pronoia

Hair

I've been thinking about hair since reading Margo, Darling's post this morning about her recent haircut.

The problem with my hair (other than its absolutely astounding level of dirtiness right now, which I'm enjoying in a perverse kind of way) is that I don't know what I want it to turn me into.

Sometimes I think I need a haircut that matches my job responsibilities, that makes it clear that I could be promoted and do other, bigger things. Then I think that I don't want to be that boring person and that if I can't get promoted without helmet head I don't want it.

Sometimes I think I need a haircut that's cute and short and flirty, but that usually requires Doing Something to make it that way, and I'm lucky if I've got mascara on most days because it doesn't occur to me to care.

Sometimes I think I need a haircut that makes it clear I'm a dyke, but is there such a thing on me? And do I want to be part of a community that doesn't take me as I am--kind of let go and heading quite happily towards middle age and not dependent on a look? Wasn't that a tenet of feminism once upon a time?

So besides being too uninspired to either make an appointment or show up at a salon, I don't know what to say when I land in the chair. I've occasionally said things like, "I want it very short, do something that will look good on me" and let it go at that (and had very good results, for the record). I would be happier if I had a stylist I trusted, and I would be happier if I had a haircut that I liked the feel of and I liked the look of. I think I look better with shorter hair, but I feel better with longer hair.

Hair is always political, and I'm not much for politics, unfortunately.

Overdrive

You're all so damned articulate this morning! Bloglines gave me 76 things to read, and when I was done and I refreshed (because I am impatient like that) there were another 21. I do appreciate your efforts to entertain me in my illness.

I am not articulate. I'm busy welcoming my brain back from whatever Carribean island it hares off to whenever my body gets a death-grip on all the snot in the known universe. It always returns a little overheated and full of Really Great Things to Say! Things I forget almost instantly because, well, my energetic follow-through is sadly lacking when my brain has just returned.

I could probably have handled work today, although it would have wiped me out for the rest of the week, so I'm glad I stayed home another day. I'm considering doing a few small things--cleaning the kitchen, for example, of Sunday's waffle-experiment. Ms. P had never made or had homemade waffles, and we got a waffle iron for our wedding (yes, a year and a half ago!), so we experimented. It was a great success, but waffles make kind of a mess, and I got sick right afterwards, so the kitchen has been unusable since. So that might be my big accomplishment for the day.

While I'm not articulate on days like this, I am chatty, so there may be more exciting posts from the outposts of home health care. Me and Nyquil, your tour guides for the day.

Home Sick, Again

So once again I am home sick, felled by a big headcold and being achy and grumpy and wishing my wife were home from work already. I feel like I was just sick, but that was over three months ago, actually. It just feels like a few weeks.

I had to spend the sick day actually working, too. I had a deadline today, so I propped myself in the armchair and tried to edit prose coherently. Much harder than it should be when I'm in a state wherein I shouldn't operate heavy machinery. But that's gone, I've watched High Fidelity, tried to read smut, and now I'm just bored and wanting Ms. P to come home, buy me cold medicine, and watch Gilmore Girls with me.

Voluntary Simplicity

Months ago, R and I stopped at a library booksale and carried home armloads of finds. I don't know what he's done with his, but mine have been sitting in a pile in the corner of the incredibly cluttered office-half of the living room. Today, I puttered in that corner for a while, and I found those books again. Often when I shop at used book sales, I come home with crap, buying books for the sake of buying books. This time, however, I apparently bought with some discretion: chakras, green healing, science writing, a cultural history of maps, spirituality, and voluntary simplicity.

I read Sue Bender's book on simple living over a decade ago, and while I have no desire to become Amish (she visited with the Amish and took that perspective home again with her), I'm realizing that when I say I don't want the running-around life, I don't simply mean I want to hibernate in my house and not talk to anyone. As I'm reading this book, called something like The Circle of Simplicity, I realize that what I really want is a life full of meaning, of connection and conversations. I want to grow things and talk to people and share child care and breathe deeply and bake cookies and eat at home and be in the present. I don't want to spend my time running around, being in large groups of people without connecting, keeping up with the Joneses or worrying about what I look like. I want to make things and light candles and sing and read and talk and write and get excited about this life we're so busy leading.

