pronoia

Exhale

I've been balls-to-the-wall since Thursday. First was Ms. P's actual birthday, with a lovely dinner interlude and some rocking therapy for me. Friday was cleaning and cleaning and working from home and cleaning and welcoming MIL and working some more and dinner with MIL and R. Saturday was cleaning and cleaning and setting up and organizing and taking a quick rest and cleaning and organizing some more followed by a rocking party with rum. And then some more rum. Sunday was clean up and breakfast and an unexpected visit from BIL and a party-guest who didn't go away and a quick rest and shoveling snow and a breakdown about money and then a dog fight. And now here it is, Monday, and I've not had the time or the brainpower to sit down and journal about that rocking therapy session or tell you about the food stuff I keep promising or to really do much of anything. Today I'm foggy and achy and grouchy and wishing I could go home right now and curl up with a hot water bottle and something really stupid on the tv and just read all of the Oscar coverage and snicker about people's bad dresses.

At least my downstairs is the most authentically neat (as opposed to neat because I shoved things in closets) it's been since we moved in. That's something, right?

Deliverance

Next weekend we're having Ms. P's birthday party at the house. We haven't yet christened the house with an event, because she felt like it wasn't really up to snuff. But lately she's feeling more confident and the house is more under control, and we're going for it.

When we moved here, I packed up all the academic books I didn't just leave in my office and didn't unpack them. I left them in small boxes piled against the walls of the dining room. What does one do with such things? I couldn't bear to throw them out--just too wasteful and somehow disrespectful of the work I did do to get that far. I didn't want to give them to Goodwill, because that was somehow one and the same. But I couldn't find a place/organization to donate them that wasn't for kids. And kids will not like Nietszche.

It occured to me that the friend we have visiting could take them to the Best Used Book Sale Ever, which takes place every spring in GradSchoolTown. So I opened every box and fondled every book. And you know what? I'm just as uninterested in composition scholarship as I ever was. But I'm also just as interested in disability and body scholarship as I ever was.

Academia was not the place for me, because in academia my research and work would be inextricably tied to teaching undergraduates, and my research interests do not meet the needs of the undergraduate curriculum. It's possible I could have applied for Women's Studies jobs, but that's a particular circle of hell I watched my best friend attempt to navigate, and I didn't and don't want to negotiate it.

But there's still a lot of room out here for research and scholarship and reading and public conversation about things that are important to a lot of people, about the intersection of individual choice and public accountability, about how we can as a society productively discuss difficult subjects, about the different institutions of expertise and how they inadvertantly support oppression. It's something no one talks about on the inside, the ways that conversations are richer and more interesting when interlocutors get to be people and not just talking heads, when we aren't stymied by the academic obligations to pretend we aren't invested.

I need to do some thinking about what this means for my actual life. I'm feeling some energy behind writing and civic engagement again, but I don't know that I'm up for the kind of freelance story pitching that would put me in the magazine world. I toy with the idea of getting involved with a disability rights organization, because that's something I'm passionate about. I don't think the path has appeared yet. But I'm excited to dive into my books again.

Another Use for YouTube

My dream-brain is like a library of really, really bad action movies. I don't like action movies, because they make me really tense, but my dreams are full of them. And they are always the same: I am being chased.

In this morning's dream, Ms. P and I were going camping at a nearby pagan campground all of our friends already frequented. It had beautiful wooden walkways connecting different places, and the whole thing fit into a space about the size of my backyard.

