Lately

What am I only posting once a week now? Sorry for the lag in consistent posts, but the dissertation is getting written people! For REALS. I'm like a machine, getting stuff done on full blast. I have submitted two more chapters, filled out paperwork for graduation in summer, and talked with my committee chair about the defense. I'm hoping it happens in June, when jerkoffs are not around to be ornery at my defense, which will be the scariest day of my life. Even scarier than the night I came home from Paranormal Activity. Or the time someone called my name in my empty house when I was 12. Or the time I was dragged to a Christian youth music festival. Well, let's be realistic, it probably won't top the music festival.

I am doing great with the "get healthy" plan. Going to the gym every other da, eating sensibly, no Coke. I think this is the longest I've ever gone without a Coke. When I did Nutrisystem I made a big stink about having to drink Diet Cokes. It was like I had to go from Marlboro reds to light menthols or something. And here I am, gone cold turkey without a problem. The doctor thing threw me for a loop, and I'm still on the fence about her, but I do have an appointment in 3 weeks, and if she still makes me feel uncomfortable, I'll switch. If she was just trying to impress upon me the consequences of my actions, I'll stay.

Funny thing about exercising, you feel more energized in general. I have been in a better mood the past two weeks, I've gotten better writing done, I've boxed up all my books and (with the help of M. of course) moved those heavy boxes down to the garage. I spent today cleaning out my office at home and getting things ready for our eventual garage sale.

It's sad to see my empty bookshelves, and even sadder to know all my books are downstairs in boxes. I feel comforted when I'm surrounded by my books. I don't think I'd enjoy an all-digital world. I like books. I like to see the covers, to feel the binding, to hold it in my hand and write all over it if I want to. I like seeing all my different weird interests on the shelf, hanging out together. I have a copy of A People's History of the United States that was purchased for an AP History class in high school. It has all of my highlighter marks, notes, and dog eared pages. Even though I bought the updates to it, and even a special hardcover edition, when I went to see Howard Zinn speak in the late 90s, I brought my battered copy for him to sign. I have a fantasy of one day having a library in my house. A room or part of my office that has floor to ceiling shelves and a rolling ladder. I really want the rolling ladder. If we have kids, I think it would be neat for them to grow up with a bunch of interesting books around. I mean, they're going to be little weirdos anyway, they might as well be well informed.

As more of our stuff gets put into boxes and moved downstairs, we seem to be having a variety of reactions about it. I like being surrounded by the little ephemera from throughout my life. M. is more into the streamlined, clutterlessness of our temporary arrangement. Once we saw an episode of MTV Cribs, the one with Moby and his minimalist loft. He also had some kind of house in the woods that was all wood and no furniture. I found it desolate and unlivable, and M. was like, in awe. So he's feeling like there's a lot more room in the house, and I'm feeling like the house is getting emptier. But soon, I'll have my stuff back, and I've got no time to mope.

Working

Week 1 of the summer and I'm already hard at work. Spent a few mornings on the dissertation, some afternoons on the comic, and I went to one of my 'happy' places: the art store.

If you've ever been to Lyon Art Supply in downtown Long Beach, you know it's totally ridiculous in there. Stuff is in piles, boxes are everywhere, there is danger at ever turn. Seriously, a couple of times I probably would have tripped had I not conditioned myself to constantly look down for debris/random poles from light rigs/boxes of stuff. It is dirty, messy, and the sort of place that immediately makes me anxious, but (and this is a huge but), it's friggin' cheap! Markdowns on everything, sales all over the place - and not 20% sales, we're talking 50% and up. Everyone is really sweet and there is a whole comic section filled with goodies. Most of them are totally in Japanese, but I get what they are for, so I bought a few layout pages and blue line sheets. The same day that I went to the art store, M. came home with his Art Bin of goodies from Platt. They loaded him up with a bunch of stuff. I believe one of the first things he said to me when my little eyes lit up with wonder at the bounty spread before me was, "Jealous?" To which I replied, "Of what? This stuff is mine too!"

Today I'm cutting the morning writing short to go visit my friend Rachel, who recently bought a loft in downtown LA. I've been aching to take advantage of the pool and spa for months now, so today's the day.

Tomorrow I will reinstate Friday Finds. Any requests on a theme or stuff you'd like to see?

Adjunct Life

Doing all this writing has got me thinking. What if I get the degree and am still an adjunct for a long time? What If I'm stuck here forever, waiting every semester to find out if I have a job in three months? To find out if I have health care in three months? Making my salary now at 35 or 40. I don't know if I can handle that.

Some quotes from Burt-Out Adjunct, fellow blogger and adjunct faculty that sum up the experience and what to do about it:

"If you are an adjunct, you need to treat it like playing in a garage band: you need a well-paying day job in order to indulge your passion."

