  Woo hoo.   This is why people enjoy grandparent-hood so much: it's all the fun and none of the responsibility.  I can't believe the difference in that one detail (albeit a big one) and in that sense too, this child never ever gets on my nerves or does a single thing wrong.  I now understand how my parents, who were irritatingly sticky about rules and discipline when I was growing up, can't seem to ever utter the word "no" to my daughter; I get how they are completely in love with her and that she is never bratty or spoiled or cranky or difficult to them, even when she actually is being that way.  I remember my mother screaming at the top of her lungs at my brother, sister, and myself - three children under the age of 8 - telling us to be quiet, stop fighting, or she was going to give us all something to cry about, and she had no moral quandary about swinging first and asking questions later.  Even if you got an undeserved smack, in her opinion it was only undeserved at that moment and it all came out in the wash.  Not that we were mistreated or beaten, even by today's bizarre phobic standards, but I lived in abject fear of my mother until I was well into my teens and to watch her now, you'd never know she even had children, and if she did, they must be horribly spoiled brats somewhere from all of her over-indulgences.  She even scolds me for correcting my daughter gently, saying things like "oh, just let her be" - who is this woman?

Nevertheless, I get it; my sister called tonight to ask me if Natty was doing okay, and asked if she had been fussy.  It occurred to me that I didn't know; if she was fussy, I didn't notice, and we've had a great time.  In the car, Natty has decided that for some reason, she cannot wear her shoe or sock on her right foot; why this is hysterically funny to me and irritating to my sister is now perfectly clear.  Natty will be one in the next couple of weeks, and she is pure delight if you ask me; 'course I'm a bit biased...

My hips don't lie

As usual, some of my best clear-headed thinking comes at the gym.  There's a point in a workout that comes just after the "oh god, I've only run for three minutes?" dread when I start to really sweat and then at about fifteen minutes, a rush of endorphins courses through me and I can go for miles after that.  In fact, sometimes I run so long that the machine cuts me off; apparently, it can only count time up to 70 minutes.  Along with that rush of good feeling I imagine that at the same moment, all of the cobwebs in my head are dissipated by the blast - it's a great feeling and I love the sense of peace it gives me.  Some people meditate, I run.

I started to think about my rhetoric class yesterday and how exhausted it made me.  I have a couple of students who are driving me crazy - convinced that I am in fact their mother and not their professor and am thus capable of being sympathetic to their stupid little problems - but in general they're a good group.  They're young and active and chatty; I find late-teen naive optimism inspiring even when I know the smart ones will be jaded old curmudgeons like myself some day soon.  Because we've been talking about visual rhetoric and the first amendment, I brought in the Anti-Gym ads for them to watch.  I admit that part of my motivation in doing so was to get a rise out of them, but I also did it because I'm selfish and I wanted to vent my frustration to a whole group of people who might validate me.  In large part, that goal was achieved and they managed to learn something about argument and rhetoric despite my cheap motives.  I am no fool (most days) and know that what the Anti-Gym thing does is just great marketing - it's designed to piss people off and we all know that any publicity is good publicity.  Just look at hacks like Marilyn Manson and Britney Spears.  I know also that I'm reacting just how that guy wants me to react because it strikes a nerve with me, but here's the thing: that guy will make his million dollars and get fifteen minutes of fame but it will never make him more than a bigot and an uneducated and misdirected person whose only hope of being remembered in twenty years is a shot at replacing Jerry Springer.  And I'm upset about what a person such as this does in the world?  Really?

In any case, that isn't even the revelation.  I was running on my machine and listening to Bow Wow Wow on the iPod and directly in front of me was a woman on a treadmill who was nearly as wide as she was tall.  I don't joke here or insult - she was very short and extremely wide and middle-aged.  But she was walking on the treadmill and running in 30-second intervals, which was clearly working her hard and she was there the entire rest of the time I was, which was about 45 minutes.  She was soaked in sweat and sipping her water but she never paused.  The man two treadmills down was at least 300 pounds with one of those bellies that peeks out under even a long tee shirt, and he was walking at a pretty fast clip, breathing hard, and soaking his shirt.  Do you know what went through my head?  Not, oh god, look at those ridiculously fat people ("chubbies"), but Wow!  Good for them.  I wanted to walk up and congratulate the both of them, tell them to keep up the good work, and not to give up.  I could have hugged that woman.  I then looked all around me and realized that most of the people at the gym this morning were in fact what others might consider chubby, out of shape, unattractive - but you know what?  They were there; they were trying, and for any of us who knows how hard losing even a single pound can be when there are things working constantly against you like genetics and hormones and medications and illnesses, that's something worth talking about.

