Roaringgrrl

Why I Should Live in the Country

Roaringgrrl — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:53:56 GMT

As a kid, I assumed that everyone’s neighbors hated them. To the left of us, our neighbors’ sons played endless rounds of basketball, resting between games on the railroad ties that cordoned off my mother’s flowers. In an attempt to keep them out of the flowers, my folks slicked the ties with oil, warning the boys not to sit there anymore. Several ruined pairs of pants later, the boys finally got the message, but their mother regularly ignored us on her daily walk to her car.

Across from us lived a mom, teenage girl, and a boy a year younger than I. The girl, Sissy, kicked me in the nose (I was eight at the time) when I tried to line up for the bus (our stop was at her house). The boy, Michael, regularly challenged my brother (two years my senior) to fights. When my brother finally consented to a round of fisticuffs, he pushed Michael to the ground after which Michael proceeded to cry and run home. Michael’s mother called my mother to complain about his ruined pants (apparently we were experts at it), and my Mom recommended bleach.

To our right lived a family whose father fancied himself a farmer. He built a barn in the backyard (about ¼ of an acre) and plowed much of the yard to grow organic produce. From inside, we enjoyed watching him endlessly roto-till his ¼ acre plot until we stepped outside and suffered the ill effects of his “natural” fertilizer that encouraged flies the size of our Chihuahua.

As neighbors, we were no picnic either. I practiced piano in the early morning (about 7am) and my brother practiced his drums daily. Our aforementioned Chihuahua, Tuffy, was a champion yipper/bayer/biter of strangers. He often refused to come in when called, so I’m sure the neighbors were less than thrilled at our nightly shouts at Tuffy to get inside.

Since then, I’ve tried to be cognizant of my own noise pollution as a neighbor and apartment dweller. As I’ve grown more conscious of the effects of my living space on others, I’ve become less tolerant of people who are clueless about living in shared space.

For instance, if I were President, my first act would be to make it illegal to cook liver and onions in an apartment building. The same law would apply for people who leave alarm clocks on over a holiday weekend when they’re gone. There would be a special jail for those who leave their howling dogs in the backyard all day while their owners are at work.

With a miniscule amount of tolerance left, I entered this holiday season with trepidation. Our new neighbors (whose yard our living room overlooks) had installed a particularly obnoxious Halloween display. In their postage stamp-sized yard, they had erected not one but two large inflatables (one in the shape of a haunted house, the other a Grim Reaper, hovering over the fence). Both featured lights that stayed on all night. Despite their already over-packed yard, the neighbors added several tombstones that glowed fiendishly and several carved pumpkins, one of which was vomiting his own guts.

For a solid month, Peter and I looked on this tableau and feared for Christmas. And we were right to be afraid. A few weeks before Christmas, the neighbors erected another large inflatable, this one featuring Santa, his sled, a few reindeer, and some elves. This, in and of itself, wasn’t too bad, but a few days later came the light display. Our neighbor draped lights over the fences and trees as well as the balcony and awning of his house. But these weren’t ordinary lights. These were, what my friend Jill called, “seizure-inducing merriment.” The lights flashed and blinked furiously in time to….wait for it….. electronic holiday music blasted for everyone within a ten mile radius to hear. And this went on well after 10pm.

I lasted three days before I anonymously submitted the following note to our neighbors’ mailbox:

The Great Assumption of 2011

And lo, it came to pass that in the town of Dillon, there was a house swaddled in lights, enveloped by music, and the neighbors, they were sore afraid…

Assumption 1: Everyone within listening and viewing distance of your display celebrates Christmas.

Assumption 2: Everyone within listening and viewing distance of your display who celebrates Christmas enjoys flashing lights and accompanying music.

Assumption 3: Everyone within listening distance of your display is hearing impaired, hence, the extreme volume of the display’s audio component.

Assumption 4: Everyone within listening distance of your display does not work in the evenings and should therefore not be disturbed by the volume of your display’s audio component.

Assumption 5: Everyone within listening distance of your display enjoys electronic mash-ups of the same handful of songs repetitively for at least five hours each evening.

My assumption: You will read these assumptions and crumple them up.

My hope: You will turn the volume down on your display so that only residents at your home can hear it.

Now, I know the note is snarky and not at all in keeping with the “holiday spirit,” and I should have just put on my big-girl panties and knocked on their door to ask them to turn down the music, but as I round the corner of 40, I’ve become less and less concerned about letting my bitch flag fly.

So it was with great satisfaction when, that evening, the music was noticeably less loud and the display discontinued at around 9pm.

I felt pretty good about myself. For about a day. Then, the following afternoon, the doorbell rang, and there stood my neighbor, handing out holiday cards.

“Hi!” he exclaimed. “I’m Phil, from next door. My family and I just moved to town, and I’m giving out Christmas cards to the neighbors as a way to apologize for my yard decorations. We got a note about them and we felt bad for disturbing the neighbors. You see, I served in the military for several years, and I’m deaf in one ear.”

Yup. I had that one coming.

Not only was this guy classy enough to come to our door with a card and a heartfelt apology but also he actually was hearing impaired. After serving our country.

He continued, “Yeah, so since I can’t hear out of this ear and my kids weren’t going to tell me how loud the music was, I didn’t know how loud it had gotten. We just moved here from California and we want to fit in with the neighbors. We love living here, away from the bustle of the big city. We decided to move here after I retired as an ultimate fighting champion.”

Gulp.

I smiled, nodded, and absolutely, positively did NOT own up to the fact that I was the one who had written the note. I admit, it was hard to speak with my foot so firmly lodged in my mouth, but even more difficult was digesting the notion that this guy could rearrange my face without trying too hard.

I said goodbye to Phil and crawled under the bed like the snake that I am.

And this is why I should live in the country. Not because I deserve to be free of annoying neighbors but because they deserve to be free of me.

Happy Holidays, everyone! Be as loud as you like. I’m not leaving the house until school starts.

Like Everyone Else

Roaringgrrl — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:37:26 GMT

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve done things because they made me different. Instead of buying a four-wheel drive vehicle when I moved to snowy Montana, I bought a MINI Cooper with a clearance so low ants could barely limbo under it.

Instead of buying a house when I moved here (thereby establishing some equity and discontinuing my practice of, as my friend Terri puts, ‘flushing money down the toilet’), I rented an apartment and bragged, probably too much, about how I didn’t have to do yard work or plumbing. (In fact, as I write this, I’ve my feet propped up on the coffee table while I can hear someone else shoveling the front walk. This makes me happy.)

Instead of keeping a low profile during the probationary years of my tenure bid, I published this column during my first year at UMW, and, seven years later, am still recognized as ‘the girl who wrote that column.’ I could have saved myself several hundred calories in stress-eaten pizzas had I passed on the opportunity to write about my single life in Montana (and avoided, as my provost has put it, ‘earthy language’).

Instead of staying single or getting married at my home church in Virginia with my friends and family watching as I floated down the aisle in white ball gown, I got married in the drive-thru at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas.

Here’s the story.

Peter and I decided in January that we wanted to get married. The actual scenario went something like this:

Me: Do you think we should get married?

Him: Okay.

We mulled over our options for a few weeks. We could go to a Justice of the Peace in Dillon, but word was bound to get out, and we didn’t want anyone to know before our parents. We could get married by a JP in my hometown over the summer, but that would leave out his parents. We could get married by a JP in his hometown over the summer, but that would leave out my parents.

In the end, we chose to leave everyone out and elope. We already had a spring break trip planned with our friends who live in Vegas, and really, what city does quickie marriages better?

Once we opted to elope in Las Vegas, we decided to make the ceremony as cheesy as possible. We could get married by Elvis or any number of Star Trek Star Fleet Commanders, but these ceremonies didn’t resonate with our (read: my) impatient personalities. Quick and easy; that was the name of the game.

The Little White Wedding Chapel offered several ceremonies, several of which didn’t required the interested parties to leave their vehicle. This sounded perfect to us, but in reality, the ceremony took a little more work than we thought.

First, we had to pre-apply for our marriage license on-line. Doing so afforded us placement in the “express line” at the Las Vegas county court house where we both had to show up with driver’s licenses and cash to pick up the legal marriage certificate. We also had to book our ceremony well in advance of our March 5 wedding date as well as secure the reservation with a credit card.

I’ve seen dozens of films and TV shows where people get hammered then hitched in Vegas, and now I can say with certainty that I don’t know how they do it. We couldn’t just show up to a wedding chapel and get married. We had to go to the court house (which boasted almost 24 hour a day service) to pick up the license (good for only seven days) and only then we could go to a wedding chapel. You’d have to be a better drunk than I to navigate that kind of system.

With the marriage license applied for and the wedding chapel booked, we turned our thoughts to more serious matters, namely, what we would wear. I’d say we spent a good 15 minutes looking on Amazon before we settled on a tuxedo t-shirt for him and a t-shirt with the words “The Bride” for me. We took another ten minutes to decide we wanted to treat our friends to The Cheesecake Factory after the ceremony, which necessitated another call to The Little White Wedding Chapel to book a limo to pick us up and drop us off at Caesar’s Palace (location of the aforementioned Cheesecake Factory).

And that was it. We didn’t think about the wedding again until we drove down to Vegas at the beginning of March for spring break.

When we arrived in Vegas, we picked up the marriage license and asked our friends to meet us at Caesar’s Palace. We enjoyed a short limo ride to the chapel, signed more paperwork and received a complimentary bouquet and garter. From there, Peter and I popped out of the sunroof of the limo and were married in the drive-thru Tunnel of Love.

My friends took a few photos and we all climbed back into the limo to go to dinner. In all, it took about an hour.

