Shakespeare Kitsch

What this has to do with anything about Shakespeare, his plays, Tudor England, the Renaissance, or anything related to Henry VIII, is beyond me:

Perhaps you need a Shakespeare Kleenex dispenser when a rose by any other name not only smells as sweet but also aggravates your allergies? Or would that be quintessence of dust causing you to sneeze? Maybe you require a tissue to wipe out those damn spots? Or meeting noses trade common colds? Did Titania have an allergy to animal dander in earlier drafts? What a piece of work is man, how infinite in faculties to create the baseless fabric of this vision!

More Obama Kitsch -- The Gift that Won't Go Away!

If I try to write a real post, I'll just bitch and bitch and bitch and bitch and I really am sick of hearing myself bitch about the same ole same ole 5/5 too many students who need too much personal attention and an upper-level administrative culture that preaches "online" as the cure-all but an online system that regularly invokes the F-word once an hour before noon.

So, here is more Obama kitsch. It just keeps on keeping on, doesn't it?

Your very own plush president:
A Michelle Obama action figure. You could buy her in several different dress styles!:
"Terrorist fist bump" shot glasses:

Awesome!

Obama the superhero:
I know he works out and all, but he's a naturally skinny dude. I'm not sure even steroids could givehim that physique.

Hmmm... "One of these things is not like the other things. One of these things just doesn't belong":
That's Bush II, Reagan, Jefferson and Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, Dr. King. All rendered as bobbleheads. Makes you wonder what happens at night, a la Toy Story or Night at the Museum.

I Should Be Grading!

I should be grading.

I have the paint. I have the rollers and pans and brushes -- make that: the roller, the pan, the brush. I have the step ladder. I have the blue tape. I just haven't found a spare second to do the actual painting. Story of my life.

Meanwhile, although running eight miles at a time was my goal for December, I have already achieved it. I'm about 2 lbs. short of my not-really-a-goal-but,-really,-it-was-a-goal of losing weight.

By the time the weight got to something I considered acceptable for a woman over 40 and the number of miles became something impressive, I found myself at a crossroads. One road led to eating disorders. Being as I was a fucked-up, white girl in the suburbs with serious control issues, I was anorexic in my youth. Hell, part of me is still sort of impressed that I had the discipline to get as deathly skinny as I got at around age 19. (That's fucked-up on its own.) So when the numbers on the scale kept going down and down and down, the lower number became something that I was chasing, and I started to think that I wanted to see how low the number could go.

That response I quickly found at odds with the other, which was the endorphin high and satisfaction that comes from seeing how far and fast your own body can go. I love that feeling of "damn! I just ran EIGHT miles!" (Or "ran" eight miles.) Sometimes, it's the single feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that I have in a week. Yet, running eight miles burns off about 1000 calories, and I began to realize just how important those calories are in being able to run another eight miles the next day or the day after while also being able to simply function during the day.

So, the question became: do you really want to take the fucked-up path of eating disorders, or do you want to maintain that feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment? I'm proud to say, I chose the latter. Silly, but true.

Also, I sometimes find myself on the treadmill thinking, "I could stop now. There's no shame in simply running 6 or 5 or 4 miles. In fact, it's downright impressive." Still, I keep going not for the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction or for the eating disorder. I keep going because stopping means that I will have to face yet more grading. Stopping means that I will have to face the feeling that I am a lazy bum who dared to take an hour or two for her own health or sanity or whatever she is doing that means she is not grading every single second of the day. Then, I tell myself that, if running is avoiding grading, I can only justify the running by running really really far. Heck, that's two different kinds of fucked up right there. I'm quite talented in that department!

Which brings me back to painting. I feel almost guilty for having taken the time to even write about my desire for painting, much less going to price the paint and pick up paint chips on Saturday, then going to purchase the painting accoutrement on Sunday. Why wasn't I grading during those precious minutes?! Why am I wasting my time and writing this instead of grading right this very second?! Why must I shower and go to the restroom and eat when I could be grading?!

I mean, I do grade. And grade and grade and grade and grade. Seriously. Yet, it never ends. There is no relief in sight, just the hope that I met the grading quota for the day (ten) and then have to wake up and start the quota for tomorrow. I'm really not understanding how this is "learning centered" when the time/space continuum does not allow for any real time to be spent on meaningfully addressing the problems in these papers or improving what happens in the classroom because of the avalanche of grading.

