Fun at the INIS Office, part 4: Conclusion

As I suspected, yesterday was not terribly productive in terms of getting words on the page. Although, given the averages, it might have ended up being productive since I worked for an hour and produced one page. Not a bad ratio of hours to pages.

Instead, I went up to one of the colleges for coffee with another professor who has written a book directly related to my subject (and we all know who that it -- the subject, that is -- but, for now, I'm trying to keep a little bit of a line between the way Clio and not-Clio discuss writing the book). I confess, my dreadful social skills, embarrassment at not actually having read her book as yet (it's difficult to get in the U.S.), and complete excitement at having someone to talk with about my subject who knows where stuff is over here on him meant that I dominated the conversation. When I returned to the Dormish Apartment, the Gentleman Caller kept asking me questions about where she lives and how long she's worked at the college and her interesting commute and generally the sort of things that people find out about other people in polite conversation and I was at a loss to answer because it never occurred to me to ask. See? Dreadful social skills.  In any case, she gave me a couple of good contacts to people who are writing on topics directly related to mine, and then offered to read some of my stuff. Excellent! Successful day in a non-writing way.

Meanwhile, I'm sure that you are all just DYING to know what happened on Wednesday at the INIS office.  So, I present to you "Fun at the INIS Office, part 4: Conclusion." The crowd can feel free to go wild, now.

By the way, the title is not a result of my poor numerical literacy. Part 3 was embedded in Part 2. It was the part about them closing while we were in line.

"Once more into the breach," said the Gentleman Caller.

"Under the bridge?" I asked. "But the office is right here." The traffic was rather loud, and I grew up listening to loud music on Walkmans. "Oh, yeah! I get it. Breach," I said. "Once more."

When you get there, as I think I've described, you have to stand in a line, wait your turn to outline your situation to the bedraggled bureaucrat behind the glass, get a number, and sit in the moulded plastic chair waiting area until they call your number to once more outline your situation yet another bedraggled bureaucrat behind the glass. The first line has ropes that organize and confine the people in the line and remind you a bit of Temple Grandin's contraptions in that HBO movie. "Moo."

Well, when we got into the office, there was a line, but it wasn't between the ropes. The posts holding up the ropes had been pushed together to close their ends, so people just lined up in front of the ropes. It was all very orderly, if inconvenient for people trying to pass in front of the line. I, being a good girl and trained to follow directions, went over to the closed off ropes.

"Shit," I thought. "They aren't seeing anyone else today, like last time." Except, we were there early and the place didn't close down until 10 pm. The office was crowded, but not that crowded.

Not to be deterred, I looked about for a sign saying that they weren't giving out any more tickets. None. Then I asked the last person in line, "Are they still handing out tickets?" Yes, they were. So, we put ourselves onto the end of that line.

The person behind the counter kept meeting with each person ahead of us. New people arrived and stood behind us, and the line began to snake back around the side of the ropes. Then, the guy in front of us went up to the counter. The man behind the glass, who, incidentally, had been there the whole time, motioned the guy in front of us toward another counter. The guy in front of us said, "What?" The Glass Guy pointed down toward another counter. The guy in front of us, pointed in that direction and said, "Down here?" The Glass Guy nodded and pointed down toward the other counters. The guy in front of us looked down the way, but so no open space. He walked further that way, looking for the alleged open counter. The Glass Guy disappeared, and a woman showed up behind him and started taking the numbered ticket out of a machine.

"Oh, shit," I thought. "Not again. Not this early."

Everyone in line started to look at one another, whispering, "what's going on? Are the not giving out tickets already? Is this the right line for tickets? What's happening?"

Then, the Glass Guy appeared behind the window again. He gave us the same gestures toward the other counters. The guy from in front of us was still wandering down the row trying to find the empty space and having no luck whatsoever nor finding anyone to help him. I looked down the row, then pointed directly at the next counter. "I don't understand. Here?" I mimed. The Glass Guy kept gesturing, so I went up to the glass and said, "I don't understand, where do we go?"

"You have to get in the queue," he said.

"I was in the queue," I said. I motioned to the line of people behind me. "This is the queue."

"You have to stand in the queue," he said. I stepped back into my place. He gestured to me to come forward again. "You have to stand in the back of the queue," he said.

"But, I was just at the front of it," I said.

"You have to go to the back of the queue over there," he said, and pointed to the ropes.

"But, this is the line," I said, and again indicated everyone standing, in a line, behind me. "The line over there is closed off."

"You have to stand over there," he said, and pointed back toward the ropes. Then, he made a gesture as if to say, "I'm done with you."

"It's closed off," I repeated, "We are all in line here because the ropes are closed off."

"You have to stand in the queue," he said, motioned that he was done with us, and walked away. He was thoroughly institutionalized.

So, I turned around and headed for the ropes. I tried to move the poles, but they were too heavy. So I tired to crawl under them. Meanwhile, the woman who had been getting numbered tickets out of the numbered ticket machine passed by me. "Don't do that, ma'm," she said. Then, she started handing out the tickets to everyone else in the line.

"Wait a minute!" the Gentleman Caller said.

"Wait a minute!" the guy who had been in front of us said.

"Wait a minute!" I said.

"WE were here first!" we all three said together.

"It's wrong to cut in line," the Ticket Woman said.

"We're not cutting," I said, reduced to sounding like an indignant six year old. "We were here first!"

"I'm not going to stand here and argue about who was here first," she said. "You have to be standing in the queue and these other people were standing in the queue."

"Everyone here will tell you we were first," I said. Everyone else in the line kindly nodded their assent.

Ticket Woman pursed her lips. "Here." She handed the guy in front of us and me tickets. I think she perceived that the two loud Americans were going to be a problem. "What are you here for?" she asked me.

Here we go again. "He's working here. I'm his partner. He's financially responsible for me."

"Do you have insurance?"

"Yes."

"Do you have sufficient funds?"

"Yes."

She looked about, saw an empty counter, and pushed us at it, jumping us ahead of the room full of people. Because I was raised in a patriarchal culture that hates bitchy women, I hate thinking that someone somewhere might think that I'm a bitch; and because I am aware that the rest of the world percieves Americans as obnoxious and entitled if not downright bullies, I try hard not to fulfill the stereotype. I should have said, "no, no, ma'm. All of these other people in the chairs have been waiting much longer than us. We shall wait our turn."

I jumped at the counter.

The woman behind the glass took one look at the Gentleman Caller and said, "Oh. You." They had met; but that's his story to tell. I just smiled pretty and handed her my passport, insurance card, and letter from the insurance company. She looked it all over, typed some stuff into boxes on electronic forms, took my picture, and returned the card and letter to me.

"Just wait over there until we call your name," she said.

"That's it?" I said.

"That's it."

So, we sat in the chairs and waited for them to call my name. When they call out people's names to pick up their passports and visa cards, they also call out their nationalities. Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Liberia, Croatia, America, Mexico, Vietnam, Czech Republic, Nigeria, Poland, China. I imagined the globe the way you see it in weather reports, with clouds swirling about it following the currents of wind, except the clouds were people, and they swirled to and fro from southeast to northwest, from south west to north east, around and around the Atlantic clockwise and counterclockwise, and trying to stop it or slow it is just as futile a trying to stop the wind or the water.

