clashing hats

Bye.

2009-02-10T09:51:00.002-08:00

Hi, all. I know I've been gone for a month. I know I'm terrible for not responding to any of the lovely awards some of you gave me right around the time I disappeared from here. I'm sorry. And thank you.

I've been doing just fine. I'm now almost five weeks past my surgery and feeling essentially back to normal. I've been working away at my research the last couple of weeks - getting an article ready to send out for publication.

The truth is, I just haven't felt like blogging. I've been avoiding it. I'm not sure what's happened, but it seems the Will to Blog has left me entirely. So has the will to be a citizen of the blogosphere. I began to feel completely overwhelmed by blogging; it began to stress me out. Perhaps some of this feeling was spurred by Facebook...I finally joined, about 6 weeks ago. Although I'm not enormously active on Facebook, still, I think I hit my saturation point. I began longing for a bit of an escape from the Internet. And I've been cultivating that.

So this brings me to this final post. I'm so sad to be leaving many of you behind; this is why I've been hesitating to write this final post. I'll keep this space up for a little while, in case I feel the urge to start up again. And perhaps you'll see me in your comments from time to time. But mostly I'll be off doing other things. I've struck up some wonderful friendships with some of you - you know where to find me...I'll be keeping this email address, for starters. We'll keep in touch, no question.

Brief update

2009-01-13T13:30:00.002-08:00

Surgery on Thursday went well...turned out to be endometriosis. Whole ovary and fallopian tube removed, which they were trying to avoid. I'm really not bothered by this - no need for concern/condolences.

Private room in hospital was a lovely treat. Morphine was not my favourite.

Have just been, obviously, in recovery mode. (This was a laparotomy, not a laparascopy). My friend A is arriving on Thursday.

And right now, I'm really tired, so I'm going to have a nap.

Back

2009-01-05T22:31:00.003-08:00

I arrived back in Scary City on Saturday. Had dinner that night with my new dear friends here: La and her partner. This was important. Coming back here from my time with friends in Home Region - with A, with S, with M, with my dance community - and being able to walk right into a fabulously fun night in a similarly easy friendship, was symbolic of my perhaps beginning to put down roots here. Just beginning.

I am not teaching this term, because of my surgery. This makes me feel at once guilty and gleeful. I went to campus today to do a couple of things, and everyone around me was in high gear, what with the first day of classes. I can't believe the gift I've been given. I can't believe what a difference it makes, not having that pressure. I am a whole new me.

This is one of many things that are making me feel amazingly optimistic about this new year. Last year was such a disaster that I think I have really sub-consciously felt the turn to a new year. Having my birthday and New Year's at the same time really allows me to reflect, and to consciously turn a page. Last week, I was staying with my friend A in Home City and she made me a birthday dinner, including this cake, which perfectly captures my feelings about this transition: Perhaps because I'm not teaching, I really do feel as if I will be able to rock this year. Funny that I feel this way even though I am starting out the year with invasive surgery. But the recovery will be lovely. And I am rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect of diving back into my research and writing. I have big plans for writing, between now and August - and feel quite confident that they're achievable, which is certainly a novel feeling.

In preparation for my surgery, I have also begun cooking in ridiculous quantities and stocking my freezer. Today, it was a kind of baked ziti with wild mushroom sauce, and a yam/peanut soup. Before I go into hospital on Thursday, I'll make a double batch of macaroni and cheese and a pot of chili with veggie ground round. I am so set, foodwise, and this too makes me happy. To be taking care of myself.

End-of-year meme

2008-12-29T18:35:00.004-08:00

Skipped this last year, but seeing it at Dr. Crazy's reminded me of its value...

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
- Broke my knee
- Traveled to Hawaii
- Put a dog to sleep
- Viewed active volcanoes
- Joined Facebook (like, yesterday)
- Was stung by a wasp (and had complications)

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I really had any resolutions. I appeared to want to have more fun. Instead, I had less. Hmmm...So I don't know about goals for the coming year...Perhaps, write lots and lots and lots. Yes, that's it. That will make me happy.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My beloved dog, Mr. Kasper.

5. What countries did you visit?
France and the United States.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Health.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
- January 25, the day of Mr. K's death.
- March 19, the day R arrived in Scary City for a trip that was entirely overshadowed by my cancer scare.
- June 30, the day I broke my knee in Hawaii.
- August 16, the day of a family party to which I drove, contemplating the fact that R and I were about to break up.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I dunno. Can't really think of anything. It was not that kind of year.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I really did not write enough.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Oh boy, did I?! The knee, the ovary, the infected arm, the headaches.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A gorgeous blue silk top. A fantastic red and white and black dress.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My departmental Chair, in all the ways he supported me.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
A colleague who shall remain nameless, who has been putting me in touch with the depths of academic sliminess.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Plane tickets. Credit card companies.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
- Volcanoes.
- Boogie-boarding.
- Being able to try running again, about a month ago.
- Crepes.
- Archives.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Goodnight California, by Kathleen Edwards

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
Sadder, fatter, richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
- Writing.
- Dancing.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
- Frittering time away on the Internet
- Drama

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it at my mother's, with her and some family members. It was really fun. We laughed a lot.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
No, but damn near.

22. How many one-night stands?
That's a tricky question...

23. What was your favorite TV program?
I am behind the times, of course...years behind. Six Feet Under. The Tudors.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.

25. What was the best book you read?
Hmmmm...Miranda July's collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Again, remember that I'm behind the times...Iron and Wine.

27. What did you want and get?
The ability to run again.

28. What did you want and not get?
A certain unnamed individual.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Hmmm...Perhaps The Band's Visit?

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Tomorrow (the 30th) is my birthday. I will have lunch with my PhD supervisor, hang out with A, and have dinner at the same fave Home City restaurant as last year, with R.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
No corrupting drama in the epic story with the individual alluded to in #28. But really, how can I name just one thing?

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
In flux. Needing an infusion. Confused by my age.

33. What kept you sane?
Friends.

34. What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Dude who plays Duke of Suffolk on The Tudors...Henry Cavill.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Our recent constitutional crisis? The coming of the 2010 Olympics, which is a nightmare in the making?

36. Who did you miss?
My dance community in Home City and elsewhere.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
New friend La. Was a grad student taking a course with me in the fall, so happy she's not anymore, because we have become fast friends, and I want to be able to fully drop the student-teacher pretenses.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Deep, decade-long connections won't get you everywhere.

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

You know what I wish
It was just you and me
Sitting in this corner bar
You could tell me how you are
But I'm not gonna lie or anything
You don't even have to speak
If you keep looking at me.
...
And I'm not gonna lie
I'm not looking for love
I won't let you in my heart
But you are always my mind

- Kathleen Edwards, Goodnight California

Here I am

2008-12-28T15:33:00.003-08:00

Yeah, so I don't know what's going on with me and the blogging of late...I just don't seem to have much to say. There's plenty of drama, but I seem to have made a move away from using this as a tell-all space...My feelings of self-consciousness have finally won out.

So I've been in Home Region. I've been Here, I've been There, I've been in three different cities in the last week-and-a-half. Stayed in five different places. Gotten to know my new piece of luggage really, really well.

Christmas cheer? I have none. (And I don't say this in an embittered kind of way...I just don't feel it...I'm okay...) Though Christmas Day at my mother's was surprisingly nice. A fun Christmas dinner.

Now I've spent the weekend at R's, taking care of the cat. She's away. On Tuesday, my birthday, I move over to A's for the last four days of my time out here.

I've been doing a bit of work. Some of it involved grading for the PhD student described here. Hir final paper. Oy. A disaster. A disaster, I tell you. Over the course of this Directed Studies with hir, I have become more and more appalled by the level of the work. This is someone who needs some undergraduate-level training, I kid you not. And now this paper. It angers me, actually. I don't understand why this person was admitted to this program. And I feel as though hir work and potential were misrepresented to me - someone heavily edited hir proposal, that much is clear. It had a level of sophistication that hir work doesn't have, not at all.

In reading all of this person's work, and now the paper, I've been fighting a certain level of...revulsion. For this person makes some egregiously essentializing moves in hir writing...really egregious. In fact, hir project seems to be based on this. The fact that zie doesn't know better, after the Directed Studies, than to continue to peddle these assumptions, this worldview, is very upsetting to me. I feel as if I may as well have not conducted the course, since clearly zie got nothing from it. What good was the feedback I gave hir? What good was a whol ehost of readings that problematized these assumptions (along with some that reinforced them)? And it's that old thing...fine, you and I can disagree on this issue, as long as you back up your position with thoughtful marshaling of evidence from the literature in the field. But no. Noooooo. This person has naturalized this position so deeply that it wouldn't even occur to hir to treat it as anything other than a given. This does not an intellectual make.

And so I become extremely emotional. Enraged. And this is not good. I haven't let my emotion dictate hir grade on the paper or anything. The paper was terrible enough, aside from the awful essentializing, that I didn't bring it down on that count alone. But it makes me wonder about being on this person's committee. I need to get off. I feel that the work is so profoundly flawed that I don't want to have anything to do with it. This worldview, and the uncritical way it is being espoused - reproduced over and over and over again as if it is 'fact' - is too disturbing to me. I find it problematic that anyone would support this work, actually. But that's not my problem. My problem is that I need to get off, lest I fly into a murderous rage every time I read even a sentence of hirs. I can't be a suitably objective judge of the work. This is an intellectual issue - sure it is, because zie is not providing sufficient (or any) justification for this position. But it's also an emotional issue for me, as I am implicated in what zie is writing about. In fact, I implicitly become a "bad person" because of where my life fits vis-a-vis what zie is working on. Shudder.

Ready to head out

2008-12-15T16:32:00.005-08:00

- I'm getting ready to go back to Home City, tomorrow. For 2 1/2 weeks.
- This is stressing me out because all it will be is lurching around from one place to the next, for a few days at a time. No down time at all. I was making up a list of phone numbers for the cat sitter today, and I am going to be in at least 6 different homes (and three different cities) in my 2 1/2 weeks. It is not the recipe for a relaxing holiday.
- This is making me rethink the way I am always turned to face Home City/Region. It gets so tiring. Perhaps I need to spend less time there. I'm torn about this...this is where the closest people in my life are.
- But it's too exhausting...and it takes away from my other vacation time. This becomes how I spend all of my vacations. As a consequence, I feel out of touch, for one thing, with other ways of spending vacation time...I was just thinking last week about how incredibly much I miss camping and canoe trips, for instance.
- For these reasons, it actually makes me quite happy to be planning to stay in Scary City for most of the summer. So that I can go on those camping and canoe trips, and get to really know and feel this region I'm living in.

- Today, though, today. Lots planned for today, in terms of getting ready to go. This morning I started my laundry, and the washer broke - full-on broke - partway through. It didn't drain, and will not. So I was left with a washing machine full of water and clothes. I frantically called my friend L, who I was planning to see later on, to drop Diamond off at her place. She said not to fret, but to bring my loads of laundry over to her place. Thank goodness I happened to have a rental car for the weekend - as a carless person, I don't know what I would have done without one. I brought my loads over to her place, only for us to discover that her power was out. I went back about three hours later, and it was still out. Poor L was sitting there freezing under a blanket in front of the gas fireplace, not knowing what would happen. My laundry was undone. So I had to frantically call a second friend and take my laundry over there. In the meantime I had to take the car back to the rental place, and so friend 2 has to drive my laundry over here when it's finished. Ridiculous!!! What a gong show.
- I had to take Diamond over to L's today. I miss her desperately. I'm become so damn attached to that little one. Damn. I feel all quivery-lipped, thinking about her little face, and not seeing her for almost three weeks. :( Another reason not to go away for so long in future.

- But there are fun things to look forward to in my trip to Home Region. A couple of days with M in Fun City. A blogger meetup over food! Fun New Year's plans. A friend's 50th birthday dance party. These will sustain me.

Ah, the edited volume...

2008-12-14T18:00:00.004-08:00

I knew, going in, that co-editing an anthology was a thankless task. Oh, I knew. William Germano had certainly told me in no uncertain terms, and I'd heard intimations of what I consider to be anthology horror stories. I knew, too, that the level of recognition it generates from the institutional machine, vis-a-vis things like merit and tenure, is far outstripped by the work one puts in. But, I said, sign me up!! (Not without some angst, to be sure...) I really wanted to work on this particular project - really was quite excited about it - and loved the idea of meaningful collaboration.

My co-editor and I - come together, basically, for this - get on famously. The collaborative aspect is extremely rewarding. We seem to have a very similar take on most of the issues that come up - and on the work that we're reading for the volume. And I really value hir extraordinary ability to be both blunt and diplomatic. Also, I'm in awe of hir intellect, and hir nuanced and extraordinarily learned readings.

But, do I ever wonder, sometimes, what we've gotten ourselves into. The majority of the essays we've read have been mediocre. Some quite astonishingly poor: so senseless that I am shocked they would be sent to us as finished drafts. Some we will have to reject altogether. It is clear, too, that the process will drag on far longer than we imagined it would...

I am afraid that I have come to see the wisdom of forgoing the anthology. At least until tenure, when presumably one will have more of a chance to futz around with poor work for draft after draft. Not that I'd want to stop this project at this point - there remains a lot to be gained from it, and from our collaboration. But I might rethink the decision to embark on such a project to begin with. The end result, I feel certain, will be fabulous, but the going is proving to be tough.

Overdue reflections

2008-12-09T11:11:00.005-08:00

I spent a couple of days - Thursday-Saturday - in Nearest Metropolis with my friend S. In my mind, this was supposed to be a bit of a (much-needed) blowout - ye know, doing Metropolitan things, which tend sometimes to be a little costly. I got thing off on the wrong foot when I forgot my wallet at home. S had to pay for me the whole weekend. It skewed the plans a little, unsurprisingly. Though I did come away with the most beautiful (and costly) top I've ever bought.

The holidays are shaping up to be a bit - well, a lot - wonky. I had all these plans, and now they're falling apart. I feel as if this is a sign that I need to start thinking of Scary City as my home. I can't pin hopes on Home Region. This is depressing.

Part of this is that R and I are having a falling-out. We've continued to act as if we are together as a couple, in many ways. We talk all the time. I've known it's problematic, but it's been very, very comforting. But now that is definitely over. It feels like a mini-breakup all over again. It shifts my relationship to Home City. To everything. Ugh. All of a sudden I feel profoundly unmoored. There were a few tiny certainties about the holidays, and now that they've come undone, I feel quite without an identity, frankly. It is not a nice feeling.

Hell, I wish I could have some sort of extended bloggy holiday party with all of you pals...it would be a lot better than what the actual holidays are shaping up to look like.

However. Today I will be able to finish my grading and submit my grades, and I shall be done with teaching until September. I am amazed and happy about that.

Monday notes

2008-12-01T12:59:00.006-08:00

- Have a surgery date; January 8.
- Will not be teaching next term! With at minimum 4 weeks off in a 12-week term, seems the powers that be have decided it's too much to try to work around. Wow. I guess this is the benefit of an institution that takes care of you, really takes care...(Lil'rumpus and others...I don't know why 4-6 weeks, but the doctor is really insistent on that - though probably 4 for me due to youth, strength, vigor or whatever. It's a full (not mini) laparotomy, not laparoscopic. I suppose the other thing is that in case there were dire findings once opened up, I'd need to have other procedures afterward and convalescence would be extended.)
- This means that lots of writing must get done in the new year so I'm not wracked by guilt. I shall be very productive! Oh my goodness.
- What else can I volunteer to do so that people at work don't perceive me as a slacker?
- Will proceed to book Paris research trip for late April/May (4 weeks) without worries about insurance. (Thank you for the tip, though, JoVE, about provincial insurance. I'm not in the province you were mentioning, but imagine it's the same where I am - good to know for future.)
- Oh my god, I have nine months off of teaching???!
- Diamond is newly in love with me, it seems. Like, full-on love.
- She's also in love with her new gopher, in an I-shall-maul-you kind of way.
- I have new friends - and they live right across the street. And are a couple with whom it feels just fine to hang out as a single - doesn't feel like being a third wheel. Last night, spent eight hours chatting. Very stimulating. They're a change from most of my friends here, who are overwhelmingly not up for doing much, so beaten down are they by their jobs. I always feel like a freak for being up for doing things...so nice to find others who share in my desire to lift the head from the work.
- Am going for a mini-break in Nearest Metropolis later this week. With my friend S. We are opting for the long bus ride instead of short flight because it will give us an opportunity to get some of the mounds of grading done - and then we can fully relax and enjoy the Metropolitan time. We are going to use the certificate for a deluxe hotel room that I was given when I had this awful hotel experience in NM back in the spring. But I am also considering this a little vacation, and am going to treat myself to non-frugal experiences.
- Am writing - trying to turn latest conference paper into article. I feel an intuitive sense that this is going to work out nicely.
- Am not, though, looking forward to grading 115 take-home exams beginning tomorrow. (I have let my TA off the hook for these, as she is writing three graduate seminar papers right now, and is the mother of a one-year old.)
- But, strangely (though I'm unhappy about the thought of having my abdomen cut open), I'm happy to have the surgery lined up...

Plagiarism and grants

2008-11-26T12:19:00.003-08:00

The number of hours I am spending catching plagiarism is bringing me down so, so much. It is happening sooooo often. Even on assignments that are supposed to be relatively plagiarism-proof. They're spending so much freaking time plagiarizing creatively that they might as well write the damned thing. Really, it's unimaginable how much of this I'm finding...I have a growing pile of photocopies of plagiarized documents - starting with this infamous one, of course - on my desk. The size of the pile - and the number of hours I spend on this - is really too, too dispiriting.

*

In other news, though, I've been awarded an internal grant that will fund a month in Paris in the spring/summer, even if I don't get my SSHRC. Hooray!

Continued drama

2008-11-25T09:57:00.002-08:00

I haven't known what to blog about. There is so much f'ing drama. On two fronts: medical and emotional. I am now having pain "in my ovary" or whatever - of the kind that took me to the doctor in the first place, leading to the diagnosis. It's been over 24 hours of constant discomfort now. I haven't had this since that first time. It makes me feel nervous and worried.

I am seeing my specialist again next Monday so that I can tell him about this, and tell him that I want the surgery in January instead of waiting until April. My Chair is being amazing. He has consulted with the Dean, and they will find someone to replace me in one course, and they feel fine with cancelling the other - it has low enrolment, anyway. It's funny how over-responsible I feel for everything. Well, not funny, but problematic. It was feeling indebted and responsible that led to my saying I'd wait until April to have the surgery in the first place. And yesterday, when Chair told me he was fine with cancelling the second course, a wave of guilt washed over me and I offered to "make podcasts" of my lectures for that course, for the 4-6 weeks I'm off. (I'm going to plead temporary insanity on that front...I won't have time to make 15+ hours of podcasts in December!!) My reaction to being "let off the hook" like this was to feel bad and as if I owe someone something. Thankfully, Chair seems to genuinely think that's ridiculous. I seem to have to keep telling myself to get a grip, that this is the benefit of having a full-time, permanent job...that the employer will take care of me to some extent. I need to let that happen.

And last night there was continued drama in this other area. I really am so tired of things going wrong that I just feel like one big mass of scar tissue...I really don't feel much anymore. So I took in upsetting news with much less conscious upset than the last time. Instead I just somatized it all, and immediately developed a headache and had to sit in a darkened room for the evening.

And now I can't work. Tomorrow is the last day of classes, I have lectures to prepare, and most importantly I have a pile of grading to do. And I can't bring myself to do any of it. I'm nervous and jumpy and distracted.

Damn my health

2008-11-20T21:38:00.005-08:00

My dear friend, M, likes to point out when he or I "somatize" our emotional lives. I thought of him today as I walked the 25 minutes home from my gynecologist's office and felt completely dizzy...like, falling-down dizzy...the whole way.

I have been monitoring the growth on my ovary since last March's unpleasant scare. (Well, "I" haven't been monitoring...doctors have.) Every two months, I go for an ultrasound and then a follow-up appointment with the specialist. It's mostly all stayed the same...same size, etc...and we were vaguely discussing the eventual need for surgery, but it all seemed far away. There was never any real urgency after the initial scare. But today, I learned, it's growing again. And he's clasifying it as a tumour, not a "complex cyst." So we are looking at surgery. I told him I wanted to do it in April, after classes are over. He hemmed and hawed about whether it would be okay to wait that long, and decided that it would. BUT he wanted me to have another ultrasound in a month or so, and a certain blood test, and if either of those indicates further rapid growth, then he'll want to do surgery immediately. I.e. in the middle of the teaching term, I'd have to be off for at least four weeks. Ugh.

And he also told me that my research plans (3-4 weeks of research in Paris, in late May/June) will perhaps be messed up by travel insurance, which will not pay if I have a pre-existing condition. So that leaving the country just, say, 6 weeks after this surgery, is very risky. Damn. Damn damn damn.