"Institutions have melted (I hate to say evolve here) into the current position because it pays the best for them. Farm out the overflow or the inconsistently enrolled to contingent [aka adjunct] faculty, freeing up the tenured to pursue their passions. If you are one of the few Chosen Ones, then feel complacent and safe–which I know you do–knowing that you need not worry too much except for a system-wide implosion (see California right now)."

Great, btw, I am in California.

"You are the expendable, the booty-call of the University hook-up system. You are the lover on the side, and when stresses arise, people will adhere to the family structure.

So, play to your passion, but ensure a more secure revenue stream–your family will appreciate it."

I was just talking about this last night, though the "booty call" metaphor is so ridiculously perfect and much better than how I phrased it. Sigh....

I'm doing good work here folks, I just hope it's put to good use someday.

It's a Long Story...

Ok, so I have been promising/threatening to tell you all my ghost stories. Some of you have heard a few of these already. I decided to get these down so that I could explore what happened. From the poll I took a while ago, about half of you are skeptical about the existence of ghosts and the other half are believers. Whatever you think, this is just my interpretation. Your mileage may vary.

When we moved to Corona, it was the summer of 1989, an incredibly hot summer in the Inland Empire. My parents bought the house from a couple with older children and a small dog. I remember how amazed I was that our tiny 2 bedroom bungalow in Hawthorne went for more money than a big 5 bedroom two-story house with a pool. I looked very very forward to having my own room. I shared a room with two younger brothers until I was 12. You can imagine the intense desire for my own personal space. In order to manage the house payment, my dad drove from Manhattan Beach to Corona every day to his job as a mechanic in an auto shop. We totally dug our new house.

It surprised us to later find out from the neighbors that the couple who had owned the house were recently married. In fact, the man's previous wife had died not more than 6 months before we moved in. We didn't know that until later though, but it's important. Our house was big and beautiful and..........haunted. Don't know how else to really explain what happened there. I give you several accounts of events that took place there that are suspect and in retrospect, very "haunty."

Experience #1: "Mom!"
People in my house were constantly hearing someone calling. My mom heard me calling her, I heard her calling me, it was endless. And since we weren't used to being so far away from each other, we thought it was quite the chore to go see what the other person wanted. And then you'd get there and the person would say "I didn't call you," or worse, "You called ME. What do you want?" Totally confusing. One day my dad and two brothers went out to the store and my mom and I were in the kitchen. I was talking to her while she washed dishes. We both heard someone say "Mom" from just outside the kitchen. Our eyes got big and we stared at each other (to make sure we both really heard what we just heard). I said "Who was that?" and went looking for some kind of intruder. It didn't sound like my brothers or anyone I knew. My mom realized it was not really explainable, so she just said, "we must have been hearing someone from outside." Phones would also ring when they were unplugged or off the hook. Somebody was always calling and nobody was ever there.

Experience #2: This Never Happened
At Christmastime my family went all out. We had a big house (at least to us it was big), a lot of room, so we got a huge tree and all kinds of decorations. My dad made a big deal out of getting a train set to go around the base of the tree. My mom got a wreath that had a motion detector in it so that when you passed by it, it sang "Jingle Bells." She put it in the small hallway that we used to get to the master bedroom, so it wouldn't go off all the time. Given the insane amount of electronic decorations in our house, my parents made sure we unplugged everything so the new house wouldn't burn down. Unlike in our old tiny house, by the time you smelled smoke, it might be too late. So imagine all of our surprise one middle of the night when the train started blaring and choo-chooing around the track. We all got up and ran to the living room to see who was playing with the train and there it was, going around lit up....and unplugged. And do you know what we all did? We turned around and went back to bed and never spoke of it again. To speak of it again would be to admit that you were crazy and that as a family, we were all crazy. The same thing happened with our little motion-detecting wreath. We were taking a family photo in front of the tree. My aunt was taking the picture and everyone else in the house was right there in front of the tree. Lo and behold, just as we were about to say cheese, we jumped ten feet high because "Jingle Bells" started playing. And we laughed it off as an electronic malfunction. It happened more than once when we were all together. And we either joked about it or didn't say anything.

Experience #3: This Isn't Happening
The master bathroom in our house had some hideous, but very expensive wallpaper. It was an ivory-pearly color embossed with blue and pink sea shells. My mother hated it and begged my dad to tear it out. One Sunday he decided to tackle the bath and it was a big hassle. He cut himself several times and got very frustrated. The water bucket broke. Twice. It was a pain from beginning to end, but he got it all off. Later that night, he was talking to my mom about how he couldn't beleive his bad luck with this project. It seemed like he was unable to aim the screwdriver, the trowel or the sponge correctly. He fell in a bathroom that wasn't too large and he couldn't figure out how he managed to fall. As my mom lay sleeping that night, she woke up to the sound of the cabinets in the bathroom opening and closing on their own. And a shower curtain being pulled from left to right. And this is the part that really scared her because there wasn't a shower curtain in there, just shower doors. So she woke up completely to make sure it wasn't a dream. My dad woke up too and as he was about to get up to see it for himself, it stopped. This is when things started to be too strange to deny.