When we got back to Dillon, we didn’t tell anyone but our Human Resources rep at the college (we had to change our tax forms). Afterward, we just went about our business of teaching and research. We told our families during the summer, and when the fall semester started, we told everyone in Dillon.

The question we kept getting was, “How did you manage to keep it a secret for so long?” The first time someone asked me this, I looked blankly and cocked my head to the side, like a dog, thinking. Finally, I said, “It wasn’t a hard secret to keep because nothing changed for us. We lived together and loved each other before we got married. We live together and love each other now. Neither the ceremony nor the license changed us.”

So why get married at all, you may ask. After all, a woman with a penchant for doing things differently shouldn’t be so quick to conform. There were any number of reasons for getting married: (1) Peter needs a green card to stay in the country and our being married helps (though not nearly as much as you would think); (2) We bought property together and being married makes contract language and mortgages much easier to negotiate; (3) As I round the corner of 40, it’s less awkward to introduce Peter as my husband rather than my boyfriend/fella/gentleman caller.

But none of these things came to mind the night we first started talking about marriage. Before I met Peter, I longed for companionship and someone to care for (who wasn’t me). I wanted my partner and me to be each others' priorities, sacrifices, and inconveniences.

Like everyone else, I wanted to be loved unconditionally, inconveniently, sideways, and upside down.

In the end, I finally got married because I am loved

Oh, and we traded in the MINI for an all-wheel drive Subaru and are now proud owners of property in North Carolina. Married, driving a "sensible car," in debt.....I really am like everyone else.

This New Condo

Roaringgrrl — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 20:46:57 GMT

Last night I dreamt I was on a swim team. After watching me swim for a few minutes, the coach decided I shouldn’t swim more than one length of the pool during meets. Because I don’t do flip turns, she reasoned, there was no use in swimming more than one lap.

I woke up frustrated and indignant. In the dream, I wanted to be a good swimmer for the team, and the coach wasn’t helping me. I knew I could be better, but I was being held back.

I’ve been having a lot of dreams like this lately. I wake up frustrated and anxious. So what’s going on in my waking life to provoke such nightly discomfort?

Peter and I are buying a house.

Those of you who are homeowners just nodded knowingly, didn’t you? Because you already know what I have just learned. . . .that buying a house is an effective way of showing just how helpless and powerless we are in the face of a crashingly huge financial system that loves to watch us squirm.

It all started last summer when Peter and I visited Topsail Island, North Carolina, a favorite childhood destination of mine. After a week’s worth of beach strolls and orangey red sunrises over the sound, we decided to buy a condo there.

As academics on ten month contracts, we reasoned that buying a summer place while renting in our college town would give us an investment opportunity while still allowing us mobility in our job location. It was a well-reasoned idea, one that I had pondered for a while before Peter came into my life.

With Peter by my side, the idea could become a reality much quicker, so a few months ago, we contacted a real estate agent in North Carolina. We told her the parameters of our search, and she began emailing links featuring beautiful beach-front condos. As the snow drifted and the winds howled in Montana, we gazed longingly at pictures of balconies with ocean views and patio furniture.

Too soon, we were jerked into reality when we began shopping for mortgages. We discovered that applying for a mortgage is as personally invasive (and significantly less comfortable) as an anal probe. They wanted bank, retirement, and tax statements. They wanted pay stubs and a credit check and just when we thought we had nothing left to give, they wanted more: landlord addresses, previous employers, etc. And this was all before we had left Montana!

As soon as graduation ended, Peter and I headed for the east coast with high hopes of finding a place early enough to get it closed before returning to school in August. Unfortunately, life had other plans for us.

Martha, our MINI Cooper, had been acting up, complaining of electrical problems since last summer. Four dealerships and a year later, she finally puttered to a stop in Rapid City, South Dakota, only one day into our trip from Montana to North Carolina.

With Martha loaded on a tow truck, Peter, Gracie the cockatiel, and I endured a seven hour truck drive to Loveland, Colorado, the closest MINI dealership to Rapid City. After four bumpy hours on the road, the wind kicked up and a storm descended bringing hail that sounded like shrapnel piercing the roof of the tow truck. Martha weathered the storm without a scratch, but as we pulled into the MINI dealership three hours later, the clouds parted and we saw the promised land: a Subaru dealership.

A few days later in our new Subaru, we arrived in North Carolina, ready to condo shop. At this point in the column, I need to thank my parents, not only for tagging along but also for exposing me to HGTV’s show, House Hunters. After watching a few episodes, I learned that house hunting is all about compromise. No place is perfect, I discovered, but a few condos we saw weren’t even close.

There was the one with the bouncy floor (some kind of laminate problem, I guess), the one with the porch screens ripped out, and my favorite, the one with four couches in the living room. I know removing the couches was an easy fix, but such a bizarre furnishing style really made me wonder about the owners.

Finally, we agreed on our first condo, a small, two bed, two bath place on the sixth floor of a large, well- maintained building. Though the furnishings looked like cast offs from the Golden Girls set, I loved the ocean view from the balcony.

But before we could make an offer, we ran into two significant snags: first, the building was pet free; second, the building was designated as a condo-tel (that is, the building would rent condos by the night). The first problem could be solved with a letter to the Homeowner’s Association but the second problem proved to be insurmountable.

It turns out that most mortgages are underwritten by Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac. Neither of these companies will underwrite a mortgage for a condo housed in a condo-tel.

Really? Companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the reason our economy is in the toilet, but I have to live up to their *ah-hem* discerning standards? C'mon, coach! Let me do more than one lap! I swear I can do it!

This setback proved significant as Topsail has only a few condo buildings, and purchasing a house was out of the question. Why? Because neither Peter nor I are interested in taking care of a lawn, garden, roof, etc. We’re not “fix ‘er up” types. The only non “fix ‘er up” homes on Topsail Island are well beyond our meager professorial salaries.

Back at the starting block, we asked our realtor to show us a few condos in a resort building not deemed a condo-tel and were lucky to find a terrific, affordable place.

At this point, I thought the hard part was over. We’d found a place and a mortgage, and it would be all downhill from there. (I just re-read that line and can’t believe how dumb I was).

All of the hurdles that followed (negotiating with the sellers, finding a home inspector, finding the best mortgage rate) would have led to fewer night terrors had I one important character trait: patience.

As I have mentioned in previous columns, I am a champion worrier, and I think most of this worry stems from my lack of patience. If I were a more patient person, I’m sure I’d worry less, but as it is, anyone who’s seen my left ear (my favorite worry spot) knows I’m one job/home/family loss short of pulling a Van Gogh.

So for now, we wait. The mortgage company appears to be on board, the contract has been signed, and a close date has been set.

So what do I have left to worry about?

The owner wants to keep renting out the condo until we close. The thought of random people’s naked butts on what my furniture is keeping me up at night.

Juicy Expectations

Roaringgrrl — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 02:17:00 GMT

It was such a simple plan. Go to Vienna for Christmas and meet Peter’s parents. Tour the city, eat some cookies, enjoy some general merriment. But like the relationship between doughnuts and my thighs, everything kept expanding exponentially. Would I like to go to a hot springs a few hours south of Vienna for the day? Sure. Would I like to take a side trip to Paris for a few days? You bet. How about five extra days in London? What?!?!

You see, Peter is completing his Ph.D. at a U.K. university, and apparently when your dissertation committee says that it’s time to defend, you hop on the next flight. Such a change added several complicated traveling dimensions to our vacation, and we left Montana a little earlier than planned so Peter could defend his dissertation.

Everything went fine for a while. We flew effortlessly from Bozeman to Minneapolis to Boston to Paris. While waiting for our flight to London, we were delayed by fairies or elves or something (we were never told what was going on), and we started to get concerned about whether Peter would make his London train to his defense.

Finally, we landed at Heathrow, caught a train to London, and waited for our friends in London to take me and our 67 lbs. of luggage to their flat while Peter caught another train to his defense. Unfortunately, we missed our friends in the busy railway station, so Peter bought an extra train ticket, and I and our 67 lbs. of luggage accompanied Peter to his defense.

Due to an electrical outage, the train was diverted, missing two stops, and though that didn’t slow us down, we ran into serious problems getting a taxi at the station where all the folks who couldn’t get to their homes via train also needed taxis. We made it to his defense with only five minutes to spare, and only when we were walking into his department’s main office did I realize that I would be meeting Peter’s dissertation committee wearing my sweatpants that say “Juicy” on the butt.

Despite that faux pas, Peter passed (he did so well, in fact, that his dissertation was accepted as written, with no corrections), and we celebrated by collapsing at a hotel. We did finally touch base with our friends in London, and we spent a few nice days enjoying museums, shopping, and tea at Fortnum & Mason’s.

From there, we went to Austria and stayed with Peter’s folks who live in a small village outside Vienna, This is when the real vacation began. Peter’s mom spoiled us with freshly baked Christmas cookies, pounds and pounds of Milka chocolate, and, just for me, several liters of diet Coke (Coke Light, in Europe). We saw Don Giovanni at the Vienna State Opera House and visited the oldest Christmas market in Europe in front of Vienna’s town hall. We enjoyed a Austrian tradition of decorating a fir tree with homemade ornaments and candles which we lit (carefully!) on the tree’s branches.

Until the day after Christmas, I mostly stayed at Peter’s house. We took a few short trips into town, but mainly I let myself be fed by Peter’s mom, and nothing, save the language barrier, felt too different from life in the states. That all changed the day after Christmas.

The day after Christmas, I learned what it really meant to be in Europe. Peter’s parents treated us to a visit to the Loipersdorf hot springs for the day. First, I learned what it means to drive in Europe. I clung tightly to Peter’s hand as his dad flew down the autobahn at about 100 miles an hour (and there were people passing us!)

When we arrived at the spa, I learned what it means to be at a hot springs in Europe: nude.