So I walked home and felt very, very dizzy and just tired of all this. Just kind of small and unexpectedly a little scared.

Also tired because this morning I went to another specialist - a neurologist - about the insane headaches and strange facial and aural things I've been having. (He thinks it's nothing, really.) And two weeks ago, went to the orthopaedic surgeon after I came home from that dance weekend and basically my knee was completely fucked. I've been doing physiotherapy for over two months now, and it's becoming more and more clear that my knee is just not ever going to be the same. the initial goal of physio was to strengthen so I'd be able to run again. But I am seriously doubting that I'll be able to run again, given the way my knee is - even in the face of my diligent and zealous commitment to my intense exercise regime. The physiotherapist - I adore him - has gone from extreme positivity to a much more tempered and sober outlook.

The surgeon was a dismissive ass and now I'm on an eight-month waiting list for an MRI. (That's right, Michael Moore, the free healthcare system you laud is BROKEN.)

I think I'm dizzy because I'm overwhelmed by having gone from the picture of health, one year ago, to this...where I have four health-related appointments this week alone. I'm only turning 34 next month, for chrissake. What the hell is going on. I feel old and tired.

2008-11-18T19:11:00.002-08:00

I am back after my conference and my forced detainment in an airport hotel.

Reflecting upon my conference, I think: I am not thrilled about the facet of the profession that is all about who you know, and what they are planning, and whether you'll be in on it, and so on. I mean, I was in some senses inducted into some sort of in-crowd, given a dinner that my co-editor and I had with some folks. But I note so much anxiety in myself about that, and about whether I'll be left behind in certain plans, yada yada. I don't want to care. But I must care. I must cultivate the relationships.

It was lovely to spend a good chunk of time with my co-editor, with whom I get on famously. She was great to have in the background of our hotel room, to chat idly with as I drank minibar vodka in some kind of celebration about our panel/wake about the news that had come as I traveled to the conference.

That news has stayed with me, weighing heavily. Making me dream strange dreams, and experience odd, feverish hallucinations. It has affected me more than I imagined such news could. Though the heaviness was mitigated in some small part over the weekend, with some more correspondence with the person from whom the sadness and drama have sprung. So now, rather than being in the kind of dreadful, shocked, publicly weeping state that I was in, I am in a blunt, cynical, and inert state that doesn't feel much better. I see that my heart is sewn up so tight after this latest blow, I don't know if it will ever open again.

But I have come back with some ideas for writing - expanding my conference paper, which was really quite flawed, into something less flawed and more interesting, and hopefully publishable. I want to try to do this by early January, and feel some excitement about it. Excitement in which I can subsume my heavy, sad self.

God, Air Canada sucks.

2008-11-16T13:17:00.003-08:00

My everyday hate for Air Canada - which I share with most Canadians, it seems - has today reached murderous new depths.

I sit here writing this in a cheap Best Western airport hotel, where I have been forced to stay for the night (on a travel voucher) because of Air Canada's spectacular incompetence. I had three flights booked home from Conference City to Scary City - an epic day. I won't get into the boring details, but I was bumped off the second leg of my trip, and can't now get home until tomorrow. This makes me miss both of my classes tomorrow, at a crucial time in the term, with work coming in from them. It means Diamond is without me for another night, and the cat sitter isn't coming in. I don't have any clean socks or underwear left, nor any comfortable clothes. I don't even have any toothpaste left.

The rage I feel is pretty strong. Not least because the people around me were given flight vouchers, and I wasn't. The customer service agent just shook his head sorrowfully at me until I wanted to strangle him. Due to some arbitrary technicality, they are calling mine a "missed connection," when it wasn't. I was there, at the gate, while they were boarding the flight, but they wouldn't let me board. Everything that happened is their fault, and others got compensation, but this bullshit means I didn't. God, I'm angry. This is simply too much.

2008-11-15T05:44:00.005-08:00

I am still conferencing. In the end, thank goodness for distractions and the friend/collaborator I'm sharing a room with, with whom I can talk about trivial things when I don't have panels to distract me. I can go for a couple of hours without thinking of the thing below. Then, of course, I remember, and I am gripped - absolutely, physically gripped - by panicky sorrow. I think I panic because this felt like a chance at happiness, and it's been wrenched away, and - because happiness has been far away for a long time - I feel deeply somewhere that I have lost my only chance. I know that is illogical, not true, but certainly it's how this feels. It feels like a tragedy. I have never had a story like this.

But I can report that I tried to do some positive visualization before my panel - imagining myself calm, etc. - and it worked! The extreme presentation nerves that have been sabotaging my conference participation for a long time - and which have somehow gotten worse in the last year or so - seemed to be mostly banished, and I got through my presentation more smoothly than any I've ever given. I even remained calm in the face of an interesting, fairly strongly worded challenge from an audience member - and had a good talk with him afterward. And I even remained calm in the face of the recognition that my paper was deeply flawed, especially at its repetitive end. I'm happy about that. Happy to have successfully repressed something. If only I could visualize away the panic and sadness now.

2008-11-13T08:45:00.002-08:00

There was some hope in my life for a while there. I was being awakened. It just got shut down. So that I spent the evening crying in an airport last night – on my way to this fucking conference. Now I’m sitting in a Starbucks warehouse, having been in the same clothes for 29 hours, slept for a fitful two hours or so on one flight, and am not able to get into my hotel room – it’s too early - to have the good fucking bawling cry I need – and a shower, and a lie-down in clean sheets and maybe a preciously hoarded Ativan, which I take only on the most dire of occasions. Instead, I’ve been weeping in public all too many times. Just last night, on the first leg of my journey here, I was reading something for teaching that was speaking to the hope and awakening I was feeling. Which was attached to someone, but also - more - was about finding myself again. Rescuing me from wherever I’ve been these last couple of years. Reading this, I felt excited, as if there were possibility. An hour later, an email told me everything was a grand, cosmic joke. I’m devastated. And I’m here in this place, with nobody around to vent and weep to, and I am just sick to death.

Sigh.

2008-11-09T11:24:00.002-08:00

I have just essentially finished a draft of a conference paper for later this week. As always, I write in a kind of fog, finding my meaning as I go. The result is more severely damaged than usual this time, and I have basically ended the paper on a completely different note than I started on. After having installed about five different things as the major theme along the way. So the process of writing went like this, essentially, and this is reflected in the complete draft I have now:

"This paper identifies foxes as the operative concept. But in fact, the great significance of this is that is about marigolds. Actually, the over-arching point of all this is humidifiers. One sees, thus, that this is most usefully read as a comment on whaling. Finally, the belatedness of the birthday emerges as the dominant concept."

Augh!!!! I have finally arrived at something I like ('the belatedness of the birthday') but the thought of revisiting and substantially revising the rest of this terrifically difficult paper to support that theme makes me want to tear my hair out.

So. I hate writing conference papers. There. I've said it. Something happens in the process that is different from when I just write, say, for publication. I wonder if this insane directionlessness that is much more characteristic of conference-paper-writing, for me, is the result of imagining my audience in a different way from the way I do when I write something that will not be presented aloud. I remain a very nervous presenter - that does not seem to be diminishing at all, unfortunately. And so I am wondering if those nerves play themselves out in an excessively jittery, unfocused approach to writing the actual papers for presentation.

Wow, and whoa

2008-11-05T12:54:00.003-08:00

Congrats and a major hug and smile for all my US friends who helped to elect Barack Obama last night. I'm so thrilled for you all.

*

Someone I know has just emailed me to strongly encourage me to apply for a seriously Fancy-Pants position. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What?! I'd seen the ad for this job, at an institution I'd die to work at - in the city where my best friend lives, as well as a past and current object of romantic interest - and written it off because they seemed to be looking for a much more senior scholar than I. I hoped that - as I'd heard - they might post a more appropriate position in my area next year, and that I'd have a shot at it.

But then today this email from a senior insider there, saying I'd be a super candidate. Encouraging me to call hir to talk about the position. I'm pretty stunned. Knowing a bit about the politics there, I'm just hoping that zie doesn't want to suggest me because I'd be a good puppet for hir. I'll try to suss that out when we talk.

But for now, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Random bullets of "christ, what a day"

2008-11-03T16:58:00.003-08:00

- I have been led to believe that the plagiarism of the MA thesis may be met with a warning letter, and that is all??? I weep, I tell you. And gnash my teeth. I want out. Everything to do with graduate studies at this institution makes my eyes bug out of my head with frustration and anger.

- Today after my 100-person lecture, a student came to talk to me. Zie is one who is very vocal in lectures and yet usually just. not. getting. it. - so much so that you can hear the other students buzzing with frustration and amusement when zie speaks up. So zie came up to me to take me to task for representing [topic I was lecturing about, and about which they had a reading] in what zie took to be politically neutral terms. Since this is a topic that zie is impassioned by, zie thought this was inappropriate. Thing is, zie didn't have a clue what I'd been saying. The reading was an indictment of [phenomenon], and offered a framework for understanding it. My lecture and this reading - which zie admitted to not having read - were littered with signals that problematized the phenomenon I was talking about, including words like "racism." The way I was framing it theoretically was as intensely, well, evil. This was the whole point of the discussion! Other students were on the same page, I could tell from their responses to my questions. Therefore I don't think I was being unclear; I was calling a spade a spade about [phenomenon.] So this one comes up to me and starts to lecture me about this thing!!! Give me a break!! I had to say, over and over, "We're on the same page. I agree with you. That's exactly the point I was making." I don't know why I found this so irritating. But good lord, to be called to task for saying the opposite of what you're actually saying is really freaking irksome. Go away!!

- While all the rest of you do InNaNo-whatever-it's called, I have my own writing goals. I mean, I have some professional writing I need to do - I'm halfway through a conference paper for next week - and I have some editing of contributions to our edited volume. But I don't need any more scholarly pressure or I will implode, quite frankly. So for me this November, the goal is to begin writing in my journal several times a week. I need to do life writing more than anything right now. This represents a big shift for me. In 2001 my now-ex, JZ, read my journal and I had hell to pay. Though I'd been journalling for over a decade by then, that violation shut me down completely. I basically haven't touched it since. But I bought a new one this weekend. I'm so, so in need of unstructured writing that will allow me to work some things out, I tell you. I am in some serious need of real rumination on a number of issues. And since I think through writing, then personal writing it will be.

- My life is a bit sordid right now. My best friend M and I were talking yesterday about how sordid both of our lives are. I thought it would make a good, depressing film, featuring exhausted, bored-but-overworked, emotionally aimless junior professors in their thirties doing stupid things for the hell of it. I know you can picture it - though you probably wouldn't go see it.

Muse of the moment

2008-10-31T18:17:00.001-07:00

As seen at Belle's. This makes some sense right now. Though I don't know if I "understand life to its fullest extent." I wish.

Your result for The A-Muse-ing Test...

Your muse is Melpomene!

50% Melpomene, 10% Calliope, 10% Thalia, 0% Urania, 10% Clio, 10% Erato, 0% Euterpe, 0% Polyhymnia and 10% Terpsichore!

Melpomene is the muse of tragedy. She is also known for her singing and as the "chanting one." She is a guide for the lost or those seeking a way to something, but they just can't quite figure out what or where. She can beautifully wear a tear or a smile, for she understands life to its fullest extent.

Call upon Melpomene when you are searching and need to heal yourself.

Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone with your thoughts. Light a candle and gather some paper or your journal. Sit comfortably and allow yourself to fully feel the pain you have inside and ask Melpomene to help you bravely face it with honesty. Write what you are feeling and what you have experienced. Express your loss in yoru own way, with your own words. Now determine to be creative and use that energy in a new way. You are ready to create something beautiful out of your sadness and loss. Paint, sculpt, write, sing, or just explore a new place. Artistic creation will help you refind joy and reexperience life in a new way.

Take The A-Muse-ing Test at HelloQuizzy

2008-10-30T14:34:00.002-07:00

You know what, student whose MA thesis I am currently reading? If you are going to plagiarize gigantic swathes of your MA thesis, choosing something other than Sparknotes' fully googlable online guide to the novel might be a good idea.

I am so done.

2008-10-29T16:16:00.004-07:00

Something just humanized my 100 first-year students so much for me...

I was grading a test I had given them the other day. The test was quite quick to write, and so many of them sat there for a good ten minutes or more waiting for everyone else to finish.

I needed to turn over their tests to write something on the back, and I saw the sweetest traces of them there on the back page, where obviously they'd killed some time doodling while they waited for everyone else to finish. There were lots of instances of writing their own names with hearts, of course - but I even found that sweet - and there were many melancholy song lyrics, a fragment of an Edgar Allen Poe poem, pictures of flowers with the word "fleur" next to them in graceful cursive. An "I heart Sharon."

For some reason, this just warmed my heart. And that's hard to do these days.

2008-10-26T09:54:00.009-07:00

I've had a close friend from Home City visiting since Wednesday. She just left. It was grand fun, but it's incredible how behind her visit has put me, in terms of work. I'm feeling slightly panicky. (And so, I shall fritter away my time blogging.)

This was a funny visit. My friend S is the person I've always said is closest to a sibling for me, an only child. I've known her since I was fifteen. She and I did the Activity together, and still do things like go to dance camps and weekends together. I love her to death. But she is intensely negative about everything from job to love to hobbies to life - always has been. (I know, I am too on this blog - but I don't exude negativity in my everyday life.) She is always this way, but she seems particularly unhappy with her life right now - relatively newly single at 35, she is full of rage and disappointment about the possibility of finding a man to settle down with. She's lonely for friends, too, she says.

I was talking at one point over the weekend about a decade-long mutual infatuation I've had with someone S and I both know, a really quite extraordinary and somehow intimate relation (which has been sexual on a few precious occasions, when he and I have both been single). Out of what I could tell was jealousy and loneliness, S asked me quite aggressively how I "always make all these deep connections with people..." I don't know what to say to that. It feels odd to be attacked for it. As if I'm doing something wrong. And I don't know how to tell her that what comes across as negativity is probably part of the problem she experiences in making connections with people. This was an odd theme that seemed to add a tiny bit of tension to our visit.

Anyway. We had fun. It's lovely to have someone I'm so close to visit me here. It helps me feel better in this place, for some reason. Even if S did observe, a number of times, that "it is really weird that you live here."

But oh my goodness, the work (and life-work) that awaits me. I am going to be paying for this visit for a couple of weeks. This is so much the case that I need to make, for the first time ever, a boring blog to-do list for today, in the interest of keeping myself accountable (and even though I don't know how to do a strikethrough):

- DONE: Call C in Berlin
- DONE: Reading and prep for first-year class
- DONE: Reading and prep for upper-year class
- GOT 8 DONE: Grade 15 of ~40 first-year assignments
- NOPE: Grade the set of critical questions for the upper-year class
- NOPE: Email K
- NOPE: Email Su.
- REFIGURED: Email St.
- DONE: Return video
- DONE: Do the many dishes
- DONE: Go to gym for some of physiotherapy regime
- DONE: Finish physio regime at home
- DONE: Meet my friend D to strategize my nomination of him for an award
- NOPE: Outline my nomination letter for D
- DONE: Shitloads of laundry - probably 5 loads

What's freaking me out is that I have a scary conference paper to write, and I just haven't had time to get there. I have only a couple of weeks left, and I'm worried. But oh well, this list is all I can contend with today.

2008-10-23T09:24:00.004-07:00

JUST TO CLARIFY THE BELOW: In my second paragraph, I'm not saying that my 2-2 teaching load is too much to run the minor in terms of too much work for me; I'm not that much of a princess. What I mean is that I can't run the minor because if all I teach is 2-2, and two of those four courses are the companion Intro courses, we (I) can't deliver enough programming to make taking the minor possible. (And I'm not about to volunteer to teach more in an institution with very stringent standards for tenure; that would be suicide.) And yes, I should learn to be clearer in my writing and not deliver off-the-cuff rants.

I have learned that I won't get to make another hire in my program for next year. I once really thought there was a strong chance - there was supposed to be a strong chance that I would. And even though I knew the chance was getting slimmer with each passing day, I still held out some hope. But the faculty is getting exactly zero brand new positions. This isn't about my program, then - I do have some faith that if there were new positions, my Dean would have allocated one to my program. But it sure is demoralizing.

The thing is, there is no POINT to me or my position. I can't effectively run even the existing minor, with my 2-2 teaching load. I am redundant, pointless. It's a really, really fucking bad feeling.

2008-10-19T19:47:00.003-07:00

Even though I just got an email from an upper-year student asking what, exactly, a research paper is, I am trying desprately to screw my head back on. In a positive enough fashion to get me through the rest of the term.

I'm sitting here contemplating this in Nearest Metropolis airport, waiting for a connecting flight home. I'm on my way from Second Nearest Metropolis, the American city where I spent the weekend. Dancing. Yes, i got to dance all weekend (well, actually, I took it easier than I usually do because my knee was a bit shocked by this activity).

Yes, the dancing that I love. That I haven't been able to do since February since I missed dance camp in the summer. That I now have to travel to do, since I live in Scary City.

So that infusion of joy - as well as a gorgeous weekend in a Metropolis, meeting new people who feel so much like the community I left behind - make me feel alive again. I need to bottle that feeling.

Thankfully, I do have a good friend - also from my world o' dancing - coming to visit me from Home City this week.

Even though it's late and I'm tired, I'm looking forward to bringing this energy home with me, to Scary City.

2008-10-16T08:58:00.003-07:00

WARNING: Horribly misanthropic post below.

I don't know how I can imagine surviving decades more of dealing with first-year students, without succumbing to a murderous rage.

I can't get over how they can't follow simple instructions. How they become so wrapped up in their grade-grubbing anxieties that they can't even listen. And so I deal with the same questions over and over and over and over again.

Yesterday I stood in front of my 100-person lecture and FOR THE FOURTH TIME was confronted with a barrage about the annotated bibliography they have coming up. I have fielded questions about this since October 1. I have posted a detailed handout about exactly what they need to do, on the course website. I have posted style sheets for the citation style. But no, they cannot look at this. Or they can, but their brains are sieves. I get exactly the same questions - and answer them - every. single. freaking. time. When all of this information has been provided to them in written form. The tediousness of this exercise made my eyes nearly pop out of my head, yesterday - I stood there and furiously clicked the pen I was holding, tapped my feet restlessly as I answered their questions in an incredulous, condescending voice. (I didn't realize how awful my body language and overall vibe were until some slightly more mature students in the front row started laughing - they got what was going on.) I just cannot imagine dealing with this inanity for the next twenty-five years.

I suppose I need to cultivate my bitch self - the one that pointedly says that I have already answered that question, and refuses to answer it again. But that's not me, and I would feel uncomfortable doing that. But is projecting the bitchiness I projected yesterday any better? I think not.

Election looming

2008-10-13T17:24:00.003-07:00

Ugh. Tomorrow's Election Day.

I voted at the advance poll, since I will be traveling from Home City to Scary City tomorrow, and unable to vote. For the first time ever, I stood behind the little screen and thought of throwing my vote away by voting for a fringe candidate. I am usually a good little voting soldier, and even - very, very briefly - once joined a political party despite my cynicism about electoral politics, because I wanted to support a great candidate in winning the nomination...I am sure you can guess which one.

But the cynicism that I managed to overcome long enough to join said party and even attend a couple of folksy fundraisers for candidates at the municipal and provincial levels has returned to define my political consciousness. Or lack thereof. Like so many people in this country, I really couldn't care less about this election. That is a terrible sentiment. But all it looks like to me is a pointless exercise that won't redraw the face of things here at all. Our resident sociopath, Harper, will end up with another minority government. End of story. Blech. Eternal return.

I am also irritated at further fragmentation on the left, which has smothered any last hope that had managed to stay alive in me.

Here we go, then. Onto the world's most boring and pointless election day. Mirrored in the world's most boring blog post of the political variety.

Home City

2008-10-11T06:11:00.002-07:00

I arrived on Thursday morning. I'm here in Home City until Tuesday afternoon. I'm staying at R's. She's not here. She's in Chicago because she's running the marathon tomorrow. That was a trip we were supposed to take together; I had it booked. But, of course, we're not doing that. Because we're not together. I saw her for a few hours on Thursday when I arrived here - so strange. It made me sad, and I've been haunted by that sadness ever since. I feel as if I missed out on my one chance at happiness. That she's all set to move on, in this city that she loves. That I'm far away from it and, in letting her go, have lost my chance.

So on one hand it's great to be staying here - it cushions me from the blow that inevitably will occur because I no longer have a Home in Home City. I get to be in this place I lived in for years, and not be confronted with the feeling that I don't know where to go in my very own city. But it has been underscoring, more than I expected, the fact that R and I are over and I'm in a place - literally and metaphorically - that gives me no hope.