It isn't new, this idea, either to the world or to me. Every so often I'm struck by this need to slow down and truthfully, we do, we are, a little bit all the time. Slowly we're incorporating the things that matter to us, slowly we're getting rid of the things that don't actually feed us. We're eating at home and spending time with our spiritual lives and putting poetry on the walls and cutting down on the unnecessary clutter in our lives. Slowly we're building this life into what we need and want, instead of what we've been handed or what we see around us.

I'm struck by the quiet joy of it. I'm listening to my dogs sleep, Gracie with her long legs all tangled up around her nose, Phoebe looking like a stuffed animal, all rounded corners and steady coloring. I've puttered, talked to my best friend, taken a bath, read a book, listened to meditation music. I'll probably do a little meditation later, pray, cook with Ms. P and snuggle up against her in the bed. We might watch a little television on DVD, we might read. I may clean up the art room a little bit so she can paint tomorrow, I may play with bead color combinations. The possibilities feel endless, all right here in our small house.

Fun With Questions

Thank you to everyone who left me questions! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and connected. So, without further ado, answers.

Me3 asks: Why were you living in Hawaii?  Why did you leave Hawaii?  Do you ever return to Hawaii?

I lived in Hawaii for five years, 8th grade to graduation. We were there because, in 1986, my father was offered three options for our next posting: Pearl Harbor, Washington DC, and Rekjavik. My mother duly informed him there was only one acceptable option and off we flew to Hawaii.

Moving to Hawaii was an experience because, well, you can't just load your belongings in a truck and head out. We were moving from Virginia Beach, so our belongings were loaded on tanker trucks, taken through the Panama Canal, and eventually delivered to Hawaii. In fact, we spent the first five weeks of our time there living in a hotel in Waikiki because our base housing wasn't ready, and then, through a strange turn of events, I ended up having my tonsils taken out the very day we finally moved into our house with all of our belongings. Because the military pays to have all of your stuff boxed up, we were treated to unusual combinations of items once we opened boxes: my stuffed animals and the kitchen knives, for example.

I left in 1991 because I had graduated from high school. The University of Hawaii is fantastic for a certain subset of subjects: oceanography, marine biology, nursing, astronomy. For other things, well, let's just say that it wasn't up to par, especially by the standards of my very preppy high school. Hell, public state schools in general were to be sneered at unless they were UVa or the UC system, so only the students who were particularly undistinguished academically went to UH.

I've been back twice since then. The summer after my first year of college, I spent $800 to fly back and live with my best friend because I refused to spend three months in a state I'd never lived in. We got temp jobs and spent the summer going to the beach, hanging out, and chasing boys. Her parents were out of town most of the summer, and we got into far less trouble than we might have given the circumstances. I think the riskiest thing we did was eat raw cookie dough.

I went back a few years ago with my college best friend for a wedding; we devoted two days to my friend's nuptials and eight to driving around Oahu in a convertible, seeing people I hadn't seen in years, and going to the beach. We were able to stay with my HS best friend at her mom's house, so it was relatively cheap and absolutely fantastic.

I will go back again, and if I ever earn/win/inherit/find on the street the right kind of money, I'd like to move back there, get a house on the north shore, and write. It's beautiful and it's my emotional home.

Susan asks, what kinds of things do you sing under your breath (or more loudly, as the case may be)?

The problem is that I sing whatever's playing on my internal jukebox, which is random, hard to reprogram, and sometimes just plain fragmentary. If I've been listening to a particular album lately (like the Indigo Girls' All That We Let In or the soundtrack to the Buffy musical episode), it's often a cut off of there. Sometimes, however, it's a song I haven't heard in years (like this morning's "as long as old men sit and talk about the weather, as long as old women sit and talk about old men"--Randy Travis but I had to look it up). The worst was when I had the old Chevy commercial in my head for two straight days, but could only remember the line "like a rock." My internal jukebox is very repetitive.

The real problem used to come when I was either teaching or being a student. If my attention is occupied, I don't generally sing under my breath although the jukebox is still on if I listen right. If I'm not paying attention, though, because I'm bored or because my students were, say, taking a quiz, I could end up humming or singing without noticing it. Not the kind of thing they address in composition pedagogy!

Susan also asks, And I'm curious about your thoughts on naming (both reaching back to a grandmother's name and deciding with Ms. P to share a name).

