Clucking Chickens

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I’m not going to be nice for a few minutes–try to contain your shock.

There is something that has always bothered me about being an English major. I can’t tell if it is worse in grad school or not. It is certainly more noticeable in grad school.

The makeup of the department (student-wise) is: a few guys, a few older women, and the clucking chickens. The clucking chickens are generally on the younger side in at least behavior and usually in age as well. These are the (mostly white) girls who are studying English because it is a genteel, proper, middle-class sort of thing to study. I can’t tell what most of them want to *do* with the degree. Some of them want to be teachers because it is a genteel sort of occupation. It is really fucking obvious that many of them consider teaching a reasonable thing to do before they get married. (*cough* I’m going to sit in my glass house and enjoy the weather now.)

But the point is that sitting in class with these chicks is often painful. They don’t talk, they squee in high pitched voices about, “OHMYGOD THE CRUISE I AM GOING ON THIS SUMMER IS GOING TO BE SO COOL SO I AM GOING TO THE GYM SEVEN DAYS A WEEK SO I CAN LOOK GOOD IN A BIKINI AND OHMYGOD I’M TOTALLY GOING TO STARVE MYSELF FOR A WEEK BEFORE THE CRUISE BECAUSE THAT WAY I CAN HAVE WAY TOO MUCH ALCOHOL AND NOT LOOK LIKE A BLOATED COW AND…” I don’t think they ever pause for breath. They make me twitch. (This was a conversation I had no choice but to listen to this week.) The room is generally divided into the silent half (the guys, the older women, and uhm… me) and the way-too-talkative half. The clucking chickens also have side conversations while the teacher is talking and that drives me batshit insane. It is so rude. I think this would bother me less if they were actually stupid, but they aren’t. They have interesting and insightful things to say during class. Why do they have to mix it with being the worst stereotypes of females possible?

*sigh*

Yay productive and House Guest Information

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Today I have done a bunch of reading. For the record: Northrop Frye may have one or two points that are interesting, but in the main he is a twat. The other critics I read today bothered me far less. I have also folded the laundry, made the bed (Arbus–I don’t know why you like making the bed, I hate it), cleaned up the kitchen after a weekend of use, and did a bunch of random picking up to allow the house to once again look “staged”–aka, boring. I’m all proud of me.

I have also been thinking about how I want to do more actual cleaning this week, partially in preparation for the open houses next weekend and partially because we will have a fabulous house guest. Very excited about hosting Brehen. 🙂

Which brings me to my point about house guests. I have had a number of people (it’s got to be close to 20 at this point) mention coming to visit us in Pittsburgh. This is awesome, wonderful, thrilling news for me to hear–but it also freaks me out and terrifies me. I’ll explain why. I am massively territorial about my space. I want things to be set exactly so, cleaned exactly so, and I want to feel like *I* have more history in my space than anyone else. This leads to all kinds of weird things about guests in my house in general. It’s part of the reason that I freak out about hosting events. I have slowly been coming to understand the depth and breadth of my neurosis on this topic as time goes by and more people want me to host parties/weekend stays/etc. I am not complaining about people wanting to visit me or stay with me or what have you. Really, I’m not. What I am saying is that in order for me to feel fully comfortable with that I need to be respectful of my own needs for boundaries.

Which brings me to the blunt part. I don’t want to host anyone for an entire weekend for the first six months we live in Pittsburgh. I may make an exception if there is some kind of emergency situation–but it would take something pretty damn extreme. I know that sounds like a long time, but it probably won’t feel that way to me. I want to settle in to my house slowly and feel like there is no pressure around needing to entertain anyone. I will also be settling into seeing how things work with the Lizard because if things go according to plan, the end of the six month period will mean the Lizard is only about eight months old. After that six month period I will probably be missing people like mad and I will be begging people to come stay with me. It’s just very important to me that I have it. I’ve told a number of people this individually, but I think that a couple of people felt like it was a personal rejection and it really isn’t. If I don’t want *you* to come stay with me ever I’ll bloody well tell you that. 🙂

So if you tell me “I want to come visit you” anytime soon I may cringe and say “Not until spring.”