It's been beautiful weather here in Home City, and I've walked a lot, feeling the sense of deeply embodied comfort that is the most striking thing about this place. Yesterday, because I need weight and other equipment to do my physiotherapy regime, I went and used the gym at the university - a gym I used for six years, but stopped three years ago. The guys at the front desk recognized me, and were excited to see me. They see thousands and thousands of people a year and they recognized me? It touched me. It made me long to be back in that part of the community, to be able to walk there, to work out there. And then I thought of something: If my job in Scary City continues to feel unbearable, I do need to think about leaving. If nothing changes next year, and yet I'm unsuccessful on the job market (or, as with this year, there are no jobs to apply for), then I might very well need to just walk away from the profession, lest I end up up sacrificing my happiness and health to it. And maybe I could see about working at the university here in a non-professorial capacity. Finding a job that draws on some of my skills - working as a Research Officer, for example.

Everyone tells me that I am the person they know who is best suited to being a professor. I sort of know what they're talking about...it does fit me. It hadn't occurred to me (duh) to think about other ways to continue working in the university. I couldn't think of anything else I'd like to do. This seems a bit hopeful as a back-up. I know that what I'd rather do is find a professorial job at a place that doesn't break me. But it's helpful to begin to recognize another option. And one that could take me back to Home City.

2008-10-06T22:28:00.003-07:00

I'm pretty much disappearing from here, it seems. I don't seem to be able to balance things very well right now.

*

Diamond was diagnosed last week with a liver condition. I'm treating her with powerful "liver medication." I just don't know. I feel terrible leaving her for five days, this coming weekend, but I have two different people coming in to watch her every day at different times. She seems as if she might be beginning, just beginning, to feel a bit better.

*

I mentioned a little while back that I was planning a post about how this job turns me into someone I don't like very much. Yes, indeed. That comes from the feeling of pressure and impatience. It comes from rage. It comes from being ungenerous with myself and with other people.

I really noticed it when I started dealing with a PhD student who is doing a Directed Studies course with me. As it turned out, she has NO training in critically analyzing texts. None. None, none, none. How can it be????!!! My response - two weeks in a row, after receiving her "critical reflections" on the readings - was to do things like slam my computer shut and swear. How awful. It is not her fault. I recognize that. I see that she comes from a very different background, one where she is not expected to approach things in this way. I see that this is a fatal flaw in an interdisciplinary graduate studies program, which potentially sets up people to pursue projects for which they're inadequately prepared. I see all of that. But instead, I react with anger and am not particularly generous with her. I just want her to go away. I feel misled about her and her project and her capacity to do that project. These are all awful things to feel. I sense we're heading somewhere bad. I know she's been panicking to her supervisor about me. And she seems to have gone uncharacteristically quiet. Probably as a result of my not being terribly supportive - though I have tried to explain in detail - twice - what I mean by critical engagement and analysis, and given her five examples of the kind of response I want her to write.

But I feel impotent, in a sense - I don't know what to do about it - and all the solutions I can think of involve more, so much more, than I can give. So I react ungenerously - and even though it's really only in my own mind, it feels wrong. It's terrible. I don't want to be this nasty person.

Hee

2008-10-04T13:24:00.004-07:00

According to this sophisticated quiz, there are only two possible answers to every gender or sexuality issue...And I become a member of the Black Bloc. Hee.

As seen at Luckybuzz's.

Your result for The Feminism Test...

Revisionist

You scored 100% Gender-Abolitionist, 80% Sexually Liberal, and 60 % Socialist

You are the Revisionist Feminist! You are, by far, the most philosophical, the most sexually-liberated, and the most politically extreme variety of feminist. You are very, very freedom-oriented. You abhor oppression in all forms. For instance, your views on sexual liberation and reproductive control adequately reflect your devotion to personal freedom. Not only that, but you also feel gender needs to be destroyed to maximize equality and freedom, because accepting socially-constructed gender roles binds women into false categories and places upon them an unneeded identity. Gender should not be a part of one's identity, but rather an irrelevant aspect of their physical bodies, such as their hair length or nose shape. Not only that, but Revisionist Feminists are political extremists and feel very strongly that the oppression of class society is a big part of the cause of women's oppression. Basically, a Revisionist feels that cultural ideas of gender, political class, and repressive sexual morality all work together to oppress women, and the only way to truly escape this oppression is to challenge all of these problems directly and extremely. You are a Marxist, a Gender Abolitionist, and a Liberal Feminist all rolled into one.

The other feminist types:

The Housewife

The Marxist

The Liberal

The Liberal Extremist

The Gender Abolitionist

The Radical

The Gender-Liberal

The Revisionist

Take The Feminism Test at HelloQuizzy

Friday Poetry Blogging: Jaan Kaplinski

2008-10-03T10:10:00.002-07:00

(Untitled. Tanslated from Estonian by the author with Sam Hamill and Riina Tamm.)

I do not know whether each believer
is as joyful that God exists
as I was upon hearing
the wood owl call from the ash tree
where his nest box
has already rested a dozen years. Now
he has nested there
four or five years himself.
He is.

Random bullets...

2008-09-30T21:28:00.003-07:00

are all I can manage...

- Diamond has been quite unwell, and I've taken her in to the vet twice. She has blood tests going right now. The vet thinks she has arthritis beginning, and possibly had a skin infection, which she is being treated for antibiotically. But I think there's more than that going on. I honestly can't even face anything terrible after everything else, so I'm largely not going there, mentally - I'm just giving her lots of love and hoping that it's going to be okay. But she really doesn't seem very happy.
- I am so tired of working 12-hour days every day and feeling like I'm running around breathless for most of that time. I am having fantasies about quitting. All of the incidents of last week aren't helping.
- I'm doing another round of the Academic Writing Club and it's working the wrong way on me. Quite the opposite of my success with it last time. It's only making me feel inadequate. Because I just cannot seem to get to my research. There is just a staggering amount of other things to do. People are horrified at how much service I do as someone so junior. How did I get myself into this mess?
- I have finished my SSHRC grant application, though - I completely overhauled it - and had overwhelmingly positive feedback on it from a mock review committee at my uni. Which was wonderful. It's disheartening knowing that my chances are still so low, though.
- I heart my physiotherapist. I first went to him two weeks ago. He's a sports physiotherapist, and an incredibly knowledgeable and competent one. I told him from the get-go, "I am here because I want to be able to run again." Well, the work he has me doing is sooooo intense, sooooo hard, soooooo exhausting - and I love it for being all these things!! It's so different from the couple of other experiences I've had with physio over the years, where I just feel like I'm doing useless exercises. Today when I went in, he had me doing mind-numbingly tough things, and I felt as if my athletic body, the possibility (and actuality?) of my being a strong body, was truly engaged. I was challenged to extremes I wouldn't have imagined at this stage. It restores me to myself, after feeling so weakened and physically vulnerable. I could just kiss him for that.
- He is thrilled with me for the extensive cycling I do, and says that is the best possible thing I could be doing for my leg. He thinks I will be able to try running in another 2-3 weeks from now. That feels a little ambitious to me, but if I stick with this program of incredibly challenging exercises for the next couple of weeks, maybe it'll be okay...
- If only all of this didn't take up so much damn time. Time I could be using for writing or relaxing. But obviously it's worth it in the long run.
- Ugh - I'm annoyed that it's almost 10pm, I have to get up at 5:30am, and yet I still have work to do...and it includes grading a paper called "Society as a Social Construction." Nummy.

Get ready for it

2008-09-25T14:44:00.003-07:00

I am going to be spending the next few days evaluating graduate students' SSHRC (national social sciences and humanities funding body) fellowship applications. I just opened the files for a first quick glance. Each has two letters of reference. For one poor female PhD student, would you like to know what information was included in her reference letter from her male professor? That she was "a knock-out" and "the best looking woman in the department." This was conveyed in an anecdote about her getting all dressed up for a party.

That "I need blood" energy that I thought was dissipating? It's returned. On my list? This guy, obviously. And the stupid fucking students sitting across from me on the bus the other day cruelly ridiculing a friend of theirs for taking Women's Studies because "that was over in the 80s." Fuck you all. And this fucking profession.

A blogthing, a placeholder

2008-09-25T09:54:00.005-07:00

A placeholder for a post on the way my job makes me into somebody I don't like very much...too busy to write that post right now...Hmmm, do you see how these things might be related? Gawd.

Anyway. I like these socks. Overall, apparently I'm a far less fabulous human being than most of you (which about matches how I feel right now).

(I don't know how to fix what's wrong with this - sorry.)

What Your Socks Say About You

You are:

- Quite glamorous
- Somewhat reserved
- A little bit greedy
- Known as attractive

http://www.blogthings.com/thesockspersonalitytest/">The Socks Personality Test

My fury only grows

2008-09-23T08:43:00.004-07:00

Yeah, you know that "harassment" situation from last week? Well, no one has responded to anything, and students have been told the most outrageous things. This is profoundly affecting them. It is sick. They need an advocate, and yet I - their natural advocate - have no recourse due to the harassment accusation. Thankfully my Chair has been willing to take it up, but still. He doesn't think it will have an effect.

I haven't been this angry in a long, long time. And now resentful of being consumed by this anger. But I can't let it go because the situation hasn't been resolved and the students don't have what they need. I suspect, in fact, that the students may be being used as pawns in an attempt to sabotage me. It has got to stop. I have to figure out a way to take this up with someone who can do something about it - something like firing people.

Last night I had to phone someone to talk it out with me and offer me alternatives to defacing a certain part of campus or going into the place in question looking for a physical fight. As you might guess from this blog, I'm a pretty damn peaceful person - and one who always gives people the benefit of the doubt, tolerates mistakes, etc. I have been told, in fact, that I do this far too much - my faith in humanity was an issue between R and I. Not so, anymore, apparently.

City allergy

2008-09-20T17:50:00.004-07:00

Recently a friend here quietly said to me that she wondered if the ridiculous chain of bad things that have happened over the last year was trying to tell me something. About the wrongness of this place for me. I admitted to having thought the same thing myself...idly, mostly scoffing at myself. Because I don't believe in that kind of fateful energy. But it's true, I do wonder sometimes. If I should be fleeing because this place and me, we just don't mix.

I thought it as I cycled home from the farmers' market this morning. Two things happened. First, I encountered a ragtag band of NDPers holding signs for the local candidate. (Americans, we are having a federal election here right now, too, though it is much less exciting - even to many of us - than yours.) I dinged my bell in support several times as I passed them, and they let up a pathetic cheer. Somehow it made me tear up to see this sad, because ultimately pointless, spectacle in this place that is so tightly sewn up by the Conservatives, one can't breathe. Then I continued my ride, and was cut off by someone making a left turn...I, who had the right of way, was forced to brake quickly to avoid being hit. The person in the passenger seat laughed at me as they drove by. These two events were linked in my mind...as symbols of an unsustainable, misanthropic place.

I know it doesn't help to think in these terms, and I try my best to avoid getting sucked into negativity about this place. I'm always going on about how beautiful it is, and I do take advantage of the area, I do. I try and try. But damn, do I ever wonder if we're just allergic to each other, me and Scary City.

This would be less disheartening if I could actually see a single job to apply for. There's not one. Last year there were, I think, a mere two that I could conceivably have applied for, had I been on the market. This year, I have the job letter all ready to go (with help from a lovely blogger!) and it's quite possible that it's just going to sit there, unprinted, forever.

It does all make me feel a little trapped, sometimes.

But this week I was given promise of a reprieve from entrapment. My favourite aunt was here for a whirlwind 36 hours, and she and I had a delightful time. She also, while she was here, booked me a ticket to Home City with her air miles, for over Thanksgiving weekend. (She is like some kind of miracle-worker! I love you, F!! For so many reasons!) A mere three weeks from now, an unexpected visit there! For five and a half days. I shall walk and walk and drink it in.

(BTW, the update on the "harassment" situation is that my Chair intervened on my behalf, going to the person's manager (who I had also cc'd on my original, "harassing" email). Neither Chair nor I have heard back, after three full work days. What a place I work at. No wonder I want out.)

2008-09-18T09:13:00.002-07:00

S/he's very clever, is the person who says s/he's going to charge me with harassment. I was making a legitimate complaint and inquiry about the status of something that is incredibly urgent, and is impairing my ability to do my job, and the students' ability to do theirs. In saying s/he's going to charge me with harassment and go to my Dean, s/he knows s/he's going to scare me off. S/he doesn't have to provide me with an answer or explanation of why this job is not getting done. S/he has effectively silenced me.

The more I think about this, the more I seethe. Now I want to go to my Dean to make a complaint about this person, who is damaging the educational experience for some students with this nonsense.

And really, I also seethe because I have enough fucking stress right now as it is and I don't need to take on the shit of people who are too fucking lazy to do their jobs and rely on tactics like this because they can't own up to their own fuck-ups. Pardon my language.

Holy hell

2008-09-17T10:14:00.008-07:00

I am being accused of harassment. The accuser says s/he is taking the case to my Dean.

I am horrified. Horrified.

The issue in question is an email I sent last night to a staff member. It was an email of complaint. I think you can imagine that my idea of a complaint is not exactly a nasty screed. I even apologized for adding to the chorus of complaints I know this person is currently facing. I just felt a situation had carried on far too long, and it was unacceptable, and I wanted to register my dismay at the situation.

I should add that this staff person is not an administrative assistant nor in any kind of subordinate role relative to me.

Now the staff person has sent me a reply saying this constitutes harassment and s/he is getting the Dean involved.

I'm so freaked out I don't know what to do. I don't know whether to reply, or to just sit tight, or to contact my union. I guess replying is not a good thing to do, though my instinct is to send an email explaining that I intended a complaint, not harassment.

Jesus.

Bike rides

2008-09-15T19:40:00.005-07:00

Today I tried riding to work for the first time since my accident - I've been going for shorter rides to do errands, etc. Nothing more than about 20-25 minutes round trip. So today, it was hard. It's always been a good workout, since it takes me nearly 40 minutes and most of that is uphill. But this time I was more winded than I used to be, and it took me nearly 10 minutes longer to get there. Sigh. I should have expected this, of course - it's been 2 1/2 months since I've had any real cardio exercise and the muscles especially on the one leg are weak. But still, it made me sad. And I had to ice my knee - it's sore.

Riding home, though - coasting downhill at 3:30, so different from my ride up the hill at 7am - was a treat. I saw the horses again, out playing in the sun. I was surprised - happily surprised, as I often am - by the landscape I live in, unfurling ahead of me. I remembered how, last fall, the ride home was the one consistent bit of happiness in the general overwhelm and dislocation of my new job. I think it will be this year, too.

2008-09-13T13:32:00.004-07:00

I think this is the longest break I've taken from blogging since I began, with the exception of times when I've been away. Truthfully, I haven't known what to say. I've been having a hard time - too hard to blog unself-consciously about - since writing that last Post of Hope. I suppose this is to be expected, in wake of breakup and all the health problems. It was premature, ten days ago, to think all was changing for the better. It's a slower process than that. And I'm just tired. Tired already.

That's not to say I haven't had some good times. I've made a new friend in the last couple of weeks, who is turning out to be that elusive friend, the wine drinker extraordinaire. We hang out for, like, 15 hours at a time. This is good. He is great. Except that it sometimes involves too much wine.

But yes, otherwise, things feel overwhelming. I still feel like my blood pressure doubles every time I walk into the university. My dark office continues to be a site of stress.

And then there is my work in single-handedly keeping the helping professions afloat in this province. Let's see...in one week I will have seen OB/GYN (about the ovarian thing that refuses to go away, meaning we are tentatively planning invasive surgery for April), regular doctor, physiotherapist, and new therapist, and been referred to neurologist. I feel ridiculously broken. You'd think I was eighty-five.

And I'm not sleeping well. Haven't since I arrived back from Home City. I'm not a troubled sleeper, normally. But I have slept through the night only once in the last three weeks. Today I look like I have a black eye, actually. And I have to go to a department party with my black eye.

Still, there are small victories, small bright spots:

- My department has come out overwhelmingly in support of me and my one-person program. Overhwelmingly, jaw-droppingly, and even passionately in support. I will - as long as the Dean approves it - get to hire a colleague.
- My 8am class, the one I fretted about last spring, so worried was I about potential lateness problems? Well, I have had not a single late arrival since it began!! Plus, they all arrive bright-eyed and ready to talk. (Part of this is because it is my upper-year, 18-person class, rather than a 100-person first-year lecture, as I had originally thought it would be.)
- I went to a concert the other night, of a band I love and have seen several times in Home City. I went with my friend L, who takes care of Diamond when I go away. This was a reserved-seating show. What happened when I got there? All of my favourite people in Scary City (whom I didn't even know would be attending the concert, with the exception of one couple), were not only in attendance, but were either in our row - right next to us - or the one behind it. In a 400-person hall. This felt like some kind of cosmic alignment, I must say. I felt temporarily grounded in Home City, surrounded by all these folks I like so much.
- I have visitors right now - an ex-student from Dream Uni who is on a cross-continental odyssey, is here with her travel partner. She graduated in spring of 2007. She'd gotten in touch to ask if I could suggest some places to see in this area, and see if we could have lunch, and I invited her to stay. It's nice to see her/them.
- And I have Favourite Aunt whirling in for two days next week.

So there's enough to buoy me, in theory. I'll get there.

Bullets of back to school

2008-09-03T20:33:00.010-07:00

- So I was grieving in a major way, and I took what I was thinking was too much time off work. But, you know, I can see my way to feeling better now. School has started and - unexpectedly - I feel the potential for lifting up, though I also feel that it will be a slow process. It's as if, at least, I can imagine it, where I couldn't for a couple of weeks there. And I think that time off was important. I was talking about my lack of work with someone today, and she said that she had been told by someone, when she had her own loss a couple of years ago, "grieving's work." I hadn't thought of it in quite those terms. But it's true. I was working while I wasn't working on my "work."

- Certainly I'm lifting out of the exhaustion that was killing me. That week of ER every night, two weeks of antibiotics, followed by last week - of being, unusually for me, unable to sleep - took their toll. Such a toll that I felt something was really wrong. But today seems to mark a turning point, and I feel more energized than I have for a while (which isn't saying much).

- My classes are fine, I think. Very, very smiley. Very excited about content, judging from nodding and engagement. Very, in the upper-level class, responsive to my talking about the necessity of cultivating patience and openness with difficult material. And damn, do they ever like certain kinds of gently self-deprecating humour. I'd forgotten that.

- Grad-student-o-rama for me, this term.

- In fact, my friend S and I have decided to plan a little cocktail hour thingy - well, a cinq-à-sept - for grad students who study X, later in the month. So they can meet each other and combat their isolation. We'll have it at S's house. (Don't we wish we lived lives where we had cinq-à-septs all the time, before we swanned off for dinner and more drinks, somehow non-drunkenly?)

- Wore fabulous new skirt - one of a kind, ordered on Etsy - today. I might need to marry fabulous new skirt.

- But administrative duties are going to be the death of me. People, never be a very junior-ranking department of one who is also charged with single-handedly growing it into a high-performing behemoth.

- Good/weird: I may get to make a hire; I may get a colleague - will know in next couple of weeks. (Yay!) Would then be chairing hiring commmittee. While also looking for a new job myself?! Ugh - can you say awkward? Am not sure what to do about this.

- A very sour note: I'm pissed. At a healthcare system that a) never referred me to or even said anything about physio either during two months of incapacitation or after crutches came off (I found someone on my own), and b) let me walk away from the hospital last week with absolutely no guidance. Nothing about what to expect, what to do, what not do. No benchmarks for progress, no idea of what to look out for. Even when I asked, just basically shrugged and said, "you're fine." Well, it sure as hell doesn't feel fine, and I can't stop worrying. And maybe everything is okay, but I don't know, do I, because I've been told NOTHING. Grrr.

- Tonight had spur-of-the-moment socializing. My friend S drove me home, and I suggested she come in for dinner. I made pasta sauce while she did a salad, and it was easy and she was home by 8. Why not more of this? I love this. If I had me some more impromptu socializing, I'd be a happier hilaire. I would not feel as if everyone I know here is thoroughly brutalized by their jobs. In the wake of break-up, spur-of-the-moments feel particularly important, taking the place of that mundanity lived with a partner, even from far away.

Supervision philosophies

2008-09-02T18:28:00.003-07:00

So. Let's hear about your philosophies for dealing with the graduate students you supervise. (Or "advise," in the US.)

I ask because I am a first-time supervisor, this year. This MA student is, I think - by all accounts - fabulous. We have met a few times, she and I and my friend S, who's co-supervising. But her super-engagement and nerves are going to be my issue. Weekly. Almost daily.