Ms. P and I were pretty clear that we wanted to share a name. For us it's part of feeling like a family and part of making that family clear to people who might want to discount it. (And I won't discount the real advantage of pretending to be a blood relative in the event of sudden hospitalization, etc.)

We started off talking about hyphenating our original last names. The possibilities ended up being long, dirty, and Dutch. Not really our cup of tea. Then we tried making a new last name out of the parts of the ones we started with. Then we were food or porn stars. These attempts didn't last very long. It was clear we were going to have to start from scratch.

Well, we thought, if we're starting from scratch, let's do it right! We brainstormed all of the things that are important to us as a couple, figuring that if we included them in our name it would act as a kind of talismanic ritual, calling those things more fully into our lives. We combined them, combed baby name books, and translated them into other languages. (For a while, Ms. P was trying to convince me to take the name Schmetterling.) Nothing quite felt right.

At some point, I suggested my grandmother's maiden name. It's beautiful; it combines light and water and movement, all things on our list; and it had the added advantage of reassuring my troubled family. Ms. P was won over by writing it (she could never love a name that didn't write beautifully), and for a while we went around writing our names on everything until we felt like they were real.

We've reflected since then that both of us being women helped tremendously, because we had both already internalized the cultural code that women change their names. We both resisted it at different times, but we had considered it. I know several men who have changed their last names, but only one who actually took his wife's.

We take names very seriously. Taking a name together--not simply hers or mine, but a name together--was about calling into being our marriage.

Dale asks, For some reason -- I guess this is sort of in the random-list spirit -- I'm wondering whether you like your hands and feet, and what your favorite song was when you were fourteen.

Hands and feet. Hmm! I don't think about my hands and feet much. When I notice them, either I'm enjoying that I can do something or I'm irritated that my hands are too small to grip something properly (like pickle jars). In general, though, I do like my hands and my feet. If I were at home, I'd take a picture for you!

As for my favorite song when I was fourteen, well, first I have to diverge into my odd time-telling habits. There are people who can tell you were they were in 1983, just by knowing the year. Me, I have to figure out how old I would have been in 1983 (9 for almost all of it), then what grade I was in (4th then 5th). And then I know where I lived, and then I can remember all kinds of things. But years and ages? Complete mystery.

So, my favorite song when I was fourteen. I was fourteen in grades 9 and 10. Okay, Hawaii and high school. A few years later it would be "Somebody" by the Cure (but only the live version); at 14 it was probably something awful by Richard Marx. My best friend K and I would call each other when we got home from our after-school activities, turn on the same radio station, and lie there not talking much while we did our homework. This period generated my favorite lyrical mishearing. Instead of "how can we be lovers if we can't make amends," I heard "how can we be lovers if we can't make a mess" and went around singing my lyrics, loudly, for years. I still like mine better!

Excellent questions! Feel free to leave them whenever you're curious; I love knowing what people are curious about.

 