So I'm going to stop grousing about this kind of shit and take my time to think about others like me.  People are all different and who's to say what is and is not an ideal body weight?  The premise of the Anti-Gym and most of our media culture is that skinny is superior and we should all want that.  We should all want to be "hot" and we should hate ourselves if we eat cake; yet everywhere we turn is a drive-thru and every commercial at dinner time is for pizza.  We make organic food expensive and McDonald's cheap.  But I don't care about that because I'm over it; I'm going to focus on positive ways I see people trying to fight this instead of being angry at ignorant people who not only think I'm fat but that I subscribe to their idea of beauty.  That short and wide woman at the gym this morning was probably the most beautiful person I've seen lately and I say this to her and anyone else who struggles with the mirror and the scale: you're beautiful too.  Rock on.

Next week, I'm making them read Thoreau's Civil Disobedience instead.

Justice goes unjustified under a toupee and an eagle

Who in the holy hell would admit in the current environment to liking George W. Bush?  Apparently the answer is in some of the students of class I just subbed.  I didn't initiate the conversation, but they are talking in that class about vocal rhetoric, and I overheard one young woman state that she heard W. speak last week.  I perked up and asked her about it, wondering what she thought.  She began with "he is such a charismatic speaker..." and I knew I was in trouble.  This kid is apparently the local spokesperson for some uber-conservative young Republican outfit here on campus and went to Washington last week, where she also had the "great fortune" of meeting John McCain and Anne Coulter.  I was about to say something like, "you mean you had them all in one place and didn't set off at least a stink bomb?"  (<--that's a joke people; don't go calling the feds, even though they're probably red-flagging this even as I write it).  She snarled at me and said how she couldn't stand that people are so "mean" to the president - he is, after all, the president and deserves our respect and admiration.  He is apparently "very funny and intelligent" and no one gives him credit for this.  Besides, "we all elected him."

What I find staggering is not only the odd kind of brain-washed rehash this girl was spewing out but that the kind of adoration she expressed was akin to idol worship; it was the same kind of starry-eyed responses that the Manson family gave in court and later interviews about their leader and prophet.  I have to say that even though I'm completely liberal and on board with Obama as the significantly lesser of evils, I really can't comprehend young and female republicans - don't they know how much the republican party is against nearly all of their best interests?  I am not even saying that as though I think I'm right and democrats have the only ideas in town for post-boomer generations, but really.  John McCain?  The man is 71 years old and a complete crackpot and Mike Huckabee is a bible-thumping hick with a marginal amount of personal charm and down-home kinds of statements that appeal to the less educated.  Guh.

If either of these yahoos gets elected, I'm expatriating.

Pain's too difficult to prove; they're gonna make pain illegal

Lately, I've been drudging up old music on iTunes because I'm old enough and out of the loop enough to still be utterly intoxicated by technology; that I can go onto a website and get any song I want for 99 cents and put them seemingly endlessly on my tiny little iPod and thus carry my entire music collection around with me to listen to at whim still makes me feel giddy, like a little girl with a secret stash of her favorite candy or something.  Today it's John Wesley Harding, whom I love and haven't listened to in years, mostly because I lent the CDs to someone at some point who never returned them.  Grrr.  But I guess that doesn't matter as much because now that I'm with the 21st century and dependent upon the mp3 format, CDs only seem archaic and brief, and when I play them in the car, I'm amazed at just how quickly I get from one end of it to the other, and I find it tedious to have to skip songs I don't particularly like.  Great.  Now I've got one of those millennial attention spans for media: give me what I want right now and make it so simple a monkey could do it.  Ah well; it was bound to happen.  Last week in one of my classes I showed a Simpsons episode from a VHS tape and I thought my students would fall out of their chairs; it was akin, I'm sure, to someone bringing to one of my classes an 8-track tape to listen to.  Funny.

I'm at my desk at DU in my former broom closet of an office that doesn't even have a phone in it this early because I am subbing classes for a friend who covered me while I was in London last fall.  I don't mind, of course, but being here this early and knowing I have to stay late has its drawbacks.  I always tell myself that quiet time alone in my office is a great time to get work done, like reading and research and writing - both on my dissertation and fiction projects - but no, alas I sit writing about nothing at all on my blog and listening to an iPod.  These are just the things I get angry at my daughter for, and even more irritated with my students for doing.  Of course, I have always subscribed to the "do as I say, not as I do" method of parenting/teaching, and I suppose it's something we all do.  You know you've given good advice if you never heed it yourself.

