Where my idealistic rejection of artificial gender stereotypes breaks down

Yesterday I wore the black skirt I wear at least once a week, paired with an ancient black tank top.

L: I like that dress. You should wear it more often.

August 6, 2003

I’m reading An Alphabet for Gourmets, and it’s the kind of book of which every passage should be read aloud to someone or another.

In other news, I did not go to the beach today. Maybe tomorrow.

And I’m thinking more all the time about Chicago. It’s sad, talking to L about leaving, even if it’s a year from now and has to be done, but the sadness is counterbalanced by a near-constant stream of realizations that everything cool in the world is in Chicago. This American Life. Mimi Smartypants. Pound. Gaper’s Block. The kind of pizza I like. Plus, Chris is in nearby Madison, and Russell wants to go to Northwestern for grad school, and oh...I think I have a plan.

August 4th bleeds into the 5th

I just spilled a tall glass of water all over the linoleum by the water cooler. It was messy.

I've decided I do need to change the name of this site. I like Clever Title Goes Here quite a bit, and no longer wish to infringe upon that territory. Any awesome ideas would be much appreciated; you may e-mail me at Mooreel2@gwm.sc.edu. You may e-mail me even if you don't have an awesome idea. I am not yet so jaded a blogger that I'm not thrilled when someone's reading.

In less positive news, my Sketchy McMethHead liar ex-neighbor is back, and he wants me to unlock the garage so he can get get his stuff. I told him I didn't have a key, and warned my landlords he was back. I don't like it.

The bread was wonderful, and I pretended I was serving it to MFK Fisher, nicely buttered and used to soak up the tomato-garbanzo-fresh herb-balsamic vinegar thing. More butter, Mary? It’s unsalted. Yes, I remember you saying nobody ever invites you for dinner because they’re frightened of your status and knowledge of food. But I know how you appreciate simplicity. So thank you for coming, really. [Later: I do not mean, of course, that Ms. Fisher was nicely buttered. Damn this loosely edited medium.]

I went to campus, did a teeny tiny bit of work on the department webpage, and then came to plot how I might be able to subsist without working any more temp jobs until the first teaching paycheck comes in. I happen to have an emergency backup fund (which, in graduate student terms, means about two hundred dollars) stashed away in a Colorado bank, and if I can figure out how to withdraw it, I can make it for another three weeks.

“But Eva,” you say, “temping wasn’t that bad…you said so yourself. And you only tried one job. And it’s not as if you’re busy with other important things…”

Bah, I say. I have no good answer for you. I know not working will just plunge me deeper into the swamp of uselessness. But I feel these next two weeks are somehow sacred. Now that I have an assured Something To Do With My Life, at least for the next five months, and I know that the bills will be paid in due time, I feel I can actually enjoy this state I’ve been in for the last three months. Unemployment is heavenly when it has an end in sight. So I’ve been considering a few ideas:

1. Go camping at the beach alone for a few days. I can walk for hours on the beach, eat cheese, fruit, and wine from a cooler I plan to borrow from L, and write all the letters I’ve planned to write for the past year. I can take The Physiology of Taste with me and read it while I suntan. I can be alone and away from Columbia. Total estimated price: $20 gas + $20 food + $15 park admission = $55.
2. Okay, I don’t really have a second option in mind, but a list seemed like a good idea.
3. I have to do something, though. I can’t sit here making fun of the cat for two weeks without A Plan. So…what? Paint the living room? No; my landlords would not approve. Caulk the bathtub? Get drunk? These all cost money. The bills continue to pile up: important things like the light bill, and less important things like my membership in the Linguistic Society of America, no longer at the discounted student rate.
4. I do have, of course, a million ideas for novels and articles and the like, but I have the distinct feeling that I will not work on any of them here in my hot, humid Columbia home.

I am making bread. I used a little of the now-rejuvenated sourdough starter, a bunch of wheat flour, ample molasses, and other various good things. Except yeast, of course: I completely forgot yeast. I noticed this when my dough had not risen one centimeter after almost an hour. Fortunately, I caught it in time. Everything will be fine now.

I’d like to expand that into a grand metaphor for my summer, my unemployment, and my uncertainty about whether I should keep teaching: I caught myself in time to add yeast, and now I will rise and flourish and be very tasty. But that would be silly.

How humid is it here? It is so humid that matches often do not strike. I’m not kidding.

Hooray for pre-internet friends who are now internet friends: I introduce Liz.

August 4, 2003

Saturday afternoon, L and I went to a wedding reception way out in the middle of the swamp. It was at a hunt club accessible only by many miles of dirt roads. The club itself was mostly a concrete platform and screened eating area with picnic tables. Three ancient men in suspenders were playing bluegrass on rickety chairs. I walked out on the dock and looked at the black, oily swamp water and the cypresses. The woman running the open bar made me the strongest gin and tonic of all time. There was a roasted wild pig, and coleslaw, and apple pie and corn and watermelon. And it was all perfect, actually – so calm, so right, with the band quietly playing Salty Dog and You Are My Sunshine and women with big hair gathering around the barrel full of ice and cans of Budweiser.