Because I Have Run Out of Brain Cells

100 Things About Me, Because of Course It Is About Me

1. I adore prime numbers. I prefer things to happen in prime numbers. When I read the news about the largest prime number so far, clocking in at 9.1 million digits (it's 2^30402457-1), I swooned.
2. I have very little ability to juggle large projects while waiting on someone else's decision. I can do small, discrete, data-oriented tasks, but I can't really write when I'm Waiting.
3. I like filling out forms. I find it soothing.
4. I like to put my Achilles tendon between the big toe and other toes of my other foot when I go to sleep.
5. Small children make me happy.
6. There are whole parts of my childhood I don't remember because I was so far inside my own head. I actually remember coming out of a daydreamy period and trying to figure out why I was on a bus and in those clothes and where the hell were we going?
7. I had opinions on the Reagan-Carter presidential race in elementary school, and I have opinions on politics now, but I'd prefer not to think about it too much.
8. My writing teachers in college asked me to please lighten up and write something happy.
9. I'm generally an optimist until I'm just not anymore.
10. I'm an Enneagram 9. Married to an Enneagram 4.
11. I'm proprietary about my pens.
12. Hell, I just love office supplies and I hoard them. It makes me feel safe.
13. I'm trying to learn beaded loomwork. It's harder than it looks.
14. I secretly want to be a singer when I grow up.
15. I'm 32.
16. I can generally recognize when a book or a movie or a band is Important and Great, but I usually don't like them very much.
17. I love movies disparaged as cheesy. Not because they're good, but because I find them pleasingly exactly what I expect.
18. My handwriting is near to illegible to anyone but me unless I write very slowly and deliberately, and even then it's a shot in the dark.
19. I don't like having evidence of my PhD around. I like that I did it, I just don't like it being a form of braggery.
20. I love the color green, followed closely by brown, orange, and purple. But really, in the end, I think color is A Good Thing.
21. I often want to like things more than I actually do like them.
22. I have a hard time thinking of myself as different from other people, inside.
23. I have a weakness for Coke.
24. I've cried over a fair number of relationships, but I've only really had my heart broken once. And it was the shortest and stupidest of them all, to boot.
25. I remember how I felt when Ms. P told me she was considering religious life.
26. I was raised Catholic, but it never took.
27. I'm currently researching and talking to Pele. We'll see if she'll talk to a haole.
28. I don't have much connection to physical location, having learned at an early age that I was only going to move anyway.
29. If I have a connection to any physical location, it's to Hawai'i.
30. I really miss the ocean.
31. I was once stung by a beached Portugese Man'o'war so badly--the tentacles wrapped up both legs--that I had to spend several days sitting in a baking soda bath in a tub in our carport while my mother read romance novels nearby.
32. I only played doctor with one person in my childhood, the divine Sara from across the street, and the only thing I can remember about her--other than her talent at tracing and coloring Garfield, of course--is that her Marine Corps father made stained-glass windows in his spare time.
33. In high school I spoke German fluently enough that by the end of a five-week visit I was unrecognizable as American.
34. I can't remember much of my vocabulary other than "schlagen," to hit, and "schlampen," to be a bitch. Oh, and "Gummi," both eraser and condom.
35. I once thought I was good at languages, but I'm only good at German.
36. When Ms. P and I married, we took my paternal grandmother's maiden name.
37. My paternal grandfather had a PhD in physics from the University of Heidelberg.
38. My maternal grandfather had an 8th-grade education and worked in the quarry.
39. My grandparents didn't know what to do with one another.
40. I often dislike the feel of my own clothing. I worry I have Sensory Integration Disorder or something like it.
41. I was a big geek in high school, even though my high school rewarded smarts.
42. I was terribly shy in high school.
43. I once played Tick-Tock-Crock in a high-school production of Peter Pan. The tech crew once accidentally landed a flying Peter Pan on my croc-foot.
44. I notice all kinds of things about people, but I have never figured out how people know about bands.
45. I often don't care to think about my general appearence, which is why I've had two great hair styles separated by lots of blah since my last haircut in July.
46. If I'm not careful, I'll forget to look in the mirror in the morning and will walk out of the house with something strange going on. This is much less worrisome with Ms. P.
47. I sometimes think her hair looks fine when she thinks it's a walking disaster.
48. She's much femmeier than I am.
49. But I'm not exactly butch, either.
50. I never "came out," so to speak, because it never seemed necessary. Except to my mother.
51. I like taking computers apart and putting them back together.
52. Past a certain mechanical point, however, I don't really understand how they work.
53. My lovely HP laptop drops the wireless connection in the house, and I don't know why.
54. I have lots of freckles.
55. I'm a shoo-in for skin cancer since I can't remember a summer in my childhood and young adulthood when I didn't get a sunburn of some kind.
56. I once got sunburned while walking for 20 minutes across campus in Illinois in short sleeves on the first balmy day in March.
57. I once sunburned my whole body--breasts, ass, feet, ears, etc.--by going skinny dipping in Hawai'i with my boyfriend at noon on the day I was flying away to college.
58. I sobbed from Hawai'i to Pennsylvania and scared many passengers.
59. I sometimes feed the dogs from forks because it amuses me.
60. I get very sad over individual animals killed on the road.
61. I have a song playing in my head every minute of the day. Sometimes they are very bad songs.
62. I love the poetry of Mary Oliver.
63. I want to be a poet when I grow up.
64. I want to be a novelist when I grow up, too, only I'm bad at writing fiction.
65. I like reading porn/erotica, but pictures don't often do it for me.
66. I like pretending I can paint.
67. I once had a pair of shoes I referred to as the butch-femme shoes. They were strappy heels, but with a nice solid heel and hiking-boot-esque soles.
68. I have never cheated on anyone.
69. I have, however, been the person someone cheated with.
70. My high-school best friend and I were each present when the other lost her virginity. In the case of mine, though, she didn't know it.
71. I'm not easily grossed out.
72. I can't handle watching--or even hearing--violence in TV and movies.
73. The first time I watched The X-Files, I couldn't look at the screen.
74. I once finished the NY Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle without cheating.
75. I still have a mad crush on Gillian Anderson, so long as she doesn't go off-script.
76. I believe in getting to my life's goals by doing the Next Right Thing.
77. Reading blogs can make my brain go off-line.
78. When we run out of dog food we feed them random things from the cupboard.
79. As of this moment, the library project is still at a stand-still. I am irritated.
80. I once frequented a Diaryland site called Dead Letter or Unletter or something like that. You could write letters to people you didn't want to read them. I wrote a few, and I read all the time.
81. I love eavesdropping on people.
82. I think people are fascinating. They're more fascinating at a distance.
83. I hate to pry, even when I'm completely curious.
84. Sometimes I still channel my inner 12-year-old and say The Stupidest Thing Ever.
85. My supervisor just left before me, which is unprecedented.
86. I like getting email and I'm not very good at responding to it.
87. I sing to myself under my breath.
88. When I'm not paying attention, I sometimes sing louder than I intend.
89. Sometimes I'm startled that people act as if they can see me.
90. I love wearing overalls and yoga pants and big mens shirts. Just not at the same time.
91. I hate traffic-directing people when the lights aren't out.
92. I wish I were sensible about money.
93. I like doing taxes.
94. My first boyfriend still isn't speaking to me because of something stupid and petty I did 13 years ago.
95. I'm still in touch with friends from high school who do speak to him.
96. I can say the name of the Hawai'ian state fish: humuhumunukunukuapua'a.
97. I wish I could find affordable adult ballet classes.
98. I like yoga because I don't think.
99. I like yoga because it isn't competitive.
100. Saying 100 things about myself is much harder than I thought it would be.