Ah, but now I've written a serious post that I vowed not to write, and I'm working myself into a pissy tizzy before 7 am. That's another of my special talents, too!

On a final note, yesterday I showed the film Iron Jawed Angels to a group of students (more on that later, because it ended up being an incredibly positive experience that I would have written about here right now had I realized that I was going to take up this amount of time when I started to write this post, which was when I thought this post would only take a minute or two). In it, the Lucy Burns character was trying to motivate the Alice Paul character by reminding her of the fun they had storming Parliament. They had been hiding in a closet, when Paul had to pee. Burns (god, Frances O'Connor was lovely and fun in that role!) suggested Paul relieve herself in a Lord's boot. "That's what we do," Burns reminded Paul. "We piss in the boot then come out with guns blazing."

That's kind of how I get through my days, and what I'm about to do right after I click "publish post." I "piss in the boot then come out with guns blazing." Figuratively speaking, of course. My talents for being fucked-up don't go so far as actually pissing in a boot.

At least, not yet.

Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite

About a month ago, management at my apartment complex performed an inspection for bedbugs. For those of you who don't know, bedbugs have invaded much of the east coast.

I've been on the lookout in my own apartment because, while I've slept with some vile nasty creatures in the past, I like to think that I've eliminated most of them from my personal life (or at least my bed). Also, I've visited New York since this invasion began, and who know what stowaways may have hopped aboard on my return trip. All of this is to say, that the Orkin guys came by, did a search, and I received no notification of squatters in my place, although I did have nightmares about gigantic, Burroughs-sized bugs biting huge red welts into me me all night long.

One of my neighbors was not so lucky. I received notice that "treatment for bedbugs is required within a home in close proximity to yours." That means that Orkin will launch a preemptive strike against the little beasties throughout the building. What good this will do, I have no idea. After all, this is a large building with a pretty steady turnover rate in residents due to a significant number of military personnel living here. Any number of new residents could become a new vector for the bugs and render all preemptive strikes futile.

To prepare for this assault, all residents must "move all furniture into the middle of the room, leaving the perimeter 100% accessible." Think about this. Look about your own home: sofa, chairs, bed, end tables, dresser, bookshelves (oh, dear god, the bookshelves with all of their books!), armoires (yes, I have an armoire, courtesy of my aunt's antique retention schedule), desks, filing cabinets -- anything up against the walls. Now, think of piling them into the middle of the room all at the same time. Is this geometrically possible in your place, even if you pretend that you are playing a life sized game of interior design Tetris?

Well, it sure as hell ain't in mine! I've had to broadly interpret "100%" accessible to mean that "you can see the perimeter, and probably reach it with one of those long nozzled sprayers." I haven't moved the larger of the bookcases, only removed the books from the bottom shelf so that the exterminators can get to the baseboards -- they are going after the baseboards, right, not the whole wall? If I were to move all of the books in order to move all of the shelves...well, there is no more space for that. None. All surfaces, including the floor, are occupied. The armoire is simply impossible. I had to put it together where it stands, and it will stand there until the undertakers come to take my cold, withered, ancient body away and dismantling it becomes my heirs' problem.

Anyway, I spent all morning yesterday moving everything that I could away from the walls. Then, I spent the afternoon awaiting the exterminators' arrival. Wait, wait, wait, wait. "Where the hell are they?" I thought. "They said Friday." Although, actually, when they say "Friday," they usually mean sometime next Wednesday, but I won't pass up a pissy tizzy if there is a pissy tizzy to work myself into.

Then, a thought crept up on me. I think of days in terms of days of the week, as in "Mondays I have to be here. Tuesdays I have to be there. Wednesdays, further on; and Thursdays back there." I don't think "on the 3rd, or the 4th, or the 8th." Even on my calendar, I don't so much look at the numbers of the days as the proximity of that square to the square that I just crossed off.

You see where this is going? I read "Your treatment has been scheduled for Friday -- November" some number. The number didn't register, just Friday. So, I moved everything for Friday. Mission accomplished, right?

