Televisions in the attic: the early fallout

Not being able to turn around without running into a television is going really really well so far. To wit,

1. I was in the kitchen--the one televisionless room in the garret--cooking dinner the other night. I was feeling oddly uncomfortable, but I could not quite put my finger on why. It just seemed quiet somehow, which did not make sense because I had music playing. I decided to replace the music with NPR. Yes! Voices! This was better. But they were strangely disembodied, I thought, and--long story short--I brought my laptop into the kitchen so that I could watch The Closer on DVD while cooking dinner. Sad sad sad.

2. I am addicted to The Closer and some episode of some season is likely to be on on the laptop or any one of my t.v.'s at any one time. The Grand He mentioned the show the last time I saw him, saying he loved it and it reminded him of me or us or some mysterious something that made me too curious not to want to check it out, but I hadn't had the chance to Netflix it until recently. I am almost through Season Two. I love it. (By the way, my sister claims she can't watch it for more than five minutes because Sedgewick 's Southern accent is so badly done. I think I've been away from the South too long for it to bother me, though I do cringe over certain words like "because" and "thought.") I see several obvious reasons it makes The Grand He think of me and a couple of not-so-obvious. I am not sure I am at all comfortable with some of these reasons.

3. In the past week and a half, I have had dreams about this person, this person, and this person.* I should not know who these people are much less be hanging out with them in my dreams.

4. Now first on my WWMD** job list is truck driver, not only because of this conversation between my father and his grandchildren but also because of the best reality show of all time, Ice Road Truckers. Turns out my father is also a self-proclaimed fan of this show. This is an amazing statement, because my father (being a staunch character, as Little Edie might say) is not the sort of person who claims to be a fan of anything. He also fully supports my fallback career plans. As he sees it, truck driving is my heritage. Of course, I am not aspiring to the ice road trucking. No. That would be like the RI of truck driving.

5. Silence has become a beautiful thing again. Sometimes I find silence distracting, but now . . . ahhhhhhhhhh.

*TMI asterisk: One of these was a really great sex dream. I am not saying which.

**What Will Medusa Do (if she does not get tenure)

Medusa's Holiday Weekend

This holiday weekend has been pretty low-key, something that I usually do not mind but that this year feels like a kind of lame "kickoff to the summer," as all of the local news station insist on calling it. It's not like I made plans or anything, since this weekend falls during the three weeks before I begin the summer travels (which I have dubbed the Three Weeks of Six Weeks Worth of Work ), and it's not like I have not done some socializing and some relaxing. Still . . .something feels too lonely or quiet to me. Maybe it's that last year's Memorial Day weekend involved having a huge party with friends new and old, engaging in an ugly public argument and breakup with my boyfriend, and unexpectedly leaving town for a few days with the rock-n-roll circus. Maybe it's the sense that I should be doing something, that holiday pressure that I think we all succumb to sometimes. Anyway, I am not nearly as sad or mopey as this post has so far made me sound. What have I been doing with myself on this unholidayish holiday weekend during which I seem sad and mopey but am not?