I'm doing a Directed Studies course with her. I suggested that we meet about this every two weeks (what I did in every one of the many directed studies courses I took), and she wrote back that she would really like, if that's okay, to meet every week, because she learns better when she can talk through ideas with someone. She also emailed, over the weekend, to tell S and I about her extreme nerves about starting this process. I knew she was looking for advice, reassurance. So she's going to be high-maintenance. In a mostly good way. But still. I'm aware of a kind of added psychic burden, now that she's in my life. And I'd love to hear the philosophies you bring to your graduate supervision, those of you who do it...

The not-quite-holiday weekend

2008-08-30T10:59:00.004-07:00

So, yeah, I had the grand plans. Of taking this weekend off completely. I had my ridiculous spa experience yesterday - there was an element of the ridiculous about it - and I came home and napped and then went for dinner and then to a party. Vacay-esque, to be sure. But I'm afraid that, having lost last week to the Franken-arm experience, I am behind where I need to be with my work right now...I can't kiss it entirely goodbye over the next few days.

But I do have Season 4 of Six Feet Under to watch, and plans every night - these are things that make me happy. Under these conditions, I can sneak a bit of work here or there, relatively painlessly.

The big news, though, is that I am off crutches. On Wednesday I was given the go-ahead. My left leg is in a kind of mild shock at being used again, but nothing has been hurting. I've been walking - a little gimpily, at first, but that is sure to change. My muscles will come back from their famine-victim state. I must say, though, that I've woken up this morning feeling a little off in the area of the fracture...something feels mis-aligned. This worries me. My provisional solution is to stay away from walking today, though that's not going to help me much if there really is something wrong.

Really, I can't handle any more problems. So let's just pretend, shall we, that I am not feeling as if my bone is un-knit, and tackle the weekend of fun.

Goal for the new year: Protecting my Morale

2008-08-26T20:28:00.002-07:00

The new academic year is imminent. I am far, far from the headspace I would like to be in. I feel gutted and exhausted. Very, very empty. (Compounding this is the demise of my 6-year relationship...for real this time...I haven't blogged about it because I couldn't bear to add another thing to the litany of disasters, and because I also can't bear to write about it in this forum, but there you have it. It is a tragedy, and it has been devastating. And that's all I'll say about that.)

I need to be good to myself this year, if I am to pull myself out of this awful period. I don't trust the academic year to offer me many opportunities to be good to myself, though. And so my major goal - I have others, mostly having to do with the contradictory poles of high productivity and lack of stress, but this is my major one - is to save my morale. What's left of it.

The morale is shockingly low at Scary City University. Shockingly. People are so overworked and so unhappy that they become consumed with negativity about the place, their jobs. Their lives, sometimes. I have come to realize how corrosive this is for me. I need to do my best to avoid getting sucked into whining conversations at every turn. Sure, venting is important - and there is plenty to vent about, as I know all too well after a year in this awful place. But because I have so little here, so little life outside my work, my work already threatens to become everything. And if all I ever hear from anyone else about the work context is negativity, then it just casts the most awful pall over my life in general.

So I need to do whatever I can to avoid being eaten alive by other people's unhappiness. I have enough of my own - and I don't want even that, much less other people's. So this means closing my office door sometimes, it means making an effort to cultivate friends outside the university, it means declaring some get-togethers with friends from work to be "work-talk-free zones."

It also means making sure I have a life. I used to have a life outside my work.

So those are the most important goals for the new year. Picking up the pieces, really. Putting myself back together again, which requires some neutral energy and some distraction from Scary City Uni. This is, paradoxically, what I need from Scary City Uni this year - time and psychic space away from it and the sadness it creates in all of us.

Back

2008-08-25T16:53:00.003-07:00

I'm back in Scary City.

I am finished with IV antiobiotics and onto a week of pills, but not over the exhaustion caused by that ordeal: I went to ER for this 5 late nights in a row, since I was supposed to get them every 24 hours and the first dose had been given at about 2 in the morning. So I spent 2-3 hours in Emergency every night (though didn't go as late as the first time!), and then cabbed home, comatose. I am so sleep-deprived. So freaking depressed. I feel robbed of my last week in Home City. Also, other bad things happened last week.

And now I'm back here, as of today. Great. I sat on my couch and immediately became itchy. It was crawling with tiny ants, which had come over from an infested plant. Nice. Welcome home.

And with the crushing weight of the new year upon me. Thank goodness I have another week until it really starts up. But since I didn't get any work done last week because of the arm, I am appallingly behind on everything. And I feel a strong sense of dread about the prospect of the overwhelm. In retrospect, last year was just so overwhelming. I can't have that again.

All I can think about this horrific last eight months is that it's my "Jesus Year" - I'm 33. Maybe all of this together moves me toward the big spiritual transformation, the life shift, the new learning, etc., etc. Yeah, well, great. Fabulous. Also, I cannot wait till New Year's Eve...I usually am not much for New Year's, but I can tell you that I am going to say a very conscious and celebratory goodbye to this year, that night.

2008-08-20T10:53:00.001-07:00

Very quick update, as I'm supposed to be not typing or doing any work (just great...great timing...). I went back to the hospital in middle of night last night; was given first round of antibiotics by IV. I will go back at least twice more - every 24 hours - for same. I am meant to be resting the arm, which is hard to do when you're on crutches.

And frankly, life fucking sucks, in more ways than this.

Off to Emergency for the 418th time this summer...

2008-08-19T06:15:00.001-07:00

Yes, that is right. I am just waiting for morning rush hour to lighten up so I can manage the bus with my crutches, and I am taking myself to the hopital for the wasp sting I got on Sunday afternoon, which has made my arm balloon to alarming proportions - truly alarming - and is getting worse by the hour. I had a terrible sleep last night because of it.

I know it's a bit rich to be going to Emerg for a sting, but I feel as if, though this isn't a life-threatening problem or anything, it needs to be treated effectively, not with the half-assed measures that clueless walk-in doctors seem to take. The walk-in clinics I've been to in Home City always feel sketchy to me, as if they're populated with doctors who trained in the 50s and are stuck in a time warp.

Like the doctors from the new X-Files film, which some friends and I had the misfortune/delight of seeing last night. It was truly, truly, truly heinous. I couldn't believe it. So bad it was amusing. Did Chris Carter have a head transplant and forget what his show actually was? My goodness - appalling.

Anyway, I shall update ye. I seem to be in amused, light spirits, though I am sure being in Emergency for eight hours or whatever will beat them out of me.

Update: I went and didn't have a terrible wait - I was out of there in just over 2 hours. Anyway, the young doctor took one look at it and said, "Whoa, you have a nasty infection! I'm going to prescribe antibiotics, give you some benadryl, and I just want to have the other staff eyeball it so we can see if we should give you the antibiotics in an IV to begin." When she took me to the head doctor, he said you can't tell if it's an infection or just an allergic reaction, and so he didn't want to give me the antibiotics - he made her draw a line around the affected area and go home and watch it, and come back if it continues to grow and/or I develop other symptoms of an infection. I am to take benadryl for four days - which means now I'm going to go for a nap - this is going to be a very dozy four days.

My gut thinks it's an infection, but whatever. Let's just keep fingers crossed that it's not, and I don't have to spend tomorrow morning at the hospital, too.

Life change

2008-08-18T06:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was taking a long drive back from a family party four hours away. I put in Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and found myself tearing up. Why, you ask? Because it reminds me of running. It brings back very strong memories, for instance, of training for last year’s half-marathon – I listened to it addictively then, and it is intimately linked with long-run endorphins, in my brain.

And the thing is, I miss running. I miss “real” (read: cardio) exercise, for which I have a strong predilection. I was ramping up my running to get ready for an autumn half, just as I broke my knee.

I am also aware that I may not be able to run again. There is no certainty on this question – the orthopaedic guy thinks I may be able to, but is not sure. The Internet tells me – as did the first surgeon, in Hawaii – that my knee will never be the same, and that I will almost certainly develop arthritis in it.

I am sad about this. I will do everything I can to rehabilitate the leg. I have already started, having gone to see a physiotherapist on my own (I was never referred to one, which shocked me and the physio) so that I can start building up strength and range of motion even while still unable to walk on the leg. (Though my left calf is a sad, pathetic little thing by now – it’s atrophied alarmingly.) I’ll work and work and work so that I can get back to what I love to do. If I can’t run, I’ll maybe go back to swimming laps, which I used to do, but got bored with.

But this is bigger than the question of cardio exercise. My worrying about this is one symptom of a larger, looming confrontation with aging and mortality. What with everything that’s gone on recently – ovary still probably needing to come out, this stupid injury*, even the first-ever migraine - I’m really feeling quite uneasily in touch with my own eventual deterioration and death. It invades my consciousness daily; it never really had before. And you know, I’d have rather put off this feeling for another couple of decades.

For that reason, it is a great thing to be watching Six Feet Under right now.

At any rate, I feel quite fundamentally changed. Quite.

*Stupid being the operative word. Do you know, this past week I have started to experience some real anger over this injury for the first time. I mean, for chrissake!! I was just bloody standing there!!

2008-08-14T18:16:00.002-07:00

So my mini-vacay – with input from you – will start on the Friday afternoon of Labour Day weekend – hurrah! I have already booked my two spa thingies...and since the spa is about a 30-second walk from my house, I can come home and have a post-reflexology mid-afternoon nap. So exciting. Then there will be wine and baths and swims and swims (the thought of which makes me drool) and the big, fat novel I was recently given as a present (don’t you love friends who give you random presents in August, with cards that say, “we love you?”).

But really, it’s quite pathetic that I’m such a wound-up head case that it’s an effort for me to plan downtime.

When I had an awesome blogger meetup with the lovely Psychgrad (with whom I talked and drank Strongbow as if we’d known each other all our lives), she asked me if I was happy. I was pretty much stumped. See above.

But moments like the meetup with Psychgrad – and the hours-and-hours-long dinner I had with a friend last night, and other times with my dear friends on this trip to Home City – make me very happy indeed. It’s just too bad they’re few and far between.

Especially in Scary City.

I was feeling better about Scary City – my line recently has been that I don’t mind Scary City, I just hate my job – but I’m feeling pretty upset about the thought of going back there in ten days. I hate how fucking uptight everything feels. Maybe that’s why I’m so uptight. I hate that everybody I know – because most of my friends are from the university – is so bloody overworked and beaten down that we are all a bunch of pathetic people who don’t know how to actually have a life anymore.

But I’m actually okay, for the most part. I am almost ready to come off the crutches and I have somehow decided that this will magically be the end of my year of awfulness.

And hey, I’m writing. Even if the part I’m writing at the moment is gut-wrenchingly difficult. At least I’m writing.

And I have been watching Six Feet Under with R. (Yes, I know, I’m always 7 years – or, hell, 15 years - behind the shows.) I had never seen it. I love it. We’re finishing up Season 2. The way it makes me sad makes me happy, if you know what I mean.

Machinic

2008-08-13T13:31:00.006-07:00

I'm feeling pretty burnt out. This isn't good. Because I'm also feeling the creep of the new academic year. Never have I dreaded it before. Never. But last year was so stressful that I can't stand the thought of this year.

And the problem is, I haven't really had any down time in a long time. My week of true vacation in Hawaii was ruined by my accident and my five days in hospital. My week of bliss at dance camp - the last week of August - is now cancelled because of that. Those were my two weeks this year free of work. My trip to France was lovely, but it was a research trip. My two-day getaway with R near Scary City was marred by the fun ovarian scare. My long weekend in Nearest Metropolis was truncated by the bed bugs. Vacations are not meant to be, for me, it seems.

And I've just been plowing through, machinically, trying to get far enough ahead with my stuff before the year starts that I don't feel like I'm drowning. So I churn through it, anxiously. Today I: finished writing my job letter, wrote some of the current book chapter I'm on, drafted about a quarter of my revised SSHRC grant application, and closely read and commented on an essay for my co-edited collection (which was a disappointment and will require significant revision - and I had such high hopes for this one!). I didn't touch the other looming things - course design for the fall that is not even finished. There's administrative service that I'm supposed to be doing - more growing of my program. I feel exhausted, and it's August. This does not bode well.

I wonder if I can take Labour Day weekend off. If I can plan for a full three days OFF just before classes begin. I wonder if I can afford the time. I don't even know what I'd do. I'd be in Scary City. Maybe I'd just read novels and go for swims. And walks - if all goes well, I should be coming off crutches and able to walk properly again just before that weekend. I think I need to do it.

Writing surprise

2008-08-11T12:29:00.003-07:00

After a lot of self-reproach, and a little motivational help from this, I seem to have found my writing groove again.

It is even fun. It is even about discovery.

I can't believe it. The last couple of weeks have seen me produce over 8000 words with little angst and no sweaty, painful effort - not my usual deal. I've even seen myself work while on "vacation" - like last week, in Dad City, where I grabbed 30-minute chunks of time a couple of times.

That's the key - I've finally given in to the writing experts, with their "you don't need to be precious about your time" shtick. I've finally seen that it's true that I don't need five uninterrupted hours in which to sit down and write. No. I can work in 45-minute blocks of time, and actually think intelligent thoughts and get some momentum going. I never thought it possible. I always thought I needed to be the tortured artiste in order to write well, but I don't - and this doesn't mean I'm uncreative. In a sense, it is as if I'm finally giving in to my own creativity, and am more in touch with it than I have been when I've been buying the tortured artiste thing.

Part of what has been helping, too, has been working at the library. Not every day, but at least half of my writing days. Free from the distractions of the Internet right there in my laptop.

I feel returned to what writing was for me before graduate school ruined it. I never thought that would happen.

I do feel this might have negative consequences for my blogging - because I do still get exhausted of my own writing, and so it's much less tempting to compose blog posts at the end of a day. And I am no longer afraid of what will happen when I sit down to write - so I am not as likely to use blogging as procrastination.

But the important thing is, I'm writing (a book - I can finally say I'm writing a book, and feel like I mean it). And I'm enjoying it.

Quick Update

2008-08-05T18:14:00.002-07:00

I have been away! Since Friday afternoon. In fact, I am still away. I am in Dad City. After visiting First Unit City for four days, staying with most loved family members who live there.

I was sad because it is a beautiful house on the water, a house that I adore, and I LURVE swimming, and I couldn't go in the water, really. I would have been able to go in off a dock - I could, I imagine, hop down the ladder on the one good leg - but since this is shallow water, I couldn't do it, really. I did have one attempt, crutching in and then sort of crouching there, supported by R. How ridiculous I felt!

Also in First Uni City, there is my grandmother, who is 85 and broke her pelvis around the time that I broke my knee. She is recovering at the Most Loved Home where R and I were staying. Others - Favourite Aunt, mainly - were ther for the first two days. But for two days, we took care of her - which was an odd challenge for me, given my crutching around. So I hopped around in the kitchen semi-preparing food, and R carried the trays in to her. It was sad, and interesting, and a post about my grandmother is coming soon.

But I am too tired right now. Too tired to write about any of the things I thought I would write about. I drove for five hours today, from that city to Dad City, and I am amazingly exhausted - it can't only be from the driving?! At any rate, there is much to blog about: grandmothers and writing and other things.

Award

2008-08-01T08:45:00.005-07:00

I am a terrible blogger. I have been too preoccupied with writing (I seem to be on fire, people!), whining, and being disturbed to post anything properly.

Which is very rude of me!! For this week, two people - the lovely Brigindo and the hilarious Sisyphus - were kind enough to give me an award for my blogging. Thank you, you two - I'm not sure I deserve it, what with my whining and my boringness of late - andnow my dropping the ball. But to have been chosen by two such fine folks is fantastic.

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Add links to these blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog.

I know most of you have been nominated already, and I'm trying not to repeat. See, the thing is, I loves you all. I hereby award you seven:

Psychgrad
JustMe
Kermit
Dr. K.
JustMe
Feral Mom
Pantagruelle

Horror

2008-07-31T08:05:00.004-07:00

I just can't get over this story, about a young man - who was just sleeping on the Greyhound bus last night - being stabbed dozens of times by a a stranger, and then decapitated. I just can't. I don't mean to sensationalize, it's just that I can't really do anything, now that I've read some details of this, but think about it. Maybe it's because I take the bus regularly. I can't imagine being a passenger on that bus. Oh, the horror.

Bugging me today

2008-07-30T09:16:00.003-07:00

Wow, I'm grumpy today. Lucky you - would you like to hear about what's bugging the hell out of me:

- The fact that I thought it would be much easier to get around in Home City on crutches than it is.
- People who send you constant unsolicited emails talking about how happy they are you're coming, how they want to hang out with you all the time, and then never reply when, last Friday, you email saying, "Do you want to get together on Tuesday evening?" and you hold Tuesday evening open for them - even though there are a lot of other people you could be seeing in your limited time in Home City - and finally end up doing nothing at all on Tuesday evening.
- Paltry transit expenditures.
- Sentences that have no referent - and having to read, for your work, multiple essays by the "important" critic who uses them all. the. time.
- Studied obscurantism.
- Gloomy days.
- Sore throats.
- Being in the way.
- My own forgetfulness in matters on which I am supposed to be working with others.

Back in Home City

2008-07-28T12:11:00.005-07:00

Diamond is apparently doing quite well…slowly recovering. My friend, who's looking after her, says she went mad for catnip on the weekend, which is just a joy to hear. One of the reasons I knew she really, really was not well was that she, catnip-lover that she is, would not touch it last week. So I am feeling cautiously optimistic about her. I miss her, though.

I arrived in Home City on Saturday, after a great deal of distress about leaving Diamond. Ack! I was not happy, and cried a lot of the way home. I felt dejected, pulled in two directions (literally). I feel so pressured around coming back to Home City – everybody wants a piece of me. R, all my friends, my family. I don’t know how to balance it all. I know – cry me a river, Hilaire. It’s wonderful to have so many great people in my life. But the situation just inevitably puts pressure on, and the way I felt about leaving Diamond (as if it was the wrong thing to do, but as if not leaving would create so much drama that I had to) was an exaggerated example of the way every trip back is in terms of pressure, pressure, pressure.

But I have four weeks here, so it’s great.

*

On Saturday night, we had a party so that I could see loads of people (and also have an occasion to introduce two friends that I have wanted to set up for over a year – I finally can, now that the one has split with her horrible boyfriend). It was ridiculous to have that many people in the apartment with me on crutches – I could barely move around. But it was an excellent time!! A very, very fun party. Often I feel stressed out by parties in my own home. Not so, this time – somehow, it was wonderfully laid-back: Here, people – here’s some cheese and some gin…make yourself at home.

*

R adopted her first ever cat last week – he was a stray who showed up on our friends’ doorstep and so they wanted to find a home for him. He is a darling! It’s been lovely to get to know him. He was the hit of the party…he has the most relaxed, social personality. Several of those present threatened to steal him. R is happy that I’m here to help her learn The Ways of the Cat (for, though I have been catless for several years up until this time with Diamond, I grew up with multiple cats and was a cat owner into my twenties).

*

Though it’s sort of impractical due to my crutches situation, I’ve decided to do much of my writing at the university library. Way to go, me! This makes all the difference. I wrote about 1200 words pretty effortlessly this morning. Not having the distractions of home makes all the difference. And Grumpy ABD Adjunct and her family are picking me up and driving me on the mornings when I go in to the library, because she works here, too – how lovely!! It really helps me out to only have to make the trip between home and library one way on transit.

I am still at the library, post-writing. I can hear a cat meowing near where I'm sitting. This ain't no teeny tiny casual library, either...why is there a cat in here? I shall go investigate. Perhaps some staffer has brought hir cat to work...?

Update

2008-07-24T10:33:00.004-07:00

So I haven't left, though I was supposed to be at the airport now.

I took Diamond in yesterday afternoon because of her lethargy. She had a high fever, as it turned out. The vet gave her another pain shot. I hadn't been giving her the liquid anti-pain/anti-inflammatory drops because I had been told to put them in her food and she wouldn't eat with them in the food - I tried for a day and a half. I was scolded by the vet for not giving them to her. I guess I hadn't realized how important these were...she had seemed better, so I thought she could live without them, as long as she was being quiet and not jumping about. I also didn't know she would have a fever because of soft tissue injury. He said if she doesn't get better within about three days, I should bring her back and he can make sure there is no internal injury or anything. Oh dear, oh dear.

Anyway, so, I'm assuming it is all going to be okay. I can give her the drops manually instead of putting them in her food, so that shouldn't be a problem - and pain and fever should be controlled in order to let her heal.

I didn't leave this morning because I didn't feel right going until she seems much better. I'm now scheduled to leave late on Friday night. I have now spent more money on change fees on that ticket (having changed it four times since my own accident happened) than the cost of the ticket itself. Ridiculous.

Now my final helper is gone and I'm here alone with Diamond for a day and a half. We'll see how I fare.

Anyway. That's the update.

Sick of...