Yes, mission accomplished. A week early.

My apartment is now in a state of chaos. Oddly enough, I like that. Not to live in permanently, but I've already grown used to it. Some of the pressure to "clean all the things!!!!111!!!" has dissipated. My desperate need to make the bed in order "to keep the forces of barbarism at bay," is no longer so desperate. Barbarism has taken over the nest. In fact, as I look around, I think, "why not paint the place?" After all, the walls are still the same shade of inoffensive taupe that becomes ever more offensive through its aggressive inoffensiveness that they were when I moved in. I've wanted to paint them some sunnier color for ages, usually in the middle of winter. Why not now, while all of the stuff is in the middle of the floor?

Why not? Well, the mound of grading that is just about as messy and chaotic as the piles of furniture and books in the middle of my floor. Then, the Douglass stuff behind it, which I would rather be doing. Then, the cost of paint and equipment (and I would need to buy brushes and pans and rollers and such, although I do have tape). Then, the magical thinking that, should I paint, I would end up having to move next week for one reason or another.

Still, the paint might give the place a little pizazz. Just the living room?

Alas, I shall be good and grade, hoping that the bedbug D-Day doesn't go down sometime in the next week..

Random Silly Things

Instead of a real post, a post about silly things I've seen in the past few months -- or at least silly things that I've seen and photographed. The world is fully of silly things that I've failed to photograph.

The Gentleman Caller visited on the weekend of Halloween. We made sugar skulls in honor of Dia De Los Muertos. Clearly, we did not have the appropriate tools to decorate in the appropriate fashion. Nonetheless, we had fun. Mine are the four on the left, his are the four on the right.:On my trip abroad, I was thrilled to see the English version of my favorite 51 cent souvenir in the International Slavery Museum.:

That's the flattening penny machine. My only regret here was that I did not have the English coin to use this. When we ran into a machine at Shakespeare's birthplace, however, I begged the coin off of the Gentleman Caller, who had accompanied me on my sojourn. How could I pass up an impression of Shakespeare's birthplace on a flattened pence?

Back home, in a tchotchke shop, bobbleheads.:
From left to right, we have Abraham Lincoln, Laura Bush, Barbara Bush, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton.

Elsewhere, we have (from right to left), George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.:Do you think you could get every president and First Lady in bobblehead form? I'm sure you could. The intertubes might be the place to "research" this matter, but I'm too lazy and tired to bother. Besides, it's much more fun to find them in the wild like this.

I also spotted a bobblehead of the King, Elvis Presley.:Somehow, the older, puffier, drug-addled, sequin-jumpsuited Elvis seems a very appropriate subject for a bobblehead.

This, on the other hand, seems a bit -- I don't know -- would "sacrelige" be too strong a word?:

Jimi Hendrix. Although, now that I think of it, perhaps a Janis Joplin bobblehead might be a good idea, except the bobble would have to be at the hips in order to replicate her particular tilting dance moves.

Next to the Hendrix bobblehead sat this lovely Hendrix lunchbox:

My brother would totally buy one for my nephew, then use it himself.

I confess, this is one thing I regret not investing in:

Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West, in bobblehead form. She is my favorite iconic witch, originating that green face and all black outfit as the icon of a witch. Plus, she was deliciously nasty.

Going back to Janis Joplin for a moment, I am reminded of the silliest thing that I have seen in recent months was not in a gift shop or my own kitchen. The silliest thing that I have seen was on YouTube (imagine that!). A duet between Joplin and Tom Jones. Yes, THAT Tom Jones, not the History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Here is your earworm for the day.:

Nothing Much to Say, and No Time to Say it In

I'm still here, just busy beyond belief, as most are this time of year. I just wanted to write something -- anything -- and have no time to write anything thoughtful. One can be shallow and thoughtful at the same time, do you think?

My depression has subsided for the most part, although I do have to beware of going out of town, especially to conferences and especially to places that I want to explore in greater depth. England was both. In fact, England had the added benefit (or deficit?) of being a conference where I presented a paper. I like doing that. I've grown to like conferences, too, because I feel rather like a grown-up historian at them. That doesn't happen much at work. In fact, it never happens at work. I'm learning to accept that.