• Well, the weekend began with me Building an Outfit over at the superfantastic Manolo's blog. You can check it out on the forum. I did not win but it was still superfantastically fun. My thoughts on my non-winning outfit are: a) I took a risk with matching the open-toed ankle strap pump with a city short (as really I prefer only flats with the city short or if a heel, a casual wedge); b) something is somehow off with the cut of the off-the-shoulder silk top, along with the placement of the ruffles; c) the necklaces, bag, and sunglasses are brilliant (and I may have ordered some of these items as a part of the retail madness part of this weekend, see below); d) I was never sure about the bracelet, though it does tie in with the shoes, but I think that's precisely why I do not like it, and I think it is too much with the necklaces; and e) the whole outfit might be a little boring--cream and brown with cream and brown. In any case, it was great good fun and I am very much looking forward to the next contest. Incidentally, I count this as the weekend's (only) "work."
• I have been following A. and Crazy's Vagina Power Weekend 2007 telephonically and on Dr. Crazy's blog. By yesterday they were feeling hungover and remorseful but I think this is wrongheaded and perhaps the undue influence of penis power. I am hoping they will reclaim the Vagina Power today, as Dr. Crazy and A. are fun and charming and witty and fabulous.
• I continue to work out as if it is my job. As you might surmise, working out like it's your job, which is to say for about an hour and a half every day, prevents you from doing actual work. Anyway, I am on some sort of mission that apparently involves seeing what will happen weight-wise, body-wise, and mood-wise if I work out for many days in a row. Today will be Day 14, and I think I might be (insanely) going for 30. The results thus far: I have lost 3 pounds; my legs, arms, and waist are visibly toned; and I feel almost too good--tons of energy, almost zero anxiety, and hence no work on looming projects this week, oopsie. I also feel like I might be living in the 1980s--the fitness-crazed 80's, not the cocaine-fueled 80's. I wonder what I would be feeling like if I had decided to live in the cocaine-fueled 80's** for 30 days. I would definitely have lost more than three pounds but I might be dead.
• Speaking of death, I almost choked on a cherry pit yesterday. During the near-choking, I thought about how funny and convenient it would be to die on Memorial Day weekend. I also thought it would be kind of nice to die by choking on a cherry pit, theoretically of course, as I am sure it would be a real nightmare physically. But how could you not smile just a little when in answer to your how did she die question, you got "she choked on a cherry pit"? Not only is it an alliterative death, but it prevents a maudlin and melancholy response. It's comical. By the way, I am not feeling particularly morbid this weekend, though the holiday inspires a kind of morbidity. I am always and have always been this morbid. There's this extraordinary line in Little Children (which I watched last night, see thoughts below) about all people being "miracles" because they know that everyone they love will die and they still go on. When I was very young, I realized just this--that everyone I loved would die and that I in fact would die. I completely freaked out and starting alerting everyone to this fact, like "Wake up, people! Do you not know what's going here? Why are we just walking around like this is OK?" Eventually I decided that this fact made life absurd and was a sign of God's excellent but sick sense of humor. (Around this same time, I started planning my funeral and have found such plans drafted out in various journals and diaries of my youth. I also was convinced I would die at the age of 24 right up until midnight on my 25th birthday, but that's another story.) So anyway, yeah, I was a freaky and morbid kid. But I still have that idea in my head. I still believe that this knowledge of certain loss and this refusal to let it stop us makes this life absurd. But maybe it does make us miraculous? Absurd or miraculous? An absurd miracle?
  
• Friday night I took a friend out for a belated birthday dinner and then we went to see another friend play music. I have been hanging out with the belated birthday friend since September. How to describe this relationship? We are friends but there is also an attraction and he has tried to make it a thing but ultimately it has gone nowhere and in the end I think we are just not that into each other. It's as messy and boring as the construction of that sentence. And the fact that I have now actually talked about him on the blog probably means that I am about to end it, at least in its current ambiguous configuration. Anyway, the other music-playing friend is the person some of you know as Demetrius or One True Love. Going to see him play with Ambiguous Friend (uh oh, a pseudonym, a sure death knell) was a kind of worlds-colliding experience, as it was at the bar that was my practically my living room during grad school and that contains at least three people I have slept with at any one time (Friday night's count was four) and everyone I had ever met was there. But it was actually kind of lame. My friends were nice to Ambiguous Friend. Ambiguous Friend was very laid-back but also seemed kind of bored. I was "meh" about the whole thing, even after two Sapphire and tonics. Who knew worlds colliding could be so uneventful?
• This weekend has provided the climax to the retail madness of the past two weeks, during which I have ordered far too many glorious treats from places like Sephora and Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and a gluttonous number of books from Amazon and local shops. Hmmmm. . .seems like I might be living in the mindless-consumerism 80's as well. Yesterday I went into Marshall's to pick up a sports bra and a pair of running shorts and ending up spending $116 on neither a sports bra nor running shorts but on things such as a DKNY chemise and the piece de resistance, for only $39.99, a new dog bed and burrowing blanket for the Chalupa:
  Isn't it wonderful? As you can see, it is most luxurious and absolutely perfect for our very girly-girl bedroom. Yes, it is big enough for a German Shepherd but she loves her super king-sized chihuahua princess bed.
  
• Ignoring Major Project due in June and the unwritten syllabus for my summer class and instead watching stupid T.V. (the Real World Las Vegas marathon, the kind of boring Shear Genius with the mechanical and unlikeable Jaclyn Smith, What Not to Wear, this new fixer-upper show with my imaginary boyfriend Andrew Dan Jumbo, who I have figured out reminds me of my second fiance, P.) and good movies like Blood Diamond and Little Children. Continuing with my reviewing style that is part Ignatius J. Reilly and part obvious pointer-outer that movies cannot resist the force 0f the heteronormative train, I will say that I thought Little Children was spectacular--the strangely funny darkness of it, the performances of Winslet and Connelly and really everyone, and the clean yet somehow stifling and oppressive look of it. Just a fantastic film, really. But the end feels odd to me. Is the optimism supposed to be ironic or does it seriously want us to think traditional family values will save us from our post-9/11 world of fear-mongering and bullying? Is it just Tom Perrotta? He does seem to be obsessed (Election, Little Children) with the cheaters-never-win theme. On the one hand, there is all of this wonderful questioning of the joys of marriage and child-rearing; on the other, there is this idea that the reason we are not being good mothers and fathers and partners is because our growth is retarded and we are behaving like a bunch of adolescents. Perhaps that is the final message: grow the fuck up and handle your dissatisfaction in a less deluded state of awareness. Blood Diamond slams the American marriage industry, indirectly blaming heteronormativity for massive bloodshed. Among its political messages is an unexpected one about family and life choices and the ultimate luxury of such choices. And that Leo. My my my.
  
