C l e a r S c r e e n

Due Date

2011-03-25T08:14:00.001-07:00

Not July 3, which is my due date. But the movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis, which we watched last night.
I think the problem with my blog is that I have more thoughts than I have patience to write out. I have mentally written out a long review of this movie that examined how it made the father/son dynamic an unnatural relationship, or a naturally contentious one which requires the overcoming of one's instincts -- a lesson allegorized in RDJ's journey of disasters with ZG. In the end, though, those lessons become irrelevant since it turns out he has a girl, which the movie seems to imply is easier for a dad to relate to (not only does he get a daughter, but the pregnant mom goes into natural labor before her (unaccounted for) scheduled C-section appt. So the natural order is restored?).

The reason I was thinking about this movie for so long is because it put Dave in a bad mood -- it's a comedy of errors but without the absurd guffaws that made him love Dumb and Dumber. But I like the two of them, RDJ and ZG. One of my favorite jokes is ZG doing an impersonation of a 5-year old with a beard.

So -- this movie was keeping me occupied this morning (also, I just finished a draft of a chapter which I've vowed not to think about again for another couple of months, at least (please!) but now my brain is in academic mode and is apparently looking for any old thing to "examine"). Before that I'd been trying to put into words exactly how Dave and I have become crazy people. Or how having a kid has brought out the latent crazy in us. Not so much that we fuss over him or protect him from the dangers of non-existent mountain lions or the polio virus. But the way we go totally off the rails when our daily routine alters in the slightest -- like when we take a weekend trip to LA, for example, or when Desmond comes down with a cold, or when these things happen at once. It's not like we become raving lunatics. Exactly. I mean, we might become kind of raving lunatics, if there's such a thing.

This is what makes me the most worried about the entrance of baby number two. Desmond and Dave and I have a really nice routine going on -- we know what to do, how to live our days and even, mostly, handle tiny little glitches. But throwing that routine out the window is liable to . . . to cause something big to happen (too many big things have been going on recently for me to find an appropriate metaphor).

But this is only my irrational fear talking. Rationally, I realize that somehow Dave and I figured out Desmond -- and we had NO idea what we were getting ourselves into with that one. We got slapped in the face hard and look, everything's pretty much awesome (I brought Desmond into bed with me at 5:50AM this morning and when the digital clock read 6:00 Desmond said "Look! Two Oh's." He's a genius, that's the long and short of it). And, at least with this new one, I know it's going to be crazy -- but also it'll stop being crazy at some point. Even all the recent mothers-of-two I've been chatting with lately who've been warning how "really hard it is" to have two kids (two boys, especially) and whose warnings have sent me to my bedroom, biting fingernails, shooting my eyes back and forth, mumbling "it's not true it can't be true is it true?" -- even they can't really convince me that I'm in for a life of hair-pulling misery. Especially since most of them seem really happy.

Update: I just got back from a playgroup with one of the Cassandra-moms predicting my hellish future with two kids. It's so strange -- she's such a calm person with two really well behaved kids. Well, one of them is five months old, but he's not a cry-er. Just a feeder. But, man, she won't let up. Everything I bring up, she replies -- in her calm, thoughtful voice -- with a story about how really difficult it is to manage her two children. Even when I try offering her an escape route from all the difficulty by asking if she feels less anxious about her second child and more apt to let him cry things out than she was with her first -- her reply is still a bummer: "Well, kind of, but only because my first son doesn't really give me the time or energy to allow me to pay attention to my second son. It's just so hard." Great.

Much has been thought

2011-03-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

These last two months have seen me up in the middle of several nights thinking things over. I thought out a very long blog entry about Betty Draper and the questions she raises about Mad Men's views on motherhood (she's the only fully present mother on the show, and she's barely that) and middle-class suburban femininity. But it was such a long, and probably tedious, entry that I couldn't bring myself to actually write it out.

I've also been -- okay worrying about everything. Libya, Japan, baby number two. Mostly baby number two. What will he be called? How will Desmond take to him? How am I going to manage without sleep again? What if he's colicky? Thanks to a recommended amnio (cause I'm so old), I am fully reassured that baby number two is genetically sound.

On top of these worries, Desmond has entered a phase that is full of energy and aggression -- most of it expressed by random screaming and then a burst of short angry tears, usually caused by nothing at all but sometimes triggered by my attempts to get him to pick things up he'd rather leave be. Mostly, I'm not really worried about it, I just try to think of ways for him to playfully expel his energy/aggression (like by not spending too much of my time on the computer, ahem). But sometimes, like on Tuesday, when our biorhythms aren't aligned, there is screaming on both ends. I try not to feel bad about that either -- I mean, I can't be smiling mother all the time, reasoning with a two year old with a calm voice. Right? I ask seriously . . . I can't, can I?

But I'm hoping this super-aggressivity will pass before July 3 or thereabouts when baby number two arrives.

Some more stuff I think about in the middle of the night

2011-01-21T07:46:00.001-08:00

I just read Amy Poehler's list of sad movies on the Daily Beast and it got me picking my own. In the middle of the night. But I realized that I can't think of any sad movies I've seen recently, or at least of any movies that made me cry. Which is weird, because I feel like that's all I do is tear up. But recently, it's the snippets Oprah that I catch, or radiolab stories, or articles on Gifford's recovery that have been getting to me. So my list of sad movies seem to hover around titles that were released when I was in my late teens to mid-twenties. It must be admitted that I've become a big wuss and refuse to see things I know will make me cry. I still haven't seen "Boys don't Cry." Cause I'm not a boy, I guess.
Anyway, here's what I came up with. In the middle of the night.
> A Heart in Winter -- This is a super stereotypical French film with little dialogue and a lot of non sequitur shots of beautiful things that symbolize sad things. But for some reason it's one of the first movies that launched me into the realm of the sadness of adult sexuality. I think I watched it three times in a row when I was seventeen and I doubt I really understood what was really going on. It's about two classical musicians -- a cellist and a violinist, maybe -- who have a sexy affair. But it doesn't work out for some reason I don't remember. Because of Daniel Auteil's cold heart? Whatever happens in this movie, it made me really sad to realize at the time. (And thinking about this movie made me remember "Damage" with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche -- which is not a sad movie, but came out about the same time and revealed how fucked up adults are.)
> Persuasion -- The saddest Austen book. A middle-aged spinster (she must be closing in on 28 years old) runs into an old love who she rejected a million years ago because she thought she was such hot shit. But really he was the One (played by a dashing Ciaran Hinds. Don't ask me to pronounce it). He's learned to get over her and is now into some bubbly young thing, which breaks her heart. The end.
> The Piano Teacher -- My mom's a piano teacher and when I was watching this movie I was thinking, "Oh no! She's probably seen this. Oh no!" I called her up and asked and she said "Yes! But what is wrong with that woman? The music was so beautiful." This movie is more disturbing than sad. In fact it's not sad at all, unless you take many steps back and think, "Wow, I would not want to be this woman [Isabelle Hupert]. She's a sad, fucked up lady." But I just really like it and think about it from time to time. Does she get what she wants at the end -- provoking her love-interest until he "gives her what she asks for"? Or is his violence a cowardly admission of his inability to enter into a true, if messed up, relationship? And what was the very end all about? I dunno.
> Billy Elliot -- Cause I cried a lot and didn't mind so much about it. This seemed to come at the end of a string of UK movies that revolved around the working class plight during the Thatcher era. But the only other one I can remember is "The Full Monty." And some other weird one with Ewan MacGregor in a marching band.
> And then finally two movies from Down Under that made me cry more than I've ever cried before. "Heavenly Creatures" and "Shine." I missed the first couple of minutes of "Heavenly Creatures" during which, apparently, we are informed that the daughter brutally murders the mother. So when, after an hour and a half of watching how much the mother loves her daughter, how worried she is about her well-being and behavior, she is brutally murdered in the end, I was shattered. I remember sitting in the theater crying my eyes out while my friends were waiting near the exit for me to finish. Embarrassing.
And "Shine." Come on. Probably the least sympathetic portrayal of a holocaust survivor ever. I saw this movie by myself -- which gives my tears more freedom to flow -- and had to tell my friend about it the next day, which made me cry again. I think, with both these movies, it's the being misunderstood and persecuted theme that gets me. So, don't persecute the innocent people, it's the moral of my movie watching.
(I have to reluctantly include "Dancer in the Dark" here because it destroyed me but also made me hate Lars van Trier and decide he was a sadist who hated women. He takes the theme of persecuting the innocent to a whole new -- and perverse and stupid -- level.)
(Oh! And "13 Going on 30" made me cry. But I was in an airplane at the time.)

Things I think about in the middle of the night after Desmond wakes me up

2010-12-03T08:41:00.000-08:00

Maybe, after I finally finish my dissertation, I should go back to school to get an MA in something useful so that I can get a real job.
Sarah Palin is the perfect woman -- she is both an inspiration for conservatives around the country and offers the rest of us a woman to hate without guilt. And that we couldn't really hate Hillary without guilt since she has all that talent, experience, and intelligence. Not a perfect woman.
In the dream I had before Desmond woke me up, I was thinking the name "Ellas" was a great girl's name -- but my waking mind changed it to "Ellis." Ellis Lushbaugh, though, is kind of a disaster. My dream also came up with "Maxine." Which was weird.
The rest of the night I spent trying to position my head in a way to keep my nose from running.

Yoga in the Evening, Yoga in the Morning

2010-10-03T10:01:00.001-07:00

I joined Groupon to see what it was all about around the same time I was wanting to start doing yoga somewhere but decided it was too expensive. Then Groupon offered a $30 for 10 classes deal at a Bikram yoga joint in Elk Grove -- about a twenty minute drive from me. Twenty minutes became 45 minutes during rush hour and I came in late and already sweaty.

Dude, Bikram yoga is crazy. It's stinky, super duper sweaty, and not at all relaxing. Actually, when I finally left, I really did feel clean. Stinky, sticky but oddly clean.

The yoga instructor stands up front, near a yoga mat which I'm guessing she brings as a prop that's supposed to remind us that she is in fact a yoga instructor and not the tankini-clad drill instructor we could mistake her for -- she didn't step on her mat once since she was too busy spitting instructions at us, while sweating, to manage a pose. Bikram yoga is all about holding poses in 100 degree temperature. No downward dog or warrior one or child's pose. Either you're lying on your back in "corpse pose" or you're twisted around yourself like a mangled, and sweating, corpse trying to concentrate on not falling or passing out but finding it difficult because the instructor won't stop spitting out instructions -- "hold the pose don't look down look in the mirror look at your eyes never close your eyes breathe it's okay if you feel dizzy this is normal hold the pose hold the pose" she claps loudly "now bend your knees lie down with your palms up in corpse pose keep your eyes open never close your eyes breathe" -- as if what we're doing is not actually standing awkwardly still but giddily square dancing, in a smelly, sweaty barn. It was the longest 90 minutes of my life. It was seriously ten minutes until the end of class for about a half an hour.

The next morning I decided to finally check out the free yoga class that's offered at McKinley Park, two blocks away from our house. I've seen them all summer, but never really cared one way or the other to join them. But I went and, relief, this is the kind of yoga I remember. A calm voice telling me to unite with my heart, to feel myself rooted to the earth, to sense my breath flowing through my movement as we go from downward dog to warrior one and two and triangle. Then the yoga earth mother stopped our flow to ask if we wanted to learn to stand on our heads, asked for a volunteer, praised our volunteer, and then reprimanded a head-standing non-volunteer for not showing our volunteer ample respect and attention and reminded us all to direct our love toward those who put themselves out there. Weird. But then we got back to yoga and doing way too many planks for my liking.

In the end, it's been a good yoga weekend for me. My arms are sore from planking and my body may be (or may not be, who knows) detoxified thanks to sweat lodge pose-holding. And, because of the crazy Groupon deal, I have to see this Bikram thing through until the end. Nine more classes.

Desmond must be socialized.

2010-09-30T09:38:00.001-07:00

Not really. I just thought that he might enjoy hanging out with littler people and that spending all day with me -- at home, at the playground, at the grocery store, at Ikea -- has got to be dull dull dull. So he had his first half-day of daycare on Tuesday. It went well with only a few minor tears. Today, day two, was a little more dramatic. We walk over to daycare (it's down the block from our house) and I sit and chat with Miss Teacher while Desmond is glued to the screen door. I say "bye" to Desmond. And Desmond says "bye" to all the kids in daycare, cause that's what polite kids do when they leave. Poor kid.

I texted Miss Teacher and learned he was bribed into tearlessness by a cookie.

And then I got a text around 10 AM that Desmond fell asleep. Turns out, he decided he wanted to play trucks by himself so he shut the play room door in Miss Teacher's face, who thought she'd let him decompress for a little bit. When she checked up on him two minutes later, he was playing trucks. Two minutes after that he was asleep on the trucks. He's kind of like an opossum, you see. He uses sleep to throw predators off his scent.

Miss Teacher warned me that things would get worse before they got better, especially since he's only going twice a week. She recommended I be firm with him when dropping him off -- no anxiety or sad faces. And also, to stop by with him on odd days just to hang out and play for a little.