So, what is it that you've wanted to know about me that I didn't tell you here? (All, you know, two of you.) Leave questions in the comments and I'll answer.

Library Logistics

I think I mentioned the other day that I've suddenly become the Interim Chief Librarian. This is startling for several reasons, most notably because 1) I'm not a librarian and never have been and 2) I'm not *that* high up the decision-making chain in this place and suddenly I'm spending lots of money and signing contracts. It's a little alarming.

In general, I'm working with a local, progressive non-profit to find some good library consultants to help us draft a job description, hire a librarian, and work with him/her to develop a state-of-the-art, beyond-basics, innovative collection. So far, so good.

Complicating things is the fact that we have a Big Event coming up, one that will Be on TV, and which involves a Big Important Person. This Big Event takes place in the spacious, light, open library of our shiny new building. The problem? Our library currently has no books in it. None. We didn't have space in our last location, we had no librarian, and the books that have been donated run the gamut of unsuitable and damaged. Filming the library during Big Event makes our ED very nervous. So I've been detailed to Get Some Books on the Shelves.

Right. First thing I do is call the book reps from Follett's Library Services. If anyone would have a clue, they would, right? So yesterday they come in here and absolutely blanch at the timeline. Pulling this off, it becomes clear, is going to take speed and a small miracle. They helpfully give me an electronic list of everything a new high school nearby ordered for its brand-new library. I scoured the list (111 screens of books, mind you) to choose the ones that seem, well, like no-brainers. I focused on reference books and obvious non-fiction, things that I couldn't imagine our students not using in our curriculum. I ran the list past several of the curriculum people, just to make sure nothing on the list was really stupid.

Choosing that list was interesting. The litigious and paternalistic attitude towards anyone under 18 is really strong, and my own attitude has been conditioned by years of "don't rock the boat" advice from well-meaning people concerned about my status as first a graduate student and then an untenured professor. (My students were usually over 18, but not by much, and their parents were still heavily involved.) Push them, I was told, but don't be too radical. So as I looked through this list, I found myself having reactions I didn't expect to have.