"Bluestocking, America," a voice from above mumbled. I got my card and my passport, and we left for the pub.

Fun at the INIS Office, part 2

I was right. Yesterday was not a good writing day. It was otherwise a good day, but not for writing. Maybe today will be, since I don't have to go to INIS, although I am supposed to meet someone for coffee if she gets back to me to tell me where.

Meanwhile, parts 2 and 3 of my dealings with the INIS.

When we left the INIS office that first week, I called the insurance company and procured a promise of a letter that would say that I was covered in Ireland for the time specified. Then, since the New York t-shirt guy said that I could bring a policy or something of that sort to prove the same thing, I went on line to find such a creature.

U.S. medical insurance companies don't really have policies, do they? They have 159 page PDF documents explaining the coverage of your particular plan, but they don't really have a section that says "X is covered wherever X is in the world, from Day 1 to Day 365."

We weren't too sure when the letter from the insurance company would arrive because they would only send the letter to the house in the Burned Over District (the Irish address tends to confuse people because there aren't the right number of spaces or something of that sort in the online forms, so they just say "fuck it, we'll send it to the Burned Over District and eventually they'll get it" -- that and it's cheaper to do so). So, we printed out a chunk of the PDF explanation of benefits in the hopes that this would satisfy INIS; and, in the hopes we could get this all over with sooner than whenever the heck the insurance letter arrived, we went back to the INIS office.

We stood in line. I got my number. I waited. They called me up.

This time I faced a fire plug of a woman who had been thoroughly institutionalized. By that, I mean that, while on the job, she seems not to have been able to comprehend anything that did not fit in all of the little boxes on the electronic form. I get how that can happen. She spends all day trying to fit situations of odd and unwieldy sizes in all sorts of accents into those little boxes on the electronic form; and, she's had years and years of those days. She had become the job. Her hair, her skin, and her clothes had all taken on the same pallid non-color that permeated the walls, the counters, the floors, and the very light of the room.

I sat down and smiled pretty. She looked at me and I think she actually said, "what fresh hell is this?" I explained the situation yet again. "He's working here." I gestured to the Gentleman Caller, who stood behind me like a German Shepard. "I'm his partner. He's financially responsible for me."

She glanced wearily at him and at me. Actually, she didn't so much glance as point her eyes in his direction, then mine. "Do you have insurance?" she asked. I handed her my passport and my insurance card. I didn't want to confuse her with the paperwork just yet. Some of the Gentleman Caller's co-workers, both native and those from out of the country and out of the EU, had told us that sometimes your case depends on who you get at the counter and what kind of day they are having. Maybe her day was so annoying that she would just want to get us through without hassle.

She took my card and my passport and disappeared into that back room. "Not again," I thought.

Oh, yes. Again. I sat there, wishing that this counter had better graffiti, or any graffiti. I contemplated taking out my book. I envisioned being escorted onto a plane by immigration officials as I was deported in three months. I wondered where I would live back in the U.S. I wondered if I could just go on a trip to France or somewhere at the end of the three months, and then return for another ninety days. I thought that, if I were deported, maybe I could get my hands on the secondary literature for my book that I so desperately needed. I wondered where I could get a good poster for that big empty space over the sofa back in our Dormish Apartment. I wondered what was for dinner.

Then, she returned.

"This doesn't cover you," she said, holding up my insurance card.

"What?" Did they know something that my company wasn't telling me? I held up the PDF printout. "I have the explanation of benefits here."

"No," she said. She pointed to the fine print on the back of the card. The fine print said, "This does not guarantee coverage."

"This card doesn't guarantee coverage," she said.

"That's how American insurance works," I said. "They want the right to deny coverage and they do it all the time. You just have to keep sending the paperwork back. I am covered."

"No, it doesn't guarantee it," she said. "Also, this date on the front just tells us when your coverage started. It doesn't say for the time you are here."

"But, as long as I pay, I'm covered," I said.

"It doesn't say that here," she said. "You see, we can't have you in the Republic using the government health insurance is something happens. Everyone in the Republic has to be covered. You either have to get private health insurance or be a taxpayer."

Wait. This is interesting. "Everyone in Ireland has to have health insurance?" I asked.

She took that as a challenge. "They don't want you using the government insurance," she said. "People coming from outside of the Republic have to bring health insurance."

"No, no, I get that," I said. "I'm honestly curious about this. Everyone in Ireland is covered?"

"Citizens are covered," she said. "People coming into the country have to bring private insurance or buy it here."

"So, everyone -- all Irish citizens -- have health insurance?" I asked. "I'm just curious because this isn't how it works in the States."

She also took that as a challenge. "Yes," she said, "In the Republic, citizens are covered. You are not."

"No, no. I get that," I said.

"You have to have something that says specifically that you are covered in Ireland for the time that you are here," she said. "Then, we can see you again."

Thus ended our interview.

The Gentleman Caller and I returned to the Dormish Apartment via a pub and waited for the letter to arrive.

About two weeks later, it did. The letter told me that I am, as I suspected, covered wherever I am. The letter, however, also said, "this does not guarantee coverage." They are just not going to guarantee coverage. That's the nature of the business. They reserve the right to deny coverage in case I want a boob job, or liposuction, or anything else not health-related. They reserve the right to deny coverage because they think that psychotherapy should only take five session and that you are cured for life. They reserve the right to deny coverage in the hopes that you won't challenge it and they don't have to pay up. They reserve the right to deny because they are a business.

Still, this is what we had, so we went back to the office for the third time.

We stood in line. We waited. We got up to the counter. They closed.

"I hate them," the Gentleman Caller said as we left.

"They hate us," I said. "Not us personally, just as a group. Or, rather, they hate their jobs. Wouldn't you?"

That was last week.

Fun at the INIS Office, part 1

Yesterday's writing went very very well: five pages in five hours. That's a little more like it! I'm not sure how good they are, nor am I sure if I'm satisfied with them; but, that's what a shitty first draft is for.

Today will not go so well. I know this not because of any sense of foreboding or the usual attack of the gremlins, but because I have to go to INIS. Again. This will be our fourth visit to what used to be called the "Alien Office," and I do have a sense of foreboding about this. Again, this is not my natural pessimism here -- o.k. not much anyway. This is because the problem has to do with my health insurance.

Let me back up to our first trip to INIS. In our first week, after we had slept off the worst of the jet lag, we hiked halfway across the city to register with the Guarda, which all long-term visitors must do. Here is the office:

Here is the inside of the office:

I've never had cause to actually be inside an immigration office before, but I imagine that it is not too much different that pretty much any immigration office in the U.S. I did expect it to be much more crowded, and I suppose I expected far more people from Latin America and Africa. That's because I've lived mostly in areas with large numbers of immigrants from those parts of the world and because I did once pass outside of an immigration office in Manhattan one morning (god, but I sound privileged!) and the line went around the block.

Whether or not you think this is crowded probably depends upon your own experience. I've been told that this is, for Ireland, fairly sparse because, since the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, most of the immigration in this country is out of it. A lot of the people here seem like they come from places that are in worse circumstances. Very few brought children, and there are many interracial couples. I use the term "interracial" here, but I start to realize that the word has almost no meaning outside of the U.S. -- or, at least, it doesn't have the same type of meaning. Lest any anti-immigrant sorts point to that as evidence of what we call "green card marriages" in the U.S., these "interracial" couples could have both been immigrants from opposite sides of the world, or one actually could have been and Irish national, but didn't have the American stereotype of an Irish appearance. What I'm trying to say is that, in this office, the entire American concept of the world broke down. I felt very knocked off center -- which is good -- and very aware of all of the Amero-centric assumptions with which I go through life but never think about.