2008-07-23T14:11:00.002-07:00

You know, I've been pretty good about this whole rigamarole of a ruined vacation - no, two ruined vacations, what with having to pull out of dance camp - and hospitalization and broken knee and crutches for the whole summer. And now the cat having an accident. I haven't been crying or depressed or feeling sorry for myself or anything - I've been working away happily enough.

But you know what? Today I'm hurting and I'm worried and I'm frustrated and I'm. just. sick. of it.

I was at the university today for a meeting. I can't really function there - if there's stuff in my mailbox, for instance, I can't really get it and take it back to my office. Today there was a book and a couple of pieces of paper...I "cheated" on my crutches so that I could actually pick them up and ended tripping and landing and hopping on the broken leg - which I'm not supposed to put any weight on. Now it hurts. Fuck. What - I can't bloody get a book out of my mailbox, for god's sake?

And I came home and Diamond is doing worse - she is incredibly lethargic and just not herself. Although she was doing better yesterday, she seems to be doing worse again. I'm taking her in to the vet in a couple of hours. But I am leaving for Home City tomorrow morning - I am dropping her at my friend's for 4 1/2 weeks. When she's not well! And she was supposed to be coming with me to Home City!!!! But I can't manage her on crutches. I want her with me. I'm worried about her. And I also don't want to leave her for that long. My father helpfully asks if she'll turn against me if I leave her for that long. What a horrible thought.

I just want things to be easy for once. I am tired of this already. I'm tired of health problems and crises and things going wrong. And I'm tired in a larger sense, too - of managing a life and a relationship from thousands of miles away - for a year now - with no end in sight. At least another two years if I'm not successful on the job market. I don't want to do my life anymore, not like this.

Drama of the week

2008-07-20T21:11:00.002-07:00

And now, for this week's instalment of drama...Perfect: it's Sunday night - historically the time of the disease-of-the-week TV movie.

(I'm honestly fighting with myself about whether to be worried about how much has been going wrong over the last 6 months-1 year. It's so completely illogical, but today, in the midst of this latest episode, I couldn't help but get anxious about all of this...what's next? Is there someone I should consult about all of this? Am I doing something wrong, for goodness sake?)

I generally let Diamond, the cat, out onto the deck in short supervised stints of about 5 minutes. She longs to be outside, but the issue is that if I let her out, she jumps over the deck onto the roof of the apartments below and from there, there is a threat of jumping all the way down to the ground - not good. Usually I can keep her from jumping over, but last night she made a run for it and jumped over. I spent five hours trying to get her to come back over - I was slightly incapacitated because of my crutch situation.

At one point she tried to jump back over to come in, but it's high - about 5 feet - and she couldn't get over. I watched her hang on the side and then fall back - I couldn't get at her. I felt bad. I didn't think much of it, but later realized that she may have hurt herself at that point. At midnight, when she really desperately wanted to come back in, she began yowling and growling in an Exorcist-like fashion, pacing, and intermittently putting her paws up as if to try jumping - but the yowling would increase when she'd do that. Finally she tried, and I was able to grab her little paws and pull her over - ouch, but there was no way she'd get over un-assisted. She was screaming. She came into the apartment crying in pain, and then tried to hide, and yowled Exorcist-like, and lay there panting. Finally I figured out that she was most sensitive around her little chest and shoulders - but they didn't seem to be broken or dislocated. At one point, she went from panting to lying on her side, totally still and barely breathing, and I thought she was dying and called an emergency vet (at which point she got up and went to her food bowl, all normal-like, and I called off the emergency!).

Long story short, Diamond spent a very uncomfortable night. She wanted to come up on my bed, but every time she'd put her little front legs up on the bed, she'd groan in pain - she couldn't jump up. It was HEARTBREAKING. And because I'm incapacitated, I couldn't go and pick her up.

First thing this morning, we took Diamond to the vet. He kept her there for the day so he could x-ray her and then let the sedation wear off. The good news is that nothing is broken. So it is some kind of soft tissue injury - ligament or tendon or muscle. She was given a pain shot and I have anti-inflammatory painkillers for her for the next few days. Poor thing threw up in the car on the way home, and again since she's been here. She's totally dopey after the sedation. She won't leave me. We napped - her lying on my chest - for two hours this afternoon. All she wants to do is to sleep it off in my lap. It's kind of heartbreaking, though I'm so happy to hear that nothing is desperately wrong.

Quick consultation

2008-07-19T15:58:00.003-07:00

I love you folks for this kind of consultation. For those of you who like thinking strategically (which I'm really bad about), here's my question...Please bear with the long explanation. :)

I teach a first-year course. (Well, actually, I teach two: part one and part two.) Part one was initially capped for next year at 80, and I was watching enrolments. It maxed out. And all of a sudden the cap had been raised to 100. I was pissed off; I had no idea who had authorized raising the cap. I certainly hadn't been consulted. (Hmmm, I sense a theme. Do you?) The course quickly maxed out at 100. I have just the one TA, so was concerned - and pissed off about the continued lack of consultation. But was also happy, because higher numbers make it easier for me to argue for a new hire in my program; as you'll recall, I'm the only one, and I desperately need a colleague in a particular area to make the program a viable option. So I've been ambivalent, but decided not to fight the raising of the cap (if I could even figure out who had authorized it) in the interest of growing the program.

I've had one student query about whether there is any possibility of over-enrolling the course, which indicates that if the cap were to be raised even higher, there would probably be students to fill it. There is no possibility of letting anyone else in, though, because the room it's scheduled in only holds 100.

But today my Chair emailed me and asked if I wanted to change the room so we could raise the cap even higher. I'm torn. Part of me wants to because of the way this will help me argue for program growth. But part of me doesn't want to because of the workload it would entail. My instinct is to reply by explaining my qualms about it and asking if I could have another TA - if I could have another TA, I'd support raising it to 140.

Here's the thing: Resource scarcity. My Chair and I are potentially going to be pitted against each other in the fall...He'll be advocating for a hire in his area and I'll be advocating for one in mine - through him. It is he who will make the case to the Dean for another hire. Given that he already has several people in his program, and I have only one in mine, I think I have a better case. But still. I need as much justification as I can possibly muster for getting a new hire; the more students I take on, the better the chances. Do you, oh wise people who have administrative savvy, think that it is okay, given that, for me to not immediately go for a raising of the cap, but only on the condition that I get another TA?

As I type this, I think, of course, dummy!! Do not think of this as a game of sacrifice! Do not get into the strategic game at any cost, taking on an unmanageable number of students for some "greater good" in an institution that hasn't been very good to you! That you don't even want to stay at!

Am I right? No further raising of the cap unless I get another TA, even if I harm my chances of another hire?

Post-portem on mother visit

2008-07-18T09:44:00.002-07:00

It went pretty well, I'd say. She was incredibly helpful, though I think felt as if she wasn't needed as much as she thought she'd be. (Both my parents booked their coming-to-help-me trips when it looked as though I was going to have surgery, from which presumably my recovery would be much more difficult.) But it's true that I'm moving more slowly than usual, of course, and can't walk around with a glass of water or plate of food, and can't easily cook things that require any effort - and in that sense, having someone around is really helpful.

I didn't feel as cooped up as I thought I would. Mostly because every day, we'd go somewhere...we took cab rides so I could go to the coffee shop I like to go to, which is ridiculous -but saved me from feeling stuck in the house. And I spent most of the day at the office on Tuesday.

I was also able to stop myself from channelling the bitchy daughter persona (mostly). We did have a couple of tense moments, but overall I'd say we did very well - we got better as the week progressed. We bonded over So You Think You Can Dance (to which I very quickly became addicted while in hospital in Hawaii, and now download since I don't get TV channels). I'd say it was a success for us. Maybe things are easing up on that front.

What was most confounding was eating-related stuff. My mother is obsessed with dieting - but not very successful at it. She lost a bunch of weight a year ago on an incredibly restrictive plan, and has put some back on, as people do, and spends all her time thinking about how to eat. Fine. I'm not going to pretend I don't think about what I eat, and especially now, when I am getting no exercise whatsoever - barely even walking. But it grew wearing to watch the contradictions...for instance, her constantly saying, "I have to get back on track, I have to..." and then having two mocha frapuccino-type drinks and an ice cream cone one day. And thinking that was okay because she didn't have lunch. But then continuing to go on and on about how badly she's eating. Buying two types of cookies and a lemon loaf for the house one day. And then having the nerve to say to me, when I ordered a small butter tart in the cafe, "Ohhh, sinful, sinful...!" Look, I wanted to say. Don't drag me into your thing. And never, never use the word "sinful" when talking about food...it's offensive. (Miraculously, I kept my mouth shut in this instance.)

I know, I should have more sympathy for this kind of thing. I understand the cultural underpinnings, blah blah blah. But it was frustrating, and my irritation was piqued by the way she drew me into it.

My father arrived yesterday. It will be nice to have access to a car once again, so I can avoid the extravagance of paying $16 for a round trip cab ride to the coffee shop! And it will be fun to work alongside my dad, who will also be writing (his work).

My own writing is much going slower than I'd like due to discipline problems, but I can see it shaping up...I daresay it is even starting to be fun.

And I'm planning my time in Home City and Home Province...I'm leaving next Thursday. I'm so looking forward to seeing folks there (including you, Grumpy! - I'll be working at the library). Have a trip to Little City planned (city of my First University position, and city of Favourite Aunt and other family members) and from there to Dad City. Stopping for a visit with ex-Supervisor at her cottage on the way home. I'm inordinately excited about all this...being back in my own territory is going to be thrilling. And it will be easier to get around than it is here in this crutches state...I will be able to take transit and actually get to the places I want to go. What a difference that will make.

(The promise of) money talks

2008-07-16T12:33:00.005-07:00

I had a meeting with my Dean yesterday, following up on the issue we met about last month, when I asked you for advice on how to transform our relationship into one that's not so dreadfully uncomfortable, with him always berating me for perceived mistakes. Well. It was veeeeeerrrrrrrrrrry interesting. He's like my new best friend. He wanted to shoot the breeze with me about what's going on in my department, offer me advice on how to handle faculty politics, and then he checked in with me about my research - he wanted to know, in detail, what I'm working on. When I explained to him that I'd had a successful trip to Paris in the spring and hoped to go for one month next spring to finish with what I needed for my book project, the question of funds somehow came up. I am out of my start-up funds. I said that I'd just be hoping to get a SSHRC grant in the upcoming competition, and that was the only way I could pay for it since I can't apply to small internal granting funds for the same projects for which I've applied to SSHRC. Well, do you want to know what he said? He said that if I couldn't get any more money from grants, I should come and talk to him - he'd give me the money, using "Dean's discretion."

"!," I thought. What a far cry all of this was from the punitive Dean I'd been dealing with most of the year.

And I thought about how the Dean has just been doing the annual review process that leads to merit pay and another kind of performance-related salary increase...these were just announced and added to our most recent paycheques. I somehow landed in the top rank of my department and got both of these two bonus-y things. I looked impressive on paper, I guess. I looked like I had things happening for me. Maybe even like I might bring in outside money in future (ironically, since I failed to bring it in with the last grant application), and that is what this Dean and this institution care about more than anything - anything - else. I am certain that it was because recently he had to look over my record in detail, and see that I've got things going on, that he suddenly warmed to me the way that he did. What a world this is. Presumably I need support and mentoring more if I am flailing - but it is not forthcoming until it's proven that I'm, in fact, doing just the opposite.

*

In other news, I'm on these crutches until the end of August. Normally I would be back to the doctor the week of August 11 (six weeks after the injury) and could maybe be given the okay to walk again then. But I will be in Home City, and not back until later in the summer. So I have to wait to see him. He did say that at the six-week mark, I could cautiously see how it felt to walk without them, but he seemed pretty wary of that idea. So, yeah - looks like it's crutches for me until August 27. Blech!! Hopefully I can go swimming - I can't believe I forgot to ask him whether that would be okay.

Oh well. It looks like I will leave for Home City a week from tomorrow, and I will still have four and a half weeks there, so that's great.

Sunday worries

2008-07-13T09:53:00.002-07:00

My mother arrives in a couple of hours. I'm quite worried about this - I tend not to be great with my mother, as I've written before. This time, she's coming to help me. I should be grateful - and I am. I should not feel irritation - but I do. I do because she doesn't drive. And the one thing that is most problematic for me right now, with my mobility limited, is the feeling that I am shut up in the house. I am normally so active. I run, for one thing, most days. And I cycle or walk to get around. When R was here, she rented a car, and that was good because we could drive on little outings, get me out of the house. There is nowhere close enough for me to walk to on crutches. So I fear that my mother and I are going to be cooped up in here together, with me growing irrationally resentful because what I want the most is to be able to get around. I do have one trip to the university planned, for Tuesday - a friend is driving me. I may have to call on others for emergency escapes!

*

I tried to start writing my book project yesterday. It did not go well. I - always, always self-censoring - felt too overwhelmed by the thought, "I am writing a book." I defeated myself immediately. I ended up with one sentence. I have to work through that.

*

As I noted yesterday, I am mostly in good spirits, and even able to see the positive in this (I will develop great upper-body strength!). But I do see where I might became very downcast...chiefly about exercise, and about dancing. I was supposed to be going to dance camp in August - a blissed-out week in the woods. This tends to be the most joyful time in my life. It is especially so now that I live somewhere where I can't dance. I won't be able to go to camp this year - and believe me when I say that it was the brightest light of my year, the thing I've been most looking forward to, for months and months. I really feel cheated.

2008-07-12T09:49:00.009-07:00

Now that I've been home for almost a week, and R has just left for Home City, it's time to finally post a little bit about our lovely trip to Hawaii, even though it was essentially cut short by my five-day stay in hospital.

*

The first thing I want to mention is how painfully aware I was that this is a colonial society. This was underscored in particularly grotesque ways in Honolulu, which is of course characterized by a nasty divide between native Hawaiians and the reams of tourists. Because I was staying in Honolulu proper, and not Waikiki, for the first few days of my time there - and attending a conference that was addressing the political and cultural concerns of native Hawaiians - and I only later I moved to Waikiki, this division was particularly apparent. Although I had a good time during my two days in Waikiki, I also felt quite unsettled to be living in what, for all intents and purposes, is a theme park - Rodeo Drive meets Fort Lauderdale - after spending some time confronting the disenfranchisement of Hawaiians in a settler society. I was happy, at least, that we were staying at the far end of Waikiki, so a few blocks out of the capitalist epicentre that was the main strip.

*

When we left Honolulu, we flew to the Big Island. I had rented a little cabin in the Puna District, which is a decidedly non-tourist area...the part we were in had no commercial zoning, so there wasn't a store in sight...to buy anything, you had to drive twenty minutes to the town of Pahoa, a little counterculture enclave (as was the whole area, really). It was such a contrast to the Waikiki experience - and so welcome. The cabin was beautiful - a Balinese teak kit home. All screens - few actual glass windows - so the breeze flowed in softly. I wish I had pictures to show you, but they're on R's camera and my computer wouldn't download them. Anyway, it was off the grid and just lovely. The area is a lava field, but there is also coastal jungle grown up over it, since the lava covered the area 50-odd years ago. The most amazing contrast, this encrusted black lava ground, and the lush jungle plants. There was a pineapple tree in our yard. At night, there was an incredibly loud cacophony of frogs - it was so loud you couldn't hear yourself think...but it was amazing how quickly we got used to it, and slept through it as if it were completely normal for us.

I don't have many pictures of most of what we did in the two days we had there before my accident. We snorkeled in tidal pools, and swam at black sand beaches (the whole east side of the island is volcanic black sand), and the water was warm and the surf was high. What I do have pictures of is volcanic activity, which is the thing that excited me most about the area. It kind of blew my mind, frankly.

One volcano, Kilauea, is very active right now. They have opened up a viewing area right near where we were staying - a 6- or 7-minute drive from our cabin. This is for watching where the lava flows into the ocean. We went there immediately after arriving. You drive through this rather apocalyptic landscape to get to the viewing area...it was covered by a lava flow in 1983:

I can't even get my head around this landscape...the plants pushing their way through what should be such unforgiving stuff...

And then there was the flow hitting the ocean...every few seconds you'd see lava-debris spewing up. It was incredible...Watching the earth expand...watching history happen, essentially, since the Island is actually growing because of the flow...

The best time to go, though, is after dark, when everything is glowing red. R did that on her own, one night while I was in hospital. Her pictures are amazing. That alone is a reason I have to go back - I have to see it for myself...

The day I had my accident, we went to Volcanoes National Park:

Again the amazing contrasts. Here, we hiked down to this bleak volcanic landscape through this beautiful, cool, fern-y rainforest:

We left there, planning to return later in the week and do more lava-viewing. But later that afternoon I had my accident, and so it was not to be. We were at the black-sand beach two minutes from our cabin - Kehena Beach, a gorgeous, hidden little crescent you get to by scrambling down a volcanic rock cliff. Having a dip at the end of this very satisfying day of volcanos and a passionfruit margarita in Pahoa. The result? Breakage. Hospital. Sigh.

But all in all, I am in pretty good spirits, and so taken with the Big Island of Hawaii that I must get back there.

Mad.

2008-07-10T12:12:00.002-07:00

You know what? This is the second time I've been informed by a graduate student, "You are on my PhD committee." A colleague of mine has been putting me on committees without even asking me. It has also recently happened that I said I'd need to think about a request to be on a commitee, and later approached by the supervisor to sign the forms as if it were a done deal.

I'm sorry, but what the hell? Am I so lowly that I'm not supposed to even be consulted? But apparently not so lowly that I can't be their feminist theory slave. Fuck them. I want out of this place.

Also, being at the office, on crutches, and hopping around on one leg? NO fun. When what you do, by definition, at the office in the summer is pop in to scurry around doing photocopies and getting signatures, etc. I can't believe I have weeks and weeks more of this.

How was my trip, you ask?

2008-07-07T13:30:00.002-07:00

Weellll, I spent the last five days in the hospital. I can tell you that the Hilo Medical Center in Hilo, Hawaii is very nice!

I fractured, last Monday, my left "tibial plateau" (essentially part of the knee joint) quite badly. A wave knocked me over as I was walking into the water - which shouldn't have been a problem, and it was just a fluke that I fell the way I did and broke it. I went to the hospital the next day (it didn't seem bad enough right then, and only became grotesquely swollen, and me unable to walk, that evening). Spent 12 hours in emergency, then was admitted that night. Told by the orthopaedic surgeon that it should be operated on - a fairly major and complicated operation that would involve putting pins and plates and all that stuff in my knee, and yet would still probably result in me having arthritis or some mobility restrictions. Good times. So the doctor was at first going to operate on me there, but then was quite strongly advocating that I go home to have it done, so that the same doc who operated on me could follow up with me, because of the strong possibiblity of problems with the surgery and outcome.

So I stayed in the hospital, with myself calling my OB/GYN in Scary City (the only doc I really have here) pleading with him to find me an Orthopaedic surgeon who would admit me into the hospital. The hospital people were arranging with my travel insurance to get me home. Meanwhile I hung out in hospital, transported around by wheelchair and then later by walker and then by crutches. We weren't able to leave until Saturday night. The insurance had booked R and I into first class flights so I had more room as was not able to bend leg. These flights - overnight, red-eye - were a horror because the folks at the hospital in Hawaii had struck mortal fear into me by consistently warning me about the possibility of dying of a blood clot on the way home, because of having been lying down for so many days before. I had been given daily injections of anti-clot stuff, but I was still terrified. R said I seemed so worked up on the plane that I was going to give myself a heart attack. And then I was also having some sort of awful reaction to the meds I was on for pain. God, the traveling was the worst part of the whole thing.

Then yesterday morning - Sunday - I arrived back in Scary City and was escorted straight to the hospital, where I was admitted into a horrifying ward that I have named the Dickensian Ward. It was so noisy and chaotic and disturbing and smelled liked pee, and I was shocked. (Thankfully I was transferred when a semi-private room became available in the evening.) The Orthopaedic surgeon on call right now had agreed to take me on. I met with him yesterday and then again this morning, when he discharged me. After looking at the x-rays and MRI, he doesn't feel that the extremely complex surgery is worth it. Thinks I can probably heal almost as well (read, not fully, but mostly) without doing it. So here I am. At home, on crutches for weeks more. R is here for the week (she had to take an extra week off work in Home City, which I feel bad about), and then my mother insisted on booking herself a ticked to come here for five days, and then my father for a week. By then, I should think I'll be in pretty good shape, though probably still on crutches.

So, yeah. That was Hawaii. It was great up till this happened. And I was supposed to leave for Home City this Wednesday, for seven weeks. Now I can't. Now I'm here for at least three more weeks. There goes my long summer with R, which we really need because we are on tenterhooks.

Really, it is so ridiculous I could almost laugh. I've had more health/medical problems in the last twelve months than I've had in my whole life, it feels like!!