Yes, I can do these things. I have to get over a little of my guilt. I mean, there's no practical reason why he has to go to daycare. It gives me a little time to work on my dissertation, but I did without it last year and managed to finish a chapter. The idea is, though, that he'll be out in the world -- listening to other adults and other kids without mommy hovering behind him. And I'm a bit of a hovercraft. When we came home today -- aside from not getting a full nap -- he wouldn't let me out of his sight. I went to grab some of his books from the other room and he was afraid I was gone for good. A world without mom has to be a survivable place for him, right?

Study shop

2010-09-21T12:15:00.000-07:00

The study, in middle-class Victorian homes, was meant to serve as a masculine retreat from the femininity of the domestic domain. Lined with books and piled with documents, the study was dampened from the din of a bustling home and marked a calm center amid a perceived chaos. Virginia Woolf remembers her father's study as a sacred place at the top of their home on Hyde Park Gate that served as the seat of paternal intellect: "Downstairs there was pure convention: upstairs pure intellect." The study defined itself on the absence of physical labor. It was a space of scholarly pursuits, where the mind rather than the body worked. In contrast to the space outside -- at the height of the Industrial Revolution -- where the laboring body kept the Empire running, the study offered a fantasy image of man as pure mind.

Now that we're all through with manufacturing and physical labor in the work place, tied to a desk pushing papers -- or that's what they tell me at least -- it is the shop rather than the study that fulfills a masculine fantasy. To work with one's hands and create an object from scratch seems to shut out domestic noise as efficiently as books and paper and offers a different kind of retreat from a different kind of laboring world. In an economy in which what is exchanged is no longer money for labor but money for debt -- or debt for debt, something like that -- the specter-ized body finds a home in the home, or in the factory inside the home.

All of which is said not to dissuade *anybody* from entering his/her shop. But just to put some noted malaise into a context -- my context of choice.

Tennis, Playgroups, French.

2010-09-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

It's US Open season, and I'm tennis'ed out. The internet is providing me with free coverage, all day long. Bonkers.
In between matches, I grade papers, play trains, knit, feel allergic to stuff, think.
I've been going to a new playgroup with Desmond. A woman who used to live across the street from me moved a couple of blocks away and has a son about Desmond's age. She kept inviting us over, but I was hesitant. Her son signs -- "all the kids sign." And, since Desmond is more of a pointer than a signer, I wasn't sure if he'd be accepted. Of course I mean if I'd be accepted -- but since I'm not the one playing or signing who the fuck cares, frankly? So we went, and Desmond loves it. Calder (the boy's house) has tons of things with wheels. And since they're not his own toys, Desmond spends hours wheeling around the backyard, not minding me a bit.
And I met a fellow dissertation mommy. From Missouri, no less! She is/was working on her PhD from the Sorbonne in French Lit, with Cixous's daughter as her diss advisor. And she's writing on space. Me too! But she's writing her's in French. No thanks. I'll just have a baguette, please, sans diss-written-in-French.
Desmond here is playing with wooden clogs at a friend's family's cabin in the Ozarks. Like most summer days in Missouri, it was very humid that day -- in fact, we just got caught in a thunderstorm.

Some Summer Thoughts in Sacramento

2010-08-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

I want to open a bookstore. I have no idea how to run a business or start a business. But I do love, on my walks with Desmond, letting my mind wander thinking about what the store will look like, the kinds of books we'd sell, how I'd offer ESL classes in the back, and host monthly lectures for a "Free University" series. It'd be called "Watershed Books" and we'd sell books on "art, culture and politics" A hipster kind of bookstore, with fancy art books, and pompous cultural studies books, and some poetry and fiction. But, more than a store that sells books -- cause who needs to buy books at a store? -- it'd be a kind of community space to meet like-minded people and see what they're reading. Dave said some sort of web format is imperative, which is a frightening but practical idea.

I'm also not thinking about the last chapter of my dissertation. Worrisome.

But I do think about all the babies my friends are having or are about to have. About how sadly far away they are. Once friends have babies it should be mandatory -- a federal law -- that they all move within a 50 mile radius of one another. Why isn't that a law yet?

Six Months Later . . .

2010-07-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

The washer is running.
NPR is informing.
Curious George is oo-oo-ah-ahing.
I am typing.
Mad Men is downloading.
The electricity is working.

Year One

2010-02-09T18:40:00.001-08:00

We had a birthday party for Desmond, because he turned one!
If I were to guess how old he was based on how many years I've aged since he was born or how many pounds I've lost I'd guess he's anywhere between ten years to two weeks old. But, in fact, he's one year old. So my parents and brother flew out from St. Louis and we threw a party at my sister-in-law's.
I think I may never host a one-year-old birthday party again, to preface. If Desmond were to ever have a sibling, s/he's already doomed. Or saved -- because it didn't seem like Desmond was having the best time of his life (that would be the day Dave flailed around the living room pretending to be a gorilla).
But I'd been planning this for months: a simple-to-make but hearty lunch menu of bbq brisket and baked beans (actually, the brisket wasn't that easy and was SUPER expensive. but also very delicious); a guest list that was generous but realistic; a cute photo-postcard invitation, specifying NO PRESENTS (Dave has a fear of plastic overload), but secretly knowing they would come; and, most importantly, the completion of a dissertation chapter to allow for a greater ease of socializing.
And it all turned out fine -- not everyone showed, which was a relief, but enough to make it seem like a party. Desmond, apparently, isn't fond of the limelight. But he was offered several supervised "be-alone" trips outside to calm his fragile nerves. And my mother likes to put things under my nose to look at when I already have quite enough under there to keep my attention. And my dad likes to do things slowly when things, for some reason I've concocted, must be done faster. Honestly, I was a perspiring, nervously-smiling, frosting-smeared mess by the end of the three hours.
But . . . I'm glad I did it . . . ? No, I am. It was fun and I got to see folks I haven't in a while, and come out as the mess I really am.

She's Alive!

2009-12-22T12:21:00.000-08:00

I went to two -- TWO -- social events last week. After months of solitary confinement, I left my apartment after sunset and chatted with people over food and drinks.
Event #1
The Stroller Strides Christmas Party.
I've been attending this work out group for several months now -- not that you'd be able to tell, because I think I've lost exactly no pounds since giving birth. Nor have I really gotten to know any of the ladies. I get shy (*awww*). And also, it takes me a while to remember what people outside of university campuses talk about for fun. These work-out-mommies are all really nice. And I could care less if they've never heard of Lacan or chuckled over Tristram Shandy. But they don't watch Mad Men!?! And they don't think Liz Lemon is hilarious. I don't get it. So -- I've been keeping the chit-chat limited to the subject of how cute Desmond is. And he gives us so much to talk about, cause he's so darned cute. See? But the Christmas Party was real swell. I was a little anxious about it, and I'm never brave enough not to feel shy. But there was some good chatting going on -- mostly about babies. But also about other things. Check plus!

Event #2
Christmas Party hosted by a geologist at David's work
Dave was waffling on this one, he being 100X shyer than myself. But the host of the party had been really supportive of David and pushed for him to get a promotion. And I have a suspicion that Dave was getting a little sick of being the hermit-father, though I'm sure he'd deny it. So, at the last moment, Dave asked his dad if he wouldn't mind watching Desmond. And we used that free night to hang out with 50-year old, frizzy-haired state geologists. But it was nice. I talked with a young mother of three, the wife of an engineer. And Dave met people in his department. It wasn't a barn-burner -- and I slept like poop that night -- but it was nice.

How to Decorate a Dining Room

2009-12-01T09:08:00.000-08:00

We moved baby Desmond to his own room a couple of weeks ago. Rather than putting him down to sleep in the dining room area -- which lies between the front living room and the hallway leading to the kitchen and back bedroom -- we housed his crib and new dresser in the back. This gave us the nighttime freedom to make noisy kitchen sounds and move from watching TV to grabbing an unneeded snack with ease.

The problem is -- Desmond is not a sound sleeper, and he's an early and exuberant riser. The back bedroom shares a wall with our very friendly neighbors who appreciate our concern but, I'm sure, would much prefer a full night's sleep (wouldn't we all). We've tried our best to sound-proof the room. I spent $60 at Joann's fabrics to make padded fabric wall panels, and Dave draped the room in blankets. But sounds still echo.

I don't think Desmond is sleeping any worse back there. But we are. Every little peep gets me out of bed to readjust and pacify for fear that louder noises are afoot, liable to wake the neighbors. And rather than letting him babble and moan when he wakes up at 5AM so that he'll learn to get up at the proper and just plain reasonable 6AM, I rush in to grab him and bring him to bed with us. This, apparently, is a delight to him -- but doesn't give us that much-needed extra hour.

The whole move has been the cause of early morning arguments. I want us all to just get used to the new arrangements for the sake of dinner as well as domestic aesthetics -- it just looks weird having a crib to creep by in the middle of the apartment. Dave wants it back the way it was for the sake of everyone's sanity. We can't (or I can't -- he's a pretty sound sleeper) keep popping up at every noise. And Desmond needs the vocal freedom to cry and moan and babble without all the parental fussing. He's right, damn him.

So tonight it goes back to the old, ugly arrangement.
My only consolation is that we only have three and a half more months on our lease. Two-bedroom house, here we come! Eventually.

Ikea Trip Threatens Marriage; or, Opposites May Not Attract

2009-11-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

I love going to Ikea. Our trips are rare, saved for the transition moments when we've planned dramatic overhauls of our living arrangements. This weekend is one of those moments. We found a dresser on craigslist that will work as a changing table and will allow us to move Desmond into the bedroom and us into the "dining room." Desmond having his own room is a perfect excuse for an Ikea visit, an opportunity to pick up a kid's rug and some other things we need around the house.
Everyone, I think, must have a similar attraction to Ikea, especially on a quiet, unbusy afternoon. In fact, I just listened to a radio story about the store's opening in China which was promptly occupied by bored teenagers who used the little living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms as hang-out spaces in which to pass a lazy summer evening. With some meatballs on the side, this sounds like a perfect idea!
Yes, walking through the alternative universes of practically decorated spaces is inspirational and exciting and gets my synapses firing. Things on the top floor usually go okay for me. It's when we hit the "marketplace" that I begin to lose my mind-grapes. I know what it looks like from inside my shoes -- like a blur. I scan this cutely designed, reasonably priced object and before I can tell what the hell I'm looking at, I spy something across the aisle equally priced and just as cute. Should I get this colander, or this one? $4.99 or 9.99? Or this one for $11.99? But I have a colander. But this one is 4.99. or 11.99. These are colanders here, in front me. The one at home I can't see right now, so how do I know if it's as good as this one, that's only $9.99? I'm a mess, and it lasts the entire hour or so that I'm careening through the basement maze.
David is the exact opposite of me. But despite what you'd think, this does not help matters. His opposite to me is not calm, rational consumerism -- the kind that would gently chuckle at my mania and calmly remind me of all the colanders and hand towels and glass vases we already own. He is the kind of opposite that walks into the marketplace with a look of extreme skepticism and a resolute NO already formed on his lips. As I told him yesterday, he's like Desmond has become with the new foods we try to feed him: he pokes at it suspiciously and then closes his eyes and turns his head in disgust. This attitude does not counteract my frenzy. I think it may feed it, because now not only do I have to choose the items among all the items on my own, but I also have to yell at David and tell him to look at this thing in my hand, we need it right? Look at it! If only he'd look at it.

The Moe Syzlak Effect

2009-10-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday as Dave and I were approaching a garage sale, I had an imaginary conversation in which I was asked what I was looking for. "Oh, nothing in particular." This reminded me of a Simpsons episode that ends with Moe Syzlak swooping down with hand-made wings to save the day. As he's about to take off, an adoring fan asks where he's flying to. Moe shrugs and says, "Eh, nowheres in partickeller." As those words crossed my brain, they were uttered outloud by my husband. I turned to him and yelled, "Why did you say that? I was JUST thinking that! I mean, when you were saying it, I was thinking it. The words were in my head, but they were coming out of your mouth!"
And he said, "Oh well, when we were walking up to this garage sale, I was thinking they'd ask me . . ." And then he went on to tell me he was thinking the exact same thoughts. At the exact same time.
People, this is sad. In a couple of years, we probably won't even need to have verbal conversations. We'll be able to communicate with a series of winks and nods. Like baseball players. Which might be kind of annoying for Desmond. He'll learn the code eventually.

The One-Hour Evening TV Drama

2009-10-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

I am currently deep into the third season of Mad Men, in which the ineffable Don Draper diagnoses the modern condition through his heartfelt ruminations for ad campaigns while juggling a harem of dark-haired mistresses.
Where would I be without my weekly one-hour evening dramas? I recently realized how long I've depended on them. I was watching "thirtysomething" when I was twelve years old. (Would this show hold up now that I'm in my thirties? I don't remember anything about the show except for Nancy getting cancer and Gary getting in a bike accident -- I think the rest was whining about kids and jobs -- which doesn't seem too far off.) Then "China Beach" -- some surfer dude, the camp prostitute with a heart of gold and Dana Delaney. Onto "Twin Peaks" -- of course my favorite of the bunch, cause it was scary and full of beautiful people (the choice between Bobby and James would eat at me for years.) Then a lull during my college years.
But then came the golden era of the one-hour cable drama: "Six Feet Under," "The Wire," and "Deadwood." With swear words and boobs!