We had to stand in a line for a bit. No one in the entire room looks happy to be there, least of all the people behind the counter. One guy back there looked like he had just rolled in from a long night at the pub, with long, curly, untamed and unwashed hair, and wearing a beat-up flannel shirt as a jacket over a ratty t-shirt. The agent who served us actually did look like he came from central casting. He had reddish blond hair, cut very close but not quite in a buzz, and a fresh scrubbed face.

We explained our situation. The Gentleman Caller is here for work, and I'm his partner, along for the ride (I've since learned that I probably should be careful about using the expression "ride," if you catch my drift).

"Do you have a certificate?" he asked. He said something between "a" and "certificate" that I couldn't understand because we were talking through glass and the room had a lot of that mumbling, moving, echoing noises of such holding pens as this.

"A birth certificate?" I asked. Oh no! No one said anything about bringing a birth certificate. They just said passport and medical insurance card. My birth certificate is somewhere in one of the many boxes -- I couldn't even tell you which -- stored in the Gentleman Caller's house back in the Burned Over District.

"Yeah, a certificate," he confirmed. Again, the word between "a" and "certificate" was unintelligible.

"No," I said. "I have a passport." I offered it to him through the metal tray at the bottom of the window.

"Oh," he said, "they might not let you say without a marriage certificate."

MARRIAGE certificate! That's what he was saying!

"We aren't married," I said. Ah, jeez, I thought. Am I going to have to go through our whole personal and philosophical position and conversation about marriage and heteronormative privilege and already being privileged enough and patriarchal vestiges and fear of commitment and all of those things that we are working out between ourselves? Is he going to charge us for marital counseling if we do?

"I'm sorry," the guy said, "When you say 'partner,' I assumed marriage." See, I would have thought "business" and some others think "gay so can't get married." Maybe the INIS office is where all of your assumptions get shaken up?

He gave us each a number and told us to wait in the seating area. Here is my number:

That's the last picture that I will show you of the inside of the INIS office because, at this point, I saw a sign that said "no pictures." Since I want them to let me stay in the country, I figured I should obey the rules.

We sat in those plastic moulded chairs for a while, reading our books. I was (and still am) reading Bleak House, which is a scathing critique of another bureaucratic agency in Victorian England. I wondered what someone like Dickens might do with an immigration office. Then, I wondered what sorts of stories everyone in here had that brought them from where they were born to these plastic moulded chairs in this office. I wondered what sort of problems they might face here, and what sort of problems they would face in the U.S., not just in the country but in contact with these clearly unhappy employees of this agency. Then, I thought of the movie Brazil, also involving a labyrinthine bureaucratic process.

Then, they called our numbers. They wanted to speak to us separately. I sat down on the opposite side of the glass from a guy wearing a New York T-shirt. I decided not to engage him about it.

"OK, what is the story here?" he asked.

"My partner is here for work, and I'm along for the ride." I said, again, not yet aware that I should probably not use the term "ride" or he might think that I was some sort of escort, if you catch my drift again. "I'm not employed here, or looking for a job, I'm just accompanying him. We're going back next summer." I handed him my passport and my insurance card.

"I'll be back in a minute," New York t-shirt guy said, then he took my passport and disappeared down toward another counter.

"My passport!" I thought. "Now, I'm stuck." I sat, waiting, wondering what he had to consult about, wondering if my dalliances with socialists back in the '90s was going to get me in trouble, or if my application to visit Cuba during that time would be used against me, or if my rejection from military service might make me look suspicious (also during that time -- let's just say I was a lost soul in the '90s), or if my knowing Babu was a problem (that's a long story, but he knows what I mean).

Then, I started to read the graffiti on the counter. Someone had used a red pen to carve "Fuck lazy Irish! Stupid Fuck You" into the counter. "There is a lot of pent-up frustration haunting this seat," I thought.

The New York t-shirt guy came back and, gesturing back toward the counter where the Gentleman Caller was having his interview, said, "O.k., so he says he's financially responsible for you."

The Gentleman Caller later told me that the New York t-shirt guy asked him, "Are you financially responsible for her?" The Gentleman Caller said, "yes, but don't say THAT to her." Apparently, the New York t-shirt guy didn't get that putting the situation that way was a bit infantilizing of me. Still, it is true, although I do have my own money, but we didn't really need to get into the details with this guy. We just needed to tell him the truth, but in the simplest terms possible, even if it obscured some of the finer points.

"So, he says he's financially responsible for you," the New York t-shirt guy was saying.

"I suppose that is true," I said.

"Are you covered by medical insurance," he asked.

"Yes," I said, and handed him my insurance card.

He scrutinized it for a bit, turning it over and back, and over again. "I'll be back," he said, and disappeared into a door behind him, carrying my insurance card with him.

"Shit," I thought, "this is not going to turn out well." Very little turns out well, or turns out well without huge and extensive aggravation, when it comes to dealing with the insurance company.

He returned. "Are you covered in the Republic?"

I didn't understand the question.

"Does this cover you in the Republic of Ireland?" he rephrased.

"I suppose so," I said. "It covers me and I'm in Ireland."

"We need the card to say that you will be covered in the Republic of Ireland for the time that you will be here." He pointed to the date on the card. "That just gives us a date when your coverage began. Can you bring us back a policy or something that says that you are covered in Ireland for the time you will be here."

"That's not really how American insurance works," I said. "But, I'll try to get something."

"That's all we need," he said. "You have ninety days from when you came in to bring it to us, and he" -- meaning the Gentleman Caller -- "has to escort you wherever you go in the country in the meantime."

They do know how to make a grown woman feel just like  little girl, don't they? I know this is not the worst and is perhaps the most privileged treatment I could receive. I wondered what sorts of other indignities and dangers faced other people in less fortunate circumstances than myself. At least I can speak the language of the country, actually do have insurance, and am financially covered. I'm also not fleeing slavery or war or seeking political asylum. I'm just caught between two byzantine bureaucracies: the Irish INIS and an American health insurance company.

The Gentleman Caller got his card, then we went back to our dormish apartment where I got on the phone and called the 1-800 number of my insurance company. They said they would write a letter saying that I was covered in Ireland for the period in question and mail it right away. Then, I sat back to wait for it to arrive and count down the days until I become one of those "illegal aliens" or am deported. It's rather a race at this point.

Not to Gloat, but I'm Totally Going to Gloat

My schedule on Saturday went like this: drink coffee, write, go for a long walk, drink wine. On Sunday, I drank coffee, wrote, went for a long walk, drank wine. Yesterday, I drank coffee, wrote, went for a run, drank wine. Guess what I'm doing today?

Nice work if you can get it!

Also, I'm clearly not working for any wages, so this has an expiration date. Still, this is awesome in the good way!

Yesterday went quite well. I accumulated four new pages as I revised who knows how many more. I'm not so confident about today. Before I went to bed on Sunday night, I knew what I had to do with the thing when I woke up in the morning. Let me tell you: that's really helps you face the Smoke Monster.