We had chosen an adult area of the hot springs that warned its visitors “Nudist Area Ahead,” but I thought that meant clothing was optional. I was wrong. It meant that nudity was required, particularly in the saunas and steam rooms. Not wanting to seem like prudish Americans, Peter and I nuded up and enjoyed a dark aromatherapy steam room.

When walking from place to place, however, we all wore bathrobes and flip flops (crocs were abundant). When Peter’s parents pointed out a place to lunch, I thought to the clothes and makeup stored in my locker. Just a quick spruce, I thought, and then I can join everyone, but there I was wrong too. Everyone ate at the restaurant in their bathrobes and flip flops. The restaurant was cafeteria style so as I meandered around looking for Coke Light, I found what it means to drink in Europe. The soda fountain offered Coke, Fanta Orange, Mountain Dew, and…..white wine.

After lunch, Peter and I wandered down to the spa where he had booked a massage for me. After all the various forms of transportation over the past week that required I sleep in an upright position, I was looking forward to a good rub down….and I found out what it means to get a massage in Europe: nudity…again.

I have often marveled at massage therapists’ abilities to preserve my modesty. Massages have always felt comfortable and safe for me, so I was very surprised when the massage therapist asked me to disrobe in front of her (usually a masseuse will leave the room for this event) and climb on to the table. I was wearing my swim suit under my bathrobe, so instead of being able to quickly disrobe, I had to peel off my clammy suit and reveal all the ripples my “slimming” suit had made in my skin, particularly in the butt and thigh area.

Looking vaguely like an albino panini, I lay on the table where I was immediately covered by a sheet. Whether this was protocol or out of sympathy for my striated thighs, I’ll never know. It was a fine massage, but instead of wind chimey, Native American flute-y music, my massage was accompanied by a Cat Stephens cd.

Ironically, this wasn’t the first odd musical moment I experienced in Austria, which is, as far as I can tell, the birthplace of classical music (Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven). I mean, I didn’t expect to be accompanied by Mozart or Strauss at all times, but I found it a little odd to be using a bathroom at an autobahn rest stop that piped-in Mahalia Jackson. It was even more disconcerting to glide along the ice at the Vienna Ice Skating Rink to Billy Squier’s subtle tune, “The Stroke.”

I think I loved Vienna all the more for these idiosyncrasies. In general, I like oxymorons, paradoxes, and all manner of juxtapositions. I like irony. So when Peter and I left Vienna for Paris, we decided to have a little fun with irony. After visiting the Christian Dior flagship store, we trotted down the Champs Elysees to a McDonald’s with a view of the Arc d’Triomphe where we enjoyed grande frites (a large fries). Later at the Galeries Lafayette, Peter went into a Louis Vuitton store and inquired if they sold any fanny packs. He received a firm “no.”

We had a marvelous time letting Paris be what it is, a magnificent city full of museums, shopping, and architectural wonders made even more wonderful when we were walking around, eating crepes stuffed with bananas and Nutella, Peter in jeans and me in my Juicy pants.

It’s funny. When I let go of my expectations, even the most complicated plan became simply delightful.

Roomies

Roaringgrrl — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:44:00 GMT

During my first two years of college dorm living, I managed to run through five roommates. After number three and I parted ways, I forced myself to consider the possibility that the problem might be with me.

I always had my own room growing up, and though I shared a bathroom with my family, we were all pretty likeminded about keeping errant hairs to a minimum and screwing the shampoo lid on tightly.

Dorm living was a different ball of wax. I couldn’t just close the door and be by myself when I wanted to: I had to share my space. I think we all know what a hang up I have when it comes to sharing .

The real problem is that I’m a neat freak who likes to have control over her space. I hated that my side of the room looked, in my opinion, fabulous, but my roommate’s side looked messy and disorganized. Once, after getting angry at roommate number three, I, in a bizarre form of “revenge,” cleaned her side of the room. It felt great and looked fantastic. The whole room had my touch.

It was pretty exhausting stressing about the state of someone else’s stuff, so after my sophomore year, I began requesting single rooms in the dorms. Since then, I’ve lived alone, and I’ve generally had no complaints about it. The bathroom is clean because I cleaned it. The milk is where I put it in the ‘fridge, and it will wait patiently in its place for me.

I’ll admit there have been some lonely weekends when, boyfriendless, I wondered if I could actually sleep the weekend away, but for the most part, I like living alone. And there’s always Gracie, my cockatiel, to keep me from being too solipsistic.

However, since the last time I wrote, my relationship with Peter has progressed. After spending much of the summer together, we decided he should rent the apartment across the hall from mine. I live on the top floor of a house with only one other apartment, so essentially, we’d have the whole floor to ourselves. When we needed alone time, we could just retreat to our separate apartments and close the doors.

Unfortunately, the apartment across the hall would not be available until December. We thought we could just continue to spend loads of time together while keeping separate residences until then, but I decided I enjoyed spending time with him so much that I didn’t want to wait, so I asked Peter to stay at my place until the apartment next door opened up.

Yes, that’s actually control freak me speaking, but notice I didn’t say that I’d move in with him (his place could barely fit Gracie’s toy collection let alone me, my wardrobe, and my extensive pear portrait collection –that’s for another column). At least at my place, my stuff and I could rest easy knowing that there was enough room for all of us.

Peter agreed to move in, but he left his furniture in his apartment. What didn’t occur to me when I extended this invitation was that he would need some place to park his stuff. My closets and drawers were currently occupied by my own wardrobe, so we purchased a few under-the-bed boxes for him to use, and I, somewhat grudgingly, crammed a few sweatshirts from my coat closet into my regular closet to make room for a few of Peter’s hanging clothes.

Since he moved in, I’ve learned from my friends that they don’t share their closet space either. One friend, in fact, uses the closet space in their bedroom for her wardrobe while her husband’s clothes are exiled to the guest bedroom. While I probably will become zen with Peter’s clothes hanging next to mine, there are a few things I’m not willing to compromise on.

For example, the bathtub must be rinsed (that’s why I have a handheld shower) after each use. Clean dishes may NOT be placed on a counter that hasn’t been wiped down. All plastic must be rinsed and deposited in the plastic recycling bag under the sink (I’ve fished from the garbage far too many pop bottles, honey).

I’ve been trying to let a lot of other stuff go, which is really hard for me. Peter likes to make the bed, and though he turns the large pillows so that the open ends face each other rather than away from each other, I’ve let that go. Peter likes to wash the dishes, and even though he doesn’t wipe down the counters before starting the washing, I’ve let that go. Okay, so maybe I’m not letting it go so much as I am not commenting on it while I silently seethe inside.

The big change for me is that I’m letting him help me clean on Saturdays, although the bathroom is still my domain (I must control the hairs and for a mostly bald guy, Peter really has a lot!). I decided that I’d let him dust. In my mind, dusting has to be done, but it’s pretty low stakes. I don’t have many breakables, so I reasoned, why not let him go to town?

Here’s the reason why. Apparently, I suck at dusting. In less than an hour, Peter went through two swiffer dusters (later, I stuffed them, black and twitching, deep into the garbage). After he was finished, he handed me something he’d discovered under the radiator. It was a Christmas ornament. And it wasn’t mine! It must have belonged to the previous tenant who lived here, wait for it, FIVE YEARS AGO.

So how much of a neat freak am I if I hadn’t ever discovered this gem!?! This was the moment when I decided that I had to let it go. Don’t get me wrong: I still carp on clean dishes sitting on a dirty counter top, but the occasional wayward hair and the pillows and the vertical rather than horizontal filing of papers? I’m letting it all go.

In return, I’ve made room for a cuddly bed companion who washes the dishes and saves enough hot water for me to take a bath before I go to bed. Let’s hope he doesn’t run for the hills like my last five roommates. My radiators need to be dusted.

Share and Share Alike. . . . For Real, This Time

Roaringgrrl — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:54:00 GMT

Since I was little, I always thought the coolest job in the world would be to be a Christmas tree farmer. On the surface, I think I thought it would awesome to be a part of a favorite holiday for many people, but now, I realize that the job fascinated me because Christmas tree farms are almost always perfectly groomed. The trees stand in straight rows and are generally of the same height and circumference. I find such order very aesthetically pleasing. This is the same reason I always like climbing on to a school bus. I like how the bench seats are always in perfectly straight rows.

I have extended such order into my own life. Though I’ve dated for more years than Dakota Fanning has been alive, I’ve never been asked to share my life with someone. I like having guests at my apartment, but I like it even better when they leave, so I can straighten everything that’s been touched or moved. It’s a sign, I think, that I’ve lived alone for too long. I like my stuff and I like it to be where I left it.

A few years ago, I wrote a column about this very problem I have with sharing. I look back on that column and laugh at myself because I didn’t even come close to understanding what it means to share with someone. Sharing a soda or a car ride is something you do with a friend, but true sharing can only take place when someone demands a part of something you don’t want to give up.

I’ve recently started dating a man, Peter, who wants to fold himself into my life. He is a delightful person who brings me flowers and chocolate and lets me hold the remote. In return, I cook him dinner and help him decorate his house. Peter is a very thoughtful man. He wants me to be comfortable and happy. These are all good things.

One Friday, Peter and I decided to have a weekend sleepover. In my mind, Peter would stay the night, enjoy a light breakfast, and then be off doing whatever he needed to do on Saturday. Then, he’d return in the evening, stay another night, enjoy another light breakfast, and be off by Sunday at noon at the latest.