Oh… unless you mean coming to stay at the Disaster House. Feel free to ask for that. I have all kinds of feelings about this house that mean I am not real attached to who stays here. 🙂

Stir crazy

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I think I am starting to have cabin fever. I went from a job where I saw at least 100 people a day to not interacting with anyone but Noah for days on end. I really like Noah, don’t get me wrong, but I can tell that I am wearing him out. I need too much attention. The problem is, I don’t really know what to do about it. I have tried scheduling dinner with someone and due to her having a severely impacted schedule and me having a few random things on my schedule (I’m busy 2, maybe 3 nights in a week) I’m not seeing her till the 29th. That isn’t feeling helpful at the moment. I don’t feel comfortable asking people to do things for some reason. All of the more ‘drop in’ social events don’t seem like a good idea. My friends groups revolve around dancing, sex, or drinking… none of which I am particularly up for at the moment. It doesn’t help that the idea of going to someone’s event means driving for a really long time so I can sit in the corner at the event and not really talk to people. I’ve noticed that most social events I only know 20%-30% of the people there and I am just not up for the emotional pull of trying to be outgoing and charming. That is hard for me. I’m not good at it.

It doesn’t help that by the time I hit the point where I am I am so completely overwhelmed by the base amount of effort of going out that I can’t bring myself to ask for help or for someone to met me halfway. I don’t have the energy for lots of effort and I don’t know how to have any other kind of interactions with people.

Maternity clothes

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It is starting to warm up a little and I am completely sick of wearing stretch pants and t-shirts every single damn day. Maternity jeans are not terribly comfortable. I want dresses. Before you tell me ebay–I’ve looked. I don’t like the selection in my size. Which means I am looking around online because every store I walk in to has 2-3 dresses and they’re ugly. I have a pretty good idea of what styles/cuts work on my frame but I’m having trouble justifying this outrageous cost to myself. Yet… dude. Some of these are damn cute.

Thoughts?

Dress #1 (Versatile and cute)
Dress #2 (So my style)
Dress #3
Dress #4 (Mouse over to see the other color)

Just noticing

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I met Noah just shy of four years ago. (It’ll be four years in another week or so.) He asked me to marry him ~ 23 months ago, so close enough to two years. Besides, even that time period where I wasn’t dating him I was still obsessed with him and writing g-blog entries about how in love with him I was.

I’m still giddy when I see him. I pine for him if he works too long on a given day. We still talk for hours and hours and hours about nothing at all. Pregnancy complications aside, I’m still madly in lust with him.

Is this still NRE? Or is this just our relationship? I don’t take him for granted. I’m soooooooo grateful that I have him.

I win.

Lessons learned.

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Today, today I learned the difference between POP and IMAP. I learned that downloading stuff off the server is not enough, it has to be moved into a separate folder. Alright, good information to have.

As of today I do not have any old email records. None. I guess I should think of this as a fresh start?

*head desk*

I would be more upset if I hadn’t done similar data-wiping moronic moves in the past. I just don’t seem destined to log old emails.

All + baby

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I told Noah last night that I really wanted to dance. He asked what the options were. I told him Merrie Pryanksters (I’m pretty sure it happened…) or BaGG. BaGG was the more interesting option. I had a lot of fun, he wasn’t miserable. We call this a win on a dance event. (He was so good. He played around, he tried to be social within the limited noise-allowance, and he flirted. So proud of him.) I danced! I didn’t feel sick! w00t!

Today I got my shiny new laptop!! YAY!!!! Which means that I get to start recollecting some of the stuff I haven’t bothered collecting in a few years because I figured I didn’t want to bother keeping it on a work machine.

So!

If I have ever had your contact information there is only about a 1% chance I have it now. Ok, I have phone numbers in my phone, but I don’t have addresses or email for almost anyone unless I have received an email from you pretty recently. It would be great to have that kind of data for people again. The comments on this post are screened so please give me whatever contact information you want me to have.

Yay!

Horoscope

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This week is fascinating.

Virgo: “Success means controlling your own time,” observed actor Rod Steiger. “If you gain control over 60 percent of the time in your life, you are really successful.” In 2008, Virgo, you will have far more power than you’ve had before to fulfill this definition of success. And right now you happen to be in a phase of your astrological cycle when your hard work toward this goal will have maximum impact. The ironic fact of the matter is that it’s an ideal time to slave away in behalf of greater freedom.”

Libra: “”When it comes time to do your own life,” wrote author Rosellen Brown in her book Civil Wars, “you either perpetuate your childhood or you stand on it and finally kick it out from under.” According to my analysis of the omens, Libra, you will, sometime in 2008, reach the pivotal point Brown referred to. And the coming weeks could be a big turning point. So which way will you go?”

How interesting. Given how much the next few weeks are pivotal to me wrapping up loose ends this is fascinating. Hm. Worth thinking on.

Thanks, Rob!