Experience #4: No Thanks.
My brother was about 6 when we moved in and took the room across from the bathroom on the second floor. All of our rooms were on the second floor, while my parents' master suite was on the first floor. For some reason, he never used the upstairs bathroom. He would go all the way downstairs to use the bathroom, to bathe, to wash his hands. It was totally odd behavior for a 6 year old. He just wouldn't go in there. And that bathroom was amazing. It was at least ten feet across, with a shower stall on one side and a tub on the other. It had two sinks and tons of room to store things. I miss that bathroom so much right now! I thought it was odd, but in keeping with the new family tradition, I didn't ask why for fear of the answer. Years later I found out why he never went in there. He and my cousin had seen the faucets going on and off by themselves in the bathroom! Having another person there when you have one of these experiences tends to make them more real and undeniable.

Experience #5: Um, I think it's not my imagination.
After the bathroom event, my parents started to actually talk about what was going on around the house. Stuff moved. A lot. Things were in different places than where you put them. They were having an argument about whether or not this was some kind of ghost or part of a set of five overactive imaginations or just bad wiring. Well, during the conversation, as they sat up in bed (with the lights and the TV on) they watched a glass that was set upon the dresser scoot across it on its own and fall on the carpet. At that point, there was no denying something was messing with them that they could not see. But not even a year into a 30 year mortgage, there wasn't much they could do.

Secondary Source: A neighbor once asked my mother if she had any "problems" with the house, on account of its history. Mr. Archer and his new wife were having problems with the house and were unable to sleep. With a little prodding, the neighbor admitted that Mrs. Archer, the first wife of the previous owner had committed suicide in the garage. She hung herself and was found by her teenage daughter on her way in to do the laundry. Mrs. Archer had worked in a cancer hospice and when she found out she was diagnosed with cancer, she decided to end her life.

And very quickly after her death, her husband married another woman and moved her into his home. I often wonder if it was she that haunted the place, since her death was so traumatic and it happened on the property. Maybe she didn't like us changing the bathroom wallpaper because she chose it herself. Maybe she wanted us to leave the house. I don't know if Mrs. Archer haunted the place, but something was scary about it and it made its impression on more than just us. When my parents divorced, my dad stayed in the house and the rest of us moved to an apartment, which still sticks in my craw by the way, because it makes no sense that one man should stay in a big house and four people should move into an apartment, but I digress. My dad invited a friend from work over to experience the house, since nobody believed his stories. His friend never said why, but he left at about 3am. Couldn't get through one night.

It wasn't until years later that we put all of this stuff together. Some of these experiences were explained away by our parents as they happened. Even though I doubted their explanations, it was easier to believe them than to admit something hinky was going on in that house.

Is this all explainable in a rational way? Did we have group hallucinations? Is our willingness to call it a haunting because we were brought up what I call "Mystical Catholic"? It could be a result of me being 12 when we moved. Most adolescents go through an intense almost schizo period in which everything is either "the best thing that ever happened" or "the worst thing that ever happened." I remember becoming all gothy in that house. Getting teenager-depressed and listening to The Cure while laying sprawled out on my bedroom floor wishing I wasn't such a freak. I was sometimes scared to go to sleep at night there. But that doesn't explain how my parents and brothers felt the same way.

Whatever it was, I still drive by that house (my mom currently lives about 10 houses away on the same block!) and feel bad for the people in there. I hope they aren't wondering if they are crazy. I have since lived in more than a few places, none of which gave me the same feelings. The apartment we moved into was fine. My mom's house now is fine. I never got that tight feeling in my stomach that preceded a moment of paralytic fear. I wonder what it was, in that house, that felt the need to mess with us. Maybe it was a racist ghost who didn't like hearing spanish or seeing statues of the virgin Mary around her house. Maybe she's bitter about the husband's quick marriage after her death. Maybe it is all random coincidences and there was no haunting at all. Let's just say that today, if I hear something out of the ordinary, I go CHECK IT OUT. And I find myself calling out to nobody saying things like "You better find someone else to haunt, honey, because I do not have time for this bullshit today."

Invisible GIrl

Twilight Party cupcake
Originally uploaded by Retro Bakery in Las Vegas

I found these amazing vampire cupcakes on Flickr. They are by retrobakerylv.com

I want to try and recreate them for Halloween. Or you know, whenever. Anyone interested in trying my experimental vampire cupcakes??