Anyway, will now go to start checking out your 145 posts in Bloglines - good reading for an invalid!!

Random things

2008-06-26T13:12:00.003-07:00

I'm on a conference-hating kick. Ugh. Sometimes I just don't understand what the point is. Why I do this several times a year. This is coming right now because, I must admit, this conference is chummy-chummy, and I am quite an outsider in terms of the field. I also did not feel like these were my people, you know? You get a vibe from a conference group, even a big one. This vibe wasn't for me.

I did have a couple of insights that are useful for me, going forward - with my work, I mean. Still, though - coming all this way for a "couple of insights." If I weren't having a holiday, I would be sad about having come.

I did see an old friend of mine at this conference - someone I taught in a big course with ten years ago, and haven't seen for a good five years. She is a hilariously manic person who decided that we would be inseparable, as soon as she saw me. So I couldn't walk five feet without her frantic voice calling out to me. Also, she would constantly be gripping my arm tightly during presentations, reacting to what people were saying by hissing - seriously hissing - things like "Bullshit!" and "Why aren't they talking about poststructuralism??!!" I fought some irritation about all this manic behaviour, but in the end I'm so glad we re-connected and we had a lovely time. I went out for dinner last night with her and her husband and daughter, and we had such a delightful time!! They were so much fun...and the twelve-year-old daughter decided I was the bee's knees, and it was so cute....she wanted to tell me EVERYTHING about her life, in that way that only kids can do...but because she's the child of intellectuals, it also is cut with this sort of sense of irony that makes for a very funny combination. She was all, "When you're in Home City, you should come and visit us and the four of us will go to the Japanese restaurant and we can, you know, chat. [This word, "chat," said in a self-mocking voice.] It'll be awesome." She was adorable.

I still haven't been in the water - it's ridiculous. I hope to go for a dip this afternoon. I am switching hotels, from the conference hotel to a "You only have a 40th birthday once" hotel. After I check in there, and before R gets here, I must find my way into the ocean! Tomorrow - the actual 40th birthday - R has told me she wants to "see surfing, to really understand how it works." So we'll find somewhere to do that - I've rented a car for the day. It is too bad R has some water phobia, because what would be fun would be for her to actually try it. But anyway, it'll be great to see it. And do whatever else her heart desires.

On Saturday we are going to the Big Island, and I will have no Internet for over a week, so this is probably my last post for a while. Have good weeks, all of you!

Post of incoherent bullets

2008-06-25T02:28:00.003-07:00

- Honolulu: strange place. Good, fine...but so surprising, with its concrete jungle aesthetic, and yet these misty mountains and ocean. Can't get my head around it.
- Nor have I really had time to get my head around it...I've had NO down-time since I arrived, having been conference-scheduled to death. Exhaustion looming.
- My theory is that I got that migraine on Saturday because of excessive stress over my paper for this conference. Not good. Stress not dissipating. Merely in hiding.
- I like the fact that here, when I have gone running at 6:30 in the morning (I really struggle to run first thing in the morning when I'm at home - why is it so easy to do when I travel?), the oceanfront park is filled...FILLED...with people. It may as well be midday. There are hundreds of people in the park before 7am, running, walking, fishing, swimming. That is very cool.
- On Thursday R comes. It's her 40th birthday on Friday. She is currently the grouchiest-guts I've ever known...says she's upset about the birthday. I gathered, from something she said on the phone yesterday, that it's largely because she thinks nobody is marking this birthday (besides me)...none of her friends talking about taking her out to celebrate, or anything. Little does she know that it's because they are having a HUGE SURPRISE PARTY for her on Wednesday night! Hurrah!
- And then we will have fun here for a day or two, and then on the Big Island for a week...I have rented a tiny little teak cottage, and it is near flowing lava, and black sand beaches, and hot springs, and various other delights. Hurrah, again!
- That is all. I am zonked.

Never-ending health emergencies

2008-06-21T19:32:00.004-07:00

Oh, goody, a new health problem for me!! Migraine. Never even really had a headache before (seriously) and today it was the full-on deal. Juuuuust great.

Yeah, so I ended up at Emergency this afternoon. I was just sitting at home calmly doing my thing when all of a sudden my vision was basically gone on one side...it started as a quarter-sized bit of completely clouded, swirling, semi-flashing vision (frankly quite psychedelic). I couldn't see through it. Within fifteen minutes, it had grown to half my field of vision and my face was starting to go numb on that side. I was beside myself, thinking I was having a stroke or something. I walked (!) to the hospital - by this time the vision thing had mostly gone away but I felt totally "off" in the top of my head. While I was being registered at Emerg, I couldn't really talk properly...I couldn't identify words, was getting them mixed up, etc. Ugh. This made me cry, and I was there alone, struggling to understand how to work my calling card (my thinking also appeared to be messed up), calling R in Home City and M in Fun City...(Before I left for the hospital I was trying to call R because I was so freaked out, and I coudn't get her. So I phoned M and asked him to try to get hold of her to let her know.) So there I was in Emergency, talking like a madwoman, leaving another garbled message on R's machine, and then absolutely bawling, with more nonsensical talking, to M.

By the time I got in to be examined, the talking was restored. Just the pain set in - and got worse as I waited. So yeah, migraine - the doctor was basically sure of it...he was good, and explained to me in detail the way that things would have played out if it were a tumour or a stroke (of course I was paranoid). Then he also said to go home and google it...Indeed, it is a total textbook case of migraine with aura - what with the vision, the numbness, and the speech, followed by pain. I was given the tylenol/aspirin combo and came home and slept for a while. I feel better now - still some pain and sensitivity, but it's pretty minor.

What I didn't like (well, who am I kidding, I didn't like any of it) was the feeling that the people I wanted to talk to and have there with me were so very, very far away. The one friend here that I really would have liked to call was away. My downstairs neighbour, with whom I've been becoming friendly, wasn't answering her door. It just sucked to be so scared and to feel alone. Yeah, I should have thought of migraine, but I didn't. So I was scared.

Honestly! I don't know what I did in a past life - and why I'm waiting until my thirties to pay for it - but it sure seems like I'm being made to pay for something, what with the last year - and especially the last six months! Good grief.

A current summer music meme: Seven songs

2008-06-20T21:32:00.005-07:00

Maggie has tagged me for a meme. Thank you, Maggie! As it was for her, this is a very welcome thing...I am a pre-conference disaster, having written myself into a terrible hole of nonsense (and I really mean it this time) and needing, really, to rewrite my paper...but I leave in less than 48 hours. Yuck. So, music meme good!!! Distraction!!!

The rules:

List seven songs you are into right now.
No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring/summer.
Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs.
Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

1. Goodnight California - Kathleen Edwards (This is bizarre because a Kathleen Edwards song is at the top of Maggie's list, too!) I must say, this song has some serious significance for me right now.

2. The Great Escape - Patrick Watson

3. Back in Your Head - Tegan and Sara (God, is this is EVER a fun song.)

4. The Trapeze Swinger - Iron and Wine

5. Les peaux de lievres - Tricot Machine

6. No Heaven - DJ Champion (This kind of electronic music isn't usually the kind of music I'd listen to much, but when M was visiting me a couple of weeks ago he made me a bunch of CDs, including the "A few good beats never hurt no one mix," with this song on it. We turned it up late at night and had a couple of really transcendent times with it. This song kills me. It totally makes me want to sprint to the nearest, sweatiest, darkest club and stay up till 5am dancing by myself. Yeah. That's what I want to do. I'm tired of dancing at things that are actually about drinking, or looking at people, or feeling proudly-yet-ironically queer. I want to dance somewhere where it's about nothing but the dancing. This song is emblematic of that.)

7. Lollipop - The Hidden Cameras

I tag:

Medieval Woman
Heu Mihi
Squadratomagico
New Kid on the Hallway
Just Me
Sarah
Feral Mom

(...but please don't feel pressured...)

Regretting my training

2008-06-18T16:15:00.004-07:00

I try not regret things. But godDAMN do I ever flirt with regretting the direction I took in my PhD training. I was courted by two very different programs. I almost chose one - then at the last minute thought I wouldn't be satisfied there, so went in the other direction. At times like these, when writing feels like doing algebra because my mind is so tangled round itself that I can't think straight, I wish I had chosen what seemed to me the less interesting path. It was the path of clarity. I could have made it interesting. Had I chosen it, I wouldn't be continually caught up in the incredible, colossal abstraction and obscurity of my writing. That's what PhD school gave me - abstraction and obscurity. So that sometimes when I write I feel like I'm doing word problems in an advanced math class. Like now. Boo, I say. And yet, that seems to be who I am.

*

In other news, the saga of the cyst/tumour continues - back at the specialist's today. It's no longer shrinking. It's just static. Apparently I'll need to have it out at some point down the road. I didn't clarify what "it" meant - ovary or tumour. I don't care right now - all I care about is abstraction and obscurity. Oh, and then I went for blood tests because of other reproductive-system-related things (that he doesn't think are related but are of a whole other order of problem.) Sigh. This is getting old.

Full

2008-06-17T20:09:00.004-07:00

Do you ever feel as if you're just all full up? Of things to do, projects...and people, most of all?

I've been thinking about that lately, and I'm pretty sure it's what is at root of a major outburst of stress and anxiety late today. I feel like I have too many irons in the fire, and I have an anxious personality anyway, and so I'm very, very stressed. For instance, today I should have been concentrating exclusively on the conference paper that is inordinately stressing me out already - I don't have a whole lot of time left for that, and it needs tons and tons of work. (I know I always stress out about papers on here, but this one is by far the worst disaster I've found myself in, in years...I have confused myself, my thoughts are all tangled up, I don't know where I'm going...) But this is the list of substantive things my day included:

- Write and freak out over paper, so much that I felt myself getting physically sick and had to leave the house;
- Long meeting with grad student I am co-supervising as of September, and friend with whom I am co-supervising;
- Correspondence about another grad student of the five or so I'll be involved with next year
(What you need to know about these last two is that working with grad students at my institution is more labour-intensive than at any other place I've ever known about...so this counts as substantive);
- Work/discussions about major conference I'm co-organizing;
- Discussions of research network I'm going to start and mini-conference/workshop I'll organize as part of that;
- Notes toward book project (because the problem with the paper I'm writing is that I seem to be trying to make it into the whole book project, when in fact it's a tiny little conference paper that represents about 1/25th of the book).
- Reviewed and commented on M.'s Insanely-Big-Ass-Important Application for King-of-the-Academic-World position.

The one other piece of major work that's in my life at the moment (which I didn't have to touch today, thank god) is the book I'm co-editing.

So that's a lot of fairly major things on my plate for the next year. 2 books, conferences, very intensive graduate student supervision, and two major pieces of professional service. Ongoing "consultation" to another scholar. (He sends me lots of his work to look at, which is hilarious considering how much fancier he is than I.) And, oh yeah...running my program, since I am the only faculty member in it.

I know it is par for the course for some people. But it's not par for my course, if you know what I mean. And part of the reason why is that I feel like I am starting to know too many people, to be involved in too many networks. I don't think my brain can take anymore.

Do you ever feel that way? As if you are full, and part of that is full of people? How awful. I don't want to feel like I know too many people. But it's like that. Too many networks...of former co-grad students, of friends, of former colleagues, current colleagues, fellow conference-goers, fellow conference-organizers. Ans students!! Now that I've taught full-time for three years, I have a lot of students in my past. And a lot of them sticking to me, still -especially ones from Dream Uni; I've had emails from half a dozen of them in the last two weeks alone. Too many people. No more people! I will start to become a horrible customer-servicey automaton, and we can't have that.

*

Anyway. Do you know what I was also thinking about. I really, really am too insular in my own writing. I'm collaborating on several things - the edited volume, the supervision, the conference organizing - but when I write, I am entirely, entirely alone. I don't show my work to other scholars before putting it out there, ever. I mentioned to M today that I was feeling stressed, but that I could look at his Fancy App tonight. He offered to look at the paper I'm stressing about. Are you kidding?? No way.

But this is terrible. It means I am so locked-in. And it can only increase the stress I'm feeling.

Today I went over to a friend's house to deliver a key to my place (for she is coming to pick up Diamond when I am going away). She asked me if I wanted to talk through in detail what I am writing about, if it would help me. I thought, "self, this is a good idea. I should learn to do this." Could I even dredge up a single iota of what I'm writing about? No, I could not. I couldn't - even though I had been working at it for hours and days - tell her anything beyond the major "subject" of my paper. I drew a blank. It's bad. I'm too locked up with this stuff. It will make me crazy.

Help with annoying Apple device

2008-06-15T20:10:00.004-07:00

Okay, I don't usually do this, but...

Can anyone help me understand something to do with my iPod?

I got my iPod 2 1/2 years ago, and there are now 1400 songs on it. I hardly ever add music to it anymore because it is synced up with my old computer, which is a piece of crap. The only reason I ever turn that thing on is to juice up the iPod. I don't want to use it anymore. I want to sync my iPod using the lovely shiny computer that I use now. What I want to do is import the 1400 or so songs that are currently in my iPod into iTunes into my new computer. So I downloaded iTunes to the new computer, and stuck my iPod in, but as I suspected, "an iPod can only be synced with one iTunes playlist at a time."

Does anyone know what I'm supposed to do about this? How can I get the songs out of my iPod into iTunes on the new computer? This must be doable, it must be!

Note: I can get the 20 or so songs that were actually purchased on iTunes into the new computer, but not the rest (which were copied from CD). Don't tell me I'm not allowed to do the other ones at all?!

I'm sorry I'm so daft.

Post-blogiversary thoughts

2008-06-15T09:07:00.004-07:00

My blogiversary - two years! - passed on May 22, while I was in Paris. I didn't take the time time to mark it then - I couldn't, really - and though I meant to do it when I came back, I haven't gotten to it.

Part of the reluctance to mark this blogiversary stems from the fact that I am feeling uncertain about the blog, I must admit. This has nothing to do with any of you, lovely blogfriends, or with the blogosphere or blogging in general. It comes entirely from me, not from any exhaustion with blogging or other bloggers. It's more like I'm tired of myself.

You see, when I began this blog, I tended to write weightier posts. I stopped feeling the need to do that after six months or so, when I felt I could relax into just recording my life.

But now I'm wondering, what is the point? And feeling intermittently quite embarrassed to have all this emotion out on display - I've blogged my breakup with R and getting back together, Mr. K's death, emotional teaching times in 2006-07 at Dream Uni, some severe unhappiness this past winter, and other crises. All in raw, charged ways. And when I think back, I feel quite unnerved about how much of myself I've laid bare. You see, in Real Life, I've often been told that "I hold my cards close to my chest." From what others tell me, it appears (and this is surprising to me, because it's not how I experience myself, as I'm sure you can imagine) that I often project a kind of detached calm. I realize that if this is the case, I do it because I don't like to be spectacularly emotive. You know, I'm good with emotions in very intimate situations, but not good at feeling on display with them. Crying in front of almost anyone else is a horror for me.

Yeah, but this blog has become precisely that spectacular, emotive theatre. Oh, not all the time, I know - but certainly it has been a lot of soul-baring. And I worry that it's all just self-indulgent, narcissistic...why do I put this out there for the world to see? It makes me feel slightly queasy about myself...I don't much like receiving lots of attention in RL, so why would I draw it my way, here?

I am perhaps being hard on myself*...it's true that I've blogged here for support and company and - dare I say it - friendship. That's been important at some crucial times. But I feel as if I'm expecting people to respond to me, demanding something of them somehow, and that makes me uncomfortable.

I suppose all of this is brought into relief, in a sense, because right now I'm going through something on a personal level that I can't imagine blogging about. Though I know it would make some fascinating reading, there's no way I am going to put it out there on a blog. That recognition has made me question why I've put other things out there in the past, and whether it's been for purely narcissistic reasons...Am I reluctant to put the new thing out there because it doesn't necessarily demand sympathy but shows me in a much more complex and possibly harsher way? Yuck. That's terrible.

So in the wake of the blogiversary, I'm thinking about the blog and even thinking about ending it. I'm torn, though, because I've made so many good connections through it and I don't want to leave behind this community...And also because I like the way I can talk about work on it. Yet I don't think I want to make this solely about work.

So I'm not sure. I may wind it up soon, I may not.

And this here has been another self-indulgent post, brought to you by Hilaire.

*Especially because I don't read others' quite personal blog posts and think they're being self-indulgent, ever. So why am I so suspicious of myself?

Tuesday bullets and a question

2008-06-10T17:45:00.003-07:00

Yeah, today's a good day, a day deserving of some bullets...even though it is freezing...

- Before he left on Sunday, M. burned me a whole bunch of music, including some things that I'm finding to be pretty jaw-droppingly fabulous and am having to fight with myself not to play over and over and over again. I so needed new music!

- You know, this whole book project? It is coming together! I think. I have been working around one of two major pieces of the theoretical framework for a few months (in focused reading, I mean, as well as writing one conference paper). I have just moved into thinking about the other major theoretical pole (which I will try to wade into for my upcoming conference paper). Even though I haven't yet figured out exactly how to articulate the connection between these two poles perfectly (or at all), I can sense it brewing. I can sense it coming. And when I sit down to write the first chapter this July and August (for I have decided to start with writing my theoretical first chapter, because otherwise nothing will cohere, I fear), I think there's going to be some good stuff happening. I think.

- However. My upcoming conference? Terrifying. Notwithstanding its amazing tropical locale. Terrifying. Looking over the program gives me cold sweats. It feels really big-league. There are some major, major players scheduled. The only other time I remember feeling this nerved out about a conference was when I presented at a small one at an Ivy League school, and there were no concurrent sessions so everyone attended everyone else's paper, including Seriously-Major-Bigwig. I thought I'd pass out. But then, I try and remember how that conference resulted in a publication for me (as well as support from the Bigwig in applying to do a postdoc with hir) so perhaps it will be good to wade into the big leagues again. Maybe good things will come of it. And anyway, I should stretch myself, yes?

- Yes. I should stretch myself. The distance covered by this particular stretch is a little much for my liking, though - since I am essentially an impostor in the territory of this conference. An impostor trying to remake herself in its image. Yeah, I know that's cryptic...

- Okay, now for some solicitation of advice: I am having a meeting with my Dean soon. I have historically had (what I deem to be) some bad encounters with my Dean (ranging from major awkwardness to outright hostility), which is just silly considering how short a time I've been in this job. The last one was just recently, at Convocation - as always, it felt like a massively failed encounter. Part of what happens in these interactions is that I always always always am being chastised. I always seem to be admonished for something; it's remarkable. Given the fact that I am not doing anything wrong - trust me on this. But the tone, the tone: he approaches every interaction as if he must punish me. And the tone with which I react is just as bad: My reaction, always startled and caught off guard, is to passively take it. It's fucking ridiculous.

So, I want to change that. What should be my mantra? What should be the keywords I repeat to myself as I go into his office a few days from now, just wanting to have a conversation about the future of my program, some strategic direction, and one other little issue having to do with my eventual tenure bid (which hopefully won't happen, but you never know)? I'd love to know your thoughts on how to turn this relationship around. This is a powerful figure in my life. More powerful - because more micro-managerial - than any Dean I've known of. If I do end up being here for the long haul, it's essential that I don't feel so awful about this relationship.

Should this bug me, or do I always over-react?

2008-06-08T18:57:00.004-07:00

I made a new friend at Congress. It was someone I'd certainly known of. She had taken over when I declined to embark upon a career at the first uni where I had a Visiting position, in 05-06 . Let's call it First Uni, or FU. (I left because I had the offer for Dream Uni, and didn't like FU enough to be able to fathom spending my career there...) So anyway, we went for drinks at Congress - we had much uproariousness - and spent a lunch together, and the AGM, and the reception, etc., etc. I was all excited about My New Friend.

During one of our times together, she told me that she thought I was an "amazing pedagogue," which was a lovely compliment. She said that because all the previous years' syllabi are on file at FU, and so she has looked at my syllabi. She told me that she has used parts of my course design for her own incarnation of Fun Course (the course I was most excited to teach, when I took the position... it was the first course I ever designed for myself...) She talked about how well the articles I'd chosen worked together, and we mentioned some of our favourites. I imagined she had taken a few readings here and there, gotten some ideas.

Well. Procrastinating yesterday, I ended up on her website, and clicked upon the syllabus for Fun Course. It is exactly the same as mine. Exactly. The weeks have the same theme-names, the readings are the same (but for a tiny handful of additions at the end), and even the evaluation structure is identical. I was floored. I was also bugged. But, though I was stunned and mad, I didn't say anything to M., even though he was sitting right across from me, working. I wasn't sure I should be as bugged as I was. But, man, I'm really pissed off. It feels like plagiarism.