Sunday had been very frustrating. I wrote and wrote and revised and revised, but really only accumulated about two pages in five hours and still, nothing seemed to hang together the way it should or said anything much at all. I felt like all of my evidence was illustrating something, but I didn't quite know what. The parts read as if I were saying, "here is my assertion, and here is my evidence." In fact, I'm not too sure that I was even making a very good assertion. All the paragraphs seemed to say was, "this happened, and this happened, and this happened" or "she said, and then she said, and then she said." That's not particularly strong, and that sort of weakness causes your story to lose momentum.

After five hours of this -- and I'm usually only good for five hours before my brain feels numb and I'm pretty damn sick of these people in my head -- the Gentleman Caller and I went for a long exercise walk. I told him all of this, and then I began talking, almost to myself, about what I'm trying to say in everything I had spit out on the page that day. Sometimes he can help with this simply by saying, "so what is the point of all of this?" or "what does it all mean?" or "what does this have to do with the Great Man?" Hearing these questions outside of my head, and babbling through the answers outside of my head, is enormous help at crucial points.

This was a crucial point; and I figured it out. So, after we returned to the Dormish Apartment, I scribbled down the points.

Then, I drank wine and watched Downton Abbey, after which, I read a few screens of Bleak House(don't judge, the Kindle was a gift and it's proving to be a boon on long trips with little luggage space).

When I woke yesterday morning, I had the ideas all there and just had to put them down intelligently, straighten out the evidence, and then see what else I might tweak out to make the argument more precise. Four pages and five hours later, I went for a good long run. Then, I drank wine and watched the second part of the Glenn Close version of Lion in Winter (god what a great role for an older woman, and god how fabulous she is!).

Unfortunately, as I now drink my coffee, I have no idea what I'm going to say today. I have the vague idea of the next section; but, unlike yesterday morning, this idea is far more lumpy when I look at it all blobby on the page. I'm not even sure this section is as far into the "and then this happened, and she said, and then this happened, and she said" stage as I thought. Perhaps that is today's task: simply to get the lump to that stage and the more precise point will emerge from that work.

Of course, the de-lumping is not going to write itself, so I should probably move on into that now that the words are shaking loose.

Still,  it is nice work if you can get it!

Writing and not-Writing because I'm Writing

Writing a blog post has become very difficult these days because I'm either out doing the things that I would blog about (or tired out from doing them!) or I'm writing my book (and then tired out from writing the book). Since my sleep has not been good since I got here, waking up so very many times throughout the night, and sometimes at such short intervals that I didn't even know I had been asleep until I wake up again, and having such bad or odd dreams, I do get tired out easily. Hence, not much blogging despite having many stories to tell.

Today's is not really a story, but more of a pondering about the pace of the book writing. I've written two other books, and other stuff besides, this blog included. I've developed this concept of being a fairly fast writer. I can pound out the words fairly quickly, given the time and caffeine. I can pound out more if I don't have to cite them, too! They multiply geometrically if I can hop into a stream of consciousness for a little ride. Sadly, that is not really the way academic writing works. I can start that way, sketching out what I plan to say and then fleshing that out; but, as the fleshing out grows, the pace slows.

Even then, I usually can get out a good 5 pages per good day of writing. All of those pages have citations, too! As my writing schedule becomes more regular and consistent, the number of pages per day increases. When I can get into the double digits -- well, there is nothing like that feeling! It's like running in that you have to start slow with shorter distances, and gradually, through regular workouts, you increase your pace and distance. If you are starting a new project, then, like getting back into shape, you start off a bit rusty.

Like getting back into shape, however, getting back into writing can be so very frustrating. You remember being able to run fast and far, and now you struggle just to get through the first quarter of a mile. You see yourself in your mind, sweaty, muscular,  and hopped up on endorphins; but here is your sad, aching body, dragging itself to the corner, barely able to get through a 20  minute mile. The same with writing. You remember that, toward the end of the last project, you banged out the pages, ideas flowing onto the page in elegant clear sentences, impressing you with your own eloquence. You are a master! Then, months later, you begin the next big project, and you creak. You can see the multilayers and ideas and a general vague cloud of what you hope to maybe convey, and you can peck out little more than the academic equivalent of "See Spot run. Run, Spot, run." That, in fact, may be the brilliant sentence and original insight for the day, and you thank the citation gods that you have to make this first citation the long form because that will up your word count and fill more page space for your daily total. You ignore that you once considered that cheating.

By "you," I mean "me."

So, daily I have had to remind myself that I'm still rusty, so my pace will be slow. Daily, I have to tell myself that only by working through the rust will my pace pick up. Also, increasing the amount of candy that I consume will not increase the numbers of words, much less good words, on the page, so put down the Skittles. Yes, even the chocolate ones.

Sadly, the rust seems to have built up quite a bit in the past several months. The first writing day, I wrote a paragraph. The second writing day, I re-wrote the paragraph, and finished two pages. The third day, I rewrote those two pages and added two for a total of four. The fourth day, I wrote four. "Hey," I told myself, "this is going quite well! I'm doubling the previous day's work." Except,  on the fifth day, I wrote one page. That seems to be the rate since then.

Now, I confess, in addition to the one page each day, I've also revised at least half of what came before, and one page is better than no pages. Still, this is a new development in my writing pattern. I sat down to write a full, shitty first draft this month. Instead, revision function of my brain begins to override the shitty first draft function of my brain, slowing the whole process down, much like having two browser windows open on your allegedly ancient computer. I'm not even sure if the revisions are that good, either, since you do need the whole shitty first draft completed in order to know if the revisions are making any sense. You have to have the "vision" before you can "re-vision," right?

Then, I noticed another thing about my writing. The last two books were -- once I got going -- pretty dang easy to write. Sure, I procrastinated on starting them. After all, the scariest thing in the world is the empty screen. Your smoke monster comes out of an empty screen. Once words start going onto that screen, and I go into the material, then the writing isn't that difficult and becomes ever more fun. That process is not kicking in quite so quickly this time. I mean, the writing is fun in the way that challenging and intellectually stimulating work is fun; but this time it seems much much more challenging than the previous two times. This challenge has very little to do with the smoke monster.

My last two books, you see, were very narrative driven. The first was a biography of a fairly traditional sort. She was born, she lived, she died. Being the first book, I was just trying to keep a story going, demonstrating the things that influenced this person and describing how those ideas affected her behavior and reflected the world for women of her race and class. There wasn't that much analysis or theory or argument, really. I pretty much told a story. The second book, being the Tourist Book or the Book Shaped Souvenir and essentially being a lark without any notes, an essentially narrow focus, and a strict order not to include any historiography, was straight-up narrative. This happened, then this happened, then this happened, and so on. I like to think that there was some analysis and other such "boring academic" types of things going on, but they took place off page and shaped what appeared on the page. Still, it was a very very easy book to write.

This book is so much more difficult because I am trying to do something quite different. Sure, there is a narrative and, sure, it is to some degree a biography; but there is so very much more going on in it that was not happening in the other books. The "he was born, he lived, he died" is -- pick your metaphor -- the skeleton or the negative space. The flesh or subject around that negative space involves several, overlapping, "she was born, she lived, she died" stories, all intersecting in the same chapters and all equally important in telling the "he was born, lived, died" story in the way that I'm trying to tell it. The intersection of these various biographies creates that negative space of the main biography. (Does that make sense?)

