It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

One year ago today I drove to the PetSmart on the outskirts of town. I bought the cheapest cat carrier I could find, a large sized litterbox, litter scoop, food and water bowls, a bag of Science Diet, a bag of Greenies and a couple of cat toys. Later that afternoon I went to my friend L’s house and picked up an adorable orange ball of fluff. His temporary mommies were a little teary to see him go, but promised to visit. Then we drove around the block to my house.

Wash spent the first hour he was at my apartment searching for the escape hatch that was bound to take him back to L’s house. He didn’t find it. He eventually gave up and played with the toys I bought him, but truth be told he wanted nothing to do with me. Having spent enough time with cats I knew not to push it. I actually left for a little while to let him get acclimated. That night he tentatively climbed up on the bed with me after a while, only to be terrified by the sound of a passing train. He spent the rest of the night under the bed.

During those first couple days I tried desperately not to get attached. He had been living on the streets but didn’t have the behavior of a feral cat. The only clue at all was two other kittens of similar ages and descriptions found about the same time in the same apartment complex. My guess is someone dumped a litter. But at the time there was an add online looking for his owner and I was taking him to the vet to get checked for a microchip in three days. I told myself I’d be fine if an owner turned up. I was happy to have him, but it really wasn’t a convenient time for me to get a cat. And if he had a family that was missing him he obviously belonged with them. I really believed I was fine with the idea of giving him up until I was driving him to the vet that Monday. I looked over at him and he made one of his adorable little squeaks (he never has learned to meow properly and he has no clue how to hiss) and I thought, “what if I don’t get to bring you home with me today?” I nearly burst into tears.

Turns out I had no reason to worry. No microchip. He did think the microchip scanner seemed like an awesome toy, but no one would let him play with it. He was so excited when the vet offered him a little dish of canned food that he didn’t even notice when she gave him a shot as he ate it. When he stayed overnight a few weeks later for his little “procedure” he had charmed every tech in the place. Three women were crowded around him cooing at him as I took him home.

Yes, my baby’s a ladies’ man. He’s alternately a sweet little snuggle bunny and the jerk who punches me in the face when I don’t feed him often enough. But he also has magical anti-depressant powers and is largely the reason I have survived the last year. A few traces of his rough beginning remain: he will eat anything left unattended. And I mean anything. His favorites are peanut butter and anything made with chickpeas. Oh yes, he’s my cat. Sometimes he plays a little rougher than he means to—not his fault Mommy isn’t another feral cat. He loves to play with toys, plot the demise of the birds outside, and eat. And I like to think he likes his mommy pretty well, even though she doesn’t feed him enough and goes to work when she should be snuggling with him.

All told, he wasn’t the cat I was planning to get and it wasn’t the time I was planning to get a cat. But he was clearly the cat I was supposed to get.

Happy anniversary little Wash. Let’s hope we have many more to come.

The above is one of my favorite quotes from Farscape. For the life of me, I don’t know why I like it so much. There’s nothing super memorable or moving about the scene. In it, Crichton tries to explain away his willingness to work with his mortal enemy based on the fact that his species looks fairly human. Therefore talking to Crais is the closest he’s going to get to “guy time” with another human male: “I look at you, and I get homesick.”

But I think it is an apt description of the way familiarity, no matter how vague, can evoke the feelings of home. I found this with one of my coworkers who we will call, for purposes of this blog, M. M is from South Georgia. She has a heavy southern drawl and tales about her father’s backyard wine making operation and her grandmother taking gin soaked raisins for her arthritis. I’m not from anywhere near South Georgia. I’m not even from the Deep South. But I was raised by a Texan and a woman from South Louisiana. My mother also recommends gin soaked raisins for arthritis—and she’s a nurse! From a family standpoint I tend to think I’m as Southern as they come. Not Tennessee Williams Southern and not Jeff Foxworthy Southern, but something else entirely that you don’t see on television. And sometimes, I talk to M, and I get homesick.

Because now I live in the Midwest. And there are wonderful things about the Midwest, but it’s different. Compared to what I’m used to people here seem standoffish. No one ever smiles if they pass you on the street. The food is bland (and racism is at a level I’ve never witnessed before, but that’s another matter). My program seems to be full of people from the Midwest and the Northern Midwest, which is another region entirely, but just as foreign. I love most of my colleagues, but sometimes I feel like we speak a different language. We also have very different experiences (except for my one friend from Detroit who is the only other person I’ve ever met who was taught to kick out a tail light in elementary school. That’s another story too.)