If you can't say anything nice about anybody, come sit by me

I should warn you that this post is all about bitching, and it will be self-indulgent, probably unflattering regarding my character, and certainly vexing.  Read at your own risk.

I struggle with my weight.  I don't mean that I vainly quibble about not being a size 2 - oh no.  I pack on pounds like no one I know; I can literally think about cheesecake and gain a jeans size.  I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't overweight by some standard and it has often seemed there was nothing to be done about it.  I'm not a particularly vain person; I can openly accept myself as the universe made me, knowing that my "ideal" or "healthy" weight is still considerably higher than most.  I completely concede that I am not nor will I ever be skinny, and that's quite fine with me.  What is not fine with me is a state of ill health; as I approach my forties (not real soon, but soon enough), I want to be fit, healthy, and the best version of myself I can be.  Last year, I hit an all-time high weight and lost nearly 50 pounds by working out, eating right, and (honestly) taking a shitload of diet pills under the supervision of my doctor.  It's been wonderful to hear how great I look and to shop for new clothes, but as far as I'm concerned, I still have a good thirty pounds to go - and this is realistic for my body - and the fucking scale will not move in any direction but higher.  I can't tell you how many desserts have been skipped, how many times I go out to eat or to parties and drink soda water whilst everyone else eats chips and guacamole or pizza and drinks beer.  I've been to backyard barbeques with just my trusty water bottle, talking to anyone who wasn't eating.  I go to the gym and lift weights at home, and do pilates from a DVD, and walk the dog, and run up and down my stairs - I haven't taken an elevator in six fucking months.  Yet here I sit feeling fat, and it's not because I'm whining; it's because I'm fucking fat.  Guh.

Do you know what it's like to go to Bally Total Fitness to work out?  I hate that place but I love the equipment, so I tune out; I put on my iPod or bring a book and insist on not making eye contact with anyone.  I usually go in the evening, when the entire gym is almost exclusively full of hispanic men of varied ages wearing too little clothing and - this is not racist, I swear - but what is it with this particular population that allows them to leer at women, head to foot, with a smarmy expression and not feel like the motherfuckers they are?  It's so insulting and when one of them meets my glare, he will usually quickly turn away, looking either guilty or shocked.  Guilty I have some sympathy for because he knows he's been caught being a douchebag, but the shocked expression makes me want to go over and cut the guy's balls off and stuff them into his eye sockets.  The other part of the gym experience is when these aforementioned guys strut around the gym and insist on lifting weights that are too heavy and require them to make cro-magnon style, testosterone-pumped grunts and growls and shouts.  Frankly, if you have to make that noise when you pick something up, it's too heavy; put it down and stop making a complete ass of yourself.  If you're reading this and fall into this category, please know that it's not impressive or sexy or cute - it's fucking annoying and stupid and it makes most of us want to kill you - not because we're "jealous" but because you're a fool.

So this is what I endure because the membership is cheap and I suspect all other gyms in my vicinity must look something like this; the alternative is to go to Curves, where the women are, but then I run into the same issue of either having to be social or dealing with other women and listening to them bitch about their weight, which, frankly, I don't want to do.  I am only interested in bitching about weight with my girlfriends who struggle the same way - not making new ones so we can commiserate.  I'm such a bitch.  

However, and back the original rant here.  I'm hungry all the time; I don't eat fast food, white foods, things with sugar; none of my drinks have measurable calories; I drink enough water; I eat fruits and veggies; I count my calories and my fat grams and my fiber and they're all within diet range; I work out; did I mention that I'm hungry all the time?  I don't drink alcohol but rarely; I skip nachos and evening snacks; I don't eat red meat and I do eat lean, broiled fish and brown rice; I don't eat butter and I drink skim milk; we have low-fat cheese and cereals like "flax flakes" and omega-3, vegetarian fed eggs; I eat organic yogurt with no fat; I take Alli; I eat soups with low sodium and all veggies; no pasta, no bread, no french fries.  Did I mention that I'm hungry all the time?

This isn't fair.  I went online this morning after the daily weigh-in went badly and looked up articles related to not losing weight.  I found one that read "8 reasons why you're not losing weight" and thought, great - this should give me some insight.  