Marriage and a Happy Baby

2009-09-30T09:49:00.001-07:00

To backtrack a bit, we went to New York and attended a beautiful wedding surrounded by friends that I love to see but so rarely do. The wedding was way up in the Adirondacks in a lodge equipped with old-timey, cozy things -- like huge fireplaces, and a "There Will Be Blood" style bowling alley. The ceremony was simple and sweet, and by God, parted the rain clouds, so you know it must've been special. Someone did the sweetest, off-key version of Hendrix's "Waterfall" that has been stuck in my head ever since. I talked and ate and drank and pretty much had a gay old time. Was I walking around worried over the well-being of my baby (which again reminds me of "TWBB" -- "I've abandoned my child.")? Not really -- Dave was feeling a bit guilty, worried that he wouldn't remember us. But, after a few phone calls back home, I realized he was fine. He had a dog to distract him with occasional licks to the face. The nicest part, I must say, was to be with people I know the best and who say things I understand and who understand me when I say things. And who like to laugh a lot. I miss that.

Two memories

2009-09-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

D's been listening to a lot of "This American Life" and comes home from work full of stories about stories. One is about a British guy who has a distinct childhood memory of being thrown in a lake by his friends because he's fat. Turns out, after a series of reunion-related interviews, he jumped willingly into the lake because that was what they were doing, jumping in the lake. His plumpness, in the minds of his friends, had nothing to do with his ending up wet.
Which got me wondering if I have mis-remembered facts from the past, which I hardly seem to remember anyway. But the shocking moments, did they happen for the reasons I think they did?
-- In seventh grade, I surprisingly slapped my best friend out of total confusion when a bunch of people gathered around to tell me, teasingly but playfully, that Danny liked me. I guess I was super excited? (I remember, we "went together" for a total of 7 days.)
-- I distinctly remember my kindergarten teacher mocking me to the entire class because of a silly mistake I made on an assignment (I remember the assignment too). Can that be right? Kindergarten teachers don't ridicule 6-year olds, do they? Even elderly midwestern kindgarten teachers named Schultz -- it just can't be.

The Lost Weekend

2009-09-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

We're heading for New York tomorrow night, jetblue red-eye then a six hour car trip upstate to attend a little wedding in the woods. I'm beyond excited, to witness the nuptials of dear friends in celebration with a whole bunch of other dear friends who I haven't seen in a while. I'll be surrounded by friends! A comforting thought to one lost in a strange city with a baby and a hubbie, neither of whom help fill my social calendar.
But our poor baby -- the thought has been eating at me for months -- will be spending the weekend at grandpa's. With his baby-loving ladyfriend and D's sister next door, there will be a community of loving arms for Desmond to cry into during our absence. But, cry I'm sure he will. He's a sensitive little one who jumps with delight everytime he sees his father enter a room, who pulls himself up to stand with a devious and proud grin on wobbly bookcases, who gets so tired he doesn't know what to do but cry and giggle at once, who shivers in anticipation whenever I pull out the box of Joe's O's. He's a (heavy! over 21 lbs!) handful. And I feel both guilty for putting my in-laws through three and a half days of back-breaking babysitting and worried worried worried that Desmond will be psychically scarred so thoroughly that all the analysis in Austria wouldn't be enough to cure him of the trauma of a weekend without mommy and daddy.
On the other (saner) hand, I have my dress at the cleaners and the long-lost friends in the wings gearing up the car to pick us up. I can't wait!

How to Write a Dissertation, pt 2

2009-09-04T12:49:00.001-07:00

On my "days off," during Dave's furlough Fridays, or on a lazy Saturday or Sunday, I either head off to a nearby coffeshop or drive 20 minutes to UC Davis to use their library. I am supposed to be writing. Furiously. With passion and determination. With my eyes on the PhD prize.
Instead I flip through a biography or book of criticism. Underline a sentence or two. Open up my Word doc. Think about what word would be a good word to write. Write. Delete. Write. Then spend the next 10 - 15 minutes on facebook, thinking with much more concentration about how to appropriately word an update I'll never end up writing.
Right now I'm looking at the cutest little black chiuaua-type dog with toenails painted pink. She of course is owned by a tatted rock-abilly chick, the type of girl I used to think was badass when I first moved to northern California.

Food on the Floor

2009-08-25T23:12:00.000-07:00

The stages of Desmond's dietary development can be measured by the objects found underfoot. Right now we're at the crushed or mushy Cheerio stage, which leaves me rubbing the bottom of one foot against the calf of the opposite leg trying to brush the thing off. He grabs them by the handful, but only about a quarter reach his mouth, and even less make it into the digestive system, spit out as they are.
We're also still in the teething phase, which brings with it small puddles -- or more like Pollackian drizzles of drool dripped across the hardwood floor.
We're long past the era of breastfeeding that left white splashes on the ground every time the baby cried. Or at two hour intervals, whichever came first.
We're about to enter finger food land -- which will probably just be a messier version of Cheerio-dom.
We almost got into a teething biscuit phase today but, after a messy five minute try-out, we quickly reconsidered.

A slice in the life of . . .

2009-08-18T15:06:00.001-07:00

To fill in some lost time, I will quickly describe the routine of life as a parent in Sacramento:
1) Desmond is apparently a morning person. He wakes up between 5:30 - 6:30. Best not to get me started on the topic of sleeping, cause I'll be likely to go on a bit. "Sleep training" in an apartment right next to another apartment in the summer when windows are open. No verb here to complete the sentence.
2) Dave wakes up and gets Desmond out of bed, changes a diaper, makes coffee and does whatever dishes are in the sink. (sigh!)
3) I get up around 7 to take over while Dave gets ready for work.
4) He leaves and Desmond and I stare at each other -- he with a toothy, drooly grin. I with puffy eyes and morning breath.
5) If it's a day for "Stroller Strides," the mommy exercise group in the park, I sit Desmond down on his play pad while I rush around getting things ready to go.
6) He takes a bottle, maybe drifts off for a half hour nap. Or we hit the pavement and are out being social and healthy.
7) A long stretch of unscheduled time that includes eating lunch, napping, crying, playing, walking, laughing.
8) Dave gets home at 5:10 and I either head out to the cafe to study, or Dave and I do something like play tennis while Desmond makes eyes at passers-by.
9) Feed / Bath / Story / Bed. Usually bedtime is undramatic, the way I like it.
10) Dave and I eat dinner, watch something either trashy, interesting, or stupid on tv/dvd.
11) Bedtime for Dave around 9:30. For me, 10:30.
Typically.

How to Write a Dissertation

2009-08-17T15:31:00.001-07:00

I have no idea. Not the way I'm doing it.

Dave and I have a not-so-strict routine. On Mondays/Wednesdays when Dave gets home from work at 5, I go off to a cafe to get some reading or writing done. And on "furlough Fridays," I'll try to get a good 4-5 hours of work in. So far this has produced a photobook of baby pictures I ordered through QOOP, and a paragraph of quotes I should use.

In the meantime, Desmond has two teeth and will crawl any day now. Season 3 of Mad Men started last night. And temperatures reached the upper 90s in the Sacramento region.

Back to Work

2009-03-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

I've been worried for weeks about today the day I commute 3 hours (each way) from Sac to Santa Cruz with a baby in the back seat who has no predictable eating schedule yet. Lit 101/Marxism is calling -- 8AM lecture.
Things seemed like they were going to work out with less belly-aching than I thought. Dave got the (Cesar Chavez) day off and could accompany us there and back, taking a lot of pressure off our first day back in school.
I prepared all day yesterday to get everything set up for our early morning departure. The diaper bag and school bag were packed, the stroller was stowed, the bottles were made in advance and the cooler bag was ready. All I had to do was wake up, feed the baby, and be on my way. And we were making excellent time, I was to be there with a good half hour to breathe.
Except half-way there I had a vision that did not include seeing myself putting the bottles in the car. I remember throwing the diaper bag and my school bag in the backseat, next to the camera which I thought I should bring. But the bag of bottles, were they there? Nope.
So for the last hour of the journey, Dave and I worried: where were we going to buy formula, and bottles, and how were we going to sterilize them? And would hungry Desmond give us the time to figure all this out? We were straight panicking our merry way over highway 17, and what should have been a pleasant early morning drive down memory lane was nailbiting nightmare.
With a happy ending. Dave called his old Paper Vision bosses who kindly opened their doors to our screaming baby and let bottles be sterilized and formula mixed as I strolled into a packed auditorium pretending that motherhood is really a cinch.
Thankfully, my sister-in-law offered to care for poor Desmond Tuesdays and Thursdays so he'll never have to suffer that drive again.

Pass the Chicken Soup I guess

2009-03-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening we went to pick up a fancy Pali crib we found on craigslist. The woman selling the crib was a local East-Sac mom with a hip husband in a Volvo. They seemed like nice people who decorate their modest home in French bistro decor and stunning black-and-white wedding photos. We agreed to take their crib, and kindly accepted the accoutrements: mattress, crib bumper, sheets. And then the mom let me know that she has published a book and said I should take one home with me. She even signed it. The Light at the End of the Diaper Pail (and I see she has a blog too).
In another life, I think I might have scoffed at a publication of this nature. In fact, because I'm a cynical snob (and probably also jealous of all "regular" people who also have a published book), I did scoff a bit as I flipped through pages that reminded me to "Breathe. Repeat." or to "Love your partner." Little chicken-soup tidbits geared to a specific demographic who just so happens to spend a lot of money on feel-good baby-shower gifts. But it actually did make me feel good. While I may ignore the advice to "Beam. Cry. Laugh. Be real." I do kind of appreciate the reassurance that my hours of sitting on the big bed watching bad cable is acceptable behavior.

Around the Bed

2009-03-17T08:58:00.001-07:00

We've been living at my father-in-law's since we got back from France three(!!) months ago. In fact, we've been living in my father-in-law's bedroom, while he's been staying at his lady friend's as his children figure their shit out. J -- my sister-in-law -- and her husband have recently moved from here to their re-modeled mega-house next door. And Dave and I are packing up and heading out to our new one-bedroom apartment, with all the old-school features -- like a built-in kitchen hutch, a Wedgewood stove, and a strange swiveling door that used to house a Murphy bed.
I'm excited about our move, to finally be in our own space with our own things. But I must admit, I'm also regretting some amenities of living in the burbs -- washer/dryer (I'm not quite sure I can live without one at this point . . . this will be a test), no apartment neighbors for Desmond to bother, no utilities or cable bills.
What most characterizes our stay here has been "going around the bed." Going around, that is, the California King sized bed that is the main piece of furniture in the room in which we live. The in-law's bedroom is of a generous size -- bigger than my studio in Paris for sure -- with a bathroom and walk-in closet attached. It also houses a huge flat-screen TV that offers one million channels or something close to that. What I do all day is sit on the bed, feed the baby, walk around the bed to gather clothes to put in the washer, check to see if I've already seen the "What Not to Wear" episode, walk around the bed to get to the kitchen to prepare lunch, feed the baby, walk around the bed to stare blankly at a bookshelf with books that I'll definitely read tomorrow. The bed is big and to get anything accomplished, you must walk around it. Thankfully, I'm not concerned these days with getting much accomplished, so I've been occupied mostly upon rather than around the bed.
Soon I'll be sitting on the new-to-me sofa I bought through craigslist that we tried to squeeze through a series of apt. doors, scuffing and streaking its white micro suede fabric, only to decide that we entered through the wrong entrance. The currently cushion-less couch is now sitting in the back utilities room waiting for Dave to regain his strength to take it through the correct series of doors.

In February, Bad Things Happened

2009-03-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

Like two bouts of breast infection -- one of which sent me to the emergency room to have a huge abscess drained, leaving me with a hole that I *affectionately* call my "boob wound" which must be dressed twice daily.
So, with the least amount of guilt that I can manage, I've given up breast-feeding and have moved Desmond to the formula'ed bottle. He doesn't seem to mind at all.
However, I must admit that, despite the decidedly motherly intimacy that breast feeding provides -- I do feel a kind of pride that I am able to produce food to nourish my child -- I was not that keen on nursing. It is really totally exhausting. I know that some of my own happiness and independence must be sacrificed for the good of my dependent, but I had some difficulty coming to terms with the many months and countless hours ahead of me, hunched over a hungry child whose appetite seemed eternal.
What is more, I was feeling a fair amount of resentment toward all the websites and advice books -- and even California legislation -- compelling me to think of my body as a sacred trough that not only provides the best nourishment -- a miracle elixir allegedly preventing diabetes, asthma, obesity and slow-wittedness -- but also points to a morally superior mother who deeply, truly loves her progeny (unlike the bottle-feeding mother who is either conceived of as a self-absorbed diva or a lower-income, under-educated teenager).
Here's a pretty convincing article detailing the breastfeeding trend and questioning the actual medical benefits of nursing.