What is more, one of the courses I laboured over and pushed through curriculum committees and Senate to get on the permanent books at my new place, this past year, was modeled after this course. I was planning to teach it much the same way next year. I don't like the idea that there's someone out there replicating it, while I teach it here. Grrr...

The other thing is, there's a certain clause I put in all my syllabi, about what I expect of myself, and of the students. It's basically a pedagogical philosophy. Well, it's in all of her syllabi, too!!! WTF??

But, you tell me. Am I completely overreacting?

Bullets of back

2008-06-05T13:45:00.002-07:00

I got back from Congress on Tuesday night. Now my friend M. is visiting me here in SCwP. Due to some annoying gynecological issues that are likely related to this scare (which is now being monitored, but seems just to be a shrinking hemorrhagic cyst), I am not feeling up to writing anything intellligent - I had thought I might take a stab at it, but no such luck. Rather, bullets...

- I am now one member of the very small program committee for my scholarly association's annual conference at Congress next year. God help me - why do I take on such things?

- I heard positive things about my scholarship, my pedagogy, and a past unsuccessful job application, at this conference. I don't know what the heck was going on, but it was certainly affirming! It's also weird to begin to be known to exist, to a few people. How odd.

- I had a lovely time with friends...my friend C., with whom I was rooming for the last two nights, was a delight as always. I saw a couple of far-flung people I don't see very often. And I had an excellent time with a new friend.

- I still cannot shake major nerves when I have to present - I thought I would die. (Partly because I just stuck out like a sore thumb, really the odd one out, on this panel, and really felt self-conscious about just being the paper people had to tolerate in order to hear what otherwise was a quite coherent panel.) I also made the mistake of looking at the newly released program for the next conference I'm attending in, just a couple of hours before my Congress presentation, when I was just sick with nerves. That combination was enough to send me over the edge - it certainly sent me into the bathroom...

- I watched the season finale of The Tudors last night and was beside myself. It has been years since any film or any such thing has affected me like that. I mean, really now. It's TV! I sobbed uncontrollably. WTF? Did anyone else have that reaction? I talked about it a bit with M, who is using it as "data" for his psychoanalysis of me!

I think that's all. I'm really feeling like hell. I'll hope to be back with something of consequence to say, soon.

You did NOT just say that...

2008-05-31T21:31:00.002-07:00

A new friend and I wanted to go for drinks today after our day of meetings. So we went to the Congress beer tent, figuring, hey, since we're here, why not? As we walked into the tent area, the security guard greeted us (as "girls," I noted). We found that the beer tent area was about the most depressing place either of us had ever seen and decided that we'd rather poke our eyes out than sit there for drinks, so we would leave UBC and go to an bar downtown. We turned around and I said to the over-interested security guard on our way out, "We changed our minds."

Said he, unironically: "That's okay. That's what women do."

2008-05-30T22:52:00.002-07:00

Oh god. What a stressful day! Try as I might, I cannot relax. I'm just one big stress and adrenaline ball. You don't need to know the details, but let's just say that my traveling to Congress in Vancouver was a highly stressful experience, one that I am still trying to come down from, 4+ hours after I arrived at my hotel. My M.O. for decompressing is to sit here drinking a bottle of wine I bought at the store next door.

I was delayed by the time I got here and incredibly keyed up on stress-related hormones. I was so late that I didn't have time to do anything but throw my bags into the hotel room and rush out again to have dinner with someone - someone I'd never met! I was meeting one of the people who is contributing to our co-edited volume, who is also here at Congress. So I was meeting a colleague, essentially. And I didn't have time to change before I left, so I looked like a beach bum in clamdigger jeans, and a faded black shirt with a button missing, and some kumbaya-ish sandals. Agh!!! And I was meeting her at a swank place, too, that I'd suggested - to which I had to walk-run in order to be on time, adding to my lovely stress-sweat. I feared a disaster. After all, this wasn't meeting a blogfriend, with whom I know we're already in a register that understands stress and looking like you've just come back from a beach party. Maybe this person would be all uptight and business-like and want to be Discussing Work in Serious Ways.

Anwyay. She turned out to be lovely, and totally down to earth - she didn't seem taken aback by my appearance or my stress-y energy. And you know what she told me? That she had quoted me in a grant application she wrote! Long before responding to the CFP for our book...It is so weird for me to think of people even reading my work, much less quoting me. Weird - but good. She feels that it was very serendipitous to have been accepted to contribute to our volume, for this reason. She also says that being accepted was one of the highlights of her academic career!!! My goodness - wow, is all I can say about that.

Anyway, I am going to finish my glass of wine and focus on de-stressing...tomorrow's going to be a long, Congressional day...

A few pictures

2008-05-28T19:29:00.006-07:00

How about some photos of my trip to France? I don't have many from Paris (besides photos of old documents), but I do have a couple...

Look, it's Pierre Bourdieu's grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery:

On my free day in Paris with R, we stopped in at Printemps department store to sit in the restaurant under the stained glass, Art Deco dome, drinking wine and eating ice cream in the middle of the afternoon...such a thing you only do on vacation. R took 30 photos of us sitting there. Here's an obscured one of me that gives a sense of the place:

She began to experiment with taking pictures of the mirrored tabletop...still-lifes, as it were, of my wineglass, her coffee cup, empty ice cream bowls - and the stained glass:

On the night before we left Paris, we had a walk through Montmartre so I could locate the Adolph Loos building, and we took a series of photos of architectural detailing on one particularly stunning street.

Then we travelled to Lyon, where I lived seven years ago. I lived there because I loved it - I love it more than Paris. I think it is the city I've fallen hardest for of any I've ever been to. I'm not quite sure why it's such an under-appreciated and forgotten city, given how fantastic, how beautiful, it is. I hated the small French city where I was studying during a year of my PhD, so I moved to Lyon. It was an emotional experience, a little, going back to this place. Mostly good. Here is part of the Roman ruins - the city was an important Roman one called Lugdunum 2000 years ago. These ruined amphitheatres take my breath away, I must say.

Oh, there I am, looking out contemplatively over Lyon, with its red-roofed white buildings...the very thing that gives it the aerial quality that gets me so...

Here's a hilarious dog sleeping in the upstairs window of this restaurant in Old Lyon.

This is the window of Bernachon on Mother's Day (on the 25th in France). Bernachon is considered to be one of the finest chocolatiers in the world. When I lived in Lyon, I happened to live ONE BLOCK AWAY FROM IT. Naturally, we purchased chocolate there. There was an incredible lineup that day, of folks buying cakes and pastries for mothers, presumably.

And these!!! We ate these in Old Lyon. They were like drugs...Oh my god, this may have topped my list of lifetime pastry experiences, it was so good. I worship it:

Home again

2008-05-28T09:14:00.002-07:00

I arrived home last night after a sickeningly long 24 hours of being in transit from Lyon. I am now crazily jetlagged and anticipate an exhausted blur over the next couple of days.

It feels great to be back here, in my own space. You know, as much as one loves travel, it is tiring living out of suitcases.

*

I feel energized for a summer of very hard work on this book. Doing that research was just the right thing to bring me fully into the project. My finds were pretty delicious, and I feel fairly certain I can make something important of them - and that nobody else is doing the same thing right now - probably because they think it doesn't matter. I'll show them it does! Too bad I have other things to do before I really begin to write the manuscript (2 conferences, conference paper, a visit from M.) though all of the things to come over the next few weeks are good ones.

*

That said, the fact that I am turning around in two days to go to Congress in Vancouver is a little wearing. I just would like to be HOME for a while. I'm not sure what I was thinking, when I planned this portion of my life back in the fall. But Congress awaits, with its myriad of friends and acquaintances, and the panel we have planned, which is sure to be poorly attended, given the overall dire numbers who attend everything in my association, and the fact that the panel is the last of the conference. Although the fact that Congress is in Vancouver this year is sure to boost numbers. But anyway, it shall, I think, be a social whirl, beginning on Friday night when I arrive. That can be a fun thing, certainly. A little exhausting at the mo', but good.

And I've decided that instead of just whining about the national scholarly association I belong to (which I have done here before), I will get involved. I'll attend the AGM and see about getting on a committee, or something. That'll make me feel better.

*

The only sad thing about coming home (apart from saying goodbye to R) was that Diamond, who was staying at my friend's cat-strewn home, freaked out last night and didn't want to come home. She was terrified of me, when she saw me. She bit me as I was trying to get her into her carrier - and wriggled away and hid under the couch. So she didn't come home with me after all. This was a bit painful - I am already very attached to her, and I was so looking forward to snuggling up with her for a long sleep last night. Also, it was embarrassing - you'd think I torture her, the way she acted with me. On the contrary - I dote on her and we had formed quite a bond. But I guess a house full of other cats trumps a boring apartment populated only by a single human, even if that human loves you very much. She's coming home today - instead of me going there to frighten her and pick her up, my friend will bring her here. Sigh.

*

Okay. Off to do my laundry and stumble around in a fog. And write to one of you, blogfriends, whose work I read while I was away - and LOVED! Oh dear - I had a number of Important Things to write about - I had planned some blog posts - but I can't remember what they are, now!

Turning tables

2008-05-23T09:53:00.003-07:00

Wow. This is a sign that things have changed:

I regard my PhD supervisor, as I've noted before, as a major Force of Good in my life. We have an excellent relationship, which is by now a friendship - I'm pleased to be one of the large network of friends she likes to get tipsy with at conferences and on Home City patios in the summer. But it is largely about me calling upon her as a mentor, of course - I've hoped and assumed that it would always be that way. I call upon her for advice, often. She is godlike in this regard.

So that is why, when I got an email from her two nights ago, requesting my advice about something, I was floored. Granted, this was because I know the person in question. But still - it was my advice she was seeking on a question of professional and quasi-diplomatic importance! How can this be? Wow - times have changed. I don't know what to think of that...I suppose I need to adjust myself to the fact that I have a real position in this little world...I think that adjustment will take years.

*

We are leaving Paris tomorrow morning - for Lyon, for three short days. I was lucky to finish with my research yesterday, so could take this day as a free one - I worked really hard this week in an effort to do that. We went for a run - as I have done almost every morning since I've been here (miracle of miracles - it is the world's biggest struggle to get me to go for runs first thing in the morning, at home), and ate pastries (food of angels) and I went to see Goya's etchings. Wow, people. Wow. That's all I can say about that. If any of you happen to be in Paris in the next few weeks, get thee to the Petit Palais to see them.

Hello

2008-05-21T00:08:00.000-07:00

Library research hasn't been going as beautifully as it did last week, but I am chugging along...we're in needle-in-haystack territory here, but I feel productive, still - so that's nice. I continue to be enchanted by the library, as well. Even the cafe, where they give you tea in a china pot when you order it - at the cafeteria!

R and I had a GREAT weekend with S. S and I - we are such friend soulmates...Though we never see each other anymore now that he lives in London, there's that ineffable something between us that we've had for 20+ years, and that makes our relationship different from any other. This weekend went a long way to repairing some of the weirdness that came of our last time in Paris, in February of last year. It was pure fun to be together, and THRILLING to be in the company of this person who gets my sense of humour so fundamentally...so psychically. And the three of us were a good little group, with S keeping R and I very, very amused.

There has been some yummy food, too (of course) - we've stuck really close to the little apartment in Montmartre for meals out, and there are some great restaurants here off the tourist track. Yum!

Off to the library I go, soon...then R and I will meet up for good, cheap Middle Eastern food and a drink...

2008-05-15T20:50:00.000-07:00

So I've been working away, very hard, and leaving the museum and library exhausted, my brain a muddle. Which is great! I'm finding all kinds of great stuff. I've finished with my appointments at the museum - there was enough time, in the end, to look at everything I needed in three mornings. Can I just say - thank the gods for digital cameras in research!!!! What would I do without them...there's no way I could have gotten through even a third of what I did, without being able to take photos. Though 1 euro per photo does add up...

In the afternoons and into the evenings, I've been at the Bibliothèque nationale. I haven't worked there before. I must say that I'm pretty entranced by its incredible size and scope, and its technological efficiency, compared to the only other big research library I've really worked at (New York Public Library). It kind of blows my mind, the incredibly sophisticated system they have in place there. Good lord. Though I also recognize that there's something sinister about it - what surveillance! Thus I shouldn't be so in love with it, but I am. I spend a lot of my time there pondering its coolness while I transcribe text, which only requires half-attention.

In the evenings I've just been stopping on my way home for a drink, and then coming home and making a wee dinner of salad and bread and cheese. I'm conserving my going-out energy - and money - for the rest of the trip...R arrives tomorrow morning! We will be here in Paris together for eight days - I'll be working during the days while she explores - and then going to Lyon for three days before we leave. I lived in Lyon in 2000-01, and haven't been back since. It's full of fraught emotions for me - much as I adore it - so this will be an interesting trip...

This weekend my best friend, S, also comes here from London. Some of you may remember our time together in Paris last year, which was really hard in many ways. We have stayed more distant than we ever were before he moved to London...I never expected this kind of distance between us, never. But these three years have changed things. Anyway, though, he's coming for the weekend, which is grand...there will be lots of fun to be had. But I do worry a little about putting his very lax approaches together with both R and I. You remember, this was a bit of an issue last year...And R is that much more together than I am, and has even less patience for people who don't have their shit together. Historically, as much as they like each other, R and S have clashed in this regard. And of course it is my nature to take on this shit, to try and manage it. I don't want to spend my weekend feeling as if I have to mediate...But already, S hasn't replied to my email asking him to confirm where I'm meeting him when he arrives tomorrow...this is exactly what I'm afraid of. Oh well, we'll have a LOVELY time, I am sure.

Blogging may be quite light until the end of this trip, as I suspect R won't have much tolerance for me spending time on the Internet while we're here together...

Research update

2008-05-13T11:00:00.004-07:00

I had my research appointment today...you know, the one I had been able to secure with the formerly very lovely person who suggested i look at these special resources...and then was quite rude to me when I requested some time to do so. She was as lovely as I remember her to be. And she gave me two more blocks of time - the next two mornings. I sensed that she is harried. There have obviously been cuts and changes at the place. They have gone down to seeing people for six hours a month! When I was there last year they had a much more open schedule. There were about ten people crammed in there today, whereas last time, there was nobody else at either appointment. So she's obviously under some stress about this. I'm very grateful to her for giving me these appointments outside of the usual researcher hours.

I managed to get through about a quarter of the things I need to look at there. I'll hope to be able to speed up a bit so I can get through all of it in my two remaining appointments. I have some strategies!

I also got myself set up at the Bibliotheque Nationale today, and will spend the rest of my time there. I have learned of a resource they have there that I didn't know existed - I've never seen a mention anywhere - and am very excited to see it...it sounds as if it could prove VERY germane to my project.

I love doing this kind of work...I wish I could do it more often. I need to think hard about framing the project, this summer...I can build in more of this kind of work, but would need to have money for it. I need to think about whether I should apply for the SSHRC again - with a low success rate - or for a more easily obtainable (from what I understand) internal grant that would be enough to fund another trip, of greater length if I wanted...Sorting out these thoughts will be on the agenda for the next few months. Should I do it because I like it? I mean, it takes me in another direction. The jury's out on whether that will be a very successful direction!

Away

2008-05-11T13:26:00.005-07:00

I am in Paris...I arrived yesterday. It is really hot here...full-on summer. Quite gorgeous - though I wish I'd brought more playing-in-the-sun clothes...

My tiny studio in Montmartre is perfectly lovely and functional...very basic, but it'll do just fine...and gets lots of light and has a mini-kitchen so that I can eat in sometimes, thank god. It is also somehow incredibly close to the Sacré-Coeur - like, a two-minute walk - and yet pretty quiet (except, as I learned last night when I tried to sleep with the window open, when it's 1:30 on a Saturday night and the invisible bars are letting out dozens of drunk, shouting patrons). Some things that make me happy about where I'm situated: all the stairs, which enchant me; the fact that the nearest tiny little corner greengrocer is one of the best I've ever seen in France; the fact that I'm on another side of the hill from the awful over-the-top tourist aspects of this area; the rues Lamarck and Caulaincourt, which have captured my heart, the latter for its trees.

My feet have swelled with the heat (and the travel, probably), and I have the most god-awful blisters. It did not help that I wore a pair of sandals for the first time since last summer, or have been wearing a very comfortable new pair of shoes that I thought would never hurt my feet - guess I was wrong. The blisters are so bad right now that walking is a painful chore...but I'm hoping some blister band-aids will clear that up first thing tomorrow...

I wish I could say that I was heading into the library tomorrow...but alas, I am not because it's a holiday (Pentecost). I didn't, of course, even think of this when I booked this trip. I should know better, having lived in France, than to book work trips without checking into holidays. Oh well - it gives me an extra day...not that I want an extra day, considering that this is a relatively short trip.

So, with the bonus day of tomorrow, I shall go on some excursion outside the city (IF I can get my blisters under control) - maybe to Versailles - er, no, the palace is closed. Well, maybe somewhere else...Fontainebleau? And then, come Tuesday, I shall get to work finally, including at the Locale of Disappointment, since the one appointment I could get there was for Tuesday afternoon. Fingers crossed that I will be able to secure a couple more!

Telemarketing

2008-05-07T17:18:00.003-07:00

I have been doing a hellish, hellish task.

The recruitment office here gets faculty members to call admitted students to try to sell them on the place and encourage them to come here. In a soft-sell kind of way. There was a fair amount of pressure to do this, so I signed on. Gawddddddd. It is the worst thing ever. If I'd wanted to be a telemarketer, I wouldn't have done a PhD. Every person on my list has been admitted here by default...it is nobody's first choice. It is fucking gross to be calling these kids and positively breathing desperation. The worst is when I leave messages with parents or on the answering machine so that parents might hear...because twelfth-graders might not know that this is desperation, but it must seem positively pathetic to parents.

And I just don't have the personality for this. Basically, I do what I'm told, i.e. call and say "Congratulations, Katie, on your admission to Scary City U. Do you have any questions for me?" Only one of the dozen students I've talked to so far has any questions at all. Which is incredibly awkward!! The info packet says that while that students might not have questions, they might enjoy hearing about research I or my departmental colleagues do. What????? Can you imagine? That is precisely telemarketing - foisting your self-interest on uninterested people in the pre-dinner hour!! And, on a more practical level, how do you seque into that??:

Me: I'm Prof. Hilaire from Faculty of X at Scary City U., and I'm calling to congratulate you on your admission and see if you have any questions.
Kid: No, I'm good/No, I'm hoping to get into Y/No, it's not my first choice.)
Me: Well, let me tell you all about ME!!!!!

So needless to say, because I won't do this, I am getting absolutely nowhere, and it's just a big fat bloody waste of time. Next year, no way. I just don't have the personality for this. Nor do I believe in the "brand" of Scary City U, which I think you need to do if you want to do this convincingly.

Imprint

2008-05-06T11:25:00.007-07:00

Do you feel marked by your own training? I do.

What I mean is that I feel so intensely as if I am a product of the period in which I took my BA. The early-mid '90s. I can't escape it. I'm imprinted. I just wrote this conference paper and I kept wanting to move into another discourse/register. Because I just started writing and waited to see what unfolded - always my writing style, for better or (more probably) worse - it felt as if I was watching myself be carried, against my will, back into this framework I was trying to move away from. I know I am making it sound as if I have no agency in the process, and of course I don't mean to suggest that. But I must say that I do find it fascinating, the way my "knowledge," or more accurately, my academic socialization, trump my wishes to turn my scholarship from X into Y. I have a strongly conditioned way of knowing, and working outside of that proves to be very difficult. I think I'm going to have to just live with that. Especially since my attempts to move into another register fail. I suspect I shall forever be defined by a kind of wispy abstraction that I both semi-deplore and am also seduced by. Ah, well.

Writing as cure

2008-05-04T10:41:00.002-07:00

I'm writing a conference paper right now.

All I can say is, I should be writing every day. Even for fifteen minutes, brainstorming. This is what I've been telling myself since 2008 began, bringing with it an enormous amount of new reading in relation to my book project. I kept thinking, "I should sit down and process this glut of reading by writing about it - just writing random notes, just generating thoughts, since I think through writing and not through reading or talking or anything else." I never got myself to do it, though - which is bad. I just kept on ingesting, without ever working through.

But now I'm writing again - the first time I've written something new in about six months, and I see how much comes of it. I should be doing it all the time. Because, a) it brings me pleasure, and b) it seriously lessens my anxiety about productivity, tenure, etc., etc., by showing me I do have thoughts and I belong in this place and that, oh yeah, actually there is enough in my brain (and the material I'm working with ) to write a book.

I must remember this. Writing as tranquilizer.