I also started reading that book I mentioned a blog or two ago, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. I really got into the style of the author and the way she uses her own experiences in tangential, off-the-wall ways.. It is aimed at fiction writers, but really any kind of writer would enjoy it. Especially one full of anxieties and doubts like me.

Here's a quote I have been mulling over:

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life." Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived."

Dude, the voice of the oppressor totally rules my world right now. I am always trying to leave less mess to clean up, to be more accomodating, to be "good." I noticed lately that I am invisible girl. By which I mean that when I walk down the street or in shopping centers or on campus, I am totally not seen by those walking past. How do I know, you ask? Well they effing bump into me, like, totally surprised that I was in the way. I'm forever playing this game of chicken where I wait until the last minute to see if the person will register my presence. And I lose at that game always, because I move first. So as to be accomodating. Then I get angry at the person for taking up more space than is rightfully theirs. When really, I should be pissed at myself for not acting the same way. Or should I? Wouldn't this world be a nicer place to live in if everyone registered that other people exist and may need to get past, so look up dammit and move a smidge to the left?

People suck a lot of the time. Not always, but a lot of the time.

Writers Write

Sorry for not posting yesterday. I was under the weather, with a sore throat and achy muscles. I'm on the mend today, but I had to cancel classes yesterday, which always makes me unhappy. It just means more work. Reorganizing lectures and syllabi schedules. Blah. I got a chance to do some at-home work like reading.

I have been trying to post each day, and if I can't I attempt to post twice. It's part of my new mantra that will help get the dissertation done: "writers write." I made an agreement with myself to write each day and to really think about writing. I had hoped it would make me more articulate and communicative as a writer. So my intention was to strengthen the practical aspect of my work, and I've come to realize it has also strengthened the theoretical aspect as well. You see, much of the academic work I read is boring as hell. Now, that doesn't mean that the ideas in the work are boring or that the topic is boring, just that the writing is so unnecessarily difficult. Many of my students get disengaged from the academic articles I assign because the first paragraph is so wordy it's like the author wants to prove he or she passed the GRE. I want my writing to be accessible and still be able to discuss complicated topics. I think it would make academic work much more useful in the real world. It might also make it more difficult for readers to misinterpret your work, which is always a bonus when the media gets a hold of something academic and decides to "report." So writing in an interesting and engaging way is, for me, both a theory and a practice. I hope I'm getting better. A fellow blogger recommended this book on writing, and I ordered it from Amazon. It should be here by Friday. Anybody ever heard of it/read it? I'd love to hear reviews.

Now, on to more pressing business, True Blood gets better every week. I heart this show. Each week the characters grow more complicated and interesting. This Sunday was the best episode yet, in my opinion. If for nothing else than the scene where Lafayette verbally and physically puts three homophobes/vampirephobes in their place when they send back food because it "has AIDS on it." That scene will be my strength this election season, when commercials about "protecting the family" from homosexuality are running rampant.

You know what show has gotten better? The Big Bang Theory. I used to watch it because it was on before How I Met Your Mother and because it had David from Roseanne (who BTW is in an on-again-off-again relationship on the show with the gal who played Darlene!). I love nerds and nerd humor, so I thought I'd tune in. It was OK. I was annoyed by the Sheldon character right off the bat. And Leonard was super whiny. Like, way more whiny than David, which is saying something. But something happened. I grew to love the characters after they fleshed them out a bit. Sheldon is a crack up! I love his interactions with Penny. Last night's episode with the World of Warcraft storyline was comedy gold.

If you want to find Sheldon's T-shirts, Howard's belt buckles, or Leonard's hoodies, click here.

Debbie Downer

One of the best things about "summers off" is that I start to lose track of the days of the week. I always know when it's Friday or Monday, but those days in between-not so much. It's nice, and I'm sure several of you would like it if I shut up right now, but today it reminds me that I haven't done as much as I would have liked to by this point in the summer.

I'm spending most of the early morning writing and/or analyzing for the dissertation, but I'm forcing it and I am growing to resent it more every day. I used to be able to put my head down and write out a 20 page paper from start to finish in a relatively short time. Not so much anymore. I wonder what changed? It's like I can't stand my own voice. I wish there were personal trainers for this, who tell me when I can get up and get lunch and not to surf the web or check e-mail. I would hate that guy, but I'd have the damn thing done! I'm way more interested in my dog, who begs me to play with him all day. Maybe there's some form of hypnotherapy for this. "I am good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!"

I also haven't been to the gym in forever.

Wish I could get out of this summer funk.

Is it wrong to giggle when you notice that Seasonal Affective Disorder's acronym is SAD?