First, I was all about the liberal guilt. I put everything even remotely related to African Americans on the list, because all but 2 of our over 300 students are African American, but then I worried that I was marginalizing our students by focusing on books about African Americans. The librarian will of course order many, many other things, but I worried that I was replicating the white student I had once who asserted that of course his Black classmate listened to rap, no matter that she had already discussed her music preferences and they tended towards R&B. Of course they all want to read about African Americans! I struggled with this, but I left them all on there.

Second, I found myself falling prey to the idea that if you just don't talk about something, teenagers won't know about it. I had to remind myself sternly that teenagers know all about drug abuse and plastic surgery and eating disorders and AIDS and not providing them with good, sound information only leaves them vulnerable to all of the media crap.

And finally, I found myself assuming that teenagers can't handle emotionally-complex material. I think it was Bastard Out of Carolina I tripped over first, and I had to remind myself that I was reading books as complex and disturbing and more at their age. I'm no paragon of emotional maturity, and neither were my classmates, so that argument is just bunk.

It's a good thing I'm not ordering the whole collection. I'd work myself into quite a state if I had to contend with these struggles every day. Of course, I'd have a whole body of theory and knowledge about the reading habits and abilities of teenagers, and that would probably help.

It's so stimulating to encounter my own prejudices.

Today's annoyance is that, after I panicked the book reps and strained my eyes on the lists and chased everyone down for their opinion, my ED is second-guessing himself. It's not the pricetag that's stopping him; he's suddenly worried it's a bad idea, that we'll order books we'll never need or use. I tried to tell him these were the no-brainers, but he's "sleeping on it."

If he decides not to pursue this, I'm going to be very put out.

On the Monday That Isn't

• For reasons I can't understand, Blogger is presenting in Japanese.
• Yesterday I found the bike keys! Where were they you ask? Why, in the car, beneath the driver's seat, where they likely fell out of my pocket in June and where I haven't cleaned since well before then. Yeah, I rock.
• This week at work, the 9th-graders are presenting their first-semester portfolios, in which they present evidence of their learning to their advisor, their mentor, two other staff people, and a parent. What I like about it is actually getting to meet students in their specificity and seeing what they're doing in class. Watching them have to admit to their mothers in front of people who know that they lied all first semester about not having homework, well, that's just a side benefit. But really it's fascinating. So different from me as a 9th-grader!
• I spent all day on Sunday processing various Awfuls with our friend J. I'm now so emotionally exhausted I can't imagine actually resolving any of the Awfuls.
• I completely missed DeLurking Week, both as a lurker and as a blogger, because I was too drained to comment, even on things I found fascinating.
• I've managed to schedule tomorrow with back-to-back meetings all day long.
• I got a bead loom for Yule, so I'm trying to learn loomed bead-weaving. Like every other beading technique I've tried, the first row is nearly impossible, and after that it's all better. I have no idea what I'm doing, however, and I'm just making up a design based on nothing more than numbers I like.
• We suddenly have a guest for the weekend, which is making me cranky because I'd been looking forward to having down time. (I'm always looking forward to having down time, and I very rarely actually get said down time. Must work on that.) She'll be gone all day Saturday, but bah. Must still clean the house and be hospitable instead of anti-social.
• Even though it isn't Monday, it so is.

Friday Animal Blogging

I'm working from home today, which gives me ample opportunity to see how my critters behave when we're out earning the kibble. I turned from the computer, which is currently perched on the dining room table, to find this:

It's a good thing I didn't want to sit comfortably and read something, because I'd have to assert my alpha status to do so!

Meanwhile, Maddie is making nooks out of still-hanging-around cardboard:

I'm off to do some internet research on the doggies, since each of them have one paw they're worrying at and which looks red inside their toes. Should I find nothing, it's washing out and warm saline compresses for them.

Fire Drills

I hate fire drills.

I understand why they're important. I know we need to understand and practice our procedures for getting over 300 rowdy high schoolers out of the building if there's an emergency. But they're just so damn loud.

As a non-teacher, my job is to be a stair monitor, meaning I stand around and make sure that no one pushes someone else down the stairs, that they all go the right direction, and that they're being reasonably quiet.

Reasonably is the key word here, since no amount of teenage hollering is going to drown out the fire alarm itself, which I have to stand next to while I monitor their exit from the building. And then I have to stand around inside the building just in case the attendance check reveals someone missing, at which point I get to help find them.

Have I mentioned that loud noise makes me all jangly?

I think it's time to go get lunch.