When Peter arrived with a weekend bag, his laptop, and various toiletries, I was surprised but directed him to store his stuff in my study (I had recently decided that he could hang his coat in my coat closet rather than leaving it on the arm of the couch in the study because apparently, I’m possessive over even my coat closet). We watched a movie and when it was time to retire, I locked myself in the bathroom under the pretense of taking care of “girlie” stuff. Instead, I sat on the side of the bathtub and whispered to myself, “I can’t handle this. He’s not going to leave?!? What are we going to talk about for the whole weekend? Is he going to go with me to do my weekly marketing? Can I still get my laundry done?” I took a Tylenol PM and emerged from the bathroom smiling and so dopey that I fell right asleep.

It turns out I had nothing to worry about. Our conversations never lagged, and I really enjoyed taking him on my Saturday chores of recycling and marketing. On Sunday, we stayed in our jammies and watched the Food Network. I felt so comfortable and relaxed that I was actually reluctant to see him go. Of course I manically straightened the house when he left, but I was glad that I saw the weekend through.

Since then, we’ve had plenty more sleepovers and I’ve slowly let Peter become part of my strange rituals. I like to make my bed as soon as I wake up, and of course, I like my bed to be made in a certain way with the pillows fluffed just so. When Peter offered to make my bed while I fixed breakfast, I balked at first, but then remembered that it was laundry day and the sheets just needed to be stripped off the bed and tossed in the washer. I instructed him to do just that, but soon, he came into the kitchen and asked, “What should I do with the safety pins in the pillows?” The safety pins!?! Holy crap! I shoved past Peter, inadvertently pushing him into the door frame, and trotted down the hall saying, “I told you NOT to take the cases off the big pillows!”

In my crazy world, I safety pin cases onto the decorative bed pillows so I don’t have to keep rearranging the cases every time I fluff the pillows. If Peter saw the safety pins, he’d know I was a fraud! Pretty soon, he’d be looking into my bureau drawers and discover that my sock drawer is a disaster area! I may be all clean and neat on the outside, but open a closet door and you’ll see I’m a pack rat of the first order.

When I took a breath and saw Peter splatted against the kitchen door frame, terrified of my reaction, I realized that I’ve become ridiculous about my stuff and my space. I mean, really, who cares about my safety-pinned pillow cases? Soon, I learned that Peter would discover things about me that I didn’t even know about myself.

I’ve mentioned in a previous column that I’m a vegetarian. Except for the occasional slab of bacon (damn, why is that so good?), I’ve been off meat for about fifteen years. This means that I need to substitute protein in other forms, and since I’m not a tofu eater, I consume a lot of beans. You see where this is leading. I have problems with, let’s say, food talking behind my back. I’ve generally kept this problem under wraps by living alone for most of those fifteen meat-free years.

But now that Peter’s on the scene both day and night, he’s been witness to some of my back-talking behavior. For the most part, I excused myself in time, but a particular active tickling session led to an accidental eruption. After that, I started letting go in front of Peter, and to my surprise and delight, he thought it was hilarious, and he made little jokes about my ability to propel small airplanes.

As we slept one night, however, I woke to hear myself tooting a little in my sleep. I was so sleepy that I just rolled over and completely forgot about it until morning. After I woke, I asked Peter if I had farted in my sleep, and he just smiled and said, “Well….maybe a little.” I apologized and said that I didn’t usually do that. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t necessarily say that.” What?!? How often, I asked, every night? “Every other night,” he said.

And that was it. That was the moment I realized that I am the problem. No wonder I haven’t been able to keep a relationship together. I’ve been literally propelling them out of my bed!

Yet I have found a man who hasn’t kicked me out of the bed. In fact, Peter hugs me closer instead of shipping me off to the guest room. He wants more of me, not less, and for that, I’m happy to share my orderly life with him, safety pins, sleep farting, and all. Just wait ‘til he sees how I fold my towels. That’ll teach him.

The Female Professor on Film

Roaringgrrl — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:46:00 GMT

The following article is a departure from my usual column about my bumbling, clumsy life. I had hoped to have it accepted for publication in a magazine, but so far, I haven't had any luck. If you have any suggestions on where I might place this article, please let me know. Enjoy!

In a February 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education article entitled, “The Thrill is Gone: Recent films portray the malaise of academic life,” Jeffrey Williams describes the prosaic lifestyle of the professoriate portrayed in recent films The Visitor, Smart People, and Elegy. Uninspired in the classroom or by their research, these aging professors belie the popular stereotype of the beloved tweedy professor pontificating to groups of adoring students.

Though much of Williams’ article focuses on recent portrayals of the professoriate, the author claims “The professor has long been a staple in film” and briefly outlines the popularity of the professor character in films such as Horse Feathers (1932), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), and Animal House (1978).

Do you see a trend here?

Williams’ film selections only feature white, male professors.

Unfortunately, not only does Williams neglect to mention women, but also he assumes his audience is male: “We are overachievers who can only wistfully imagine the days of the relaxed, leisurely pipe-smoking professor.” We are? Certainly pipe smoking isn’t limited to men, but the gendered stereotype is clear. Professors are male.

At first, I reasoned that Williams refers only to male professors because few films depict women as college professors. I quickly discovered that this isn’t true. In fact, I found several films that portray women as professors. Recent statistics showing the rise in the female professoriate also bear out this trend in films. According to a study conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities in 2005, women constitute 41% of all full-time, tenure-track faculty members in all ranks.

Even though the number of women in the professoriate continues to trend upward (from a paltry 19% in 1970), there are several films as far back as 1941 that feature female professors. In Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), Martha Scott plays the protagonist, Ella Bishop, an English professor at the fictional Midwestern University. In 1943, Greer Garson played Madame Curie in a film of the same name, and she shows a Paris academy what it means to be both a woman and a scientist.

However, no matter the time period in which films are produced, balance is the overarching theme that emerges from most all films in which women are portrayed as professors. Several films portray women as enjoying successful academic careers with disastrous personal lives while others show only one small facet of a female professor’s life.

In The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), Rose Morgan (Barbra Streisand) is a popular professor at Columbia University. Her students listen with rapt attention as she discusses the nature of love in medieval texts such as The Art of Courtly Love. She encourages students’ participation, calls on them by name, and moves around the classroom with ease and grace. Outside of the classroom, Rose schlumps around in ill-fitting clothes, fakes colds to cancel dates, and capitulates (at first) to her mother’s and sister’s advice to change her eating habits.

More tragically in Wit (2001), Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) is a brilliant scholar dying of cancer. She refers to herself as having made an “immeasurable contribution” to her field (the study of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets). Her former student (and her current doctor) describes her in the classroom: “She gave a hell of a lecture. No notes. Not a word out of place. It was impressive.” However, as Vivian endures endless chemotherapy treatments, she, for the most part, suffers alone. Only one person other than the medical staff visits her. Ironically, Vivian’s visitor is a female professor, one of Vivian’s mentors, who encouraged Vivian as a student to “go out. Enjoy being with friends.” Instead, Vivian went to the library and says later, “I thought being extremely smart would take care of it.”

Interestingly, in Wit and The Mirror Has Two Faces, neither characters’ work life seems to be adversely affected by her personal life. Both Vivian and Rose are accomplished teachers and scholars despite their isolation and loneliness, and neither let these parts of their personal lives into their classrooms. Not so in Mona Lisa Smile (2003). Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) is deeply affected by a student’s editorial about Katherine’s decision to encourage a student to attend law school. Following the publication of the editorial, Katherine shows ads to her art history class depicting “the perfect housewife.” These ads from the 1950s depict women cheerfully vacuuming and ironing to please their husbands and families. Katherine asks the students, “What will the future scholars see when they study us?” When the students fail to respond, Katherine exclaims with great disappointment, “I didn’t realize that by demanding excellence that I would be challenging the roles you were ‘born to fill.’ My mistake.” She storms from the classroom shouting, “Class dismissed!”

Similarly, Elaine Miller’s (Frances McDormand) outburst in Almost Famous (2000) in her classroom shows her personal life seeping into her professional life. After a few months of sporadic phone calls from her teenage son on the road with fictional band Stillwater, Elaine, in the middle of a lecture about Carl Jung, blurts out, “Rock stars have kidnapped my son!” and she flees from the classroom.

In other films, female professors’ personal rather than professional lives are almost entirely the focus of the film. In Desert Hearts (1985), Helen Shaver’s character, Vivian Bell, is never shown in the classroom or in an office (though at one point she is shown leafing through several books and discusses preparing some lectures). Desert Hearts certainly explores the stereotype of what a literature professor should look like (prim) and be (prudish), but the focus of the film is Bell’s exploration of her sexuality in light of her budding relationship with a young, female artist.

Likewise, in Away We Go (2009), Maggie Gyllanhaal’s LN Fisher-Hirren, is only shown once in her office where she is breastfeeding her two children simultaneously. LN, in fact, is completely defined by her role as a mother, and though she refers briefly to Simone de Beauvior, LN never reveals what she studies or teaches.

LN isn’t the only female professor character to be defined or characterized by her gender. There are a few films that sexualize the female professoriate. In Bickford Schmeckler’s Cool Ideas (2006), Cheryl Hines plays Professor Adams, a cosmology professor. While discussing Bickford’s cool ideas, she loosens her hair from its tight bun and says to Bickford, “You penetrate me.” Later, as she reads Bickford’s book, she receives oral sex in a hot tub and orgasms, gripping his book tightly.

In Back to School (1986), Diane Turner (Sally Kellerman) enters the classroom to a wolf whistle. She then reads Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Joyce’s Ulysses and after Rodney Dangerfield’s orgasmic agreement with her reading, she thanks him and tells the class that she’ll describe the reading list to “see what else turns you on.”

On the other hand, some films show female professors only as professionals. In The Sure Thing (1985), Professor Taubs (Viveca Lindfors) is only shown in the classroom where she has a profound effect on students Walter Gibson (John Cusack) and Alison Bradbury (Daphne Zuniga). Her writing assignments (“Life’s the ultimate experience,” she exclaims) encourage the students’ romance from the beginning to the end of the film. Though it’s clear from Professor Taubs’ advice that her life outside the academy influences her pedagogy, we are never privy to that life.

