Sunday, November 25, 2007

cat-lady-in-waiting

Yesterday I decorated my apartment for Christmas, which I wasn't going to do, because who was I going to do it for, just me? The theory being that, instead of making me feel cheerful, decking the halls for just yours truly would be a bit depressing. Au contraire. It's cute in here, and it did improve my state of mind.

Thing is, though, I woke up this morning with the following thought: What if it isn't cute in here at all? What if someone else came into my apartment, which I think looks just fine, took one look around, then dialed the nearest mental institution? Like maybe I'm like that guy in 'A Beautiful Mind' or something. I hide it well enough for my students and the neighbs and the people I see in public or over at their houses, and meanwhile my surroundings look perfectly normal to me, because I'm CRAZY, and my dog doesn't care anyway, 'cause he's a dog, but step into my apartment and blammo, it's cuckoo time.

I heard this archived This American Life episode the other day? About obsession? Where this woman beaded a kitchen? That is to say, she covered every surface in the whole room -- appliances, walls, everything from soup cans to nutcrackers -- with tiny glass beads. This took five years, so I don't think I'm quite there yet, but this line of reflection has me somewhat concerned. I'm not scared of becoming one of those cat ladies, you know, the ones who live alone except for those nine hundred cats or whatever, but mostly I'm not scared because I'm allergic to cats. If I'm not careful, that could become the only thing stopping me.

So I guess I need to do two things: first, I need to stop living alone before my idiosyncrasies totally take hold. I need there to be someone else here to walk in on me and say, "what on God's green earth are you DOING?" before it's too late for that to make any difference. Second, I need to sit my ass down and write Chapter Three already, because this Christmas decorating, senseless shopping, loafing, munching, special-features-watching, may all be just one great big evasive tactic aimed at not working on my thesis.

Which reminds me.

Friday, November 23, 2007

happy t(of)urkey day

That's my attempt at a politically correct Thanksgiving salutation, something along the lines of "Season's Greetings".

Thanksgiving has never been one of my favorite holidays. In fact it's mostly caused me anguish over the years, not only because of its dubious historical premise, but also because it's a holiday based on prolonged sessions of overeating followed by hours of lethargy, also the Detroit Lions.

Not to mention that most often, folks have the good sense to prepare a whole lot of coffee for all the guests, of which I end up drinking more than my fair share. So I'll have like six cups of coffee with my pumpkin pie, then I'll walk into the room where everyone is in a post-Thanksgiving-dinner carbohydrate stupor and go, "What's WRONG with you people?! Don't you want to DO SOMETHING?! Bleeeaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!" then promptly go into cardiac arrest.

By that measure, this Thanksgiving was not only painless, but even enjoyable. There was a hootenanny {sic}, a kitten, lots of knitting, and booze. Also these praline things that were addictive. The neighbs monitored my coffee intake so I didn't go berzerkers.

Hope yours was good too.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

really this is just a way for me to flaunt that I chat with Japan

I was chatting with a friend of mine this morning (who's in Japan, I'll hasten to say, just in case anyone thought they were being alluded to), who was reeling from the fact that he had just advised one of his friends to divorce her husband. I don't really believe in divorce, he said, and I was the first to tell her she should get one. The punchline is that my friend, himself, is divorced. And now he and I have this weird thing in common, which is this creepy tendency toward divorce evangelization.

I remember when I first noticed that the words "ditch him and move on" had become one of the things that, if I were one of those novelty dolls with a string you pull, would be one of the half dozen phrases I would utter (go ahead and take a deep breath and read it back, it makes sense I swear). I was really shocked at myself. At first I thought I had become one of those self-righteous, man-hating bitter women and was trying to bring everyone around to my own jaded view, but I don't hate men and I don't feel bitter or jaded, so I realized it can't be that simple.