Since I moved to the South, I have never felt so comfortable with adult Southerners as when we are all eating and drinking somewhere out in the country. And yesterday, with the women in sundresses, everything like a scene from Picnic, I felt comfortable with them yet again.

We played a decent show that night, and Aaron and his band came to town, so it’s been a good weekend. We had burritos and beer for lunch on Sunday. I felt unentertaining, but the band seemed content to lie around my apartment reading for a few hours. I called Michael to go to the show with me. It was delayed three and a half hours...Michael and I wandered up and down the block, then sat at the bar and drank beer. This was good; we’d been planning a date soon anyway. Aaron and I nerded out over Harry Potter, which made me happy. Played some nude Photo Hunt. The place was swarming with hardcore youth in full hero-worship mode…kids in black waiting in line for Aaron to write BEER SLUT on their knuckles, teenage girls gathered around Jeremy. I felt very much like an old lady, but was refreshingly unconcerned about it. Finally the show began, but I left after The Great Redneck Hope, because I was starving. Ate and drank beer with L. And now here it is another week.

Why temp work might not be a good idea for me: When someone calls me early in the morning to ask if I want to do some work, my natural and immediate answer will be no. Given the choice, having had no coffee yet, perhaps still in bed, I do not want to go anywhere or do anything. These things have to be arranged ahead of time.

Roper Staffing called this morning at 8:30 or so, and I did not pick up the phone. My excuse is that I still have some work to do on campus. And I do…

I’m feeling awfully wistful. Seeing Aaron on tour, thinking about him and Bettina, getting an invitation to HighLifeapalooza…it’s making me want to A) go on tour, and/or B) be crazy in love and drive around the country with that person.

I thought Ronnie was playing with a mouse, but it was a jalapeno she’d knocked off the table.

Food notes:

1. I bought a small wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano yesterday. Since reading Jeffrey Steingarten’s latest book, which contains a chapter all about this cheese, I’d been intending to try it. I can’t tell if this is from a superior round or not. Nearer the rind it seems kind of waxy and clunky-tasting, but nearer the interior, it’s pretty amazing: the salt crystals are big and give the most satisfying tinkly crunch, and the cheese flakes apart and melts when I touch it with a knife. It makes my mouth itch slightly.

2. I am coddling my sourdough starter, feeding it every few days and observing carefully. This is the most Spartan of starters – since my mom gave it to me five years ago, I have used it only a few times a year, never feeding it in between. I carried it all the way across the country, nestling it each night in a hotel bucket full of ice. It’s used to the hard life; I think it rather enjoys it, actually. But I pulled it out last week, and something seemed different. There was far more liquid on top than usual, and the gray was a lot darker. When I fed it and left it on the counter overnight to increase, it produced only a few weak bubbles. Now, I remember my parents’ friend Jack saying years ago that starters are usually fine to use unless you see pink or red in them. So I was not worried about contamination, though Jack could be wrong, I suppose. I was worried that the yeasties had been too long isolated and starved…they had died, or were producing runty, delinquent offspring. I fed it again, and have fed it every few days for a week. It’s gradually getting stronger, the odor cleaner and snappier and the bubbles larger and more numerous. I just hope it doesn’t get used to the soft life.

3. In the midst of all this gourmet activity, I was overcome by a powerful Taco Bell craving today. This is more or less an annual event. This was the wrong day for it: I was already feeling blobby and gross, and the show was exactly the right number of hours away to guarantee that I’d be a very unpleasantly stinky stage companion. But I caved in. I drove around town listening to a very old tape from John: Sunny Day Real Estate, The Lemonheads…imagine! I sang and grumbled and went to the Taco Bell drive-thru. I ate my seven-layer burritos before I’d hit the third stoplight.

And I remembered a Taco Bell trip long ago in Durango. It was the summer Aden and I lived together, I filling in as surrogate roommate. The afternoon started like this: I was washing my hands in our bathroom, dropped the towel, and reached under the sink to retrieve it. Standing up, I hit the front top part of my head firmly on the bottom of the towel bar. It hurt like hell. I put my hand up there (why is there always the impulse to clamp tightly on an injured body part?) It was wet. I took my hand away, and it was drenched in red. My mouth dropped open… and then blood actually spurted from my head. I remember that; it shot forwards out of my head and hit the pale beige carpet. This is why carpet in bathrooms is one of the three worst ideas ever. I yelled Aden’s name, turned the shower tap on, and stuck my head under it. The bathtub quickly turned red; there was blood all over my face, and when Aden reached the bathroom, she just stared. Head injuries are deceptive, though. My head hurt from the bump, but there was only the smallest of gouges in the skin, a tiny chunk of missing hair. There was a sting and a raw coolness, but no major pain. My skull was not visible through the scrape. It bled, and bled, and I ran the coldest water I could handle on my head. When the bleeding slowed slightly, I put on a bandanna over a wad of toilet paper mushed against the cut.