In Madame Curie (1943), Marie Curie spends the majority of the film in her lab at Municipal School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris. Though we do see her interact with her children these interactions take place off school grounds and discussion in her lab doesn’t include her children. On the other hand, many of her interactions with her husband take place in the lab though the discussions are mostly professional in nature. Though the film shows Marie as having achieved somewhat of a balance between her personal and professional lives the most powerful images of Marie are of her in her lab by herself or on stage receiving awards.

Despite these numerous one-sided portrayals of the life of a female professor, there are two movies that show a successful female academic who has found a sense of balance.

In Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), Ella Bishop is a student-cum-professor at Midwestern University in 1883. Ella is an excellent teacher who demands excellence in the classroom while supporting and mentoring her students outside the classroom. Respected by her colleagues and loved by her small family (her mother and cousin), Ella enjoys her life. She is, however, disappointed in love. She becomes engaged only to find her fiancé bedding her cousin Amy. When Amy and the fiancé leave for New York, Ella is upset, but she is comforted by her long-time friend, Sam (who tried to propose marriage to her in the past). Amy returns in a few months, pregnant and abandoned. After Amy dies in labor, Ella happily takes care of the baby. Many years later, Ella falls in love again, but the man’s wife refuses to give him a divorce. After rejecting his offer to go abroad where no one will know them, Ella looks in a mirror and spits out: “You’re a teacher. You set yourself up to carry a beacon for boys and girls to see by. Well carry it!” This is really the only point at which Ella seems utterly exasperated by her life. Though she is disappointed, Ella continues to teach. In the final scenes of the film, the university gives her a retirement party in which several of her former students, a U.S. Senator and a Nobel prize-winning astronomer among them, thank Ella for her mentorship. After the party, she dies at home with her faithful friend Sam by her side.

Cheers for Miss Bishop is the only film that shows a university professor from the beginning of her career until its end. It shows us someone who doesn’t achieve all that she had wished in her early days (a husband and her own children), but she does appear to be happy with her life and values her role as an educator in and outside the classroom. In one scene, Ella gives advice to her grandniece about not running off with a married man. Ella discourages her, not to save her reputation, but because it would be a missed chance to become a mother.

In Teacher’s Pet (1958), Doris Day plays Erica Stone, a journalism instructor at an unnamed city university. As in Desert Hearts, stereotypes abound, but they are quickly debunked and thrown out. When Clark Gable as newspaperman James Gannon marches into Erica’s classroom to tell her why journalism can’t be taught in a classroom, he begins to lecture a frumpy brunette with glasses. She looks at him confusedly and indicates that she’s not the teacher. When Doris Day enters the classroom as Erica, James stares at her blonde coiffure and his face registers surprise and then delight that she is the teacher. Later in the class, Erica reads a letter from James turning down her request for him to speak to her class about journalism. She dismisses the letter and paints a portrait of what this hardnosed journalist probably looks like for the class. She gives him a smirk, a cigarette, a wrinkled suit, and a great disdain for formal education. “But,” she says, “Education teaches you how to spell experience.” James stays on in the class (though he changes his name) to prove her wrong. As he gets to know her, he sees that she is smart and honest in her drive to educate her students about journalism. When he asks her why she teaches, she tells him, “Occasionally, a musician wants to be a conductor. He wants a hundred musicians play music the way he hears it. If I can influence a few students who might some day become reporters and eventually editors, well, I think it’s worth a try. You see, I have my own ideas about what newspapers should be, and I know they can be a great deal better than they are.” When she discovers who James really is, she doesn’t lash out but is merely disappointed by him. She tells him that he’s been unfair to the other students in the class who have worked hard to be there. He grabs her in a kiss, but she doesn’t respond physically and only says after he releases her, “Are you finished now?”

This is unlike a similar scene in Mona Lisa Smile when Katherine Watson complains bitterly to a colleague, Italian professor Bill Dunbar (Dominic West), about Wellesley women who want little more than a finishing school education. When she leaves his office, he runs after with a gift and catches her in a kiss. From that point in the film until she discovers that he’s been lying to her, she seemingly forgets about her anger toward Wellesley.

Conversely, in Teacher’s Pet, both James and Erica are changed by their intellectual relationship to one another. James begins to believe that she’s right about education being more important than experience. After all, Erica is an educated woman who worked on her father’s newspaper (her father won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism). However, James changes his mind when he reads one of her father’s articles and discovers that her father’s newspaper is little more than a small town gossip rag. James tells Erica to take off her rose-colored glasses where her father is concerned, and she too reads her father’s work with a critical eye, seeing it for what it really is. By the film’s end, James and Erica have reached an interesting balance. James has accepted her invitation to be a guest lecturer in her class, and Erica has convinced him to run fewer blood and gut stories in favor of a few “think” pieces.

What I like about Teacher’s Pet is that Erica Jones doesn’t appear to be unhappy or dissatisfied with either her personal or professional life. She’s single, employed, and ambitious. She has reached a balance in her own life and thus is able to achieve another one with a future colleague whom she educates and who educates her.

It’s unfortunate that the only two films which depict the female professor as fulfilled both personally and professionally are more than fifty years old. As women continue to enter the professoriate in the U.S. in growing numbers, we need more big screen portrayals that complicate rather than simplify the life of the female professor. Instead of the lapsing into the personal/professional dichotomy, films could show how this dichotomy exists to keep female professors from meaningful promotion within the academy (i.e. women are fulfilled at work or at home, never both). Though such dichotomies are certainly not limited to professions inside the academy, I would argue that because teaching is one of the most visible professions portrayed on film these dichotomies are strikingly prescient for women in this traditionally male field . Debunking such dichotomies is important for the ever-rising population of students entering college today. According to a survey conducted by National Center for Education Statistics, enrollment in degree-granting institutions has grown from 7.4 million in 1970 to 15.6 million in 2007. Of these students, over 50% are women. These women need to be exposed to their professors’ lives as ones that are rich, complex, and oftentimes, deeply satisfying both inside and outside the classroom. Unlike Williams’ claim that “The thrill is gone” for male academics on the big screen, for women, the thrill has just begun.

O Holy Ketchup

Roaringgrrl — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:01:00 GMT

Last Christmas, I wrote about my first time being away from my family during the holidays. I vowed to add new traditions to keep things fresh, such as watching The Sopranos on Christmas day and doing donuts with Jacek in his car in the school parking lot at midnight.

This year I’ve found it especially important to keep the tradition of being non-traditional alive. Jacek and I have split up, and for the first time in my life, I find myself alone at Christmas. The break up happened too late to purchase a reasonably priced plane ticket home, and for the past few weeks, I’ve truly fretted about what the holidays would be like without family or a boyfriend.

I felt awful. Convinced I had just lost my last chance to be in a committed relationship, I found myself having urges I’ve never had before. I started craving the companionship of something other than a man. I watched this video over and over and thought about how great it would be to have a kitten.

Luckily, my urge didn’t get far and I realized that if I got a cat I would probably become one of those crazy cat ladies who never gets married because, you know, she has all those cats.

Determined to set myself down a different path, I thought back to my vow last year to start new traditions, so I set a few plans in place. First, I chucked Love Actually and all other movies having to do with love in any of its forms and stacked my Netflix queue with thrillers like Misery, Taken, and Drag Me to Hell.

I shoved my traditional John Rutter and the Cambridge Singers carols to the back of my cd collection. The night before Christmas Eve, I attended a Kirtan, an Indian chanting session accompanied by an harmonium and bongo drums. Instead of “O Christmas Tree” and “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” I chanted “Ramakrishna jaya bolo, bhajo mano” while banging a mallet on a bell.

I ‘fessed up my newly single status to my friends and received numerous invitations including a Christmas Eve dinner with delicious homemade soups and a Christmas evening drinks party with martinis and pie.

But what about the day itself? How would Gracie (my cockatiel) and I spend Christmas day? In keeping with the theme of being non-traditional, and trying to fulfill at least one of last year’s New Year’s resolutions, I decided to make ketchup.

In my life, ketchup has only ever come in a bottle, ready to squirt forth to join my fries and veggie burgers. The idea of making ketchup has held a certain romance for me because of the film Meet Me In St. Louis. In the opening scenes of the film, the Smith family is making ketchup, and each family member has an opinion about the condiment’s sweet or sourness. I really love this family that is so checked in with one another that they are all allowed opinions on what amounts to be a minor part of any meal.

I scoured the Internet looking for recipes and finally landed on this one. Though it is a complex recipe, I wanted a considerable amount of my day taken up with this process in case free time left me feeling sentimental and sad. On Christmas Eve, I went to the grocery store to stock up on my ingredients.

On Christmas morning, I tucked into a cinnamon roll and a mug of hot chocolate. Afterward, I started putting together all the ingredients for my ketchup. I broiled large slices of onion, peeled ten cloves of garlic, and tightly packed brown sugar into measuring cups. I stirred in tomatoes and tomato paste and added all ten spices. Then, I simmered the four quart mixture for three hours, stirring it every fifteen minutes.

After three hours of simmering, I poured the boiling ketchup in batches into my food processor and pureed the mixture. From there I transferred the puree into Tupperware containers. With all that simmering and pouring from one container into another, my kitchen was a hideous mess.

The ketchup, despite its lengthy ingredient list and cook time, was delicious. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to make my own ketchup, but I think I’ll continue to resist pre-packaged and processed traditions of the holiday.

And because of this homemade holiday extravaganza, I need not worry about becoming overly sentimental about being single during New Year’s. I have almost four quarts of ketchup left over.