It also occurred to me that perhaps it's easier for other women to open up to me about their relationship problems when they know I'm divorced, because they expect I'll be able to relate better than someone who has one of these Donna Reed-type marriages. Maybe it makes me more approachable, maybe they think I'll be more receptive to the messages they've been sending themselves. And my answer has a tendency to be "ditch him and move on" because in reality that's precisely what they've decided in their hearts, it just took the right listener to unlatch and authorize that feeling. Gosh, I can certainly sleep better at night with that explanation.

I love it when people work it out, which certainly happens. I give infinite credit to those who share enough love and trust to make a go of it. I hate it, however, when people lament that couples today get married thinking that, if it doesn't work out, they'll just pop down to the corner store and get them a DEE-vorce. No one who has experienced the anguish, fear, abysmal loneliness, hurt and vertiginous self-confrontation of a divorce would ever think that it could be taken so lightly. In fact, I think divorce is something people often enter into with a considerably greater degree of deliberation than marriage or parenthood. Which is a shame, because if people thought harder about those other things before they did them (and I do not exclude myself from this), maybe there would be less divorce.

It would be the height of cynicism to marry someone for any reason other than wanting to spend the rest of your life with that person. But what if it turns out you were wrong about that? Do you then have to stick out eternity making each other miserable? Do you forever deprive yourself and your partner of a shot at real happiness because of a severe early miscalculation? It's not that I think we have any inherent right to happiness, but not to try for it is just so... chicken-shit, I guess. Make no mistake, divorce doesn't absolve you of your responsibility to better yourself and confront your demons. By itself, making that break doesn't solve anything... but then, neither does just staying together. And from that standpoint it's a lot harder to be self-congratulatory about divorcing than about "sticking it out for the sake of the kids, the dog, etc". If you're busy feeling Quite the Hero for deigning to stay in your relationship, forgive me for saying so but you're unlikely to turn it around.

It also occurs to me that my pat, "ditch-him-and-move-on" response comes from the fact that I, myself, gambled on happiness. It wasn't pretty. I hurt somebody I loved, big-time. I will never again be one of those people who can say they have no regrets. There's puh-lenty I'd take back if I could. But what it comes down to is that I'm a better person now, and that I'm happy. After all the pain and fear and ugliness I both perpetrated and felt, I'm happy, so when somebody comes to me and says, ohhhh, I'm sooooo unhappy, blah blah blah, I get impatient. Stop bitching and do something about it, I want to say. For me the outcome of having been through a divorce is that I'm much more tolerant of people's shortcomings in general, having bunked in with some of my own, but much less tolerant of people who wallow in their unhappiness.

Truth is, it's an easy enough thing to pledge 'til death do us part' when you've never experienced eternity in the day-to-day. Some people know themselves and their partner well enough to get that right the first time, or they stumble into a good thing out of sheer shiny-cheeked optimism or dumb luck. Others, like me, need first-hand experience of something like eternity to decide with whom we should spend it. So that, next time, hopefully I can say: even knowing what spending-the-rest-of-my-life-with-you feels like from moment to moment, I'm just crazy enough to want to give it a try.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

the first step is admitting your dog has a problem

It's three-thirty in the morning and I'm fast asleep, until I feel the dog jump off the bed and slink out of the bedroom. Oh well, I think. He probably got too hot under the covers and went to sleep on the couch for a while. I try to go back to sleep, but I'm interrupted by what sounds like someone drop-kicking a bee-hive, which turns out to be a very frustrated warbling, growling noise from my dog. Huh, I think. He must need to go outside.

So I open the door to let him out, and he stands there and looks at me, dumbfounded. Which does not altogether surprise me, since it's raining. Go on, you pansy, I say, a little rain won't hurt you. He obediently walks outside, then stands in the driveway pointedly not doing his business until I offer to let him back in. Guess that wasn't it either, I think, and check food and water bowls to make sure they're well-stocked. They are.

Perhaps if I just crash out on the couch with him, I think. So I curl up on the loveseat and offer him some space under the afghan. He considers this for a moment, then jumps up and settles himself in for no more than six seconds or so before hopping back down onto the floor. I hear his toenails clicking on the kitchen tile, then comes one exasperated WOOF! and suddenly it all becomes clear to me.