M and I started grad school at the same time, so our first year here we had a lot of classes together. And since we both took the bus to campus we tended to get to class early, and we had a lot of time to talk. Later we were assigned to teach the same class, wound up with overlapping office hours, and had a lot more time to talk. M is an amazing person to begin with and I like to think we’d have been friends without the shared experience of being southerners, but it’s certainly helped. It’s like when I lived in Peru—I speak Spanish just fine. I would and could go entire days without speaking a single word of English. But sometimes I would be sitting in a restaurant or an airplane and hear someone next to me speak English, and it was so nice to be able to speak English for just a few minutes. That’s how it is talking to someone “from home” when you’re in a foreign land. That’s why it’s always been so refreshing talking with M when one of us says something about our family and then adds, “Well you know…” Because I do know. It’s nice to know when M says, “Well you know what the expectations are, being a Southern daughter,” that I know and she knows and someone gets where I’m coming from. All the good and bad that goes along with it.

M has just received an amazing job opportunity. One that fits perfectly with her experience and expectations and will allow her to get paid while doing her dissertation research. Unfortunately this means she’s moving this Summer. I’m thrilled for her. And on some level I’m a little sad for me. As it so happens, a lot of my friends are moving this Summer and next year will be different for me in a lot of ways. But somehow that little self absorbed part of me is extra sad about M leaving, because from now on I know when I get homesick I’ll be homesick alone.

Would we drink coffee with Juliette Gordon Low?

Kristy: Sure. Random fact:I was in a commercial about the Girl Scout’s 75th Anniversary. So I owe Daisy for getting me started in showbiz (not that I went very far, but still…) I was also a girl scout from Daisies to Juniors. I quit once I got to that age where other girls become unbearable to be around, but over all, I enjoyed it. But I also think I’d genuinely like to meet her. By all accounts she was witty and eccentric and seems like someone it would be fun to share a cup of java with. I’d like to see what she thinks about the current state of Girl Scouts. Is she satisfied that they’re much the same as they were in her day, or did she have bigger plans. In light of all that’s changed for women in the past century, would she have had them change as well. And I’d also like to hear what she has to say about growing up in the post-Civil War south, about her disastrous marriage, and anything else she feels like telling stories about.

Cammy:  Sure, I’m down with meeting her.  I mean, she learned to be a blacksmith to make her own property gates:  that’s the kinda gal who is totally worth hanging around with.  Coffee with her may or may not involve making or planning something, which is always fun.  Also,  I’m also a fan of scouting generally.  I, however, wasn’t a Girl Scout.  I was a Camp Fire Girl (which, strangely enough, was actually started as the sister organization to the Boy Scouts, 2 years before the Girl Scouts) instead.  This worked out well for me because in my town the Camp Fire girls were the hard-core outdoor set and I was all for that.  And that’s something I’m keen to talk to her about:  Girl scouts and Camp Fire have definitely made shifts and changes over the years in what kinds of activities they focused on, how they incorporate social changes, etc.  It would be interesting to see what she really thinks of these changes.  I’m fairly certain she would see some of the adaptations as a positive, but I wonder if she, like me, would be a little disturbed at the lack of real scouting and out-door education these days.  Sure, it’s there somewhere, but I’ve noticed with friends’ kids who are Girl Scouts and Camp Fire kiddos, there’s much less emphasis on getting outside and examining a bird’s nest  and I’ve yet to meet one in the last 10 years who really understands how to use a compass (last Girl Scout I met was working on a merit badge in Googling or something equally post-Digital Revolution).  Modern self sufficiency is definitely good, but would Ms. Low be shocked that it’s coming at the cost of some of the original scout/guide type activities?

So I was supposed to post on Thursday. I didn’t. I’d like to tell you I had a good reason, but… well actually, I did have a good reason. I had to finish my taxes. Yes, taxes aren’t due for a while, but my FAFSA was due on Friday, and I’m required to file a FAFSA as part of my department fellowship. What I don’t have is a good reason I waited till the last minute to do them.

I swear I didn’t mean to wait till the last minute. I tried to start them a while back, only I couldn’t find the interest statement from one of my banks. Wanna know why? Because they delivered it digitally. Which I would have known if I, you know, had a brain capable of remembering such essential information.

In a lot of ways my taxes were easier this year than in the past because both states in which I earn income are participating in the TurboTax Free File program this year. So because I’m poor (I mean that metaphorically, of course, because this year my income officially registers me as lower middle class. Something I have to remind my parents periodically when they make derisive comments about my career choices.) I can use TurboTax for free for all version. While that made things easier, what didn’t was my self-employed income. This year it was in the magic window in which I’m legally required to report it, but the group that contracts me does not have to give me a 1099. Which means if you don’t have an accounting degree, it’s really hard to figure out how to file it. Delay #2.