Ms. P was off setting up with some friends of ours, and I ended up in conversation with a woman who, it turns out, is on an e-list I'm on for traditional Wicca. We were talking High Priestesses, and I was hoping she'd give me some leads, but she kind of morphed into my friend J for while, and then I was walking into the employee section of some large retail establishment that was nonetheless outdoors and trying to figure out how to make my outfit look like it was supposed to for this, my first shift ever. I came back to the dressing room several times to fix my outfit, and then I realized that I'm barefoot, and you can't work in retail barefoot and dear goddess did my supervisor see? I'm on my way back to the dressing room (again!) and I realize my Ex and his Now-Wife have walked in. They don't see me, but I realize we've managed to move to the same damn college town they live in. What are the odds! I walk over to Ms. P to fume for a minute, then I go and put shoes on, good sturdy shoes with socks. And then I start getting chased. The people chasing me get into a car and Ms. P gets in with them, and they start chasing me with the car. I'm running and doing things like crossing a divided highway in the middle, crossing behind and between the houses in the subdivision at the other side, and I know they're still not far behind me because cars can do that, can cross Jersey walls and get between houses and fences. And suddenly, in my dream, I'm so bored of this endless chasing in my dreams that I reach down, grab the button on the red bar, pull it all the way to the right while watching the rest of the dream flash by, realize that in the end, I'm happy and safe in a recliner, and wake up.

Thank goddess that whole dream got buffered/loaded, huh?

You Totally Wish You Were Us for Valentine's Day

Around about 3pm yesterday, Ms. P and I were getting a mite stir-crazy. We'd watched the Prince of Lawns and his friend scrape ice off a truly amazing amount of sidewalk, we'd shoveled the driveway ourselves after I just couldn't bear to ask them to do more, we'd played Scrabble, we'd IM'ed, we'd listened to our favorite morning radio show, we'd read blogs, we'd invited over a friend who decided not to come. We couldn't really bake or cook anything else and expect to keep it in the house. We'd finished season 3 of The L Word the night before. It was time to bite the bullet and leave the house.

We had planned to celebrate V-day on Friday, because I hate prix fix menus and nearly every place has one for the big night. Our favorite Salvadorean place, however, was unlikely to do such gimmicky things, so we decided to go see Music and Lyrics, get me The Omnivore's Dilemma from the bookstore, and have a nice dinner. Wrapped and bundled, we walked/slid into the car and headed out.

The car was making a funny kind of noise, the noise it makes when it has ice or snow stuck up in the wheel well rubbing on the tire. So I got out to knock it loose and found one incredibly flat tire.

We drove very, very slowly to the nearest gas station, because there was no other reasonably flat, ice-free stretch of ground we could think of. Of course, said gas station hadn't bothered to clear its lot, so we took over an out-of-order pump and put the donut on. If I saw us changing a tire, I'd be kind of amused, since it involves me standing on the lug-nut implement (it's not a tire iron--what is it?) and bouncing up and down until my body weight loosens the lug nuts. In 25-degree weather with 40-mile-an-hour winds, however, it was kind of painful. (The wind was so bad that Ms. P's already-broken glasses flew off of her face to drift a ways away.)

We'd had the tires all replaced only three months ago, so off we go to the PEP Boys we'd frequented. They're open, but we're not the only ones in this predicament, so the wait time is estimated to be two hours. We have books with us, but they're the kind of books you can only read with your whole brain. The magazines available are all car-related. And the TV is on very loudly. Since it's late afternoon/early evenings, it's sit-com rerun time. And oh my goddess are they bad. Offensive, taking cheap shots, characters with one dimension at best, stupid and predictable jokes BAD. We watched kind of in spite of ourselves, having nowhere we can go and nothing else we can do, and we refrained admirably from being loudly disdainful, but that was a definite challenge.

Finally our car was freed, and we drove in blustery winds to the restaurant for dinner and then picked our way across a very icy parking lot. We're seated at a table and then ceremoniously un-seated, as the hostess had acquired unwanted and unknowledgeable help in the form of our waiter and he didn't know who was really in line. Fair enough if we then had to keep waiting, but they merely moved us to a different table. One right by the windows. One that was quite chilly.

And then, and then. And then my PMS hit full-force and a one-off comment by Ms. P about having fewer animals in the future (not at all unreasonable) made me cry and cry and cry and feel all protective of our crazy Island-of-Misfit-Pets. Poor Ms. P.

Really, poor Ms. P, who loves Valentine's Day over many other holidays.

So that was Our Valentine's Day. I know you're jealous.