Progress

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Cause I may be working on less shy, but I’m not *that* forward. Mr. Chris has been taking pictures of me. I’m going to share some of them because I think they are neat!

Apparently people no longer assume that my journal is NSFW. I wonder when that happened. (I must be getting boring.)

So uhm yeah–warning, NSFW nekkid pictures ahead!

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Something I’m thinking about.

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Many of my friends are going through really rough/crappy stuff right now. Lots of the situations are things where generic advice/condescending comments are not helpful in the slightest. But some of the people going through unfun stuff are my favorite teenagers (you know, the ones who were given this lj handle…). Some of the reasons they were given this access is because they are a)interesting b)budding freaks c)thoughtful beyond their years, etc. Really, just fucking awesome people. (Maybe I’m biased.) Whereas I know that some of my friends are completely opposed to giving advice to teenagers, not all of my friends feel so limited. 🙂

So something that I would ask of my friends in general, because you are all a fucking interesting group of people, is what would you say to teenagers who are going to be the kind of people you hang out with in a couple of years? How did you get through being a teenager? How did you deal with depression? For my not-so-skinny friends (and hell, my skinny friends too) , how did you deal with the societal disapproval for not conforming to the conventional idea of beauty? How have you learned to like yourself more or come to terms with the parts of you that you don’t like (physically and otherwise)? Did ya’ll hold off on sex? Why? Keep in mind that these stellar kiddos are still legally minors so we can’t get graphic, but being honest doesn’t have to involve being inappropriate.

I will understand if people don’t want to comment, but it would be neat if you did. The kidlets may or may not respond cause they didn’t ask me to do this. I’m just pushy like that. 🙂 I will screen anything I think is inappropriate.

QOTD

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I’m looking for maternity dresses online because I can’t find anything I like in stores. I found an adorable dress, but the company only makes clothes going up to a pre-pregnancy size of 10. Uhm, that’s not me. I told Noah and he said:

“I think this proves they are poopy-heads.”

🙂

That’s that.

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My work email was shut off today. Guess I won’t be looking at it again. Oh well.

Current countdowns:
Con begins in: 14 days. Woof. Are we ready?
I have 13 more class sessions left on my MA. No pressure.
The comp exam for my MA is in: 9 weeks. I need to freakin read more. Stupid poetry.
The kid is due in: roughly 16 weeks.

It’s really interesting to be aware that once I finish the con, the MA, and have the kid I’m not on any time schedules for anything. We want to move to PA as soon as is reasonable, but we don’t have a firm date on this. We want this house sold soon, but there isn’t a mandatory date. I’m going to be just sort of floating in space. I don’t think I have had that in my life before. I have had periods where I knew I didn’t have to do anything for a month or two before the grind started again, but I have no grind to look forward to.

Holy shit.

Body image and sex and societal programming, Oh my!

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Recently one of my beloved g-bloggers brought up how she is going through changes in her body image/self-image post-baby and I didn’t comment at the time because I had too many thoughts to be able to make sense of them at the time. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then though and I think I am more able to be coherent.
(Nope, not sure I was more coherent. WAY long-winded and rambly. Ah well. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. 🙂

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I can tell this is going to be a heavy posting day…

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I’m getting ready to run away to buy books so I can started on my (mountain of) homework for this week. But before I do…

I generally work very hard to keep my mouth shut about politics. I find that the way that most people talk about politics is very difficult for me in a variety of reasons, so I am really picky about who I talk to about politics. But uhm…

I’m voting for Barack Obama. I have done more research on him than I have ever done on any other politician and everything I find makes me respect him more. He is the only candidate I have looked into who actually pushes for teacher accountability (now there’s a hot button for people). He is pushing for a lot of open government things that I believe in. And I’ll honestly say that listening to the man speak makes my eyes tear up and my heart soar. He has charisma oozing out of his pores. He inspires hope and I think our country needs that. I’m ok with people disagreeing with me and if you want to vociferously do so in comments I probably will read and not respond.

But yeah. He makes me hope and I think I need more of that in my life and in my country. I would encourage people who don’t know much about him to do some research and consider him as an option.

(Thanks for the reminder Cos.)

Observations

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Pittsburgh is cold.
Victorian houses are pretty.
I have massive inferiority complexes.
I don’t maintain an even temperament well when my sleep schedule is completely fucked up.
My cat really misses me when I am gone for the weekend.
I lap up praise from professors like it is the best ice cream on the planet.

And then, completely randomly, I was thinking about this other thing…
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