I finally got that all figured out, but had to figure out my self-employed expenses. Which meant car mileage. Which was in my car. Outside. In the dark. And the snow. So I decided to wait until the next time I went out to my car. But kept forgetting to get them. Delays #3 & 4.

The annoying part is that after figuring out my mileage I found out I was ineligible for the standard mileage deduction and since I don’t actually keep records of my gas money (standard mileage has always worked before) so all that was unnecessary. As was my work to show my eligibility for the EITC because I earned $60 too much to qualify for it.

And yet… for the first time since I started earning income in noncontiguous states, I’m actually getting a refund. So I won’t complain. (True, one of my state refunds is a whopping $4, but it’s better than the over $100 I had to pay last year.) So even if the time I spent doing my taxes (poetically enough, when I should have been writing up a time vampire of the week) included some missteps and stretched on longer than it should have, I’m not going to complain. You know that whole saying about what beggars can’t be…

Thursday I will face one of my greatest fears. Well… one of my greatest fears that isn’t alligators or crocodiles. (Don’t judge. Those things are relics of an earlier world. Much like Balrogs. And just as evil.) No, Thursday, for the first time, I will substitute teach.

I have a lot of teaching experience. I’ve taught high school. Middle school. I’ve taught middle school curriculum to overachieving eight year olds. I’ve adjuncted at the community college level and I’ve been a graduate teaching assistant. But I have never been a substitute. There are reasons for that.

Mostly because I remember how awful kids are to substitute teachers. Okay, at the end of the day, kids are awful to all teachers. But whereas with full time teachers they’re constantly testing the limits with subs they tend to assume there are none. I’d like to believe that it won’t be so bad since these will be college students, but I’m not holding my breath. Teaching any classroom full of undergraduates who aren’t majoring in the subject at hand is always hard. But with my own students I learn to read them. Thursday will be like the first day of class again, only without the benefit of ever moving beyond it.

Add to all the student bullshit the lingering feeling I’m going to screw up what I’m supposed to teach and ruin the curriculum for the rest of the semester. After all, I’m not going to be the one grading them. I won’t be there when they all get the same thing wrong to sit there and say, “Oh, you know what? That’s because I said XYZ.”

And the real reason I’ve never subbed before is this: you don’t even get paid well for it. At the secondary level subs tend to get paid about minimum wage. I’ll be getting paid in nothing but good karma and fudge.

Though to be fair… fudge is fudge. And I’m a broke grad student, contractually obligated to do most anything for free food. And I’m going to need the karma in a couple weeks. So heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to someone else’s work I will go.

It’s an Olympic year. It’s a Summer Olympic year which means that it’s that one year in four when some of you might actually watch gymnastics. As your resident somewhat more than casual gymnastics fan I feel like it’s therefore my duty to keep you informed so that when the Olympics do roll around you can act all knowledgeable when you’re watching with your friends who aren’t informed because they don’t read this blog.

One of the first major competitions of the year took place yesterday: The American Cup. While the commentators always go on and on about what a prestigious competition it is, it only rates as anything at all prestigious if you’re American. If you’re not American it’s sort of a joke. There’s a reason the fan communities on the interwebs refer to it as the “Scamerican Cup” or just “Scam Cup.” Americans are always over scored. For years only C list international competitors were invited; now they invite higher ranked gymnasts, they just don’t come.

Regardless, it does give us our first glimpse at many gymnasts for the season. And perhaps most importantly it gives the online gymnastics communities something to talk about. Because for months they’ve been making conversation about which gymnasts follow each other on Twitter and it’s gotten a little stalkerish.

As for what we learned:

American men tend towards some head case-ish-ness. (Don’t worry, one of them still won after magically coming from behind.)

The American women’s contingent is deep. The top three scorers in the women’s competition were all American. This is especially interesting since each country is only allowed to send two gymnasts.

Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas can both do Amanar vaults (round off on, two and a half twists off). Since conventional wisdom stated that Raisman could not make the team without one, this is big news for her. Also, she does insane tumbling.

Jordyn Weiber is not someone I would like to meet it a dark alley—seriously, girl is ripped. Even for a gymnast.

We need better uneven bars coaches in the US.

The Romanian women are making strides towards erasing the disaster they had at last year’s world championships, but they aren’t there yet.