On this year’s New Year’s Eve menu: tater tots and slasher movies.

Conveyer Belt of Love

Roaringgrrl — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:50:00 GMT

In January, I watched what was either the greatest television show ever or one of the seven signs of the apocalypse. The show was called, “Conveyer Belt of Love.”

Here’s the set up. Four women sat in chairs facing a stage featuring a moving conveyer belt. One at a time, men floated in front of the ladies. In less than a minute, a man had to make an impression on the women in the hopes that he would be chosen for a date. With a quick flash of signs that read “Interested” on one side and “Not Interested” on the other, the ladies either invited the men to get off the conveyer belt or encouraged their ride off the stage. If two ladies showed interest in the same man, the man could choose between the two. Then, he would come down from the conveyer belt and put himself on a platform featuring the chosen lady’s name. Later on, if the woman decided she liked the look of someone else, she could bump off the guy on her platform.

I think this is a fabulous idea. Let’s face it, within a few minutes of meeting someone, we can usually tell if we’re attracted to him/her. Of course, these guys had only a minute to put on their A game, and the first guy who floated out and admitted to living with his parents was given a flash of four “Not Interested” signs within a matter of seconds. Others played guitars and sang, while a few appeared in only their underwear in the grand hope that their physique would serve as the main attraction.

All four ladies went on dates, and while two of the ladies realized that their initial attraction wasn’t strong enough to keep a conversation going for more than five minutes, the other two ladies did seem to genuinely get along with their chosen men. A fifty percent chance of finding a nice companion after only seeing him in person for a few minutes? These are odds I like.

And so, dear reader, in the wake of my last break up, a looming Valentine’s Day, and my impending twentyyear high school reunion, I did something I promised myself that I would never do again. I joined an on-line dating service.

I had actually joined this service about seven years ago when I was still in grad school. I met and had dates with three different men. These were all “good-on-paper” guys, but when I met them in person, I didn’t feel any spark of attraction. From this experience, I reasoned that on-line dating wasn’t for me.

However, I live in a tiny town, and my options are limited. I’d like to date again but outside the fishbowl I live in. The best way to meet men, I thought, would be on-line. Plus, two single friends, one here in Dillon and another in New York, had both met interesting men on-line. As one friend put, “It’ll do wonders for your self-esteem.”

Oh, how I wish that were true.

Once I joined the service I decided to make my profile invisible so that I could enjoy a “conveyer belt of love”-type experience. I would shop around for men who lived in Bozeman or Missoula, towns close enough to drive to easily but far enough away so that my personal and professional lives wouldn’t mix.

Browsing through the profiles was a fascinating but daunting experience. I quickly became overwhelmed with all of the choices, so like any good teacher, I had to devise a rubric or scale to rate my level of interest. Any man whose profile picture featured him proudly holding a fish (or any other dead animal, for that matter) was right out. That eliminated a good third of my choices (after all, it is Montana). Next, I started reading profile autobiographies and realized that I couldn’t take off my English professor hat. After looking at these writing samples, I knew I had to eliminate anyone who couldn’t be bothered to use spell check or write in non-texting language. There went another third.

With the remaining candidates, I saw a disturbing trend. A great many of them were outdoor enthusiasts who listed activities that involved either hurtling one’s self down the side of a snowy mountain at breakneck speeds or walking though forests with fifty pounds of gear on one’s back. This worried me. Where was the guy who admitted to liking channel surfing while eating Doritos? Or reading Dickens and the Huffington Post?

I consulted with my ex-boyfriend, Will, and he said that these guys weren’t necessarily looking for me to participate in these activities but perhaps for someone who can appreciate their interests. This made sense to me.

So I wrote to several of these men. I introduced myself and explained why my profile was hidden. I offered to send a picture and more information about myself. Then, the waiting began. Within a few days, I had some takers who were interested in seeing a picture and knowing more about me. I replied and sent on my picture, and again I waited . . . . and waited.

For the most part, none of these men emailed me again. So a week later, I sent out another batch of introductory emails to different men. A few replied to my emails, but once again, after I sent a picture, I never heard from any of them again.

Puzzled, I spoke to my best friend who used to live in Montana and had done some on-line dating. “Are you crazy?” she exclaimed. “Men in Montana are a**holes.” She told me a story of a man she had met on-line. They had exchanged emails and phone calls, and after a few weeks, he decided to visit her. They made arrangements for him to stay with friends and both were looking forward to meeting in person, but he never showed up. He never called her again. Unfortunately, she has a treasure trove of these types of on-line dating stories.

But what if it was me? After all, I’m 38 and still haven’t been able to make a relationship work. Clearly, I have some pretty unique baggage. I decided to re-read my emails and study the picture I had sent. Was the picture not good? Admittedly, I was wearing a sleeveless blouse and the way I was standing made my bicep look to be the size of a Virginia ham. Were my emails too intimidating? I did cop to being an English professor, but it’s not like I quoted Shakespeare or Derrida.

I could speculate endlessly on why these men weren’t interested in me, but the truth is that I’ll never know why they didn’t reply to my email.

So I decided to take myself off line and go with some friends to the one bar in town that my students don’t frequent. My mission that night was not to find someone to date but to find someone (preferably an out-of-towner) to have a minor fling with. My self-esteem needed a booster shot, and, in the past, I’ve been a fairly successful flirter. So I chatted up a man from Seattle who was passing through town. He seemed to respond well to me, and together with my friends, we closed out the bar. While I had hoped to spend some time alone with him, he left me quickly with a peck on the cheek, and I cried all the way home.

And now, I write to you on this Valentine’s Day, with my self esteem in the toilet. My “conveyer belt of love” experiment was a sign of the apocalypse after all. It may not be the end of the world, but it’s the end of my attempt to find love. If he wants me, he knows where he can find me, but for now, Cupid can kiss my ass.

Bridget Jones' Classroom

Roaringgrrl — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:32:00 GMT

Just recently, a new colleague in my department experienced every professor’s worst nightmare. She forgot to go to class. On the first day.

See what happened was that, in her head, she mixed up the time of her class as being in the afternoon rather than in the morning. Her husband, also an instructor at the university, was in their shared office that morning and called her at home to say that her students were in the office, confused about their class.

She handled it like a pro, though. The next day in class, she began by introducing herself and asked, “Let’s break the ice by describing something stupid that we’ve done. Let me start…..”

After hearing about this, I realized that after teaching in higher education for fifteen years, I have quite a few stories of my own goofiness in the classroom. I believe I may rival Bridget Jones in her general inability to make it through any given day without lipstick on her teeth and her skirt tucked into her pantyhose (both things I’ve done, by the way).

In fact, just last month, I railed on my students for having such poor grammar that they were writing in incomplete sentences. I believe I said something like, “Really, at this level [it was a 300-level class] you should be writing in complete sentences.” Instead of marking the errors in their papers, I put a number in the margin next to a sentence with an error. The number corresponds to a punctuation and style key that tells students about the error and offers suggestions for fixing it. I passed out the key impatiently and told the students to get cracking on correcting the errors. The next day, a student pointed out my own proofreading error on the style key in which I wrote “to” instead of “two.” Awesome.

Once I was looking at a syllabus I had passed out a few years ago advising students to buy any “addition” of the novel they wanted. I also accidentally photocopied a summer school class application, which included my social security number, on the back page of a syllabus. And about ten years ago, I wrote to a student that “for all intensive purposes” she was set to pass the class. Oh yeah.

But my fumbling as a professor goes beyond the occasional typo. I’ve tripped over a trash can, kicked off a shoe during a particularly active discussion, backed into a black board which left chalk dust on my butt, and farted while I slid off a table I was sitting on (though the table creaked a lot so I don’t think anyone heard).

This of course doesn’t even touch all the technological boo boos I’ve made. While trying to turn on the classroom’s Smart Board, I angered it so much that the board’s lights flashed red and made a beep beep beeeeeeeeeeep noise that sounded like a heart monitor on a dying patient in a Meg Ryan movie. In another class, I couldn’t get the slide clicker/laser pointer to work, and after changing the battery and restarting the computer, I had to have an IT staffer show me the on/off switch on the clicker itself.

And I know I’m not the only teacher who’s been Bridget Jones-ing it in the classroom, so I’m leaving this column intentionally short to allow editions…..wait…..additions by readers (either who are teachers or who, as students, have been witness to some pretty goofy things).

Let me hear from you!

Fraidy Cat

Roaringgrrl — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:00:00 GMT

I’m not what you would call a sporty person. I’ve never felt the need to run or jog (except after an ice cream truck or the Schwan’s guy), and the idea of chasing after a ball whether it be volley, foot, base, or basket in nature has never appealed to me.

I do, however, love to swim. When I was 8 or 9, my parents encouraged (read: forced) my brother to stop staring at the television and join our neighborhood swim team. As a tag-a-long little sister, I begged to be included in this endeavor and every summer until I was 18, I swam with the local team. I hardly won any races, but I learned all of the strokes and am now able to swim long distances quite easily.

So when a friend asked me to join her and a few others on a trip to swim Clark Canyon Dam, I said yes, excitedly. I’ve swum in open water before, but only for play. It was during this excursion that I realized that I am a big, stinkin’ ‘fraidy cat.

First, you should know that the water was frickin’ frackin’ freezing. It literally took my breath away. Next, you should know that the water was filled with algae. Little strands hung suspended in the water and large globs of it floated all around me.

And here’s what nobody told me about swimming in open water. It’s dark! Unlike the pool with its semi-clean, chlorinated water and clear, black lane lines, the lake water was dark as night. I put my face in to begin my free-style crawl, but I almost immediately pulled my head up and shook myself like a dog. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t swim and not know where I was going and what was beneath me. I was pretty sure the canyon dam wasn’t home to any sea monsters, but I did know that the dam covered a small town called Armstead. I half expected ghostly post-resident Amstead-ian arms to reach up and grab my ankles.