This past weekend, I attended another conference. All of the people whom I met there helped me come to some realization about my position where I am, both good and bad -- or, not so much bad as not quite right. As I have bitched and bitched and bitched, I have a 5/5 load, and have to specifically state and defend by desire not to teach in the summer since most of my colleagues are begging for more courses to teach in the summer. They are the sort who LOVE to teach, who define themselves primarily as teachers, and (with a couple of exceptions) don't care if they never write another word about history again.

I am not that way. Again, it isn't that I hate teaching, but it isn't the main reason that I went to graduate school for so long, and it isn't where my passion is. I'm just over-fucking-whelmed by so many classes and students. This means that I feel like a failure at my job. Not that I am, I think I do a pretty good job, but I just feel that I'm somehow not right.

Anyway, at this conference, everyone whom I met said, "you have to get another job with less teaching." They often said this in tandem with, "if you want to get anything done." Well, it isn't as if this hasn't occurred to me, or as if the Gentleman Caller (who knows the job) hasn't told me this a million times. This time, however, something about the message sunk in. Everyone with whom I spoke are dedicated teachers. They think and work at teaching; BUT, they see themselves primarily as historians and their passion is in research and writing. They did not understand my desire to teach less as a failure, but as a need to have more space for research and writing.

I did not feel judged as a bad teacher. I felt sympathy, not in the personal close way that Gentleman Caller offers (which is quite important); but in a general, professional way. In fact, this epiphany finally appeared when a gruff older historian whom I respect, but whom I had only just met, said, "you need another job." His matter-of-fact tone made my whole situation seem suddenly very clear, understandable, and not something about which I should feel guilt.

Of course, there are no other jobs, so I have to work with what I have, and -- as always -- I'm pretty lucky in what I have. Working with what I have means finding a way to manage the stress much better. Managing the stress meant identifying the two sources: no time to write and too much to grade. The grading I broke down into a schedule of ten papers or tests per day. That's all I can manage, and even then I have to use weekends to catch up. That also means that I am appallingly slow in returning papers and tests, but that's just how it has to be given the time constraints that I am under between the teaching all of that other stuff that comprises the job outside of the teaching. The research and writing I've broken down into certain tasks or two hours per day. Again, I don't always make the quota and have to use weekends to catch up, but I still can chip away at the big project. That's all I can do right now, given the job.

Once I burrow into the work, I don't have time for the depression. I don't have time to grocery shop, clean house, blog, answer personal e-mails, or do other things, either, which brought up another problem. Grants and conference paper proposals and so forth have deadlines. If you are too burrowed into what you are doing to get from one day to the next, you lose sight of those. I missed one grant deadline and one conference proposal deadline, which really pissed me off. At least the grant was tiny; but the conference would have been awesome because the topic was both new(-ish) and appropriate to the conference location. Lesson learned. Now, all of my deadlines are on my calendar, and I have to work in a bit of time each day to work on grants and proposals.

The plan for quiet has also come along fairly nicely. My life is not actually quiet, but I've weeded out a lot of distracting noise, sometimes by finding a quieter noise to decrease the frantic noise in my head. For instance, I can work myself into a frenzy in the mornings while getting ready for work. Sometimes I would use the t.v. or music to quiet the frenzy, but the external noise simply drowned out the internal noise, much the way anything on my cd player or iPod must drown out the general noise and the ghastly music at the gym. My head ended up in a cacophony rather than a calm. No noise left my head to make its own, so I decided to play audiobooks. That, for some reason, makes the morning much quieter -- or less loud.

My little indulgence for the day in reading fiction before I go to bed also seems to have a general calming effect. Also, I rationalize the reading as helping my writing. After all, if you read precise and elegant prose, you begin to write more precisely and elegantly. After reading undergraduate prose for much of the day, this is an absolute necessity. Besides, I found myself starved for beautiful language and have gravitated toward the nineteenth century. I'm now reading Emma, which I have never read. In fact, I've read very little Jane Austen, only Pride & Prejudice and that was back in high school. I find her very chatty and almost breathless, and envision her sitting around with a bunch of girlfriends gossiping about the neighborhood.

In any case, I'm maintaining my grip on sanity ("sanity" defined as "not depressed and furious at the world"). Let's see how long this lasts.