And yeah… we don’t know much more than we knew last week. As far as who will make the Olympic teams, it’s way too early to tell. At least half the contenders will be injured by then. But message boards will be filled with daily posts of people analyzing the issue, saying who they’d put on their team, etc, etc. Fortunately they won’t have to obsess over this meet for too long as Pacific Rims are in two weeks and it will have much more to obsess over. (Don’t worry, you’ll probably get another blog post around then.)

Admittedly, I had the idea for this post yesterday, when it was 66 degrees. It’s now somewhere in the 30s here, so this seems less timely than it did yesterday.

My friends from Minnesota and Michigan have been complaining that we haven’t had enough of hard core winter. I’m just rejoicing that whatever winter we have seems to be on the way out. This means my life will improve in a lot of ways, but, perhaps most importantly, it marks the start of ice cream season. While I will generally eat ice cream any time of year if the mood strikes, even I eat more when I don’t have to bundle up in blankets to do so.

Last weekend I made my first sorbet of the season and it was a brand new, self created recipe that I think deserves to be shared.

Lavender Lime Sorbet

Zest and juice of four limes (this recipe also gave me an excuse to use the citrus press my sister got me for my birthday)

1 cup lime juice (you can use all fresh lime juice and I’m sure it would be better, but I’m broke and lazy, so I went half and half on the good stuff)

2 cups water

1 cup sugar (approximately. Some limes are tarter than others, so start a little under and add until it tastes a little sweeter than you want your end product to taste. Remember it will lose some sweetness in the freezing process.)

1 shot vodka

2-4 drops lavender oil

Mix all ingredients together and chill. When totally cold pour into ice cream machine and follow directions. Put in the freezer for about two hours to set. Enjoy.

I haven’t been sleeping much lately. Mostly this is from stress. I decided I need to do something to de-stress. My usual go-tos of alcohol and exercise weren’t helping, so I decided to try a strategy recently recommended to me by a colleague. I decided to try reading fiction. And since the piece of crap book I’m trying to slog my way through wasn’t helping either, I decided to pick up some new fiction.

I was at Target to buy a new flashdrive, and I had to walk by the books to get to electronics. I saw The Hunger Games on a display, and since the same colleague had also recommended this book, I decided to pick it up.

When I couldn’t sleep again Friday night I decided to start reading it.

Bad mistake.

At 4am I finally got to sleep.

The good news is I read it in two nights (I skipped Saturday). The bad news is that’s because I stayed up till 5:45am on Monday to finish the damn thing. Keep in mind I’m a sleep deprived narcoleptic who tends to fall asleep after five pages.

The question is: why?

Admittedly, the writing style has some minor issues. Most notably a tendency to break the “show me, don’t tell me” rule. And yet, I’m totally addicted. And unlike with Twilight I’m not even ashamed of being addicted. I’d blame this on social pressure, but you all know how eagerly I admitted my soap opera addiction, so that seems doubtful.

I could give you the answers everyone else seems to give regarding this book: the social commentary inherent in the dark future and the strong female character. Those are both true. I like that Katniss is not just a strong female character, she’s a well rounded one. Let’s face it—emotionally the girl’s a train wreck.  Understandably so.

But I think the truth is that the book actually does a remarkable job of blending plot and character. A lot of popular fiction these days is all about plot. Which bores me. A lot of other writers (myself included) get so distracted by character they forget they need a story. This book balances both forces perfectly. Enough that it can break my heart and keep my heart pounding for five hours.

Needless to say I can’t wait to read the other two books. But I’m not letting myself stop them till Spring Break. When not sleeping won’t be such a problem.

Would we drink coffee with Bernadette Peters?

Kristy: For context, she’s this week’s choice because tomorrow is her birthday and because I just rewatched the recording of the original Broadway Cast of Into the Woods. Hmm… I guess so. I have reservations because as much as I’ve enjoyed a lot of her work, I really have no clue what she is like in real life. But I guess the whole point of “Coffee with…” is to find out what people are really like (even if it’s all hypothetical) so why not? In addition to actually getting to meet her, you figure she’s got to have some great behind the scenes stories. Besides a respectable number of Broadway shows she worked on the movie version of Annie, Animaniacs, and Ugly Betty (just to give you an idea of the random assortment). You just know she has random bits of info on other famous people, trivia about this and that. I should prove to be interesting if nothing else.

*Speaking of random trivia: A woman behind the counter at a bagel shop once insisted she couldn’t comprehend my order (which I had given three times) because she was distracted by how much I looked like Bernadette Peters. This is amusing to anyone who knows me on account of the fact that I really don’t look anything like Bernadette Peters.