Labor Story

2009-02-15T16:24:00.000-08:00

My appointment for the induction was Friday night, 8pm. I was not thrilled about the idea of being induced. I wasn't really sure what it entailed, nor was I sure -- based on my (not really) extensive internet research -- how patient-friendly, as opposed to doctorly-convenient, it was going to be. I was afraid, as was Dave, that I was setting myself up for a chain of interventions. First an induction, next thing you know a C-section.

But we arrived promptly at the scheduled hour and I was immediately surrounded by nurses attaching monitors to my belly and sticking me with needles, taking my temperature, asking me questions then doubting with their sidelong looks the veracity of my answers (No really, I haven't done street drugs. Not cocaine OR heroine. Swear.) But once these pleasantries were out of the way, the first of three main nurses was really sweet. She looked just like Joan from *Mad Men*. She explained the deal with inducing labor: she was going to insert a tiny pill that would slowly release a hormone and my contractions would get going. The thing is, though, is that my contractions had already begun. I just couldn't feel them really. I could see them on the contraction monitor -- but felt nothing like pain when I was supposedly experiencing a contraction. The induction pill was supposed to help things along. But as soon as "Joan" went to take her break -- around 9pm -- my water broke. On it's own. It had nothing to do with the hormone pill. Weird.

For the next 6 hours, I didn't need the monitor to tell me when I was having a contraction. I was in pain. What's unfortunate about scheduling a labor induction is that they have you come in at night, assuming that you'll be opting for pain medication. I think I could have handled the pain however if I hadn't been so miserably tired. As it was, both Dave and I were struggling to find the energy to withstand what felt like . . . you know, I don't even remember what it felt like exactly. All I remember is that it hurt and that I had to audibly moan because for some reason that helped soothe the pain.

Anyway -- they did have to ask twice, but I took their drugs. Because it was too early for the epidural (I wasn't dilated enough -- you need to be between 5-6 inches), but my contractions were practically on top of each other, they injected into my IV some kind of narcotic that immediately made me feel great. I felt high. And good. And then recalled that I have never been straight-edge. I have mostly always enjoyed a dopey high, especially one that dulls pain (although, for the record, I've never really taken drugs to alleviate pain before). So Dave was off pain-partner duty and, at 3AM, we could both get some rest.

I remember at around 6AM, the drugs were wearing off and the sun was beginning to rise. All I wanted was to be surrounded by peaceful things. There was a TV station that showed images of nature -- winter landscapes, fall foliage -- accompanied by soft music. Despite the rising pain, I wanted to live in this moment it was so quiet.

But then at 8pm the epidural brigade arrived, along with my new main nurse, Irene, who is much younger than her name suggests. This was her first day back from a four month maternity leave after delivering her second child. She was great and I kind of want to go back to give her a proper thank you for her help. So, they inserted the epidural: it was a scary sounding procedure and I think Dave was really uncomfortable watching them thread things into my back. But, whoo, it's kind of amazing how the pain completely disappeared. I was a little concerned, about 6 hours later, when one of my legs -- which were both tingly and numb -- wouldn't stop tingling (it eventually did, though).

About 7 hours later, after almost 18 hours of active -- though mostly painless -- labor and a steady dose of pitocin (yet another hormone that speeds labor along) I was ready to deliver. Irene told me when to push and Dave held my hand (and leg) and counted to 10 three times. What was unexpected about delivery is that it's much calmer than in the movies. There's not constant screaming and cursing. When there was a contraction I would push as hard as I could. But then there'd be a couple of minutes of just hanging out, chatting with the nurses about other deliveries, or their own babies, or nothing at all -- just staring and zoning out. There was about 45 minutes of this. And the scariest thing about it all, as you would imagine, is the thought -- and the reality -- of a head passing through a smaller passageway, that I would have to experience this passing, and that it would (or should, if it drugily didn't) hurt. But out he came. And all because, I'm sure, of my expert pushing. Everyone was really impressed with my pushing.

And it was CRAZY, crazy to have little Desmond placed on my chest two seconds later. Things then start to become real, but not really because I'm worn out and addled, with nurses and doctors running in and out, and I don't fully understand what's going on. And maybe because I don't know what else to do and definitely don't know what to think, I'm just smiling and crying and looking at Dave, whose state will remain unwritten, and Desmond who knows no better than me what to do next.

In February, Things Happen

2009-02-11T15:05:00.001-08:00

-- Little Desmond Harold aka Ji-myung has arrived (labor details to follow). As the pediatrician commented today, he's a robust lad for being only a week and a half old. He eats well, sleeps tolerably well, and cries whenever he feels like it.
-- The jobs Dave has been *patiently* awaiting have slowly started to hatch. The State job (whose hiring staff has had me wondering how anything gets done at the state level) may actually happen. Could it be true? After months of random and pointless test-taking and stalling and paper-shuffling, will there come a day when he walks into an office to work and leaves with a paycheck in hand? Let's not get too excited . . .
-- And sadly, Dave and his family had to put their dog Bubba down this morning. He had a growth in his stomach and looked miserable and heartbreakingly ashamed. Bubba leaves behind his twin brother, Poncho.

January is the month of waiting

2009-01-29T05:08:00.001-08:00

It's five in the morning and I've been up for an hour and a half. I think this might be my new schedule for a little while: up at 1 and 4 am.
It seems like everything is going to happen at once. After an entire month on the edge of our seats, waiting for things to start moving and get decided, it's all going to get done this weekend. I'll still keep my fingers crossed:
The baby's about a week late and the doctor will induce labor Friday night.
David finally has an interview with the State tomorrow, I mean this morning.
The in-laws' house next door is almost done with renovations and it looks like they can move back this weekend.
My parents arrive on Sunday.
The Australian Open Finals are this weekend.
As is the Super Bowl.
Obama passed a stimulus package.

The Mystery of James Gray

2008-12-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

One thing I learned during my stay in France is that there is an American film director of some renown named James Gray. He came out with a film a couple of years ago starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg called "We Own the Night." It looked like a generic New York gangster movie, with the generic grit and violence so I didn't pay much attention. But "Two Lovers", starring Gwyenth Paltrow and Joaquin again, opened here a couple of weeks ago -- in fact its only opening is in France, it is not scheduled to open in the US.
Apparently the French are gaga for James Gray. One theater was having a James Gray film festival (he's only directed four movies).
I talked to the film prof I'm TA-ing for and he was simply gushing over this guy. The stories he tells (mostly about the Russian Mafia in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn), the mise en scène, which is apparently more French (long takes) than American (fancy editing). I asked the prof why I'd never heard of him, why America is not interested in James Gray, and he said -- "Typical American. They don't care about the auteur. Only the actor."
That may be true -- but it's also kind of weird. Dave and I saw "Two Lovers" a couple of nights ago. It's a solid movie, based on a Dostoyevsky story ("White Nights"). Phoenix plays an odd-ball -- depressive, weird -- but who has a Brooklyn-boy, neighborhood charm that catches the ladies. Gwenyth Paltrow is bad-news, in love with a married man (Elias Koteas who I LOOOOVE), and the perfect blond shiksa for the shy Jewish boy's fantasies. Anyway, I'm not going to go over the entire movie -- but it's good, I was taken. There was nothing odd or artsy about it.
So I don't understand why this movie, with fairly big Hollywood names, is not opening in the US. Will it open only after the Oscar season so it won't get in the way of the films that are really "in contention"? In any case, I'm now suspicious about this "American way" that only appreciates actors and never auteurs. I think perhaps this does not indicate an inherent American trait, but rather we are being led -- by industry scheduling priorities? -- to ignore the "auteur" to the benefit of the genre (complete with generic actors) that fits the season.

Last 10 Days

2008-12-03T08:17:00.000-08:00

Goodness, the sky is actually clear right now. A rare moment.
I must say, I am half looking forward to going back to California. The warmer weather and sunnier skies will be a nice change of scenery. Of course, going back to the States also means going back to the real world -- a real world of health insurance, pay checks, joblessness, and newborn babies. Not so uplifting.
But, while I'm here . . . I haven't really bought anything Frenchy French since I've been here, souvenir-style. Most of my clothes have been purchased at H&M (I figured, why spend real money on maternity clothes that I'd only wear for a couple of months . . . although there was a really cute maternity-ish dress at APC, but for 180euro? eech). True, I've bought some books, and some good ones too. But I want something decadent and "Parisian."
What should I waste my money on?
* Boots (I need them, but shoe shopping is an arduous task for me)
* Perfume (I might get some at the airport duty-free)
* Sunglasses (They are way over-priced, you know for the marc jacobs label or whatever, but they look really, really cool -- and I've never had designer sunglasses before)

6h du matin

2008-11-19T21:13:00.000-08:00

I can't go back to sleep.
We've been going to as many museums as we can stand since Dave got here. This November is apparently the month of photography, so we saw a Walker Evans exhibit and a couple of days ago went to a really, really great show of 70s American Photography at the BNF. Yesterday afternoon we hit the Pompidou Center. I had forgotten how huge that place is. We saw a special exhibit on Futurism, but after that we were too exhausted to really take in anything else. I dragged Dave through the rest of the rooms anyway to make our 12euros last.
Tonight we're going to try to see if Wes Anderson and Peter Bogdonovich are actually having a public conversation after the showing of "Royal Tennenbaums."

People often ask me if I have weird food cravings. And my answer is no. I love eating, so I crave food -- but not in any unheard of combinations, or at strange moments of the day. In fact, my eating habits are so normal (perhaps with slightly larger portions) that I was getting worried that my pregnancy was not "as pregnant" as it's supposed to be. Until I realized that maybe I do have cravings. Yesterday I sat thinking about donuts for a while. And just now I had a yearning for pumpkin pie -- or maybe just for Thanksgiving dishes in general. Of course, this could have nothing to do with being pregnant and everything to do with missing American food. But what's strange is -- I mean, like Twilight Zone weird -- is that I, as you may know, love nachos (esp. from La Cabana in Santa Cruz). And I miss them, theoretically, but I haven't craved them like I craved that donut yesterday. So maybe everything really is okay.

Oops, I think I just induced a nachos craving.

Reunited

2008-11-16T10:13:00.001-08:00

We're back together again. I picked Dave up from the airport on Wednesday. I exited the elevator the exact moment he exited the gate. And from that strangely synchronous moment, everything's been back to normal. I thought it might be a little weird, being a couple again, having someone around all the time. But it's not. I'm a little more giddy than I was before -- Dave got himself trapped between the sofa bed and the wall yesterday which had me laughing to the point where I thought I may be doing harm to myself and the unborn.
Speaking of, I finally went back to the OB who didn't seem to mind at all that it had been over two months since my last visit. Dave came with, smiling politely while sitting across from the briskly efficient -- and still tan -- docteur who was muttering to himself in French about glucose tests and echograms. But after weeks of anxiety and embarrassing phone calls to receptionists, over bad reception, in broken French, as soon as I entered the waiting room I already felt better. I knew nothing was wrong. I felt healthy. I just needed the surroundings there to verify it.
And also, it doesn't hurt to have Dave back again. To reassure me that I don't have gestational diabetes, or high blood pressure, or a fat ass, or a dumb dissertation. Phew.

Macarons

2008-11-09T09:43:00.000-08:00

Today I had lunch at a friend's place. She makes the best Japanese chicken curry. I ate way too, way too much, but still had enough room for some macarons from Pierre Hermé. I've had other Parisian macarons. More than really relishing their taste, I enjoy them as a curiosity -- a French treat that can't be found elsewhere. Even though I love the different flavors you can choose (pistachio, green tea, orange blossom), I usually find them sweeter than I like my sweets to be. Like little colorful sugar bombs. But these Pierre Hermé macarons . . . they have some substance behind them. They're sugary, but meaty too (yes, a meaty macaron). We waited in line for at least 20 minutes for our ten macarons (costing 15 euros), but I'd say it was worth it.

While I wait . . .

2008-11-08T09:40:00.001-08:00

. . .for D. to get his ass over here, I've using my time to make some progress on the dissertation. I am both impatient wanting D. to be here NOW and worried that I won't have enough time to actually get anything substantial done.
So, I've been going to libraries. Not to read their books, because I've decided to forget the goal of working on my French chapter. But to get out of the house and work somewhere "studious." I go to the Bibliotheque Ste. Genvieve, which is gorgeous inside but doesn't have free wi-fi (or at least not that I can tell). I also visit the Bibliotheque Forney, which seriously looks like a castle (and very well may be) and has free wi-fi (that doesn't work that well).
Yeah, it's been good jumping from library to library. I get there early and stay for three to four hours -- which I think is a good chunk of time for my brain to be thinking and my hands to be typing. Then I make my way home. Today I left the Bib. Forney and strolled along the Seine toward the Metro at Hôtel de Ville. There's some Jacques Prévert exhibition going on there that is apparently very popular. Which reminds me of all the things I want to do when D. gets here. I think the first thing we'll do is go to the Walker Evans Expo at the Henri Cartier Bresson museum. It's free on Wednesday nights starting at 6:30pm.