And then John knocked on the door. We’d been planning to feed a Taco Bell craving, and he’d been on his way over when I’d so spectacularly painted the bathroom the colors of a contaminated sourdough starter. And we went. I ate a dairy-free seven-layer burrito, sitting on the curb in my bandanna, carefully monitoring my thoughts for signs of concussion and feeling pretty good about everything.

Must play show! Ack.

August 2, 2003

I’ve had the kind of twenty four hour period that leaves me fairly unimpressed with my life. I meant to clean the house while listening to This American Life last night, but instead lazed on the couch drinking wine. L and I rented movies and drank Schlitz. Night of the Hunter is pretty incredible: very creepy in an understated way, very odd with its conflicting messages about morality, very open about sex for the 1950s. Then, we watched And Now For Something Completely Different, which, strangely, I had never seen. Fell asleep too late. Woke up too late. Am drinking too much coffee and still not cleaning the house. I should accompany L to a wedding today for people I met once, briefly, and didn’t think much of. We have a show, and I should practice. We won’t get to warm up because of the wedding, and we always suck for the first several songs when we don’t warm up.

So, the cat and I are sitting here being hot and grumpy together. It is sticky today.

Russell writes that Rob Cockerham is in his Friendster network. Mary informs me that one of the Hanson brothers is connected to us. I found a woman yesterday purporting to be an 'elfin warrior of light'. When will the fun stop?

Later

Here's my favorite recent excerpt from Aaron's tour diary:
[They were playing in Providence, and the other bands were described as follows] South Shore kids from Massachusetts with big muscles and 'tude. They play, to wit, "Tuff-guy haaaaaadcore." Fucking ex-football team retards, each and every one, and there were seven bands worth. Here's some of the gems that took place during the bands:
"Fuck this place up, you fucking faggots!"
"This song is called 'Internet Thug.' It's about internet faggots."

When John lived in Providence, he made all these hardcore friends, many of whom just sounded like stupid jock assholes to me. So this rings true.

I am really grumpy about the head of my department right now. Every time I think I'm getting over being sick of him, he does something else dickheaded. As soon as he heard I was graduating, it seems, he removed me from the online student list and did not transfer me to the alumni list. The new department newsletter contains no mention of the department award I and another student won in the spring. I feel ridiculous for complaining about not being recognized, but my indignation is on behalf of others, too: it would kill him to give a compliment unless NAGPS or the university president was listening, and he pretends to be such a friendly little guy. Insincere motherfucker. Grrrr. The smartest thing I ever did was find another advisor. Then graduate school became everything I ever wanted it to be...well, at least the discussions with my thesis director over coffee. Next time, though, I'll find a program with students who have a clue.

Goodness! I didn't know this was all lurking in there.

My landlady handed me twenty-five bucks when I walked in to pay the rent today. Apparently someone I referred has ended up with the apartment next to mine, and this wins me a referral fee. I love my landlords. Sorry, Bettina.

Final giggle-worthy item: The wonderful Annals of Improbable Research people have compiled a list with one simple premise: it consists of scholarly articles published by G. Bush. That's all. But the improbability of seeing George Bush as an author of "Activation of Distinct Motor Cortex Regions During Ipsilateral and Contralateral Finger Movements" kept me amused for several minutes.

August 1, 2003, early

Why does L have to work at 8:00 in the morning? It sure screws up my sleep. I was dreaming about polar bears this morning between more lucid moments of watching him put on his Friday casual clothing. Know what? As a teacher, I can in theory wear whatever I want, and my nice zoris will definitely count as 'dressed-up'.

So, polar bear dream: This was all preceded by some hiking and some meeting up with my parents. But then I was on a frigid, gloomy, half-lit wasteland of snow with a group of polar bears, and I was getting ready to give birth. I agreed to have my babies with the polar bears (what do you call a group of polar bears?) if they'd promise to take me to a hospital if anything unexpected happened. They were reciting some strange slogan which I can't remember, or maybe wearing T-shirts of it, and I asked what they knew about it. Turns out that when they were migrating (yes, I know polar bears don't migrate) to Antarctica that year (this involved swimming a long, long way), they'd run across a thick stream or sort of solid wall of trash in the ocean that had been thrown off a boat. It made them sad and angry, so they took the slogan off a piece of the trash and used it as a sort of anti-trash, save-the-oceans slogan. I wish I could remember the slogan; it was totally unsuitable, like maybe something about free checking, and I think maybe I'd written it and thrown it away myself. Anyway, since this was taking place in the late 1800s, I think, there wasn't much awareness of not littering...but I knew in the dream that those polar bears actually had managed in later years to get boats to stop dumping their trash overboard.