So, I feel like I am writing something that has far more dimensions than the other two books ever could, and I'm trying to take that multi-dimensional image of the story that I see in my head and cram it into something linear. I'm trying to express a sculpture with a line. No: I'm trying to express the sculpture on its pedestal next to its artist in a room in a museum by drawing a line.

Which is fabulous! I know that I'm pushing myself to be a better writer and historian than I could ever imagine myself being. I have moments, even in this struggle -- heck, because of the struggle -- that tell me that I'm doing something important.

But -- goddamn -- it's slow going!

Invited

The ceremony was not as bad as anticipated. Really! The Irish were clearly involved, if not in charge, of its planning because the whole event was devoid of most of the things that I anticipated. About halfway through, I realized that much of it had to do with artistic responses and interpretations, not jingoism, crosses, all caps and eleventies.

Dressed appropriately in black, right down to our underpants (the Gentleman Caller consented to wear a tie and appeared dashingly handsome), we arrived by passing a round building that caught my attention. "What an interesting building," I said.:

Turns out it was our embassy.  I took this quick picture from the cab. Down there in the bottom left hand corner you can see a tiny Christmas tree. Later -- after my batteries had died -- we passed again and discovered it surrounded by flowers and other expressions of sympathy. Also, a guard told people to move along.

A block away, the cab let us off at the Royal Dublin Society Concert Hall, the location for the event:

Several men in suits, crossed Irish and American flag pins, and swirly wires from ear pieces milled about outside. We had anticipated much traffic, as warned, but discovered none. So, even with my whole routine of hair and make-up and other costuming accoutrement, we had actually arrived quite early. The milling men pointed us to the Insomnia across the street.

"Insomnia" is Gaelic for "Starbucks."

There, we found the place packed with Americans, including our cohort from the orientation. We shared ghost stories (another story for another time) about the place we had stayed over the previous nights and then traded horror stories about various branches of the immigration service. After about an hour, we cleared out with the rest of the shop.

While in line to get into the concert hall, we heard the plaintive, lonely, mournful sounds of the Dublin Fire Brigade Pipe Band:

As for the line, after the saga of the invitations, after the stories of silliness endured by our Emerald-American liaisons, considering the "no loitering" policy outside of the embassy, after being warned about electronic devices, and after being familiar with the security at U.S. airports, courthouses, and government buildings, you would expect that we would each be X-rayed and frisked within an inch of our lives before entering. You'd at least expect a metal detector or a perfunctory bag search.

Nothing. They just checked you off of the guest list and didn't even give you a second glance after verifying that you looked something remotely like the image on your picture i.d. There was a moment there where they could not find me on the list, and I began to suspect that they had me listed as Mrs. Clio Caller. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but my passport says that I'm Clio Bluestocking, so there could be a bit of an issue in letting me in if I were listed as Clio Caller, although I would have yet more fodder for a blog post.

I was almost right. They had my name, as my name, listed with the Gentleman Caller's as his Plus One. Plus Ones were listed with the named invited person and therefore more difficult to find unless they presented themselves as the Plus One. Between immigration, the bank, and this, I really have no idea how I am supposed to present myself to be recognized as official.

Here is the cover of the program.:

Up in the corner there you see the crossed Irish and American flags pin. They handed them out from crystal fishbowls. I put mine on my program because I don't wear those types of things, jewelry as they may be, and because that was veering a bit too much toward that flags and crosses and all caps and eleventies thing that I dreaded.

I had also dreaded lots of bunting and a room draped with flags and red, white and blue. Again, nothing of the kind, except a flag for the U.S. and a flag for Ireland, as you can see in this picture:

Well, you can sort of see it in this picture. Inside, I was a little uncertain about the permissibility of cameras, so I turned off my flash. That meant that most of the interior photos that I took ended up a touch blurry. By "touch," I don't mean a slight brush by a tiny hand. I mean more of a hard slam by a ham-fisted man.

An usher sat our group just behind the wheelchair row because one of our number was in a wheelchair (as I mentioned in my last post -- Ireland, by the way, seems not to have too many disabled people, or at least doesn't seem to have something similar to the Americans with Disabilities Act). That meant we had a pretty good view of the proceedings, although from the front of the back section.

We waited for quite a long time for the event to start. Behind me, two diplomats -- one from Ireland and one from Britain -- conversed quite loudly on the qualities of various embassy chefs, the propensity for western male diplomats to marry Japanese women but the infrequency of Japanese male diplomats marrying western women (something about differences in concepts of masculinity and opportunities for women), the surprisingly lovely translation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice into Chinese, another diplomat's lovely wife who could not speak much English but was a "charming" and "artistic" woman, and the fact that the Irish diplomat's wife "obviously fell for Ireland before she fell for you."

They also made comparisons between the behavior of the Chinese, Russian, and American diplomatic behavior not only among the three superpowers but also between their public and private behavior. Americans, they concluded, will always "get back to you on that" and never do, which makes them seem like "they never seem to be quite sure of what they are doing." The Irish diplomat suspected that the problem stemmed from the State Department's "one size fits all" instructions, which often leave the diplomats in the countries as a loss in responding to anything that does not apply to the instructions. They cited an instance involving instructions about the way to treat Muslims at a Fourth of July celebration that anyone in Ireland found ridiculous and impractical. The English diplomat said, "sitting looking out over the river in Washington this might have seemed like a good idea." It wasn't.

Suddenly, the whole saga of the invitations began to make sense.

Around about this time, a voice from on high asked that everyone turn off their cell phones in order to respect the moments of "solemnity" in the program. The room filled with shuffling, but another conversation behind me suggested that some were too important to comply with the suggestion. If they thought that, they were not found out because at no point did a cell phone beep, buzz, boing, ring, or sing out a pop song. Imagine that!

Then, the officials began traipsing into the room. This is the Irish president, Mary McAleese, entering:

Actually, you can't exactly see her in the image. Her entourage entered from my left and, since I still wasn't certain of the policy on unauthorized cameras, I sat in the second row, and her security guards (women among them!) could see exactly what I was doing, I waited until they passed. That probably defeated the purpose of taking her picture.

In any case, the ceremony began in an Irish accent and without a single invocation of a deity. A color guard from both nations entered at each side of the room in front of the stage, but they did not make a huge presentation of themselves, then soloists belted out the national arias. First the Irish:

Then the American:

I say "national arias" because both soloists sang as if they were in an opera. The opera at least sounded more Mozartian and less Wagnerian, which is so often the case; but, still, never is a song strangled and mangled in so many painful ways as a national anthem. Is it to make sure that everyone is awake?

After the arias, the color guards retreated. The Irish marched a little forward, about faced, and marched off. Quietly. The Americans marched a little forward, with guns, about faced, and marched off. Loudly. Behind me, the two diplomats diplomatically muffled their guffaws.

The American ambassador spoke first:

That's not him speaking. That's him leaving after the ceremony. He and his wife are the elderly couple there. My images of him speaking all look like smudge, so this is the substitute. Also, I didn't get my camera out and on fast enough to take his picture as he passed by, entirely unassumingly, as if he and his wife were off for some coffee and scones at Insomnia after church.