My dog has awakened me in the middle of the night to play with the stuffed hedgehog that lives on top of our refrigerator.

This is not the first hedgehog Grendl has had. This is Hedgehog Version 4.0 at least. Previous hedgehogs have been carelessly left within Grendl's reach and mercilessly devoured, which is why this one lives on top of the refrigerator. Actually, Hedgehog Version 3.0 lived up there too, but one day when I could no longer stand Grendl's withdrawal symptoms I delivered 3.0 into his loving jaws and bought myself a night's worth of peaceful study time while the dog silenced the squeaky plastic bubble buried inside his toy once and for all.

The funny thing is, a good deal of time elapsed between the demise of the last hedgehog and my purchase of this one, yet Grendl cruised the fridge at least once a day in the intervening months. He was like one of those faithful believers who worships the produce section where the Virgin Mary was supposed to have appeared in someone's potato. And, sure enough, after a dry spell, Hedgehog once again materialized on top of the refrigerator to reward Grendl's loyalty.

It's great knowing that there's one surefire way I can endlessly entertain my dog. The problem with Hedgehog is he's disgusting. They say dogs' mouths are cleaner than humans' and from this standpoint, handling Hedgehog's crusty fur, matted and brown with saliva, is enough to make me want to do a Listerine keg-stand. Even more troubling, though, is the way the scant few minutes Grendl spends each day with Hedgehog eclipses all other pleasures. His poor rope toy lies abandoned. He'll tug on it for a moment, but loses interest quickly, gazing wistfully at the refrigerator instead.

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It's hard to know what to do as a pet owner. I long for the days before Hedgehog ever entered our lives, when the most interesting thing to materialize in the vicinity of the refrigerator was sausages. There's a simple enough way to finish off Hedgehog 4.0, but I know the dog will faithfully wait for Hedgehog to rise again. And you know, he's probably right, because when you believe in something that hard, your mom will probably cave in the next time she goes to buy you Milk Bones.

Monday, November 5, 2007

in search of Walla Walla

There really is a Walla Walla, you know. It's in Washington. It's very pretty, at least on GoogleEarth, in the Columbia River valley. It's also home to Whitman College, one of around sixty places I'm in the process of applying for a job. But for me and the neighbs, "Walla Walla" has come to stand in for "wherever I get a real job, most likely far, far away from here". And Walla Walla seems to loom large in most of our conversations lately.

I've been schlepping out these resumés, oscillating between the terror of leaving this town after eleven years and the tedium of assembling and mailing out parts of my portfolio. And the kicker is that where I go isn't really up to me, but instead depends on where I'm needed, so every time I drop a new round of envelopes in the mailbox I have to wrap my mind around what my life would be like a year from now if I ended up in L.A. or Miami or Burlington or Eugene or Newport News.

So far I haven't had to apply anywhere I simply couldn't imagine making a life for myself, although it's hard to tell. I look at the Michigan schools on the list, and they seem perfectly innocuous in black and white. But how do I know that I haven't accidentally applied at the Pennsylvania, or Louisiana, or Utah equivalent of Alma College? Not to say anything against Alma, it's just I'm willing to bet I'd have a significant commute if I craved sushi at 12:30 a.m. (or p.m, for that matter).

In lieu of a fool-proof method of ensuring I don't end up someplace sucky, I've come up with a no-K policy. I have yet to apply to any university in a state whose name contains the letter K.

Think about it.

I'd very much like to end up somewhere a reasonable person might reflect, "I wonder if I will need my snowbrush this year". I'd prefer a blue state, and I'd be willing to use the word "y'all" but not to the exclusion of "you guys". I'd rather be a Tarheel than a Buckeye, but I'd much sooner be a Buckeye than a Hoosier. Then again, having spent a significant amount of time among adjunct and part-time university instructors lately, trying to get them to unionize, I guess I'd settle for anywhere that had health insurance and a decent salary.

Unless of course it's in Texas.