Obama Oh-Eight!

2008-11-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

Woke up, turned on the computer. I already knew, there was no way that there could have been any other result. But when I saw the headline on the New York Times, of course I had to cry. It makes me so happy and excited.
And I'm a cynical academic! But, as Zizek says of American capitalism, "I know it's not real, but all the same I live as if it is."
But I always have room for worry and today it goes to Missouri which is locked at 49.4% for each candidate! The color-map of the state mirrors the color-map of the country: blue on the sides, red in the middle. If Indiana can go blue with only a .9% difference, I'm hoping the same can be true for MO.

Family Visit

2008-11-02T23:26:00.001-08:00

Ok, my parents are gone for the States but, while here, managed to provoke my first non-rational, hormonally-rich mood swings. Seriously. I was going from screaming pissed off to silently crying in seconds. And the whole time I was thinking, "damn - my family really screws me up." Until I realized at least half of this dysfunction just can't be helped. Which is a relief, cause I was starting to feel real guilty for being such a nutso of a tourguide/daughter/sister. I still feel a little guilty.

But I think their trip was a success overall -- given all the photos that were taken. The weather was pretty much cold and rainy the whole time -- but I took them to the Musée de l'Orangerie. Which they loved! We also saw the new James Bond movie, and had dinner at a great little Vietnamese restaurant near Belleville.

Four-Day Week

2008-10-29T00:47:00.000-07:00

My family flew in this past weekend and had me swirling around Paris until I was nearly in tears. They left for a train tour of the Alps on Monday and I was left to nurse my itchy throat that became a full-blown cold the morning of their departure.
Before they get back to Paris on Friday, I have four days to myself to get things organized. I'm here, in case we've all forgotten, to get some progress made on my dissertation. I should get going on that before D. gets here in early Nov. (btw - he received a rejection call yesterday and is, of course, totally bummed. f**k. something will turn up, right?)
So, here's what i need to do:
-- finish grading student midterms (finished it yesterday. i just wanted to check one thing off)
-- apply for some diss fellowships
-- apply for a family leave of absence
-- apply for california state "disability" funding (since being pregnant and a nursing mother disables me from working)
-- um, finish my stupid chapter on freud.
I'm going to get myself to the Pompidou library today to get started on some of this.

Hancock

2008-10-24T07:25:00.000-07:00

I just watched the Will Smith movie Hancock. It's really bad. But what had me laughing at the end is that the black man has to stay away from the white woman for the good of the world.

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

2008-10-23T00:37:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, after twisting my ankle, falling on the cobblestone, and getting a run in my new tights, I walked to the Museum of Hunting and Nature. This is the single-weirdest Paris museum I've visited. Here's a fuzzy photo of the ceiling of staring owls as proof:

It's really a museum that presents the history of man's fascination with animals. Its rooms are organized by animal: there's a room of wild boar, fox and stag, unicorns, birds, and of course dogs. Some rooms include a little cabinet that provide both biographical information on the animal, and poems dedicated to the animal. And of course each room is covered in paintings and tapestries:

It's not a big museum -- I think it took me less than an hour to see everything. But it's really great, how the museum intentionally mixes its messages. The ceiling of owls is crazy/silly but then it will give you scientific data to remind you that these animals are not for entertainment, they have a life outside human perception.
It's highlight is the big game room --

Which is followed, if one goes to the unfinished upstairs portion, with a general question of the actual scientific difference between human/animal. So, here we're made to feel bad, but of course not too bad (it's not like in the States where every natural science exhibit must be accompanied by a moralizing guilt trip, where you are made to confront the evils of your car-driving, plastic-consuming, tuna-eating ways. Not that I disagree with these evils, I'm just impressed by the America's ability to turn everything into a personal moral issue -- smoking, recycling, gas guzzling -- rather than a wider political-ethical concern.) In fact, the finale of the museum doesn't even make you feel bad. The punchline -- animals are like us (I almost wrote humans are animals, but I don't think the museum went there) -- maybe was the running theme throughout the museum as you look at all the different ways humans have occupied themselves with thinking and writing about, killing and painting animals.
Go visit.

Born and Raised

2008-10-20T23:36:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize how much of a St. Louisan I was until this morning:
Nachos Story.
(I disagree with rule #1 and #4, as well as the general tone of the whole thing.)

Prenatal Yoga in Paris and Toni&Guy

2008-10-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

First off, if you happen to be English-speaking, pregnant, living in Paris and interested in yoga -- then you should check out Centre de Yoga du Marais. Michelle, the instructor, is really great -- she's easy on us, but not too much. We do adaptations of standard yoga poses, focusing on stretching out the hips and the back, but also working on balance. I'm not sure what balancing is supposed to help, but I find I'm better at it as a pregnant person than I ever was "unencumbered."

Secondly -- I got a free haircut today at the Toni&Guy Academy (whose new number is 01 43 14 02 28). It was a totally strange experience that lasted over three hours. And in the end, I got a strange "fashion" do that was "asymmetrical" and pretty short. They are meticulous technicians, it would seem, that work on thinning out your hair via a number of different razoring movements. A fast-talking Swiss dude cute my hair. I barely understood a word he said, but he didn't seem to mind. The students are actual stylists who come to the academy for three days to get updated on the latest trends (I'm piecing this together from what I understood Fabrice, my stylist, to have been saying). I would provide a picture of my head, but I'm a bit vain. I came home and de-asymmetrized my head (it was just too weird, and my mom will be here on Saturday and I already know what she'd say: nothing at first, just stare at me with a slight smirk and then ask, "You like your hair? It looks weird to me."). But I think I like the shortness. I mean, I think I'll like it more in a couple of weeks when it does a bit of growing out. But the thinning out thing, it's cute.

Une chambre à soi

2008-10-19T00:47:00.000-07:00

I went to see a stage production of A Room of One's Own last night. The good thing about it was that it was really nice to go out and see a play in Paris. The bad thing was that it was boring -- it was just Woolf's text read out loud and kind of acted out. The actress, Edith Scob, stood in the middle of a set designed to look like a cozy old British study with wooden desks, book shelves that reach to the ceiling and a really nice leather sofa. But, as my friend pointed out, she didn't do anything with this room of hers. She just walked around in it and made us imagine other rooms and other places (Oxbridge, British Museum, etc.). Scob's version of Woolf was also really annoying -- she made her shrill, fragile, and annoying. And finally, I wish the playwrights and the director could have imagined someway to make this text -- which is still relevant today -- actually appear relevant. They had us approach the text -- which dated itself Oct. 26, 1928 -- as an historical artifact, but the problem was that it (the text and the play) was trying to make universal claims about what men do (use women as mirrors) and how women should write (androgynously). But there is a way to make Woolf's text speak to a post-feminist audience. But it would probably require actual writing, not just transcription (ooh, damn).

Cookies and Crafts

2008-10-18T05:29:00.000-07:00

I splurged today for lunch. After a decadent week-and-a-half of eating out at French Bistros I had promised myself to make all my meals at home. But I had such a craving for Vietnamese noodles this afternoon. What could I do? And then after my (actually Cambodian) lunch, I had a hankering for something sweet. So I bought a chocolate cookie. And I ate it. And now I feel awful. But also completely satisfied. C'mon. Cut me some slack. I'm pregnant.
I've started knitting a Super Easy Baby Blanket with some yarn I got at the Bon Marche, which was having a sale. My mother is already making a baby blanket, but I couldn't resist. Babies can have more than one blanket, I'm pretty sure. Might as well both be hand-made. However, knitting is an activity that indulges my procrastinating desires -- which may be a problem since I really, honestly should get some work done while I'm here.
I went and saw Tropic Thuder (or "Tonnerre sous les tropiques") last night. I thought it was funny, but not as hilarious as the man sitting next to me, crying into his popcorn everytime Ben Stiller played "Simple Jack." Perhaps Stiller's performance was too reminiscent of Jerry Lewis not to provoke the Frenchman's hysterical convulsions.

More Pictures

2008-10-16T07:27:00.001-07:00

Diana thinks about rock

Christina's belly in the hall of mirrors

Mannequin Ghost

French Antiques Dealer

Debates

2008-10-16T02:00:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to last night's debates. I'm about to turn it off cause it's just annoying. McCain's tactic, here, is so obvious and so childish. First he throws accusations Obama's way, then he quickly switches subjects so that the little comma separating two parts of a sentence also apparently allows for a complete change of logic. "He has terrorist friends, but I really think that tax cuts is the way to go"::"You have stinky feet, but I think unicorns are neat."

The Last Week and a Half

2008-10-15T07:19:00.001-07:00

I've had visitors -- and actual things to do for the past week and a half:

My lovely visitors

Père Lachaise on a beautiful autumn morning

The picnic spread at the garden in Versailles

Shopping at the flea market

Sleeping and Eating

2008-09-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

I got my new "banquette/clic clac" which looks like a normal (denim blue) sofa but *pouf* clics itself into a bed for my sleeping comfort. And it is comfortable. Enough. For the time being. Which is all I care about.

As for eating . . . for some reason last weekend I decided to take myself out for meals whenever the fancy struck me. I went back to Le Reveil du Xeme and again had a delightful meal -- a mashed potato/fish dish. On Saturday -- before and after the Juliet Mitchell lecture at Le Musée de l'Homme -- I breezed my way through restaurants spending money I really shouldn't have. But Kristina and I went for a really nice dinner up in Montmartre at a cute little bar/resto. I got pasta bolognese -- which I was scolded for, since I can apparently make such a thing at home -- but I order what the baby demands. And he loves pasta. (and mashed potatoes. and probably nachoes if such a thing existed here.)
So, in an effort to make up all that money I spent on meals last weekend, I've been going to the "Restaurants Universitaire" (aka RestoU) -- a series of cafeterias for college students. It costs a mere 2e85 and you get a healthy, square meal which includes a crudité, a main dish, and a cheese or yogurt course/or a dessert tart. And a free piece of bread. Not bad. The only drawback is that everyone is sooo young, and I just feel like a lame, old pregnant lady eating a cheap meal. Who cares, right? I don't really, not for that price! But I think after my penance this week, I might re-consider.

Journée du Patrimoine

2008-09-22T00:13:00.000-07:00

This weekend France opened up many of its governmental, religious, historically important buildings and archives for the (annual?) "days of patrimony." I had a list of places I wanted to visit, including the Museum of Hunting and Nature. I only got to two. The National Library (or BNF), where I went on a one hour guided tour which ended in the audiovisual room with a demonstration of Wii (SuperMario Wii). I then had lunch on a cute corner of rue Montorgeuil -- I wanted beef, so I got a French hamburger -- which is ground beef topped off with a fried egg. But my doctor said I can only eat meat "bien cuîte," so my burger was dry and eh. Anyway, after that I went to the Musée des Arts et Métiers (the "Industrial Arts Museum") and listened to a 15-min "flash" tour in the Communications Hall on the birth of the motion picture. I need to go back though.

Update on my torn feelings

2008-09-19T09:00:00.001-07:00

I feel both totally happy about living in Paris and walking through my increasingly familiar neighborhood and totally bummed about the condition of my studio. I sleep on mats on the floor, but the weather outside is perfect right now. I can hear every drunken word my neighbor says at 3 in the morning, but I found a quiet little library and I started writing! My toilet drips and makes grumbling noises, but my weekly yoga class is really great (why didn't I ever really get into yoga when I wasn't pregnant?)

Along the same lines -- I am both totally depressed about what's going on right now in the US (Palin + economy) but also totally loving American media (NPR + Lost episodes + Project Runway + Hollywood movies [*Tropic Thunder* opens next week]).

I'm two things at once! I'm a fucking walking Whitman poem.

Busy Sunday and the end of pleasure

2008-09-14T11:45:00.001-07:00

After a cold, drizzly Saturday and an awful night where my neighbor and his friend sang U2, shouted in incomprehensible French, and drank until 4 AM, I woke up thinking that today would suck.
And it looked like it might, as I waited in line at the grocery store stuck in front of yet more French drunks who just talk incessantly about anything and break into song and, in general, make everyone around them feel uncomfortable.
But it was so beautiful out today -- just like an early Fall day. Sunny, slightly crisp, but also warm in the sun.
And it's "rentrée" at the cinema for the next three days, meaning that each showing only costs 3.5 euros. So I decided to see "Mama Mia." Wow, what a movie. It reminded me of Laura Mulvey's essay in which she calls for the end of narrative pleasure in cinema, a pleasure that for her arises out of a male (or masculine -- since both men and women occupy it) gaze of the female body. This movie was definitely unpleasurable, but only because it was sooooo ecstatically joyous and insanely celebratory of female pleasure. It was totally weird and I wanted to leave every second I was watching it, but I was also curious about how this awful movie was celebrating and reveling in different kinds of feminine "jouissance," as they say. The movie ended with a burst of water that sprang, not from a fountain, but from a gash -- a gash, I say -- in the concrete. There was singing, and melodrama, and giggling, and dancing and it was totally stupid -- but this might be what Mulvey meant, after all. I hated it.
Anyway, after that I met with my landlord's daughter, who recently gave birth to her second son. I was totally petrified about going over to her house and chatting with her in French about god knows what. But she was really nice, and my French wasn't that bad -- or it was, but I decided not to care too much. She talked about "accouchement" in France and walked me past the hospital that, in case it was necessary, I could get treated.
And then I took myself out to dinner at a Korean restaurant called Seoul 88 (in honor of the 88 Olympics). The food was pretty good -- I got duk mandoo gook -- and the pan chan was delicious. The service was kind of bad, only because they seemed overwhelmed, even though there weren't that many of us in the restaurant. And weird, again drunk, French people would randomly walk into to tease the patrons. Seriously -- there are way too many drunks in Paris (which has even become a topic on the news recently). But the other patrons were enjoying themselves and sometimes, even though I don't know exactly what they're saying, it's really nice to hear people speak Korean.