Yes, I am the world's worst photojournalist.

I didn't like his speech because it was full of flags and all caps and eleventies, although refreshingly free of crosses. He invoked the war on terror and evildoers and heroes -- may we banish that word from our language! -- and all of that simplistic forced optimism and chest-pounding cliches that I suspect would characterize a wholly American event.

The Irish president spoke next:

I liked her speech much better. Despite some drift into the usual tropes, she invoked MLK, noted the firefighters in the audience who had been among those at Ground Zero, reminded the audience that people of various nationalities had died in the attack, introduced the idea of agency in defining an event, and called for hope and peace. In other words, she used words and concepts so often absent from the usual language of the American media voices.

Then, we had the minute of silence. Silence is good, to me. During the silence, I realized that I have few memories of that day. My lapses have nothing to do with not caring or because the news was so traumatic for me. I just have so few exact memories that distinguish me from any of the billions of other people who got most of their information from the media outlets. I do remember bouncing among the news that mostly came from the radio and a black and white t.v. with poor reception in our office, concern about the arrival of the remainder of my belongings, laughing at concerns that the state capitol in this mid-western city where I had just moved might be bombed (demonstrating just how distant the attack really felt to those in our office), and getting work done. All of the images that I have been so certain that I witnessed on t.v. I more than likely added in later after seeing them on the internet in the immediate aftermath or elsewhere during the ensuing years. What I knew when, and what I saw when, is really just a fuzz followed by the alienation from the flags and crosses and all caps and eleventies that took over.

Back at the ceremony, the silence ended with a new composition, Termon, for strings and Uillean Pipes, which are like a smaller bagpipe that doesn't involve the player's breath. Heart wrenching no matter what the occasion (and if you like that sort of thing. Apparently not everyone finds the pipes moving, would you believe?). Afterward, someone read "The Names," a poem by Billy Collins, while a slide show of what appeared to be children's artwork using the names of victims. At that point, I began to appreciate the program. No deities, no crosses, no more flags than necessary for a state occasion. This was about artistic expression and sympathy.

Then, the strings played an arrangement called "The Last Rose of Summer," which included a very cheesy spoken word section. This cheese wasn't so bad in intent, however, and included another unused word, "bleak." The rest of the composition, after the spoken word section, was lovely. After the music, the Irish equivalent of a prime minister, the An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, read "Anything Can Happen," a poem translation by Seamus Heaney.

If you go back up to my picture of the stage, you will see something that looks like an ice sculpture in the center. Actually, the sculpture is made of crystal, and was created by Sean Egan, a Waterford Crystal master engraver who, like many of the employees of Waterford Crystal (and, indeed, elsewhere in Ireland), was laid off. He used the crystal and a bit of metal from the Ground Zero site to interpret the survival of a group of firemen in Stairwell B of the south tower.:

Below the sculpture, I found more proof that, for the past two to three years, no one can pass up the opportunity to connect their work with Abraham Lincoln:

Sheesh!

Anyway, Egan had earlier used crystal to depict the removal of Father Mychal Judge from the wreckage. You may recall that Judge was the firemen's chaplain who appeared in the film that unexpectedly became a documentary and record of the World Trade Center attack. The picture of his body being carried from the wreckage became famous. Do not click on the link if you believe images of the dead are disrespectful.

In fact, if you believe images of the dead are disrespectful, don't look at this one because now I am showing you an image of that photo in this one:

The blur at the podium is William Cosgrove, who is a retired NYPD fireman. He is also the man wearing white in the photo with Judge's remains. The other three men were also there. Since the sculpture was named "Miracle in Stairwell B," and since we were now contemplating the photo of a religious man, I braced myself for the crosses. Still, I thought, the man was there, so he can invoke whatever the fuck he wants.

In a rich New York accent, he simply thanked the audience and the organizers of this event, and he too called for hope and peace. Later, I heard a reporter ask him how he felt when he saw that photo. He said wearily that it never gets easier. Every year is just as bad as the one before.

To close down the event, the Soul Steps Dance Troupe took the stage and performed an amazing dance in firefighter boots, which they said were similar to the South African gumboots worn by the people who originated stepping.:

If I can figure out how to do it, I will post my recording of the last part of their dance.

The male dancer sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing" at about the mid-point, which seemed to keep in theme with hope and peace. They also spoke of the concept of survival, which was also a new word.

After the dance, the master of ceremonies thanked us all for attending, and I was glad that I had gone. The event was so refreshing in its focus on creativity. While there was some mention of shared experience, they did not push the concept as if we all were there. We weren't, but we could all feel sympathy for those actually affected by the attack. Also, the talk of hope and peace -- and peace seems an ever more delusional hope -- seemed to suggest an awareness of a bigger picture and of subsequent developments.

The whole affair felt thoughtful, as if another narrative or interpretation than the ones I am avoiding on t.v. and the one that I feared would be the program for the day could, in fact, be imagined. In that moment, I loved Ireland and knowing that there are other places on earth than the U.S.

Uninvited

Before we left for the Emerald City, the Gentleman Caller received an invitation to a 9/11 commemoration organized by the American embassy. How very exciting! He responded saying that he and his partner, Dr. Bluestocking, would be happy to attend.

We went through the packing and moving and unpacking and repacking and flying and settling in and so on and so forth over the next two or three weeks. Then, the Gentleman Caller received another e-mail. They were sorry, but Mr. Bluestocking cannot attend. The invitation was for the Gentleman Caller alone.

"How rude!" said the Gentleman Caller. "Who invites someone and doesn't expect them to bring a Plus One?"

"Mr. Bluestocking?" I said.

"Well," said the Gentleman Caller, "now I don't want to go myself."

"Mr. Bluestocking?" I said. "They think we are a gay couple. I bet they made this 'no Plus One' distinction in our case because they don't want an out gay couple doing whatever they think out gay couples do. Fucking homophobes!"

Now, I was kidding on the square there; but it turns out the ambassador is the father of the owner of a sports team and my impression is that the whole macho sports industry isn't exactly cool about homosexuality or feminism or anything but men being real men and knocking the shit out of each other for big bucks. In fact, the Gentleman Caller said that this particular team has a player on the field at this moment (not this particular moment, but during the playing season) who has been accused of sexual assault.

"Fucking homophobes and misogynists!" I said, because I love the taste of sour grapes, although I did tell the Gentleman Caller to go without me and return with a full report. He said, if I wasn't invited, then he wasn't, and he didn't want to go. Besides, he said it would be no fun without me. (Isn't he a keeper?)

Not even a day later, however, the Gentleman Caller received an e-mail from the Emerald-American liaison at the organization for which he is working. She apologized to all of the American employees. The organization had nothing to do with this ceremony, it was all the embassy's affair and, sadly -- or rudely -- the embassy did not allow any Plus Ones. The embassy said something about space. Off the record, one of the liaisons told us that the embassy gives them tons of trouble about even the simplest and regular occurrences like paperwork that goes between the organization and embassy officials, and that even they were not invited to the service.

One of the organization's employees, however, was very pissed. He had asked about access for the disabled, since he has a wife in a wheelchair. That was how he learned that only he was invited. "I'm bringing her no matter what!" he said. I wanted a picture of that. Could you see the headlines?: "American embassy refuses admittance to woman in a wheelchair at 9/11 memorial service." All caps and eleventies!