Where's Colin when you need him? Or even someone who knows who Colin is?

Russell finally updated Gangway!, and is also selling the camper.

July 31, 2003

I just made an enormous decision about twenty minutes ago. I signed up to teach three sections of English 101 this fall, keep the same office (though I will share it with a certain Mark, which I imagine will generate pages of hilarious and/or frustrated entry space), and be paid as an adjunct instructor at least through this fall. I don't know what made me decide so suddenly that I could do this, or that I wanted to. Maybe it was three days of the thick whump of file folders hitting the floor as I tossed them into piles, dust clogging my sinuses. Maybe it was coming home having done nothing whatsoever to directly make the world any better. I know it had something to do with spending sixteen hours reading about Hogwarts. I am a nerd.

I finished The Order of the Phoenix at about 2:30 AM. It took 16 hours to read it, which works out to around 55 pages an hour. That's 16 reading hours, mind you...total time elapsed since I checked it out was 32 hours, since I had to sleep, work, practice, and get drunk with Will after practice. And oh, it was so good. The career advice sections really got to me, as did the struggle between the liberal, enlightened academe (Hogwarts) and the lame, corrupt government (The Ministry). So, yes, the new Harry Potter convinced me to get back to teaching college English.

Well, the email from my old student convinced me, too. I'm still blown away that she contacted me. I don't think I could do the same in her position. It's weird to have a hero who is a sophomore in college and failed my class.

There was a third factor: I found my student evaluations from last semester, and they're really good. So I know I can do this. My favorite comment: I grade and return papers with "superhero quickness".

Other news: we have a show this weekend, and I'm nervous about it for the first time in a while. I know why, and it's stupid. Aaron's band will be in town the same night, playing two doors away from us, and we're going to try to catch each other's shows. And I know for an absolute fact that they will hate us. That's fine: I'm no hardcore fan, so have no context in which to judge his band, and I don't expect everyone to like ponderous, pretty-melodied, guitar-soloing indie rock. I don't even like us sometimes. And usually it doesn't matter that some people don't like us, because of course other people do, and they come to shows and say nice things and play our record on the college radio. But we play just the kind of thing Aaron and his band make fun of, and I do so want him to like what I'm doing. I kind of hope he misses the show. But I'd like to see his.

July 30, 2003

It's about to rain here. It's gray and sticky, and my head is throbbing. This could be because I stayed up until 3 AM reading the new Harry Potter. I knew this would happen. I put off picking up my reserved copy from the library until I'd finished the mortgage company job. Got it after work yesterday, and now my life is in shambles. I'm on page 654. It's really good.

I did tear myself away long enough to head up to campus and my soon-to-be-vacated office. Had a wistful cigarette with my old boss, Mila. Checked all the usual blogs, sites, and boards; two days away has left me feeling quite Friendsterless. I have to clean out this office this weekend, and I'm not looking forward to it. I COULD teach, I guess...and maybe I should. But I'll need several classes to make it worth the time, and am unsure I'll get that many. And I'd have to whip up lesson plans right quick. Still, after three days of commuting through the mall traffic, numbly stacking dusty file folders, and peering at sales projection charts on cubicle walls, I may stick around here after all.

I have been getting good compliments from people lately, though. The mortgage people said they were sad when I left, and the First Year English program people like the work I've done on the department website so far this summer. So my self esteem should be in good shape, dependent as it always is on the approval of others, but since I don't know what to do next, I'm still not feeling that great. If I don't get assigned temp work tomorrow, I will go for a long hike at the swamp and try to really decide something.

Some girls who live here and run a website have asked me out for drinks, and I am way flattered. I've never met them, but they are tough and funny, from what I know of them on their message boards. I want girly friends here in Columbia like nothing else. But I'm nervous about the feeling of being on display...they only know me through posts, in which I think I am much funnier and wiser than in person. So, in all likelihood, I will drink too much and have a great time, then feel icky the next day. Anyway, no date has been decided yet, so there's no worry yet.

Everything that was once here has been moved to here. I expect to do this once a week or so.

Aaargh! In addition to the awful popups you readers have to contend with, you will apparently also be subjected to the horrors of Garamond for some time to come, as this free hosting site will not let me change my stylesheet. Look at the banner ad; it's even usurped the sheet for its own evil purposes. And now that I realize how much I hate Garamond on the web, especially the capital letters, I am stuck with it, as well as the enormous font size. I could override it in the html, I guess, but that would make ugly code. Which is worse? What shall I do?

Wait...never mind.