Cammy: Given that Bernadette Peters has done such a wide variety of cool stuff (ANIMANIACS!!!), I assume that she would be the kind of cool person you could have coffee with.  But, like Kristy, I know little about her other than her work in Animaniacs, Annie and Into the Woods.  And, on top of that, I’m Broadway Ignorant for the most part.  So there’s a definite intimidation and uncertainty factor here.  I think I’m in for at least buying her coffee as a salute for her work that I’ve enjoyed, but I’m totally prepared to scoot off to the other side of the Spacial Anomaly in the event that she’s not up to providing trivia and chatting.

So for part II of my changing the channel adventure, I decided to check out Days of our Lives. I didn’t really have much of a concrete reason for choosing this one other than the online buzz for the show at this point seems fairly decent.

I didn’t have any trouble figuring out what was going on. For the most part (more on this later). Just like in stereotypes they do a good enough job of working exposition into scenes that it’s easy enough to catch up. Even though there’s major plotline that seems to be referencing some deep history.

Over all, I’m digging the show a bit more than B&B (which annoys me since it’s twice as long). There are things I definitely like about it. I like that they’ve spent a lot of time dealing with the friendship dynamics between Abigail and Melanie. Abigail kind of grates on my nerves, but the big issue is that television usually gets so swept up in couple swapping that they forget to include non-sexual friendships. And friendships can be just as compelling dramatically. I loved watching Melanie listen to Abbey’s whole story about sleeping with her married professor boss. You could see Melanie thinking that her friend was crazy and stupid and yet trying to still be a good friend. A lot of us have been there. It was a nice touch of reality.

Other things I like: EJ is a wonderful villain. Smarmy and smug. Devious. But he’s also multifaceted—seems to actually have some sort of a heart and feelings etc. I was blindsided by the revelation that EJ and Sami had slept together (this is a big deal because they’re both married to other people) because ordinarily on soaps when people have secrets they talk about them constantly, loudly, in public locations. I’m amazed that the show enabled me to be surprised. Nicely done. On the other hand, I wasn’t entertained by Sami’s husband Rafe making out with her sister Carrie because they kept building and building to it, yet I don’t really see any chemistry between the two. I’m also incredibly sick of listening to Sami yell at people about it. I hate when television shows do this thing where they have characters have the same conversation over and over again and it goes nowhere. Oops, this was supposed to be the things I liked. I like Will. By which I mean Will is an obnoxious little punk, but that’s an accurate portrayal of a young man in his late teens/early 20s. Particularly one simultaneously struggling with being in the closet and knowing his mother cheated on the step-father he really likes with the ex-step-father he hates. I liked the corporate espionage storyline with Sami and Madison, particularly in the way it made it clear that people around the two women would not have been so upset out of similar behavior by men. Nice. I like that the professor sleeping with the student subplot didn’t go with the standard seductive teacher but when with the kinda psycho undergrad. (By the way, since you may not be watching, they didn’t actually sleep together, she’s just convinced him they did. He was actually too drunk to stay conscious that long).

Things I dislike: Stefano is simultaneously too much of a cartoon villain and not enough of a cartoon villain. It’s hard to do a fleshed out caricature, and they aren’t pulling it off. I’m not entertained by this whole subplot where Hope (who thinks she’s married to Bo) is actually married to John (who thinks he’s married to Marlena). I don’t care. I don’t get why they care so much. I just want it over. I don’t like the whole election storyline because I’m clearly supposed to be rooting for Abe, but I can’t get past is unethical behavior (he let someone give him the debate questions ahead of time while slipping his opponent fake debate questions). His whole logic that his opponent (the aforementioned EJ) was dirty and so he had to sink down to fight him at that level didn’t convince me. Nor did his desperation that EJ would do horrible things as mayor. Seriously, he’d just be mayor. Too my knowledge that doesn’t come with missile codes or anything. How badly could he screw things up in one term? I was relieved when Abe’s wife finally pointed that out to him, but not relieved enough to like this storyline.

So over all, I’m definitely liking it more that Bold and the Beautiful. But I’m not loving it. I’m not invested in it. When my DVR crashed and erased an episode I wasn’t that upset. I didn’t even go watch it online. Maybe investment takes time. I had half a lifetime invested in OLTL and I don’t expect to feel that for any other show any time soon. But I’m still trying to support scripted drama where I can. And I’ll admit I’ve been thrilled to see ratings for all the non-ABC soaps increasing while the ratings for ABC’s new reality show nosedive into the toilet.