At this point, I figured the whole Plus One issue was not one of space or homophobia or misogyny, but of security. They would assume that the employees had been vetted. The Plus Ones of the employees, however, could be anyone. Hypothetically speaking, for all the embassy knew, I could be a terrorist disguising myself as some tart whom the Gentleman Caller had picked up in a bar the night before. I could have dynamite tied to my thighs, or hidden in a body cavity. My tits could be implanted explosive devices! They couldn't risk that.

We thought the matter settled there. I just added this to my hyperbolic comedy routine in which I'm suspected not only of being a potential leech on the national health care system, a money launderer, a gay man, and, now, a potential terrorist threat. Not bad for an aging nerd girl! Furthermore, we had to go to an orientation for the American employees that same weekend anyway, and then a party for the Gentleman Caller's particular group, and I was rather looking forward to a free Sunday in which to write all of the posts about all of the occurrences of the past week or two, including this one.

Then, the Gentleman Caller received another e-mail from the embassy. This one revealed the heretofore super secret location and gave instructions about bringing identification, arrival time, and other logistics. The Gentleman Caller, unable to pass up the opportunity to remind the embassy of their poor etiquette, sent a response reminding them that he had declined to attend because "DR. Bluestocking" was also not invited.

Oh, no, no! They replied. "Ms. Bluestocking" is invited. Please bring her along. All Plus Ones were now invited. In fact, during the American employee orientation, a representative of the embassy announced the event and welcomed everyone in the room in tones that said, "bring your family! Bring your friends!" He gave the impression that the event was open to the public, or at least the American public in the Emerald City. Someone else from the embassy did the same thing the next day. All of the Americans in the room just rolled our eyes.

"Oh, this is so going on the internet," I said.

So, here it is. We go a little later today. I think it is coordinated to take place a the time that the attacks occurred. They have warned us that some sort of recreational cycling thing is taking place downtown and that lots of streets will be blocked off to allow people to ride bicycles along them. The bicycle event actually sounds like fun. I think I would rather be involved in that because all of these 9/11 commemoration things just make me mad.

The commemorations all invoke God and country and the kind of language that got us into the big mess we are in right now. They all demand that we never forget -- as if we could or as if maybe others haven't had disasters hit closer to home that might eclipse the 9/11 events (I'm thinking New Orleans and Katrina) or as if we should remember the destruction but forget how it was used to destroy much much more.

They all demand that "God Bless America" in all caps and eleventies, and I never understand the connection there. Is it a plea? Is it a prayer? Is it just damn stupid? Or is it stamping "Christian Crusade" upon the events? All of the caps and eleventies make me feel as if any questioning of those images makes you "against us." It alienates me.

I felt that in the aftermath in 2001: alienated by the flags and crosses. They felt so meaningless and divorced from what I had seen on t.v. or heard from people actually in Manhattan, and from what I saw in Manhattan a few months later. In fact, the flags and crosses, at that time and ever since, also scared me. Used as they are, to me, they seem like bludgeons. They seem like hatred and revenge. They seem like ignorance. I know many people find comfort in them, which is fine when it is private or even smally collective and when it is, in fact, a comfort. When they are weapons, I hate it, because I feel that the force behind the weapon is so narrow that I and the people and things that I value are part of the target -- not necessarily the bulls eye, but certainly acceptable collateral damage.

We are about to get ready, and I will take notes. It may not be as bad as I expect. I hope that it is silent and respectful, because that seems most appropriate. Then, I hope to spend the evening writing about the lesser events of the past few weeks, forgetting flags and crosses and all caps and eleventies in my shallow end of the pool.

Also, I'm sure that I will be extradited for this post -- right after I'm deported for not having sufficient proof of health coverage.

We Share the Power in This Relationship!

I've not been a world traveller much in my life, having stepped no more than a few blocks into Canada and into Mexico until last year. I did know, however, that the electrical systems overseas are much different than those in the U.S. Something to do with voltage and perhaps AC/DC (not the band) or something all engineer-y and scientific, which means that the numbers and information all slide out of my head two seconds after I think I've mentally ingested and comprehended the facts. What did remain in my head was the knowledge that you can't put your American plugs into non-American sockets. I'm simple that way, and I hope it keeps me out of trouble.

Last year, when I went to the land of the Beatles and Shakespeare, I stopped into Radio Shack to get one of the adaptors so I could make myself pretty for the conference that I was attending. I hadn't yet learned that hair driers are now ubiquitous in most hotels, but I did know that hair irons are not.

A vast array of different adaptors and converters and sockets and outlets and all sorts of related paraphernalia covered a section of the wall at the store. Before the initial reaction of "Oh, shit, I'm way out of my league here" could wear off, a helpful young woman -- almost girl -- in a Radio Shack shirt offered help.

"I'm going to Europe," I told her. "I want to use my hair iron."

She had an accent. Spanish, I think, or perhaps Polish. Clearly, I'm not an expert in European accents, although if she had a Spanish accent and was talking with a person with a Mexican accent, both in Spanish, I could tell the difference. In any case, the fact that she had an accent made me feel a bit better since she probably had some experience with incompatible voltages. In fact, as she handed me one, she said, "this is the one I use when I go back to Europe." So, I bought it and went on my merry way.

Did you know that "Europe" and the "United Kingdom" are two separate concepts? I mean, I know that the UK is its own place, but I always put it in the category of "Europe" based on my 4th and 10th grade geography lessons. Along similar lines, I'm having a hell of a time figuring out when to use "Ireland" and when to use "UK." I assume the two are separate, with the exception of Northern Ireland, based on my limited knowledge of Irish history. The electronics companies, however, seem to conflate the two. I've ended up in conversations that go something like this: "Will this work in an Irish outlet?" "Yes, it's compatible with all outlets in the UK." "Yes, but I'm going to Ireland. Will it work in Ireland?" "Yes, in all outlets in the UK."

Going back to the situation with the European adaptor, in the English hotel room, I discovered, much to my frizzy-haired dismay, that the prongs on my adaptor did not match the openings in the outlet.

On the right, you see a UK outlet:

That's a type of adaptor on the left, left by the prior sub-let tenant. Those are, in fact, switches to turn the electricity on for each socket. Those are all over the apartment. Almost everything using electricity has its own switch; and, contra to American switches, you flip down to turn on. So, the red bit on the right switch means that the outlet on the right has power.

I digress.

This is the "European" adapter:

In trying to force this adaptor into and English socket, I was actually trying to put round pegs into square (or rectangular -- they are squarish, right?) holes. Lesson learned, not just in European and UK adaptors, but also in reading the back of the package to see where the item works.

Radio Shack might have taken the adaptor back, but I didn't try to find out because the back of the package said it would work in France and hope springs eternal. It also says it works in places beyond the ruins of the Iron Curtain, and that location is now on the itinerary for the year. Lucky I have an adaptor for it!

With the adaptor lesson learned, during the packing for this current trip, I stopped by Best Buy to get a proper one. Fortunately, at Best Buy, I got a sales person who seemed to actually know something about electronics. My adorable, pony-tailed, sweet-spoken electronics geek explained that I don't just need an adaptor. Carefully explaining the voltage differences, and the impact of that difference on my hair drier and computer, he told me that I needed a converter. They were, sadly, out of converters. "Lots of people are travelling to England these days for some reason," he said. "We have a hard time keeping them in stock."