Perfect Snow Day

When I woke up, it was so obviously going to be a snow day (2 inches of ice) that I could just relax into it. We have plenty of food in the house, including low-point baked goods Ms. P made yesterday to warm herself up. We have electricity and gas and laptops and dogs, and just now, just as I was considering taking myself outside to clear our very long stretch of sidewalks, the Prince of Lawns arrived to offer to do it for me. For a price, of course, but I'll happily pay him and his friend $50 to scrape ice off of two blocks' worth of sidewalk. I'll do yoga later instead.

I hope you are all similarly warm and snug.

Small Pleasures

I've been on an iced tea kick lately because coke? 2 points for 8oz, and that's a significant point commitment. This is not to say I haven't made it because, baby, I have. But I'd like to use those points for something more effective in, say, running my body. For a while I was just drinking water, but we learned last week that Ms. P is not the only one in our relationship who needs daily caffeine.

We have a machine in our staff lounge that makes coffee and tea. It's a step up from the vending machine, because you can choose your tea or coffee flavor and put that flavor in the machine, then it makes the tea/coffee and throws away the leaves/grounds. But it makes hot coffee and tea, and frankly, unless the temperature is way below freezing and the sun is hiding, my office is kind of toasty. There's no good iced tea in my neighborhood, because it's either commercially-produced tea (and therefore full of corn syrup) or it's sweet tea, which I love but which negates the effect of giving up the coke. But today! Today I realized that we have an ice machine in the freezer of the staff refrigerator! And if I fill my cup up with ice and then get Earl Grey tea, I get iced Earl Grey tea! Genius!

Perhaps it's time to cut back on the caffeine again.

I'm working on a post on the economics/politics of food in America, but in the meantime I wanted to share my tea epiphany and tell you I had a fabulous weekend. Every time I want a weekend with no commitments in it, I think Ms. P is afraid we'll just sit around and do housework for two straight days. This weekend we managed only one hard commitment, lots of fun with friends, enough housework to actually transform the downstairs (we have to prepare for her mother coming, after all), two episodes of the 3rd season of The L Word, and lots of reading and hanging out and talking about natal charts. That's what I'm talking about: a perfect weekend.

I hope yours was as good!

Coming up on Pronoia: the politics and economics of food, the really fun interactions we're having with pregnant friends, and the emotional effects of having made my job better.

Chilly

Apparently the problem with winter is that it's cold. Who knew?

After a long, global-warming-proving stretch of ridiculously high temps for winter here (i.e., temps in the 60s with the odd 70s thrown in for good measure), we're a little on the cold side: highs in the 20s, lows in the single digits or teens. And for the first time in a long time, I'm fucking freezing.

It turns out I'm not very good with the cold. Those years when I'd bundle up to shovel snow and have to undress down to my long-sleeved t-shirt so as not to overheat? Hyperthyroidism. Those years when I'd kind of scoff at coats because we were just getting into our cars and out of them again? Hyperthyroidism. My complete lack of dress clothes that are more than one layer thick? Hyperthyroidism. My being perfectly comfortable in a house set to 62? Hyperthyroidism.

This is a much different winter than I ever remember. Ms. P says that, in retrospect, my response to last summer was kind of weird; my reactions were bigger than she expected. I think I came close to heat stroke a time or two, and my inability to mow the lawn without feeling like I was bringing on either heat stroke or a heart attack seems to be less about my actual fitness level and more about, you guessed it, hyperthyroidism.

So many things are better now: my digestion, my dry and itchy eyes, my overly dry skin, my moods. Okay, that last is still all over the map, as is my reproductive cycle, but I think we're on our way to homeostasis.

I'm really grateful that we caught this in time, given that it was pretty far advanced when we caught it. I'm grateful that I'm feeling better. I'm grateful that I have the prospect of some nice outdoors time this summer, both working on the yard and not. Given all of that, however, I'm still wigged that I've got yet another autoimmune disorder. Once my thyroid levels out, either naturally or with supplements, I'm hightailing it over to a naturopath to find out what's so out of whack that this keeps happening and find out what to do about it. Because it's way too early in my life for this much chronic illness.

Brinksmanship

On Friday I had finally had my fill of Smithers. I had thought I'd had my fill before, but on Friday I became clear that either something was going to change or I was going to have to leave. Immediately.