So, I turned over on my back and began to do the back stroke. Ah, this is the life, I thought. I hardly ever do the backstroke in the pool because I’m afraid I’m going to bump my head on the pool’s edge, but in the open water, what would I bump into? Well, as it turned out, something bumped into me. A large pelican had been quietly swimming closer and closer to me as I swam, and when I turned on my side to check my progress, I saw Pete the Pelican coming in for the kill. Seriously, this pelican charged me! I let out a yelp loud enough to scare both of us and he flew away.

Since I was too scared to put my head down, I proceeded to swim the breast stroke, but with my head sticking out of the water like a 95-year-old granny. I may as well have been wearing a bathing costume and floral swim cap with a neck strap.

I swam like this for an hour, and my partner, who was paddling along in a kayak, and I switched places. Unlike me, she had no problem putting her head under water and swimming an industrious crawl. She finished her part in about half the time as I did.

We celebrated our swim with warm towels and a thermos of hot cocoa. When I got home I peeled off my swim suit and realized that I was covered in green slime. Because I had kept my head above water, the algae had no problem making its way down my cleavage, leaving me with slick, green boobs that smelled like a salad. I looked like an alien.

I didn’t used to be so fearful. It’s known far and wide that I’m a champion worrier (and I have the bunched up intestines to prove it), but I’m usually pretty good about taking risks. I’ve moved all over the country to universities where I haven’t known anyone. I’ve gone hang gliding. I’ve been a model (in various states of undress) for art classes while I was doing my undergraduate work.

But lately I’ve noticed that I’m less likely to take risks. After my somewhat bad turn at a carnival this past summer (see my last column), I didn’t chance any rides at this year’s carnival in Dillon. I usually like the rush of adrenaline I feel when I’m at the top of the ferris wheel, but now, I think that rush is really stupid. Why should I put myself through the palm-sweating experience?

One of my favorite movies is Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life (1991). In it, Brooks plays Daniel Miller, a man who has died and gone to a place called Judgment City. While he’s there, Daniel discovers that he has a lawyer who will literally defend his life. In order to move on to the next place (an undefined heaven), Daniel must prove that he has conquered his fears. If he can’t, he will be sent back to earth to try again. During his trial, prosecuting attorney Lena Foster, played by the feisty Lee Grant, shows movie-like clips of Daniel’s life to demonstrate that he hasn’t overcome his fears.

If there really is a Judgment City and I do have to defend my life, I wonder what clips the prosecution will show from my life. The time I gave into peer pressure and signed a classmate’s petition to run for class president in high school? The time I needed to look for a leak in my roof but I froze at the bottom of the attic stairs and then made my boyfriend go up there? The million times I’ve listened to racist/sexist jokes and not said anything?

What might be if I stop being a ‘fraidy cat? If I stopped being afraid that people won’t like me (though I have a feeling that ship may have already sailed in certain cases)? If I push myself to enjoy rather than dread the rush of adrenaline that flushes my face and gives me a mild case of the shakes?

I can tell you this, if I hadn’t been too scared to put my head down at the dam lake, I wouldn’t have gone home with green algae down my bathing suit. And really, who wants to go through life with green boobies?

Quirky TV Shows Featuring a Strong Female Lead

Roaringgrrl — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:54:00 GMT

With access to high speed internet this summer, I’ve taken to downloading shows and movies. After watching several episodes of Weeds, the title, “Quirky TV Shows Featuring a Strong Female Lead,” appeared in my queue as a genre that Netflix apparently feels is suited to my taste. The title also appropriately describes my summer vacation.

I’ve had a little too much time on my hands. After not being 100% satisfied with certain products, I called a lot of companies to complain. My call to L’Oreal about a greasy face cream netted me a refund check but my visit with a Victoria’s Secret sales clerk stuck me with a bra whose seams would show through fleece (there’s a reason why it was on clearance, ah-ha!).

My best interaction was with the representative of the Keurig corporation, a company that makes single serving coffee makers. Mom purchased a Keurig coffee maker for my dad for Father’s day, and we all fell in love with it. The coffee maker uses little pre-measured cups (called K-cups) of coffee that are popped in and out of the maker. Dad is a straightforward cup-a-joe guy, but I like flavored coffee, so I purchased a K-cups box advertising that it contained Butter Toffee and Caramel Beurre coffee.

Unfortunately, I found that the 18 cup box contained 16 Butter Toffees and 2 Caramel Beurres. I called the company to complain about the inequity and hoped they would send me an entire box of Caramel Beurre as an apology. My complaint was met with silence. Then, the customer service representative tentatively suggested that I was, in fact, in possession of an entire box of Caramel Beurre…..because the term is French for “butter toffee.”

Apparently K-cups are popular in Canada where some are labeled in French.

Oh.

In all, it’s been a schizophrenic summer. I spent time with “all-American” families, widows, and carnies. I learned that I am too old for carnival rides (though never too old for funnel cake), I learned that if I get married, I’ll always have someone to buy hangover food for me, and I learned that the middle and ring finger of my right hand are virtually fingerprint free.

This last piece of knowledge came as a particular surprise. For a teaching license, I needed to undergo a background check which necessitated fingerprints. During the printing process, the officer at the Sheriff’s department printed me twice, and still, we couldn’t get clear prints on two fingers of my right hand. I guess, then, I can still embark on a crime spree using only my right middle and ring fingers. It’ll make lock picking difficult, but I’m sure I’ll manage.

In fact, only two days later, I did do something legally dodgy. At a store, I wanted to purchase a can of Virginia Peanuts, but no one was around to take my money. There were no other customers in the store, I poked my head into the back room and saw no one, and I called out for assistance. Crickets. So I wrote a note and tucked the cash into it. And then I left, with the peanuts under my arm. I’ve never done anything like this, and so far, the police haven’t come knocking on my door. Maybe they were confused by the odd fingerprints I left behind.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. The Montana Bureau of Justice has rejected my fingerprint cards, citing them as unreadable.

This whole fingerprinting incident really got me thinking about where I am as an adult. I mean, I’m lucky enough to have stayed off the grid for 37 years, which I think is a minor miracle given my penchant for speeding and making obscene gestures (which often occur at the same time).

However, in 37 years, I’ve managed to become less physically tolerant of being whipped around violently. As a child, I could climb off any carnival ride with a big smile and wild hair. This summer I discovered that those days are over. After 3 minutes on the swings at the Salem Fair, I tumbled off, listing heavily to the right, with very wobbly bowels. No, I learned, port-a-potties at a carnival are not fun.

On the flip side, at 37, I’m old enough to stay in the pool during the adult swim. This summer I swam most days at a nearby outdoor pool. I was entirely too excited the first time the lifeguard blew the whistle to announce the adult swim, and I realized that I could stay in while all the ankle biters had to get out. I floated in luxurious quiet on my swimming noodle.

One of the groovy things about going back to my hometown this summer was meeting up with high school friends. Of course, they’re all married with children (while I still ride the relationship short bus), but I was invited in for a glimpse of the “all-American” family at play.

During the weekends, the families in my friend’s cul-de-sac let the children play in the street while the adults, sometime nursing babies, sometimes nursing beer, supervise from their driveways. Though conversations were punctuated with, “Don’t do that!” “Leave your brother alone!” and “Take that off your head!” I learned several things about the “all-American” family.

I learned that perhaps the greatest invention of the 20^th century is the baby monitor. Parents can listen for kids up to mischief in their cribs from hundreds of yards away. With baby monitors clipped onto their belts, moms steadied a glass of wine in one hand while spraying bug repellant on a rowdy two-year old with the other.

I also learned that two-parent households are particularly adept at tag-team disciplining their kids. Employing the eyes in the backs of their heads and using a growl that could stop a team of horses in their tracks, these parents didn’t need to leave the comfort of their lawn chairs in order to scare the crap out of their kids.

I think the most interesting thing I learned about these married-with-children families is the built-in support system. Sure the parents shared the car-pooling and cooking responsibilities, but, most importantly, I learned that all the husbands drove out the morning after a particularly raucous Christmas party to buy their wives hangover food. This is a fringe benefit of marriage that I’d never heard about. I think I might have climbed on board the marriage roller coaster if I’d known that!

When I wasn’t spending time with the Great American Dream families or at the pool, I shared an occasional glass of wine with the widows who live in my parents’ condo building. With an average age of 75, these ladies are living the good life volunteering at church, taking pottery classes, and spending time with family.

They also taught me something about marriage—it’s a good ride that everyone should get on, but once it’s over, it’s good to stand on your own two feet. Hopefully without the listing and the loose bowels.

Blue Highways Revisited

Roaringgrrl — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:19:00 GMT

In my last column, I discussed my need to get the hell out of dodge so I could shake the anger and misery of a bad school year. I’m not sure going on a cross country road trip was the way to do it.

During the last major road trip I undertook alone, I fell in love with William Least Heat Moon’s autobiographical book, Blue Highways. In it, Least Heat Moon describes a journey he took after divorcing his wife and losing his job. He outfitted his van with sleeping quarters and took to the road. While mapping out his trip, he decided to keep to the blue highways (the color of U.S. highways on older maps). Least Heat Moon’s autobiography begins as a simple journal about his trip but evolves into a more intimate account of his own spiritual journey.

Inspired by this and despite the farm animal settings my dad had prearranged (see my last column, “Mapping”), I decided to put TomTom to work. I programmed him to avoid the major interstates. I believed a trip down those lonely highways would soothe my troubled soul.