• Hanging with the Chalupa. Here she is with a friend, known as "Baby," watching a home-decorating show featuring a bedroom that looks eerily like my own. If you look through the window in the shot, you can kind of see Hairy Yoga Guy's porch.

That's all from Medusa Central. I must go out into the sunshine with the Chalupa, perhaps break up with someone who is not my boyfriend, and at some point sweat profusely on an elliptical machine, perhaps in some sort of Jamie Lee Curtis-inspired head band. Happy holiday weekend to all!

**Updated to add: Apparently Lindsay Lohan was doing my living in the cocaine-fueled 80's for me this weekend.

PSA: Gyllenhaal alert

Jake Gyllenhaal will be on this morning's Today show, within the next ten minutes or so.

Updated to add: Lame. Jake said a few words, then Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal's character in Zodiac) yammered on and on about the STILL! NOT! OVER! case. I wanted Mark Ruffalo to run in screaming and punch Graysmith in the face. Then I wanted Robert Downey Jr. to show up and snort some lines of coke off of Jake's bare chest.

Dream proof of media overload (and all manner of other issues)

I know I am in danger of becoming that boring person who posts only pictures of her pet on her blog, so I will instead risk becoming the annoying person who blogs only about dreams. This week's dream log also serves as evidence that I have been spending entirely too much of Februrary watching television and reading blogs:

Monday night: While passing by a cafe in a hotel where I was attending a conference, I noticed a man gesturing toward me. It was Larry King, eating a bowl of a oatmeal. (Some of the oatmeal was falling down his chin and into the folds of his jowls. Ewww.) So he says, in his exact Larry King voice, "Yeah, so sit down. Let me tell you something. Stop dieting. You're looking gaunt, here and here [gesturing toward each side of face]. You don't look good. And watch it with the booze, will ya? Now go." He goes back to eating his oatmeal, and I walk away with the distinct feeling that he had somehow mistaken me for Lindsay Lohan. I was upset not at what he had said but at the idea that he had not really said it to me.

Wednesday night: Matt Lauer totally felt me up. He was ostensibly measuring me for a bra for a segment on the Today show, but there was OVERT fondling.

Friday night: Last night's was the most detailed and emotional dream. Heather Armstrong decided to give me her life, complete with husband and child. I was to take over as her, to live in her house as her husband's wife and her daughter's mother. I kept trying to explain to her that I could not just fill in for her, because her child and her husband loved her. But every time I told her that she could not just be replaced, she would shake her head and give me this "you are so so naive or perhaps even slightly retarded" look. As she was training me, guiding me around the house (which was really quite spectacular, with all kinds of hidden spaces like a huge underground grotto with hot spring-fed baths), and telling me what to do, she kept saying, "You are going to have snap out of it and pay attention." I had this overwhelming feeling of complete inadequacy, not with the child or even with the impossible necessity of having to be a lapsed Mormon but with the idea that I would be a terribly inferior partner in the marriage.

So, yes, I think we can all agree that it's a good thing I will be seeing my new shrink again next week. I think I will just walk in, sit down, and bust out with, "Larry King thinks I'm too skinny, Matt Lauer and I got to second base, and I am a bad wife."

Though you are the size of my head, I shall defeat you (or Die Froggy Die)

As you can see, things have been quite busy around here, with froggies needing to die painful deaths and such.



The Chalupa and I are getting along marvelously, but sadly it looks like this will only be her foster home until I find her a better, most perfect home. She is not doing so well with the many stairs involved in living in an attic and with the spastic dog downstairs, with whom she shares the yard. She loves nothing more than to be in my lap, but my lap is unavailable for large portions of the week--often 12 hours a day. I am in touch through the veterinary hospital and various rescue leagues with some wonderful people, so I feel confident we will find her a great home. Already there are a couple of good possibilities. Still, it will be a sad day indeed when she goes. There's always the possibility I will not be able to let her go, but I need to remember it will be better for her. So, for now, I will be making the garret the happiest possible foster home for Her Majesty, Chapula Chunk-o-Love.