Post-SSHRC reflections

2008-04-30T11:07:00.005-07:00

I just got in the mail the external evaluators' assessments of my SSHRC application. I didn't receive one, I found out a month ago. I wasn't surprised, knowing that the rate of success is about 34% overall, and it is about 22% for those in the "new scholars" category, like me. I was disappointed, though - knowing that I shouldn't be - because the four people who had read it had all been extremely enthusiastic about it, and two had said they felt certain that it would be funded. (Not to self: Don't say such things to people!)

The thing is - and I was aware of this, even as I let myself get my hopes about it - that none of these people who reviewed it have expertise in the field in which I was proposing my project. The proposal was sent to three external evaluators who are all, of course, expert in a field I was ostensibly treating. Some of their comments were pretty harsh, which doesn't surprise me - they picked up on what I knew were inconsistencies in my application, on issues I myself had identified. The thing was, I was under pressure to submit a grant application, and so I conjured up my project very quickly...I mean, I had the project going 'in name,' and had presented papers on tiny bits of it, but only wrote about it in detail for the first time, for the application. It was very newly formulated. It has matured a lot in the 8 months or so of additional research and some writing I've done since I first wrote that application (thankfully!).

But my problem is my positioning, and the researchers to whom the application was sent for review. To invoke the terms with which I have metaphorized my research before, they are haiku experts. I also work on chemical engineering and agricultural history - and in fact, my work is about the intersections between those latter two fields - I simply use haiku as a means of thinking about these other two fields. I don't consider myself first and foremost a haiku expert, though I certainly know my way around the field. In fact, I've even thought about having the first line of my book be, "This is not a book about haiku" (even though it is, on the surface - but really, what it is, is a book about agricultural history and chemical engineering, using haiku as a lens).

But the app was sent to thorough haiku experts, and it does not surprise me in the least that they don't love the project. In fact, the SSHRC committee - which would be composed of chemical engineering and agricultural history experts - was quite generous with me considering the lack of enthusiasms of the haiku-ists for the project; they wrote quite lovely comments and gave me points in disproportion to what the evaluators' comments warranted. They "get it," they get what I want to do, I suspect. I don't think haiku-ists ever will; they're never going to like what I'm trying to do, in part because it will be seen as much too abstract for their material field. It is very telling that they didn't even comment on what, to me, is the major theoretical point of the project!! They don't even "see" it. (This is not me being a snob, suggesting that people who work in more materially oriented ways don't understand theory...I mean simply that it's not what they're trained to look for or emphasize or evaluate when they're doing something like this.)

So when I re-submit in the fall, I'm going to be really challenged in terms of how I present the project. What I could do is rejig the project, addressing all of the haiku-ists' complaints...it is really not hard to do. But I don't want to have a project that's like that. And yet, I will always be evaluated by haiku-ists, simply because the word haiku is in my work. But these aren't people, as I mention, who engage with the theoretical issues I'm dealing with, that I'm actually trying to bring new perspectives to.

At least I have a summer to think about it.

The other issue is, SSHRC places so much value on having "graduate student training" be part of the proposal. They don't distinguish between fields...graduate student training in psychology and some of the social sciences is very different from what it is in the Humanities, where we simply don't have the same kind of tradition of collaborative work between researchers and their grad students. So there's (to my mind) an over-emphasis, on the evaluators' assessment forms, of the question of how the proposed project will contribute to graduate student training. The assessors are really negative on this point, saying that my plans to have doctoral candidates do archival work and then literature reviews are totally unrewarding and no good. Well, that's all I ever did - or anyone I know ever did - when we were employed as research assistants. (Well, no, I drafted some translations and tracked down a whole bunch of quotations and dealt with permissions and the publisher, but that is of the same order of busy-work, that work). I'm not really sure what this excellent graduate student training is supposed to look like...I note that this is SSHRC rhetoric (i.e. government agency rhetoric) and it seemed to me that the actual committee of academics - the ones who were quite generous to me - didn't even factor it into their decisions to allocate points. This is good, because when I rejig the app for this year's competition, I may phase out most grad student training...simply because adding more and more of it is a nod in the haiku direction, but does nothing for the chemical engineering and agricultural history aspects of my work.

To whom am I teaching, and how?

2008-04-29T18:25:00.003-07:00

Today, I was thinking about where I fall on the 'hard-ass' scale. This was because I was an examiner at the Honours thesis defense (since when are there Honours defenses set up like grad school defenses??). It was for an excellent student I had in my fourth-year class this term. She's written a thesis that is quite learned, but that I didn't find to be as spectacular as the others did - I wasn't in favour of giving it the A+ that they were, and was more hung up on a couple of issues.

I thought back to a month or so ago, when the student asked me if I'd be a reader of the thesis, and she said - very good-naturedly - that this was scary because I am "hard." I was kind of taken aback by this, but felt good about it, because sometimes I worry that my easygoing way with students means that I am not challenging them enough. And this sense that I am "hard" was borne out at the defense today, during which I was being more demanding of the student's work than the other two (both of whom I respect a great deal).

Then I thought about how I teach. I "teach to" the strongest students in a given class. I am sure that this would get me in trouble with learning specialist types - I am not trying hard enough to be inclusive - but I feel it is my "duty," for lack of a better word, to aim high, to meet the strongest students at their level. And then I am hard on them, apparently.

I don't know what to think about this question of who I am teaching to, and what I am expecting of them. Am I doing anyone any good if this is my approach - the "hard" approach? Well, sure, I can see that being "hard" for the strongest students is challenging for them - I'm not so worried about them. But what about the weaker students. Surely I must then be even "harder" for them. Is this good or bad? Am I any help at all for them?

Who do you teach to? Should we place a premium on 'hardness'? These are the questions I'm thinking about.

Post-bug update

2008-04-28T20:38:00.004-07:00

I arrived home on Saturday night and felt sane again. I still cannot believe how much that incident affected me. I really felt as if I was losing my mind, even the next day, in the bright sunlight, out of the hotel. I thought I had grown out of a lot of that phobia, but I guess not as much as I thought.

I quarantined EVERYTHING the moment I got home - including the clothes I was wearing, which I stripped off and threw onto the deck with everything else. (Oh, hi, neighbours!) On Sunday I washed what was washable in the machines, kept some quarantined for dry cleaning, and boiled the rest in a big cauldron-like pot, ridiculously, feeling as if I was acting out Macbeth. I also soaked the suitcase in boiling water.

So anyway. Now I'm back. I have a lot of work to do in the next week and a half, including writing my paper for Congress before I leave for my research trip. Since I will have only a couple of days once I get back, before I turn around again to go to Vancouver for that crazy shindig, and will be jetlagged and out of it. Never have I had so thin a conference paper idea - I really have no idea what I'm going to write...my abstract, I see, is ridiculous. I may even have to consider scratching this part of my book project, so little do I feel I have to say at the mo'. God, I hope not - there would go one third of my objects of study!! Let's just hope that my completely open-ended writing process comes up with something, as happened with last year's Congress paper, which I was really happy with (with several months of hindsight).

God, why am I such a mess?

2008-04-26T16:00:00.002-07:00

I cannot really function. I feel itchy and crawly all over...and totally not myself. I feel totally alienated from myself. I wouldn't have expected to have such a strong reaction. What the hell is wrong with me? I guess it really is a deep phobia. What a bloody wimp.

Anyway, I just realized that with feeling like this I could NOT handle the ridiculously overlong bus ride. I would probably be completely insane by the end of it. The reason I had taken the bus instead of flying in the first place was that I am trying not to fly whenever I can...trying to reduce that carbon footprint. But I just said, fuck it. I just booked the flight for 2 1/2 hours from now. Carbon emissions and all. Sigh. Oh well. I can't wait to be in my own home, and to try and relax.

Bed bugs in my hair

2008-04-26T07:43:00.005-07:00

Here's something you might not know about me: I'm phobic of insects. This has improved markedly over my life, but these remain the only thing I could really say I have an irrational fear of...anyone who knows me well has seen it in action and knows that it remains an issue. The only recurring nightmare I've ever had is one about insects (the atmosphere being made of insects, actually). There were several times as a teenager when I saw a single cricket or beetle on the hall wall and proceeded to lock myself in my room, screaming and crying and unable to come out. There are parts of the world I feel sure I won't visit because of what I've heard about their insects. It's like that. That's why when I had a bed bug experience in my hotel in Nearest Metropolis last night, I really had to fight to not become completely, cart-her-off-to-the-hospital hysterical.

So I arrived at my hotel - a small budget hotel that I once stayed at years ago, that is well loved and gets fawning write-ups in travel guides for being so lovely and yet so miraculously inexpensive - at about 9 last night. I was checking email and things when I all of a sudden felt quite itchy in several different places. I wondered about bed bugs, and so googled them. Then I did a thorough search of the sheets and pillows and mattresses. I puzzled over some tiny rust-coloured pieces of somthing, squinting at them under the lamp and trying to determine whether they were bugs and deciding they were not. (They were, I realize in retrospect - given what I read on the Internet - actually bed bug shit.) I tried to figure out what to do...my gut was telling me something was wrong, but I didn't know what I'd say to the hotel management (not realizing I had evidence in the form of bug shit!)

Anyway, I went out for an hour or so, and came back and felt decidedly itchy again. Debated what to do about it - ran through the conversation in my mind, and decided to just stay put, after having examined the bed pieces again. Put on my pyjamas and went to bed, feeling quite crawly but telling myself I was imagining it. It took me quite a while to fall asleep. Something woke me up when I'd just drifted off - gee, IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE LARGE BEDBUG THAT I SAW FALLING OUT OF MY HAIR ONTO THE PILLOW AND SCURRYING AROUND ON THE BED WHEN I RAISED MY HEAD, STARTLED AWAKE.)

This is when hysteria occurred. I don't quite know how I managed to pull myself together enough to get out of my pyjamas, into some clothes - it had to be in the dark, because I couldn't stand the thought of seeing the thing while I was actually "unguarded." Went downstairs to the front desk. The guy there moved me immediately - seriously upgraded me actually. I went back upstairs to get my stuff and was able to find the bed bug, on guard as I now was in proper clothes. It was a huge one. I took a very long shower, washing my hair three times. The front desk guy made chamomile tea for me. I put all the clothes that I'd worn on the bed in the hotel room in a tightly sealed plastic bag. I examined the bedding in my new room - it really seems fine - no shit this time. But I'm not sure what to do. I'm so tired I can't even think straight - this all happened at 1:15 and it took me hours to calm down enough to sleep for maybe three hours. While I was lying awake, I thought I'd just leave the city and go back home late this afternoon, after my meeting - instead of staying until Monday. The thought of making that ridiculously long and cramped bus ride again the very next day, though, makes me want to cry. I just wanted to have a little fun weekend here, after my meeting - and after what was actually a very long week!

Ugh.

Anyway, the major lesson here is to trust my gut!!

Update: I'm leaving tonight.

Bullets of week

2008-04-25T08:24:00.004-07:00

Thought I'd check in with some bullets..

My potluck for students the other night was a success. But many people in their early twenties appear to socialize by way of "storytelling contests," meaning that they don't actually talk with each other. They try to impress each other with stories about their lives. It's positively exhausting. The young ones held court while the three mature students and I just watched them, sort of incredulous. But people said they had a wonderful time.
But really, why do people go so overboard for potlucks?? I have a long history with people using potlucks as a kind of one-upping competition (in my Activity community, which was full of women who were excellent cooks), and it is a major pet peeve of mine. I even asked people, this time, to restrict the amount they were bringing...But still, some people brought two dishes. Gawd! What it meant is that I was left with a fridge full of weird food...
Things are really heating up with the co-edited collection. It has taken over my life this last week - I may as well be married to my collaborator, what with how frequently we're in touch. But I'm very happy with what's transpiring, and it tickles me, frankly, to be working collaboratively.
God, I love my PhD supervisor. I love what our relationship has become, and is still becoming. We are really very close. She means the world to me. We are having the most wonderful email exchanges lately. I'm so grateful for her.
This weekend I'm going to Nearest Metropolis for a day-long meeting tomorrow. Leaving later today, coming back on Monday. This makes me very, very happy. It makes me feel amazingly free.

Photo day

2008-04-21T13:40:00.003-07:00

My faculty is redesigning the website. (This doesn't seem to be the wisest use of funds during a budget crisis - which I've not bloggged about - but whatever...) We all already have snapshots on our webpages, but those are being redesigned with new, professional photos. I had mine taken a couple of weeks ago, and today was sent a page of proofs to choose from.

Oh. my. god.

I am not usually high-maintenance about photos at all, but this is HORRIFYING. Horrifying. The thought of being represented by one of these shots makes me want to cry. Perhaps worst of all, I look like I have a rat's tail. Why didn't someone give me a mirror or tell me to fix my hair???

Les you think this is just me over-reacting, here is what R wrote when I emailed her the sheet of proofs:

"i'm so sorry, but they are the funniest things i've ever seen. (or maybe i'm just sleep deprived) I can't open the link without immediately convulsing with laughter. I've forwarded the email to my home address so I don't make a fool of myself here at work....sorry to be laughing at your expense, sweetie, but....thanks for the hilarity."

Augh!!!!

About-face

2008-04-21T07:55:00.003-07:00

I am leaving on a research trip to Paris - just a couple of weeks - next month. I planned this in part to return to one of the places I did some preliminary research "reconnaissance" last year.

I had such a great experience there (as I have at most every place I've done such research). The woman who is in charge of the library there was extremely kind, helped me a lot, and encouraged me to come back. She told me how nice it was to have a researcher like me come in - someone doing "actual research," since it turned out that most of the people she had appointments with are just random folks who are interested, not professional researchers working on a substantive project. She told me about some new, relevant resources the library had recently acquired at auction and said that when I came back, I should spend some time looking at them. She was so lovely, as I gushed in that blog post - as was the colleague she drew in to help me with a couple of questions.

Last week I wrote to her - not in any kind of overly familiar way, but reminding her that we had met last year and that she had suggested that I should look at X Resource in future. Could I set up some times to do that while I would be in Paris next month, I asked?

I got back quite a curt note - entirely different in tone from the emails I'd had from her the previous year - saying she could give me one three-hour appointment, and that they just didn't have the resources to see me more than that, normally, but that since I was coming from outside the country, she might see while I was there if she could give me one or two more appointments, but nothing more than that.

I was surprised by the whole thing - particularly the tone. But also because it had been she who suggested that I come back to look at this stuff. However, I wrote back a VERY grateful email, in which I said that I understood that they didn't have many resources and that it was very kind indeed of her to see me, and that I would come on the appointed date. I noted in an offhand way that we could, as she said, see at that point if there were one or two other times available.

Well. Clearly this has pissed her off, even though it was her idea. She wrote back a very irritated note which suggested I shouldn't expect any more time there, and reminded me of how very far she was going to even suggest additional appointments.

Dude. Chill. God.

If this had been the tone when I dealt with her last year, that would be one thing. But it seems like such an about-face, it's really confusing. There are probably internal politics, or funding issues, or job-loathing on her part, that I know nothing about. I just wish she wouldn't be so rude about it - what I've communicated to her is not at all demanding, and it is entirely laced with bowing-and-scraping.

Also, this just sucks because I had counted on being able to look at those resources - I expected to spend a few days there...she'd indicated before that this would be possible. There's another place I can go for other things, but she has me very curious at looking at these special resources; they would be extremely helpful to me.

Oh, sigh.

Weekend ramble

2008-04-20T19:54:00.005-07:00

What a sickening weather weekend - ugh. It felt like winter again. Not nice, not at all. It was also a slightly aggravating weekend in other ways.

For one thing, I grow tired of disorganized wimps. A friend had been making noises about wanting to get together. A week in advance, I suggested last Thursday evening. When it came time to make the plan, it turned out she had messed up and had something else going on Thursday. Fair enough, I suppose - so we rescheduled for Friday. I then turned down an offer from someone else to do something on Friday night. I had this plan to have friend A over for dinner, and had gone about buying things and preparing. It was 45 minutes before she was scheduled to come over, I was up to my eyeballs in soup-making, and she bailed...she wouldn't be good company, she said. This pissed me off! You mess me up two nights in a row and your excuse is that you wouldn't be good company? Well, that seems kind of shitty to me - you get your ass over to the friend who's making a homemade dinner for you, and you get in a good mood, dammit! Harumph. I made delicious soup, but I ate it alone - quite in the mood for company. I ended up in a marathon phone convo with M, during which I got tipsy on dessert wine.

Then, on Saturday, after invigilating an exam (which I can't bring myself to begin grading) I ended up buying a little jacket that is very un-me but that I was attracted to anyway. (When I said to the clerk that it was un-me, she said, "It's a style." Duh. I am AWARE that it's a style. Are you saying it's un-me because it's a style?? Nice going; need some help getting that foot out of your mouth?)

On Saturday night and into the morning, it was adventure time. I had bought Diamond a leash because I felt that trying to leash-train her would be the only way I could let her outside...I was letting her outside onto my balcony for short periods, but stopped that when she flew the coop and strayed too far. I put on a collar that had come with her box of things, attached the leash, and took her outside for a disastrous attempt. She hated it - and almost immediately broke off her cheap collar and ran into the backyard and straight under the deck of the downstairs neighbours. Which has a 4-inch opening underneath it. This was at about 5pm. At 11:30pm - after all these hours trying to coax her out, and to drag her out - I finally went to bed, taking some meds to help me sleep because I was so freaked out. She had turned into a demon cat, clearly terrified, but also hissing and growling and scratching at ME, her ally. Her behaviour - including when she would emerge from under there, only to head back in if I so much as moved a muscle - seemed to suggest she had gone a little cuckoo.

This morning, though, after the umpteenth attempt to drag her out or coax her out with my dulcet tones - which resulted in yet more hissing and growling - I was able to get her to come out for food, which hadn't been working last night; I guess she got hungry! She was a baby in my arms as soon as I got her...and spent the morning curled up on my lap, sleeping off the adventure.

Never again is she going outside - at least, not until the "cat walking jacket" that I have ordered arrives! I don't need more freezing nights spent sprawled in the dirt talking into a four-inch opening, terrified that Diamond would go feral if left there for any length of time. And she doesn't need any more terror.

And tomorrow, I host a little potluck for my fourth-year/grad student class. Risky, but a good thing, I think. One of them has written a short play inspired by the material in the class...she invited me to come see it when it was performed in her creative writing class (I found it to be pretty amazing stuff), and I in turn invited her to stage it at our class gathering. There will be a 'punk theory' play in my living room tomorrow night!

Tax question for the Canadians

2008-04-18T09:21:00.003-07:00

Update: Don't worry about the below...I didn't really figure it out, but I seem to be getting such a large refund, for some reason (overpayment on taxes?) that I'm not going to worry about it this year. In fact, I'm kind of stunned about the whole thing...

I'm just setting about to do my taxes, and am now hoping someone who is a Canadian can enlighten me on the possibility of deductions...ideally someone who is also a faculty member...

(I should have looked into this ages and ages ago - I meant to - but I didn't, and now I need to do the taxes and I'm desperate. God, I'm so disorganized!!!)

Anyway, what I'm wondering is about whether I can factor in my professional expenses. I used to get my taxes done by an accountant, and she was able to get me all sorts of deductions for work-related expenses when I was a grad student. I stopped using her when I became a faculty member, since I figured my taxes were now so simple. But one or two people - who are not academics - have suggested to me that I can factor in my professional expenses - conference fees, conference and research travel, books, etc. (Most of this was not covered by meagre professional development funds, etc.) I saved a lot of those receipts last year, but I wasn't sure about this...I thought I could deduct professional expenses only if I was self-employed, which I'm obviously not.

If anybody has a clue about this, I'd be very grateful to know. I apologize for being such a dunce about this - you are not tax professionals, I know.

Early classes, late students

2008-04-16T08:28:00.002-07:00

OK, so this academic year just finished, and I'm already onto the next. Making up my reading lists, etc. Also quaking about the fact that I am teaching an 8am class in both terms next year. Ugh. 8am seems really early to me...I've had no experience, as a professor or a student, with classes that started before 8:30. Even 8:30 I found painfully early, in terms of energy levels, etc.

But I will be teaching Monday-Wednesday 8am - my first-year classes, Intro Part 1 and Part 2. My friend who taught in this timeslot this year has been complaining bitterly about it. She says students are half asleep, and/or coming in dreadfully late. She is also vowing to never teach in that slot again. She has me worried.

So I am already thinking about how I'm going to deal with this. This will be a large class - about 80 students in the fall. Therefore, I won't be taking attendance, so I can't use that to ensure promptness. But the idea of 30 students disruptively filtering in while the class is in progress?? Fills me with horror.

Do you have any strategies for managing lateness in large, early morning classes? I could tell them that they can't enter the room more than 10 minutes into the lecture, but that would involve publicly humiliating people the first few times they DID try to walk in. I really don't want to do that. Any less punitive strategies out there? Or should I just suck it up?