Paris might hate me

2008-09-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

I'm getting used to my life here. Instead of wide-eyed wonder, I react to the goings-on in the neighborhood with either indignation or a sigh of resignation. One sunny morning two days ago, I was whistling my way down the boulevard only to run into a drunken old man with his trousers about his ankles, finishing up his business on the sidewalk. All I saw really was his flat ass clothed in nasty black underwear, but that was enough to stop my whistling.

It's not that bad, though. I really like my gross neighborhood, more or less. It's affordable and hides little cute treasures in random corners -- like this café/brasserie around the corner with the coziest interior and what seems like a "Cheers"-like camaraderie with the clientele.

But I think this city might not like me too much. I've never had more problems just living, getting by, as I've had here. When I lived here 11 years ago, I was young, new to the single-life in the big city, free from any real parental or adult supervision -- things were bound to go wrong somewhere. I lost my key and my old bourgeoise landlady (Mme de la Guerronière) freaked out and was convinced one of my thug friends stole it, made a copy of it and was scheming to steal everything she owned. So I moved out and into a more modest neighborhood -- above a pharmacie in the 15th, owned by the father of the woman whose children I was taking care of. Well, he was a crazy grouch too who would abide not a peep of noise after 10pm, not even the sound of the toilet flushing. And when my friend from the States stayed with me for a few weeks, he threated to kick me out.

I'm rid of old French people. I don't have to deal with them, or pay them money, or creep up and down their creaky steps. Now, however, I have a toilet that explodes and refuses to stop exploding. Well, it doesn't literally "explode," but it made my life this past week much stinkier than I prefer. And I convinced myself that the gods (or saints?) of Paris would really prefer it if I were elsewhere. I wonder why and where.

My Visit to the French Doctor ("Docteur")

2008-09-06T23:39:00.001-07:00

First off, I went to this doctor -- who is incredibly, incredibly expensive -- because my insurance recommended him as "english speaking." Which didn't actually turn out to be true. I mean, I'm sure he speaks English as well as any average Joe in France. He knows a few words, like that we call them "sonograms" instead of "échographs." My insurance also recommended doctors in the Passy district, all really expensive places. So these rich doctors must be in cahoots somehow with American Health Insurance companies. I paid 120e just for a consultation, without an "echograph." But I called a place closer to home and they charged 110e for a consultation and echograph. After shedding tears upon learning that I'm spending money needlessly (which I didn't realize would upset me so much), I decided to buck up. If my insurance wants to reimburse me (which they will, by god) for overpriced French consultation, it's all ultimately the same to me.
That said, he was nice enough. I mean, he wasn't charming or accommodating or even English-speaking. He was just no nonsense which is somehow more reassuring to me (esp. since I think he may be the first male gyno I've ever seen). I'm healthy, the baby's growing at a healthy pace, it's heartrate is also healthy. All good.
But let me start at the beginning, if I may. He does everything. He checks my blood pressure. He weighs me. He takes my urine sample. All things a nurse would do in the States. He does have a "secretary," but what she seems to do is to take down appointments, answer the door when I ring, show me to the elaborately furnished and decorated waiting room (which lies on one side of a huge private apartment that takes up an entire floor), and when I search for the bathroom she leads me to it, and when I'm done she escorts me back to the waiting room and shuts the door behind her.
There were two other women waiting when I arrived. I chatted a bit with one of them, since the doctor was about an hour behind schedule. That extra hour, though, really calmed me down and helped me talk myself through the price gap between faubourg St. Germain (the "old" aristocratic hang out) and my own faubourg St. Martin (the "old" working class neighborhood) which was still upsetting me. I finally get called in and am asked to sit at his desk to answer some introductory questions. He's very tan (probably from a recent August vacation) and dressed in a navy blazer (which may or may not have had gold buttons). The first thing he discusses is the concern in France for toxoplasmos (sp?) -- a bacteria carried by cats and un-zapped, undercooked meat. Stay away from both. And get another blood test to make sure you don't have it. At the end of the thorough but swift exam he asked me for the 120e and gave me a receipt for my insurance. All went well, and I feel fine about the whole experience. Although I really, really wanted to finally learn the sex of the baby but I have to wait two more weeks until I can go to an echographist, who will probably charge me more money. But that's okay, no big deal, stop worrying about it, I tell myself, because my insurance is going to pay me back for everything.

À Dejeuner

2008-09-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to take part in the French thing of big lunches, small dinners. A habit that makes sense, really -- even though I love a nice big dinner. But so far this ladies-who-lunch thing has been successful.
On Tuesday I met a friend at Le Loir Dans La Théière in the Marais, which is a cozy place with wooden tables and a kind of coffeehouse feel to it. I ordered a creamy/zesty linguini dish that was yummy and my friend got a zucchini tart that was FULL of zucchini. The best though was dessert -- a lemon meringue which consisted of 10% really tart lemon and 90% huge, really dense and sweet and yummy meringue. I never liked meringue pies, the kind offered at my church cafeteria -- the meringue was airy and tasteless, I thought. But this stuff was so good and I am thus converted.
Today we went to a local place called Le Reveil du Xème which is a modest little bistro around the corner. The people there are super nice and the food is no nonsense. Most of the dishes were incomprehensible to me and I was too scared to order something called "Tête persilée" (parsleyed head?), which made me believe that this must be "real" french cuisine. I ordered the saucisse dish which came on a mound of dense mashed potatoes with not a green veggie in sight. It was really good. My one friend ordered the duck confit with sauteéd potatoes -- really moist and yummy. And the other ordered the salad with chevre chaud that came with two huge mounds of chevre. We also ordered escargot to start and what I suppose was a modestly priced pôt of beaujolais (since our "addition" wasn't that overwhelming, about 20e/person). And we got an eggy (kinda quich-ey) peach dessert (i forgot what the kind of tart is called). I liked it.

Foundation Cartier

2008-09-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

This museum is free on Wednesday afternoons. They were exhibiting pieces by César, a sculptor who seemed to have enjoyed some popular and populist fame in the late sixties.

Toby

2008-09-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

I wonder what is sold under this name . . .

Musée Nissim de Camondo

2008-08-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

Today I visited a "hotel particulier" in the 8th arrondissement, a bourgeois neighborhood in which blond children walk around literally looking like Ralph Lauren ads. Very weird. This is the former home of Moises de Camondo, dedicated to his son Nissim (a friend of Proust's I think) who died in WWI. The place was built in the early 20th century, but decorated completely in 18th c. fashion. The de Camondo family, originally from Istanbul, earned its money in banking and spent it on art collecting. The last of the family died in Auschwitz.

Louis XVI style sitting room (I wish I knew what an early 20th c. Parisian sitting room looked like, to have some sort of basis for comparison. Next museum visit.)

Where the head chef decided his menus for the week.

Defense de Boire

2008-08-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

As I already began to suspect during my last few months in Santa Cruz, not being able to drink really cramps my social life. It kept me mostly at home evenings, which I didn't mind so much then because SC night-life was beginning to grate. But now, it would be so much easier if I could, during one of my aimless walks, duck into a bar/restaurant/cafe and order a beer, read my book, be out and about, with the people, the people I tell you.

Order something else? I can't drink coke either. Sometimes I do stop in for a coffee. But really, alcohol is key. It's one of those things you can order more than one of, and it just means sociability. Perhaps what I'll do is go out a mere once a week for a mere "demi pression," a teeny, tiny draft beer. We'll see what the doc has to say about that.

Rues of Paris

2008-08-25T23:10:00.001-07:00

The Single Life

2008-08-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

As you would imagine, it's an odd feeling moving from married life in the States to single life in a foreign country. As a "GSI" (Graduate Student Instructor), we aren't provided with the kind social security blanket that the undergrads get. We're supposed to be adults with a purely academic purpose here. So far, it hasn't been bad. I've been mostly preoccupied with checking out the neighborhood and peeking my nose shyly into this brasserie or that bookstore.
But yesterday was a miserable rainy day and, even though I went out for a very nice social lunch, I was faced with the rest of the unplanned day. Not only do I feel pathetic simply because I am friendless in a big city, I also get a glug of anxiety whenever the thought crosses my mind to venture out to populated areas where someone might try to talk to me. You know, in French.
So my goal for the time being is to have one substantial activity per day that I successfully accomplish. Today I had to do another excursion to Sacre Coeur with a different group of students. Check. And then I wanted to check out a museum up there on Montmartre, The Halle St. Pierre, which was having a show of contemporary artists under the theme of "Interiority." I'm not sure how these pieces were an expression of interiority -- some of them were paintings of american subways, some were self-portraits, some were fabulously detailed patterns -- but they were mostly all creepy, in a good way.

The View + Sacre Coeur

2008-08-24T00:05:00.001-07:00

My Studio

2008-08-23T23:57:00.001-07:00

pictures! -- the neighborhood

2008-08-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

There was a "manifestation" yesterday on Blvd. Magenta, apparently in defense of those "without papers," or illegal immigrants.

The Canal St. Martin

Visit to Montmartre

2008-08-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

One of my duties is to accompany a professor on an "excursion" with the students so they can check out different parts of Paris, ride the métro, etc. Unfortunately it was raining, the professor did not make any sort of plans and had not been to Montmartre in years, I haven't been up there since 1997, and it was raining!! Up we went, though -- and I had to lead, telling them about the name "Montmartre" (mount of martyrs), the story of St. Denis, the story behind the Cathedral, and thanks for trooping through the rain. I guess it was fine. What you'd expect: the Sacre Coeur, artists wanting to paint your portrait, tourists. The students are sweet: either so-cal brats who aren't used to walking and definitely not used to public transportation, but you can tell they're trying to make it work and might even feel proud to realize their feet can take them so far; or nor-cal nose-pierced nerds -- with whom I feel more in common, although they might look at me like a stranger.

The Quartier

2008-08-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

After about a full five days in town (and a respectable 8 hours of sleep), I can say with conviction that I really like my neighborhood. At first, my first impression left me feeling a little out of sorts. "Queens," I thought, which means "multicultural" and "working-class" -- both good things (esp. for a gentrifier like me, if we want to be sadly self-critical about what I am, moving from the Mission to Williamsburg as i did) but also a little alienating for an (apparently) white and (barely) academically-employed jeune femme.
Chateau-D'eau, the closest metro stop, is a meeting place for a local African community (which stretches along ligne 4 up to Clignacourt). Dudes literally hover around the station entrance and ask things that I don't yet understand (According to these awesome photos, and against my initial belief which was based on "The Wire," it seems the dudes are waiting to see which of their friends emerge from the station -- rather than acting as corner boys. But, I don't know -- there is a lot of parasitical loitering around that station . . .)
This community stops dead in the middle of the block. It's very strange. It goes immediately from black to brown/yellow as I approach my house -- where all the kid's clothing stores are, owned mostly by Chinese or Middle Easterners.
If you continue West, you walk toward the Canal St. Martin, the hipster neighborhood. Aha! My people -- who have turned a previously drug-ridden scary place that lined an ignored and polluted channel, into a playground of organic grocery stores and over-priced bistros.
Needless to say, I know where I am going to hang out and study in the afternoons . . .

Getting it together

2008-08-20T20:50:00.000-07:00

I finally got 7 hours of sleep. Even though those hours were from 9pm - 4am, it promises more normal hours in the future.
And I finally found a lamp. I have a deep aversion to overhead light. I felt ridiculous searching the streets of Paris for a silly lamp that I'll only need for four months (I eventually found one at Habitat on rue du faubourg St. Antoine, by Bastille). But now that I have it all set up, yep -- I love it. I also bought a silly little succulent plant that I will have to abandon in four months. Why am I wasting my precious money on things I can live without for less than half a year? I don't know! Please don't say it's my "nesting instinct" kicking in. I hate that notion. I think it's because Dave and I had been living in the same apt. for over four years and I'm finding it fun (reluctantly - because, really, everything is so expensive here) to decorate a new place. And this studio is so drab, it needs something.
So, sleep: check. Lamp: check. The boxes of clothes and books I mailed to myself have arrived. Things are coming along nicely.