As I'd cried my frustrations onto the shoulder of a colleague who both has worked closely with Smithers and has the ear of Mr. Burns, I got a phone call that afternoon checking in. Mr. Burns reassured me that next year would be different, that I wouldn't have to be supervised by Smithers next year, but I pointed out that next year is a really long way away, and I was much closer to the end of my rope than I was to August. He said we should both think about it over the weekend and touch base on Monday.

I spent Friday closeted in my office, playing solitaire and trying not to cry. I spent Saturday running around being social and ignoring everything. I spent Sunday panicking. I woke up panicking, I did a walking video panicking, and I went to brunch panicking. If I couldn't find some way out of this situation, I would have to find another job and I didn't want to find another job. I like my job. I love my school. I adore my colleagues, every one but one.

We ended up at coffee with L&S, and out of desperation I picked their brains. I wasn't anticipating getting anywhere, but somehow in that conversation I moved from thinking it was purely about my misery to realizing there were good, organizational reasons that Mr. Burns needed to fix this problem ASAP. For one, the organization is in a cash crunch, and he needs fundraising to be working on all cylinders with very little in the way of time wasting. For another, our annual fundraising gala is in April and I could find another job faster than he could replace me. So there was that.

R came over for Sunday night dinner, and we talked through it more--not only why it needed to happen but how to make a significant organizational change seem easier and more logical than dealing with this situation as it stood. We brainstormed, I took notes, and I went in on Monday morning and wrote up a memo. A very clear memo, one that articulated the problem in organizational terms (not my emotional ones), described how I had repeatedly tried to address the problem, and finally proposed that my team's supervision immediately move from Smithers to Mr. Burns, complete with caveats for how to minimize the increased demand on Mr. Burns' time.

I went into my meeting with him nervous as hell and armed with arguments said and unsaid. I know him well enough to know that threatening to leave would backfire--he would feel betrayed and angry and that wouldn't do. I knew not to directly address the significant problem of having HR in the hands of the one person no one can work with, who has no training in management or personnel issues at all. I simply said that I had thought all weekend long, and I couldn't come up with anything incremental that we hadn't already tried. Nothing. I handed him my proposal and prepared to argue. He skimmed it, said he was sympathetic, but he needed time to read it and think. Could we meet again at 3? Later he asked for overnight, and of course I said yes.

The following day we had phone conversations. What if he took everything but grants? What if Smithers was still my supervisor but Mr. Burns sat in on all of the meetings? What if, what if, what if. In the middle of the what-ifs, I pointed out that we needed to not just find a workable solution, but a workable solution plus a rationale that allowed Smithers to save face and didn't endanger anyone's working relationships. Mr. Burns sounded relieved and we talked through some options.

I was really careful to not back down, to not minimize my experience, while still engaging Mr. Burns' concerns. On Wednesday I got a grumpy phone call telling me he'd give me what I wanted, even though he didn't necessarily think it was the best option for him or for the school, and I needed to make this as easy on him as possible. I agreed and thanked him profusely. R was scandalized that he would say he didn't think it was the best option, but I think Mr. Burns was himself trying to save face, since I essentially forced him to deal with a problem he'd been ignoring. He can be as grumpy and face-saving as he wants to be, really, because I am no longer being supervised by Smithers.

Yesterday was an amazing day. On top of my phone call with Mr. Burns, Ms. P got an interview for a job she really, really wants, a job that is much more in line with her experience, skills, and interests than her current job. So we went out for sushi to celebrate.

I feel exhilarated and exhausted at the same time. This is not a skill I ever did--or possibly ever could--learn in academia; the helplessness of having no leverage at all once you sign the contract was very disheartening. I know now that Mr. Burns values me and the work I do (he said more than once that he wanted to keep me), and the biggest reason to hate my job is either gone or effectively gone. I have room to do what I need to do, room to do a fantastic job, room to have a really productive team. It's amazing.

To a large degree, I credit the kick-ass ritual Ms. P and R and I did several weeks ago. It's a truism of asking for what you really want--whether through ritual or some other means--to ask for only the goal, because the universe has more ways than you know to get you to that goal, and often faster than you'd expect. I asked for my goal, and I got, and I am thanking the Goddess.