In other news, the semester is off to a busy start. Once again, my course-release time (for research) is being sucked into the Black Hole that is my Toxic Devil Chair's service agenda, including the many obligations of serving on search committees for multiple searches run in the most stupidly fucktarded (and I am almost quite sure illegal) ways possible. My classes and my students are awesome. My colleagues (with exception of Toxic Devil Chair) are awesome. Foggy C, while fucked-up in various ways, is fine. My personal life, since resolution of Big Deal Personal Suckage, is full of all manner of bright and happy possibilities. If I could just find a way not to let Toxic Devil Chair toxify my life, I would be fine.

In New Year's Resolution news, "goofing off" is going particularly well, which is why I think I will ignore the prep for a class I have only taught once two years ago (a perpetual untenable position I find myself in due to utterly unrealistic demands of Toxic Devil Chair) and the stack of ungraded papers to go see Pan's Labryinth this afternoon and then settle in with the Chalupa for wine and Grammy fun (and froggy killing) this evening.

Random Bullets of I Feel Like Crap

I have sniffles and chills and aches. A cold, plain and simple. I got into bed at 7:30 p.m. last night and pretty much slept straight through to 9:30 a.m. this morning. I still feel crappy. I am too cranky and foggy to put the things bouncing around in my head into narrative form, so . . .

• I might be turning into my mother. My mother avoids all people with colds at all costs. She will also cancel plans if she is coming down with a cold or recovering from a cold, because she thinks it unforgivably rude to pass on known germs to others. I am especially cranky about this cold, because I got it from someone who knew he had a cold and made plans with me anyway and didn't tell me he was recovering from a particularly nasty cold until he had exposed me to all of his germy germs. Oh god! I am a seventy-year-old woman.
• But you see, I CAN'T HAVE A COLD RIGHT NOW! This is the week after my holiday but before school starts--the week in which I have to do everything I need to do in order to start the semester on a reasonably sane note. This is TCB week. Dammit!!!!!
• More evidence that I might be turning into my mother: I bought this. My mother has always refused to use a coffee maker. She has two old-fashioned percolators and makes a pot of decaf and a pot of regular every morning. Is it really worth the trouble? After two weeks of drinking the old-fashioned percolated coffee and then returning to my Mr. Coffee coffee, I have to say "blek, blek, blek" and "yes."
• At the risk of forever losing my film critic cred, what with yesterday's recommendation and with what I am about to say, that Night at the Museum really is a cute movie. My new favorite word is "weirdie."
  
• Is the "Megan Mullally Show" really still on the air? Have you seen this thing? It's unforgivably bad. The conversations I have on my couch with my non-celebrity friends are more interesting. Oh, I could turn to "The View," which airs at the same time. Ayyyyyyyyyyyy! Right, I'll say it again, "Hey Barbara, Rosie, Elizabeth, Joy--you're killing feminism!"
• I should be getting into the shower then getting into my study and then doing the things with the syllabi and the files and the organizing and the what-not. Don't wanna. Cold. Achey. Pajamas soft. Robe warm. Bed nice.
  
• I love The Blog of Henry David Thoreau. Isn't this passage beautiful? I have swum in Walden Pond at sundown more than once and once at night under a full moon. Transformative.
• Is it okay if I stay in bed today? If I do, I would only have a few days to get ready for my semester--writing syllabi (but I've taught these classes before), reviewing student work (but that does not have to be done right now, necessarily), re-organizing study, etc. Won't I just feel like a useless slug if I do stay in bed? Agh. Annoying even myself.
• Damn you, Man with Cold! You are bigger and stronger and younger than I am! Damn you for giving me your cold and going on your merry way!
• When I feel better, I want to blog about my New Year's Resolutions, which are serious this year. Briefly, they are: 1) Goof off more; 2) Indulge on regular basis creative impulses, including new one--sewing--made possible by snazzy new sewing machine I got as a Christmas gift; 3) spend time meditating, first of all and most importantly on the question of whether a) to go for tenure at Foggy C; b) to do a bigger job search next year; c) to do something totally different; or devious option d) to get tenure at Foggy C AND to put most of my energy into doing something totally different; 4) giant Spring cleaning, starting in Winter and lingering into Summer.
• OK, what if I moved into the living room, set up camp on the futon, did some work, watched some movies, but drank juice and tea and napped at will?
  
• I am seriously thinking of getting my hair cut, which is quite long, like this. But not until Spring. Thoughts?
  
• I think I might be the most boring person with a cold in the whole world.