Faubourg St. Martin

2008-08-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

In Paris, one finds that certain trades are located in particular neighborhoods. You may be walking down the street and notice that every storefront you're passing is selling the exact same product. Today I walked down Rue du Temple, after an exhausting search for who knows what at BHV, and noticed that all the stores sold bijoux. Mostly, these stores are wholesale dealers (but why the storefronts?), but it looked like individual consumers would drop in to maybe get a deal. (I'm just guessing, I really have no idea how all this works.)
The neighborhood I live in claims a particular trade. Children's clothing. Yesterday I told D there seemed to be like 15 stores in a row that sold kid's clothes. Today I realized there must be at least double that number. So many! It is as if I the gods needed to firmly and constantly remind me of my current "condition" and provide me with a sartorial vision of my future.
Unfortunately, the clothes aren't that cute.

Jetlag

2008-08-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of the sleepless night of my first night in the new studio. It's as small as I expected. As I haven't quite gotten a good look at the neighborhood yet, let me spend this morning writing about my living space.
Bad points:
--- The sleeping situation is uncomfortable and/or awkward. The pull out sofa bed consists of a thin mattress pad atop wooden slats, one of which is broken. I also have fold out twin size mattresses that I tried to sleep on tonight. It was more comfortable -- but I might try to get the bed to work somehow.
--- I'm going to have to scrub the place down with bleach. The shower is icky and the windows are lined with mold.
--- There was mice poop in the "kitchen" -- another reason I don't want to sleep on mattresses on the floor.

Good points:
--- The little desk is beneath a tall window that overlooks the rooftops in my neighborhood, and if I face left and strain my neck slightly I have a perfect view of Sacre Coeur. (I left my camera in Sacramento, else I'd show you).
--- The apartment building itself seems really pleasant so far, and my landlord -- who I've not yet met -- has a really nice family. His daughter is eight months pregnant with her second boy and will send me the no. of her OB.
--- It's not much, but I think I can make it homey. Or at least livable for four months.

In the Meantime . . .

2008-08-04T10:28:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Sacramento, after having packed up all our stuff and trucked our way out of Santa Cruz, and before flying across the country and over the ocean to land in Paris. Mostly, I'm sitting on my ass, listening to public radio or watching cable. I've bought some non-academic related novels to indulge in. Basically, I'm enjoying a summer vacation in the hotspot vacay destination. Well, at least the weather's hot. And there's a back deck with a lounge chair -- perfect for novel reading.

TechnoPop and Hot Pix

2008-07-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

I'm in my borrowed office on campus that I have to give up at the end of the week. Only two more class sessions left. Tomorrow the students are going to do some work on the essays they have due on Thursday. And Thursday -- the last day -- we're going to watch Pan's Labyrinth.
But instead of preparing for class tomorrow -- which I need to start doing pronto -- I'm listening to dance music on Pandora and taking pictures of myself on Photobooth. Computers are fun.
And educational. I just learned I look really nice as a comic book Christina -- much better than "normal" Christina. Overexpose the blemishes, please.

Notice the empty bookcases behind me. Vertical lines to draw the gaze inward .. . No, just a testament to the impermanence of my position.

"Bookmark" Incongruity

2008-07-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'm looking for a wedding present . . . actually I already know what I want to get through rare device, but they're currently not available. It's a set of custom personalized mugs, with initials and year of your choosing:

So, I wanted to look at "related" websites I thought I saved in my bookmark group categorized as "interesting stuff temp." "Temp" because I obviously think of myself as a much more active organizer of links than I actually am -- these sites were only to have a brief lifespan in bookmark history. But at least two years later, there they are, telling a strange story that I leave to you to reconstruct. Here are the links:
Vivavi
Elsewares
Robot Bags
Fun Totes (apparently I was looking for tote bags)
Overheard NYC
Ideologies of War
NYTimes Zombies
Synonyms for "Percipiens" that won't open
Jaques on Maurice
Lacan Seminars
Something on NYTimes called "Jurismania" that won't open
Intute? (I think what interested me here no longer exists)
Law's Madness (I bought the book. It's alright.)
More Law's Madness
Something by Renata Selecl called, "Why is a woman a symptom of rights." Won't open.
Elk, California

New Haircut Shyness

2008-07-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

I got a dramatically new do yesterday. And tomorrow I will have to stand in front of my class and survive the "Ooh, I like your new haircut!"s and my stupid habit of looking at myself through their eyes and trying to figure out what I see -- some older lady looking weird with a new haircut.
I was talking to my hair dresser yesterday about how it sucks to live in a college town because of the totally unnecessary old-age feeling that plagues one. It's almost like being Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused but without the perv's glee. I keep getting older and they stay the same. Humph.
So, there's another reason it'll be nice to get out of town and be in a city for a few months. Especially with my big old pregnant self. I feel totally out of sorts and boringly domestic here, like a sad old lady who can't drink and have fun with the rest of the kids. And, at the risk of actually sounding like a bitter, sad old lady, I really can't wait to hang out with some adults. Who have adult concerns. Whatever that might be. Mortgage? Investments? Diapers? Ok, so I really don't want to hang out with adults. But whatever.

Home Stretch

2008-07-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

I've been waking up super early and going to bed super late. Ah, the luxuries of having absolutely no social life. At least, no night life.

Our days are filled with 1) watching six straight hours of wimbledon; or 2) posting unwanted furniture on craigslist and selling it within hours; or 3) writing 12-page lectures for my class in less than two days -- which is surprising to me since it took me a month to write 20 pages of my dissertation. And i haven't touched it since; or 4) getting forms and such ready to get my visa; or 5) watching random bad movies and finishing off the final season of Prime Suspect; or 6) sneaking into East Field House to swim some laps.

An image from Reunion '08.

In Between Here and There

2008-05-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

The transition begins . . .

Dave has a second interview on Monday for a job he is not super excited about and doesn't pay well. But it's a job.

I have to find a place to live in Paris, get all the paperwork together for a visa, and teach a summer course.

These things are great, just a little confusing.

In the meantime, we've been keeping ourselves warm during a chilly late spring by fulfilling our Santa Cruz routine of making dinners, watching dvds, reading books, playing tennis.

I was told by my adviser recently that I'm a "slow writer." Which I don't think is at all true. So, right now, I'm gearing myself up to write an email about the inaccuracy of that characterization. In the least accusatory or defensive manner possible. Do I possess magical powers potent enough to compose such a letter?

Wednesdays in Santa Cruz

2008-04-16T17:20:00.001-07:00

I must admit that since we've decided on a "date of departure," I'm starting to feel a little warm and fuzzy about Santa Cruz, a town I had declared my mortal enemy a little over a year ago. It's early spring, the flowers are so pretty, we had a helluva a hot weekend, and I really can't imagine living without Shopper's Corner -- which is kinda reminiscent of Met Foods in Greenpoint, except with an awesome butcher department and not-kidding fresh produce.
So, I'm fine with Santa Cruz and my forced exile. What I cannot quite swallow, though, is the distant sound of drummers circled together under a tree celebrating the weekly Farmer's Market that takes place a block from my apt. Not that it hasn't been educational. I never really spent much time around drum circles, so I don't know a lot about them. Now I realize that the point of drum circles is not so much to make music with your buddies, having fun with the different sounds you can create with percussion instruments. It seems to be purely about zoning out (or zen-ing out?) to a beat that does not alter, at all, for four hours straight. The same, ritualistic beat, over and over.

Vraiment?!

2008-04-14T17:57:00.000-07:00

Why is French radio playing Barbara Streisand? There better be more than one radio station over there!

Map This

2008-04-14T17:34:00.000-07:00

In preparation for my little stay in Paris, I'm listening to French news on-line. I only understand the words I understand, which doesn't seem to help with the acquisition of new words. I'll keep at it though.

So this weekend, I went to a dissertation writing workshop. Here's what I learned:
1) Don't psychologize the writing process. I'm not not-writing (or writing slowly) cause "I suck," but because of external factors: like time-managment issues. I guess my poor time-management skills aren't supposed to reflect poorly on me personally. It's probably time's fault. He's an asshole. Don't question it.
2) Work in 45-minutes "sessions" for better productivity. I worked a total of 6 sessions today (not on writing, but on stuff like grading papers and reading for lecture), which may sound impressive until I admit it was a 4.5 hour work day. But it's mentally stressful, so suck it.
3) Try a cognitive map, which I wish were a graphic representation of my brain, but it's not.
4) Actually, the best thing she said was that when a person bitches constantly and complains about how slowly her writing is going, this most likely means she is getting really productive work done. Since I've been bitching non-stop for the past month and getting depressed about the 1-paragraph a day writing feat, that made me feel like a genius! Of course, now I'm going to moan and whine continuously, whether I'm writing or not. Better to feel like a genius than actually be one. Geniuses are boring, admit it.

What the near future looks like

2008-04-09T09:39:00.000-07:00

Drinking champagne under a tent amid a crowd of white-haired women in pantsuits and sweater sets then stumbling over the green, through the humidity, toward more drinks -- it's a Vassar reunion.
Lecturing through a shaking voice and an upset tummy at a group of drowsy-eyed summer students -- it's Lit80.
Packing up books and dishes, trying to dump unwanted furniture on the nearest passerby -- we're out of here by Aug. 1.
Headed for Sacramento, then off to Paris.
The picture gets fuzzy after that.

Spring Break '08

2008-03-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

From the beach to the suburbs, we did our vacation in reverse.
Our trip was spent watching the final season of "The Wire" on cable. It was a lot of work, it's not easy watching 10 episodes of an anxiety-producing show during a four-day weekend, but definitely worth it.
We also played Scrabble, washed the car, and played with the baby.

Back at home, I wake up with the mantra *please get a job soon, please get a job soon*

Update on the Frauenzimmer Dilemma

2008-03-26T14:50:00.000-07:00

I had the smarts enough to ask my Austrian friend for help. And help he did. Here is the answer we've been waiting for:

"as for the term frauenzimmer, it's an antiquated word whose history/etymology
i'm not quite familiar with. i know it as a derogatory term for a troublesome,
troubled woman, usually lower-class, maybe of loose morals, maybe tending
toward the "hysterical," but definitely socially malicious in some way. it may
be the closest german approximation of "bitch" that i'm aware of."

There is also a German TV-movie called "Das Frauenzimmer" whose description he translated for me.:

Frauen bei der Arbeit in der Küche als Ausgangsbasis für einen Film, der nicht
in herkömmlicher Weise beschreiben will, sondern die Szenen assoziativ
montiert und Zusammenhänge sichtbar zu machen versucht, indem er die
alltäglichen Gesten, die fast schon Ritualen gleichen, so verdreht und
verrückt, daß sich die Grenze zwischen Wirklichkeit und Traum verschiebt.

[this is one long-ass stupid german sentence!!!]

[Surrealist] [F]ilm consisting of scenes of women laboring in the kitchen.
Everyday gestures that almost resemble rituals are twisted and defamiliarized
until the line between reality and dream is blurred. The film doesn't take a
conventional descriptive approach. Rather, it seeks to make visible social
contexts using an associative montage technique.

Doesn't this sound good??

Frauenzimmer. Help!

2008-03-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud says a room (zimmer) in a dream means woman (Frauenzimmer). The translator says "Frauenzimmer," literally "woman's apartment," is also a "slightly derogatory term for woman." But does it mean "slut"? The two german-speaking professors I've talked to said no. In the 18th c. it was simply a term for "jeune fille." In 19th c. Vienna it was apparently a term for the woman-servant employed in the bourgeois household. But there is a book of photos out right now called Frauenzimmer: Brothels in Germany:

What does this word mean? And where can I read more about it?

Multiple Out-of-Town Weekend Activities Make Me Tired

2008-02-25T16:29:00.000-08:00

We left on Friday afternoon and headed for Davis, CA where I was dropped off to attend a grad conference on "the long 19th century" hosted by The Dickens Project. We were given a free hotel and relatively delicious meals to reward us for our hours of attentive presentation listening.

The attendants, most of whom I remember from last summer's affair, are really sweet, smart people who, judging from their papers, are also eloquent writers. But, I gotta say, this is going to have to be my last Victorian-related lit conference. Although, in the past, I have enjoyed reading Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House, Vanity Fair, etal -- I haven't spent much time thinking about them, or even remembering their finer plot points. Becky Sharpe was inticingly bad, Elizabeth Bennett fell in love with Darcy, Esther jangled keys. Beyond this, the books live a fuzzy existence in my head.

Aside from the fact that I don't remember the Vic. lit. of which they speak, they also speak about books differently than I do. Whereas I am looking at how an idea or figure, in this case a room, interrupts a certain discourse (psychoanalysis) or text (ie Mrs. Dalloway) as a kind of symptom, bringing with it a particular rhetorical history, "they" (as a reductive, general category) were speaking to and within a very particular field of criticism that was concerned exclusively with George Eliot, or Jane Austen, or Charles Dickens. Although I am interested in reading "Woolfian" criticism, I wouldn't call myself a Woolf scholar, or even say I'm interested in disrupting or re-evaluating conventional Woolfian discourse. Then again, I am only on page four of my dissertation, so maybe my comparative non-specificity has something to do with that.