Reason 1 was drinking soda pop, which I don't do except for diet, which is acceptable to this writer; 

Reason 2 was not drinking enough water - I drink so much water I have to pee every hour; 

Reason 3 was eating french fries - no shit?  You mean those make you fat?  I can't remember the last time I ate a french fry; 

Reason 4 was eating "white" foods with refined sugar, or white rice or white bread, etc.  Haven't done that in more than a year; 

Reason 5 was not eating whole grains - fuck that, I've done that for years too; 

Reason 6 was not getting exercise - did I mention my gym woes?  I'm not just filing my nails on a stationary bike, people; I'm running for miles on treadmills and elliptical machines for up to an hour at a time; 

Reason 7: eating too much fat - nope; 45 grams a day is low even for a diet; 

Reason 8: not eating breakfast.  Well, that solves it; I'm a medical anomaly.  I've never not eaten breakfast - it's my favorite meal of the day in fact and I do it right and well: whole grains, low-fat proteins, no sugar, fresh fruit.  Yup, that's me.  I'm not sitting around eating coco krispies with whole milk watching Good Morning America with a side of bacon and buttered toast.

Even Oprah's site was not helpful in this regard.  The complaint of a message board participant was "I'm doing everything right and still can't lose weight" and do you know what the replies were?  (1) buy these books by friends of Oprah, and (2) you're not doing everything right, so change this fact.  Thanks.  That will keep me from heading to the clock tower with a high-powered rifle.

I started running but there's nowhere to run to

It's been a weekend funk once more.  I dunno where these moods come from, but every so often everything I have to do sounds overwhelming and I waste the day feeling bored.  How someone with a to do list as extensive as mine, with a life as full as mine, and satellite TV to boot can be bored is one of the cosmic quandaries.  Once I realized the Turner Classic Movies was playing The Return of the King in letterbox with no commercial breaks, the night was entirely shot to hell.  Usually I won't watch it if it's on TV because the chopped picture and endless commercials make me nuts, but at least if I get sucked in the Glade plug-in commercial will provide ample pause for me to realize I have things to do and turn off the idiot box.  Quite tricksy of them to suck me in this way...

But everything I have to do feels so heavy of late that fantasy worlds are all the more appealing; I don't want to write a dissertation anymore, I don't want to read books that require a pen in hand, I don't want to be mommy to every single person in my life (except for, ironically, my offspring), and most frightening is that I don't want to do anything else either.  Going out sounds like work and being sociable feels impossible some days.  If teaching my classes wasn't an exercise in keeping in character on a stage, I may never be able to face them at all.  Ever.  

Blah Blah Blog...

It's Saturday morning, and Pajama Day has commenced.  I'm hungover and groggy and feeling a bit hollow.  There are many things to do and I plan to do none.  Fuck it.  The week was manic - I had really great moments (mostly in the classroom) and some really shitty ones, including weeping at the bar at Charlie Brown's last night until I swallowed enough vodka to no longer care, which for me, is about two ounces - I'm such a lightweight drinker, which is comical on so many levels.  For someone with mostly Irish roots and the job of English professor, I'm a disgrace to my alcoholic ancestors and colleagues.  The fact that I grade papers sober and have only taught class under the influence one time in six years makes me the English department square - the goody two-shoes, the Miss Manners.

Have you seen the commercial for "Akavar" - this diet pill that claims "eat all you want and still lose weight!  We couldn't say on television if it wasn't true!"  Between this one and Denver's Anti-Gym ads, I pretty much want to crawl into the TV and kill whomever is responsible for such utter rubbish.  For those of us who consciously and purposefully strive for good health, moderate weight, and overall well-being by trying to eat right, avoiding the drive-thru, going to a gym, and so forth, such things are a bold middle finger to our efforts, and given the amount of effort this lifestyle takes, I can only respond - not with appropriate disdain and tuning out - but with complete rage.  I long for the days when vengeance was in fact justice one could feel good about; someone should turn the Anti-Gym guy into a meat pie and feed it to people he would call "chubbies" - that's poetic the way Tamora had to eat her two sons in pies for raping Titus' daughter at the end of good old Titus Andronicus.  Granted, Titus ends up dead too - as does the large percentage of the dramatis personae, but what the hell - there are too many people on earth as it is.  

Over coffee the other day, my friends and I - geeks that we are - were deciding on what our drag-queen names would be, should we ever change professions.  Given that I'm the only girl of this particular bunch, it was funnier to think of myself dressed up like a drag queen - so Shakespearean even - to be a girl dressed up as a boy pretending to be a girl.  

My drag name is:  Miss Anthropy.  Ha.