After staring at the empty hook, hoping that the appropriate converter would magically appear if I wished hard enough -- or maybe clapped -- I thanked my electronics geek and ventured off in search of another place that sold converters.  Other places, however, employed sullen, inarticulate, monosyllabic teenagers who were all clearly collecting a paycheck and didn't know shit about their inventory much less how to use anything not involving a phone. Still, the Gentleman Caller and I muddled through and finally found a converter, despite the mumbly salesboy's lack of knowledge about adaptors or converters or the difference between the two.

We only bought one because we wanted to see if it would work first, then figured we could buy another at our destination. (God, we are Amerocentric, aren't we; and for all of our advanced degrees, not too bright?) We also wanted to find one that had a three-pronged socket. If we could find one with a three-pronged socket, then we could plug in a surge protector strip and my computer. The Gentleman Caller's computer has a two-pronged plug.

We have yet to find the three-pronged converter, although we did find a salesperson who insisted that the adaptor he was selling us was also a converter and wouldn’t let the voltage difference blow out our laptops because laptops are set up to go everywhere. We were dubious, but bought the adaptor anyway because it couldn’t hurt to have one extra and it did have three prongs

Being dubious and not entirely clueless, we decided to try out the adaptor on something other than our computers. We decided to use the surge protector.

Let us all bow our heads in respectful memory of the surge protector, which died with a pop, valiantly protecting us from a barrage of high voltage:

Not as grisly as you would expect, is it? I assure you that it made a loud noise, and I worried that the Gentleman Caller had taken a serious shock. Mercifully, he was fine and felt nothing but surprise.

Now, we have one converter, which we plug into an adaptor. Then, we plug the two pronged computer cord into the converter:

That means that we have power for only one computer at a time. So, the Gentleman Caller uses the power until his battery has filled, while I work on my computer using my battery. When my battery gets low, he passes the cord over to me to juice up, and he works on his battery. Back and forth, back and forth, all day.

We share the power in this relationship.

Meanwhile, we await the arrival of a converter from a friend in the States.  We actually have another device that we thought was a converter, and says it is a converter, and was going to be a part of this post; but, as I wrote this post, that device took on a story of its own and half of the electricity in the apartment shorted out.

Tram Adventure

The apartment that we are staying in is spare, to say the least. We sub-let it from an academic couple who currently have the longest distance in their long-distance relationship of anyone I've ever heard of. They are positioned at opposite ends of the globe and, to make matters worse, have just had twins.

But that is their story. Our story is that we are subletting their apartment, and you would never guess that they were an academic couple about to have children by the looks of it. Not that I would expect them to have left it all homey for us.  That isn't the oddity of the place. The oddity is that the place has the stark feel of a better grade dorm room or sparse hotel room. I'm not saying "ugly," just strangely un-lived-in. There are not simply no books, but no bookshelves or evidence of such. There are no end tables nor lamps. The only evidence that anything has been hung on the walls are stray hooks, placed haphazardly. Even the furniture is square and uncomfortable, including the beds.

This means that this couple -- the Gentleman Caller and I -- has to go out and buy things that make it not just homey, but functional for our own living, much as college students must do for their dorm rooms. I started with a poster from our visit to the Book of Kells; but that is just not enough by a long shot. We need lamps. We need end tables. We need converters for our electricity. We need an alarm clock. We need something on which to stow books and something to hold toiletries. We need a Target.

Except, Target is in absence here, as is the Big Ass Grocery Store, K-Mart and -- gasp! Is there a place in the world where this does not exist? -- Wal-Mart. On the one hand, thank heavens there is actually a place in the world where Big Box stores are not on every corner (nor is Starbucks, although there are Starbucks). On the other, where does a person buy these things? More importantly, where does a person buy these things at a low cost because they are only going to use them for a year and then abandon them?

I suggested the resale shops nearby, but they only sell clothing and small housewares like plates. The Gentleman Caller suggested the hardware store,  but they seemed a tad too expensive. We found an Ikea on the map, but it is all the way on the other side of the city. How about a mall? Yes! A mall. There is a mall on our side of the city and we might be able to get there and back without much effort or culture shock.

You see, the Gentleman Caller and I are not usual travellers of public transportation in the U.S., where we know the money and the ways to get about. So, public transportation as our sole source of mobility aside from our feet and in a place where we are a bit alien, is something of an adventure. We consulted maps of trams, maps of trains, maps of buses. We consulted the websites of each. We consulted Wikipedia. Finally, we decided that the tram system, LUAS (Gaelic for "fast," according to Wikipedia), was our best bet. After all, we haven't taken a tram before. Plus, it went directly to the mall.  So, we put on our coats and packed our umbrellas and headed over to the tram station.

Here is where you buy the tickets:

They are 1.90 Euros, depending on your route. Actually, I think everywhere is 1.90 Euros, but I haven't fully investigated that questions. Also, you go up to the track and buy the ticket. Not outside a turnstile, not to be punched on the tram, but here, next to the track, and no one checks them. A very trusting system!

Here is my ticket:

This is a tram:

My goodness, the inside was clean! And quiet! Plus, the doors don't all open automatically. You have to press a button to open the door. If you are standing, the tram doesn't lurch to a start nor throw you over when it stops. All in all, a fun and easy ride. We took it back, too.

The mall was an experience in "just the same, but different." Some of the escalators were like those moving walkways at the airport, but on an incline. Instead of T.J. Maxx, there was T.K. Maxx. Penney instead of J.C. Penney. They even had a grocery store. The  most unusual thing for us -- or most frustrating, actually -- was that the department stores where we thought we could find a housewares department, like T.K. Maxx, did not have those housewares departments. Just clothes. Later, we went to another mall, but their housewares department had nothing electronic. We finally found our alarm clock in the grocery store , which was much larger than the one in our neighborhood, and had something more akin to the housewares department that we were looking for.

"Where do you go to fit out your kids for college," Gentleman Caller wondered, having done so a few times himself.

"Yeah," I said, having done so for myself more recently than I care to remember.

You could buy school supplies for younger children, but nothing like you find at Target for dorm rooms. What do dorm rooms look like here, I wonder? Do kids shop for them like they do in the U.S.? All very curious to us.

We have the alarm clock, and I found a small light to attach to my book so I won't disturb the Gentleman Caller or have to turn on the overheads when I want to read myself through my insomnia. No lamps or end tables. Also, as part of my informal research into the American cultural perception of Irish culture, I have learned that you cannot easily find the kind of cheap tapestry with a Celtic knot available at every single head shop and outdoor festival in the U.S. Not that those are lovely, but they would warm the place up a bit on the wall and take up more space than a poster.

Yesterday's adventure was the bus, also 1.90 Euro. We had help in the form of some Irish colleagues, who also informed me that I don't have to worry about the graffiti that I see everywhere. They say that those are the work of kids emulating Americans, not serious gang work of marking territory. I hope they are right! Especially since they also say that the sun starts setting around 3:30 pm in the winter.

So, now we can ride the trams, and the buses.

Tomorrow, we learn to tie our shoes! Sunday, we go for Ikea.