I left the conference a day early to hang out in Sacramento with the in-laws, get some baby-time in with little Scotty, and watch the Oscars with the Mahoneys and company. Here is my review of the affair:
I thought Catherine Heigl was cute, all shaky-voiced as a presenter.
Why did Bourne Ultimatum win all those awards, thus depriving me of my Oscar-pool triumph?
Daniel Day-Lewis won, which everyone thought he would, which would make sense since he was the only memorable actor in the movie. I liked the movie (in fact the more I think about it, the more I do), I liked him in it, but as stated below, the whole thing seemed heavy on the DDL-worship.
Whereas "No Country" was really beautiful in its collaboration.
Tilda Swinton is a readhead.
Javier Bardem speaks Spanish real good.
That song from "Once" really got stuck in my head for a while there.

Hunkered Down in the Bunker

2008-02-18T11:21:00.000-08:00

I've holed myself up in the Grad Lit computer room, affectionately called "The Bunker," or "The Bomb Shelter." Windowless with cement walls and absurdly enclosing cubicles, it's much nicer than my cramped apartment. Or, at least it's a nice change of scenery. I'm trying to edit my conference paper -- and, by god, I will get it done! Eventually.

Some lunch would be nice though . . .

Lincoln's Birthday

2008-02-13T11:16:00.001-08:00

Some friends came down from S.F. to help celebrate D's Birthday. We went to Soif and ordered much wine and many "small plates," but we never managed to feel well-fed. Which is a pity, since the food was good. But it seemed kind of ridiculous to keep ordering plates, our table would have looked like some crazy medieval banquet for small children. And I can't have that.

So we had wine and then we went to another place for a few more cocktails, which were unnecessary but delightful. We had cheerful, laugh-filled conversations and everything was just swell. And then we went home, our friends were to stay the night. I got it in my head that more drinks must be had, a 100% false belief. Not a single person needed another drop of anything, save water, and Dave promptly took the misguided drink from my hand. A wise move that led to a peaceful night's sleep.

More blog writing

2008-01-29T14:31:00.001-08:00

I'm on a blogging frenzy . . . I can't stop! I don't even have anything to say, but I just want to write about it.
We watched a documentary about the SLA and Patty Hearst last night. Which recounted events just as fucked up as those recounted in the Jonestown and the Weathermen documentaries. I know this probably won't be a popular comment, but I wish people were just a wee bit more radicalized these days; that there was an ounce or two of the insane fury of the 60s/70s weirdos. Except for the whole Jonestown thing, that was just straight-up scary as shit.

Go to Bed Happy and the Baby with a Camera Face

2008-01-29T09:57:00.000-08:00

Don't worry about things before you fall asleep.
Two nights ago I was worried about getting fat and then I dreamed my clothes didn't fit and my face was pudgy. Last night I worried about how few opinions I feel I have to express (which is a kind of weird thing to worry about, actually) and then I dreamed . . . something related to that concern, though I don't remember the details.

Have you seen the one where the dog turns into a lady?

Rainy Days of January

2008-01-27T17:34:00.000-08:00

During these rainy days, Dave and I have both successfully fought our cute little colds and have emerged this Sunday afternoon in relatively fine form. I have a knot of energy in the pit of my tummy that is urging physical activity, movement of any sort, but the picture outside my window convinces me otherwise -- as does the glass of wine beside me. Perhaps tomorrow I should get up off my ass and move somehow. I can't say in which direction or in what manner I'll be moving, but move I must.

We saw "There Will be Blood" on Friday evening. It was a captivating character study, but really heavy on the Day Lewis-is-a-genius front. His genius, which along with his "looks" I can't deny, pretty much slaps you in the face without submission. It was hard to figure out what else the movie wanted to say or do besides display genius. Although, I suppose one could argue the movie was "about" the search for blood (oil, family, religion -- but not female blood, I don't think.) Anyway, it was a good movie.

Menu for the Holiday Party

2007-12-13T17:30:00.001-08:00

which will be on Saturday:

Meatballs, which is apparently a tradition in most people's eyes. So I'm givin' it to them.
Latkes, cause this party ain't christian-specific.
Bruschetta with anchovy tapenade.
Eggplant Sandwiches. Laura said she'd make those.
Fingerprint cookies.
Dips and Cheeses
Some sort of punch.

I'm kind of looking forward to the cooking part. I've never thrown a "catered" party before, so I don't really know what to expect.

"christina is" has many things on her mind

2007-12-09T21:17:00.001-08:00

First off: I spend way too much time on facebook. It makes me feel pathetic.

I've been thinking about Hillary Clinton in the last several hours, and how newspapers (for example, the NY Times article I just read) will publish features that claim to probe into the minds of presidential candidates. "Why won't Hillary cry?" I suppose my malformed "reading" of this would be to point to the wide spectrum of actual presidents and the variety of their emotional/professional reactions to events in life that seem to have little to do with their masculinity (read: "neutral"). And suggest that Clinton does not seem to neatly fit into either the category of "presidential" nor "feminine" and how that seems to pose a big, emotionally-affective [and epistemological] crisis for some.

Next, I think I'd like to move to "upstate" (not that far up) New York.

And finally to add that I'm working on grading papers but thinking about my skills as a cookie-baker. I'm planning a holiday party on saturday and would like to make delicious foods. I feel pretty confident about my meatball and hors d'oeuvre skills, but I am not so good at the baking thing. Too many rules.

2007-11-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

Well, that change of theme really shut me up.

I am sitting here, listening to a Fresh Air interview that I've already heard, thinking about all the websites I could possibly visit in order to avoid having to write this paper. This stomachache-inducing paper. Which I will have to present at a conference in Alabama next week. A thought that has me paralyzed. Although it will require me to buy a "conference outfit" and since I finally got paid yesterday, the idea of new clothes is the only thing keeping me okay with the world.

In the past couple of weeks, absolutely nothing has happened. Dave is getting closer to finishing his final project. We've started watching Deadwood on DVD. I saw Darjeeling Limited, which has some people scowling. But I kind of liked it. I didn't dress up for Halloween. I've made three different kinds of soup: a weird Tuscan tomato bread soup, lentil soup, and split pea. Soup-making is a lot of fun, but requires dicing a few too many onions. Think on that.

change of theme

2007-10-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

there is way too much talk of babies and weddings on this blog. and relocation -- although, to be honest, that is always at the forefront of my casual musings: where shall i move to next?
but enough! let me talk about other things. starting . . . now?

St. Louis trip

2007-10-08T10:11:00.001-07:00

We went to St. Louis a couple of weeks ago to attend my friend's wedding. It was tons o' fun, and impressively organized and decorated. Yeah for Lauren!
Here are some pictures of the bachelorette party -- a trip through Missouri wine country! which we roped Dave into chauffering. I know, "poor Dave." But get over it, he had a good time.

i got me a one year old nephew

2007-10-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

We were in Sacramento celebrating my nephew's first birthday. Circus theme! It was very cute. But i gotta say: too many babies in one weekend! Normally i can take all the baby time people want to throw at me, and won't be at all affected. I mean i coo and say, "who's the cutest baby?" and pretend to eat their toes. Okay, I admit . . . sometimes I leave and think about how awesome my baby will be and how it will win all the awards given to the best baby. (quick digression: i had a dream last night that i won an oscar for best supporting actress and it was awesome, but no one believed me because i left my award with zach braff. jerk.) But seriously, we saw A LOT of babies, day and night, and it's not like they bothered me or anything. It was just a lot. I guess that's all I really have to say about that. Many babies were seen.

Flinch

2007-08-16T13:27:00.001-07:00

So, all summer I have been working on various school things. I did some TA-ing, some research and catalogue work for a prof, the whole Dickens thing, and most importantly writing drafts of my dissertation prospectus. I met with the chair of my committee this week and she said that it was looking good, one more draft and I can get the approval of the rest of the committee and it'll be a go. Awesome! Unfortunately I don't have a full committee yet and this morning I get an email from the one professor I really, really wanted and she said she didn't want to do it. Why? because her help is "unnecessary" and that I am "perfectly capable" of writing this thing without her guidance. Which, of course, is not the real reason. She is about to retire and just doesn't feel like it. A fact I can accept, but one that kind of leaves me up a creek. Erg. So I decided that I was going to take all references of her works out of my dissertation! She'll get no acknowledgment from me! Just kidding. I still love her.

One Year

2007-08-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

A year ago today, we were somewhere between St. Louis and Little Rock. Because it was the day after our wedding and we were on the road, pretending it was a honeymoon.

Yesterday we celebrated our first anniversary. We had thought about driving up the coast. And then we thought we'd spend the day in S.F. But we don't have money enough for any of that. So we spent an actually really pleasant day in Santa Cruz. We watched the drippingly romantic "Bourne Ultimatum" and then had dinner at Gabriella's.

We shared a "halibut confit" as an appetizer. Mmmm, it was so good! With huge butter beans and red onions. Dave got a mushroom risotto with truffle oil. I got skirt steak with a nutty pesto side, and roasted summer squash. And then we had a pistachio pudding for dessert.

I only realized this morning -- cause we had a bit too much wine with dinner -- that we didn't leave a very good tip. I hate this realization -- I kind of want to go down to the restaurant and leave her some more money.

Anyway, despite our economizing, we had a good time.

I've been occupied . . .

2007-08-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness. I was trying to hold my tongue last month when my summer threatened to drone on into a uneventful blob of self-pity. But then things started looking up, in a subtle way, only perceptible to one in desperate need of subtle changes.
Dave's friend in Sacramento gave me a *miracle cream* for those of us with sensitive, annoyingly inscrutable skin. Seriously, I don't know what it is -- it's from some chinese herbalist in SF -- but it fucking works. I was a monster of a bridesmaid in New York this past June. And now I'm like, you know, perfect again. wink.
I've been to the beach, and should go again soon if I know what's good for me. As soon as the weather gets nice again.
We've been swimming at the university pool, which I've never done as long as I've been here. It's not exactly fun -- cause, you know, we're "working out" -- but I like it.
And I just finished a week-long, intensive Dickens conference at school. Now, i don't know shit about "Boz," and I am a sorry excuse of a Victorianist. In fact, I'm decidedly not a Victorianist (in fact, I'm not sure I want to be an anything-ist). But it was a pretty genial environment, geared for grad students -- getting us schmoozing with the profs in a more or less democratic manner. Sadly, one night I had a smidge too much to drink which led to an unpleasant next morning in seminar. See what happens when I'm deprived of social encounters -- excess, my friends! Beware.

Square One: Fat Boys - One Billion Is Big

2007-07-26T13:09:00.001-07:00

How I got so smart . . .

As summer drags on . . .

2007-07-08T18:23:00.000-07:00

. . . at its slow pace, D and I are still thinking about what we should do and where we should go. We both admitted that the greatest obstacle in our planning is the (self-conceived) weight of our decision. It's like we have to choose whether or not we want to become grown ups by the end of the year. I know, come on! I making it seem so melodramatic and, whatever, deep or something. But seriously. It's like our choice is between buying a house, which borders on "settling down," especially since it would have to be in an affordable city -- and none of our friends live in affordable cities. So it would be Dave and I owning a home and thinking about family things. Between that and moving where my friends are, spending half my paycheck on rent and the other half on going out and all that that entails. The thing is i really want a house. Why the hell do I want a house so bad? Maybe because Santa Cruz has made renting seem like the dumbest thing in the world. Why would anyone throw their money away just to live in a town that sucks? (Sorry. I know, i have to get off my S.C. sucks kick. It's just summer, and cold, and boring right now and I can't help it. If it were February and 70 out I might sing a different tune.)
But what also pisses me off is that this is a decision that has to be made. Shouldn't it just happen? Shouldn't it be like, wups i just had a baby, now i have to find a job and house that matches? I hate all this pre-meditated nonsense.

Santa Clara Dining

2007-07-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

After a deathly boring past two weeks, all of a sudden I'm super busy. How did this happen and can i get it all done?
Yesterday, D + I went up to Santa Clara to have Korean Food. This is our third tripto the city and our third Korean restaurant. We've been to Blue Stone, something else, and last night we went to Corner Place. Let me briefly describe the korean dining experience, if i may. Most on the Northern West Coast (which means I've only been to Silicon Valley + Geary St, SF), are not "fancy" places. The proprietors don't seem to mark decor as a priority, thus they mostly maintain a ghostly resemblance to the IHOP, or whatever, that used to exist there. (This is not true for the restaurants I've been to in Flushing, NY -- which mostly seem constructed by the owners and elaborately reminiscent of a mythical Korean landscape).
But the food is usually super good -- and "down home." Korean food is not delicate dining; its stewey, sloppy and steamy. Last night I got Yuk Ge Jang -- a spicy beef broth with veggies and noodles. Dave got Duk Man Doo Gook -- my favorite dish of broth, rice cakes, and dumplings. You also receive on your table an array of "pan chan," little dishes of goodies. If ever you want some K. food, call me up. I'm in.