In the beginning, the blue highways were superb. Well, except for the cattle drive I ran into only 20 miles north of Dillon. I’ve lived in Montana for almost four years and had never seen a cattle drive. Of course, Murphy’s Law dictates that such an event would correspond with my soul journey. Riders on horses expertly moved the cows down the shoulder of the road, however, a couple of errant bovines decided to move down the middle of the road, aiming directly for my stopped car. It was then I learned that Montana cattle are bigger than my MINI Cooper. Luckily, Martha (my Cooper) didn’t appear interesting to the cattle, and they moved away from us.

Motoring along U.S. 12 in Montana, I got a look at central Montana, a place I hadn’t yet seen. The rolling hills and green grass brought a smile to my face, but I’ll admit what really pleased me was learning that the Town Pump franchise had planted itself along the highway. No matter how small, most of the towns I puttered through offered this well-equipped convenience store that allowed me to eat somewhat healthily on the road.

The last time I drove across the country by myself (15 years ago) convenience store fare was very different. Today’s convenience stores offer vegetarians like me the best invention since sliced bread: Campbell’s Soup At Hand. A minute and a half in the microwave and I was good to go. Don’t get me wrong; I love road junk food tremendously (Slurpees and Bugles and Ho-ho’s, oh my!), but I wanted to give my aging body a fighting chance at a b.m. at some point during the trip. (Hey, I'm a teacher. I'm always interested in outcomes.)

In fact, I drank at least one Soup At Hand each day, and while I was on the blue highways in the west, I had no trouble finding great convenience stores along the highway for my daily soup fix.

After Montana, I crossed through a tiny corner of Wyoming into South Dakota on U.S. 385. This beautiful blue highway afforded me an experience through the Black Hills that was breathtaking. Literally. Since I live in a town so small that trips to the grocery store only have me in my car for two minutes and so isolated that longer trips outside the county require strict attention to roads that may be littered with animals (see above), I don’t generally spend a lot of time cruising easily in my car.

On this trip, however, with my Ipod loaded with CDs I hadn’t listened to in a while, I enjoyed cranking up some tunes and singing loudly, badly, and, given the altitude, somewhat breathlessly. My favorite Black Hills CD was Barbara Streisand’s Broadway Album. Maybe it was her version of “Being Alive” that got me going or maybe it was the misguided notion that I actually sounded good when I sang along with Barbara, but when I was listening to that album, I felt great. My soul started to shed all the junk from the past year and leave it in the wind.

After South Dakota, I cruised happily on U.S. 20 through Nebraska and learned that no matter how small the town in Nebraska, there is always a Pizza Hut. I’m a big fan of the Hut, and though I didn’t stop to sample the pan pizza, I loved knowing that they were there.

In fact, during the first half of the trip, I enjoyed a great amount of abundance. There were plenty of places to eat and sleep, and I never worried about Gracie, my cockatiel who rode right beside me. I plied her with millet and Ritz crackers when she wasn't napping atop her stuffed bird. Life was good for both of us.

From Nebraska, I traveled into Iowa and saw something I rarely see in Montana: happy cows. Now, this is not to say that cows are unhappy in Montana, but when I observe cows pulling up dry grass and milling around aimlessly, I believe them to be dissatisfied with their lives. The cows I saw in Iowa were curled up, chewing their cud in the shade of large trees. They looked contented and peaceful.

Unfortunately, my time in Iowa was the last peace I was to find on the blue highways. Once in Illinois, I found that the blue highways were crowded with large towns through which TomTom skillfully guided me. However, unlike the blue highways of the West, the blue highways of the Midwest and East lack services. Gone are the roadside convenience stores and cheap hotels. Such amenities in Illinois and Indiana are reserved for the numerous interstates that criss-cross the states. Fearing that I wouldn’t find gas or lodging on those highways, I decided to find the nearest on-ramp of a major interstate and just jet on to Virginia.

This turned out to be a huge mistake. If I had stuck to the blue highways, I would have made it home a day later, but I probably would have avoided the giant rainstorm that socked me in on the West Virginia Turnpike. As it was, just as it turned dark and I paid $1.50 in tolls (and there were two more tolls to come), it started pouring. Then the clouds rolled in so that I was driving in the mountains, through the rain, and in the dark. I put on my hazard lights and slowed down to a crawl, but 18-wheelers kept zipping past, spraying Martha and me with water. The road, slick with rain and tractor trailer oil, looked (and felt) like corrugated cardboard, and Gracie and I bounced our way down the mountain. How ironic that the one road I actually paid extra to drive on was the worst maintained.

I’m glad to say that I arrived that night in Virginia safely but exhausted, with my shoulders up around my ears from four hours of tense driving.

Now that my shoulders have relaxed, I am sorry that I gave into the fear of scarcity when I arrived in Illinois. I know if I had believed in the beauty of abundance that I would have had enough, but fear is a powerful motivator. If only I had remembered this passage from Blue Highways:

But it is man’s potential to try to see how all things come from the old intense light and how they pause in the darkness of matter only long enough to change back into energy, to see that changelessness would be meaninglessness, to know that the only way the universe can show and prove itself is through change. His job is to do what nothing else he knows of can do: to look about and draw upon time.

Driving on the blue highways was meant to slow me down so that I could “look about and draw upon time,” but in the remaining hours of my road trip, I forsook that notion in favor of fear. I guess all I can do is to keep traveling down blue highways (both literally and figuratively) and know that I have all that I need.

Mapping

Roaringgrrl — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:34:00 GMT

The academic year is over. I have no major complaints. I’m still employed and most of my colleagues are still speaking to me. My night table is stacked with delectable goodies to read, and my TIVO is almost filled to capacity with the past year’s Masterpiece Theatres just waiting for me to submit my final grades.

I have no major complaints except one. I have become a miserably angry person.

I’m two-thirds of my way to tenure, and I think my latest incarnation as miserably angry person, or MAP, is probably fairly common at this stage in my career. The honeymoon is over; I’ve seen the future of my current job, and I keep mumbling to myself a phrase uttered by Mr. Wilcox in Howard’s End: “Oh, the uselessness of it.”

(Such a phrase applies to several situations, though certainly not to my students, who have kept me from going into a bathroom and opening a vein.)

It’s useless to think that I can change the course of the university’s trajectory, it’s useless to think that I can change my colleagues, and, ultimately, it’s useless for me to be miserably angry about it anymore.

This year, my MAP-ping has taken on several forms and more often than not, I leave the campus feeling like Charlie Brown with his forehead against a wall.

But lately, I’ve been seeing things. Or, as I like to think of it, I’ve been shown things. Several nights in a row, I watched five large raptors circle the tops of the trees on the university’s campus, which is just across the street from my apartment. From my balcony, I watched these huge birds swoop and glide above my head.

Jacek came over and declared them to be golden eagles because of the coloring of their wings. I loved watching them soar into the wind, riding thermals (as birders call it). The English professor in me couldn’t help but to see something symbolic in these beautiful animals flying high above my balcony, night after night. Their presence was telling me to fly to new heights and to take pleasure in the ride.

The symbolic birds reminded me of the summer after my first year here. After heavy rains, enormous rainbows perfectly framed the university two evenings in a row. As with the birds, I saw the symbolism and took the rainbows as a sign that I was in the right place.

Then I found out that the birds weren’t golden eagles. They were turkey vultures.

Try as I might, I can’t think of anything positively symbolic about the university and my balcony being swarmed by vultures.

And so, dear reader, I have decided to put my Mini to the wind and get the hell out of Dodge. I’m spending the summer far, far away from the university and the turkey vultures. I’m going home to Virginia.

When I asked my parents about a two-month long visit, they were surprisingly welcoming, given that I’m almost 40 and basically asking for free room and board. And though I’ve made this trip from the Midwest to Virginia more than a few times, Dad sent me his TomTom, a GPS system, for my car.

I’m not one to get caught up in gadgets (I don’t even have a cell phone), but I must admit that the TomTom is pretty cool. And creepy. As I sat in my car, powering up the TomTom, I thought I would have to reprogram it from my Dad’s location in Virginia to mine in Montana, but nope, within about three minutes, six satellites (according to TomTom) found me and pinpointed my exact street location. AND the little car on the screen was a blue MINI Cooper, just like mine. Freaky.

When some friends decided to take a spontaneous jaunt to Butte (about an hour north from Dillon), I packed TomTom with me to get to know him better. After I programmed him to take us to Butte, we hit the highway.

And then TomTom began to moo. I’m really not kidding. TomTom periodically mooed all the way to Butte. At first, we thought maybe he knew that we were in cattle country and was alerting us to the possible presence of livestock on the road. We also thought since TomTom knew there were few other roads, exits, or communities around that he was mooing to keep us awake.

After returning from Butte, I googled “TomTom moo” and learned exactly why TomTom was mooing. Apparently, TomTom has safety preferences. It only took one phone call to discover the guilty party.

“Dad, did you or did you not program TomTom to moo when I go over the posted speed limit?”

There was only uproarious laughter on the other end of the line.

It turns out that Dad also downloaded the image of the MINI Cooper for my enjoyment, and I was a little relieved to know that the satellites tracking my every move didn’t exactly know what car I was driving.

Since then, I’ve been endlessly fiddling with TomTom trying out different routes home, discovering different POIs (points of interest) on the way, and learning that TomTom is default programmed to take me to any Shoney’s in the country.

As a visual learner, I’ve always loved looking at maps and tracing routes from one place to another. However, I’m easily weighed down by the big picture, the whole trip, all the states to cross.

What I like about TomTom is that he breaks the journey into parts so that I’m not overwhelmed by the whole. He’s helping me trade one MAP for another, one that helps me see the joy in the journey.

Stay tuned for updates from the road….

Life is Like a Box of Booberry Cereal

Roaringgrrl — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:18:00 GMT

When we were growing up, my brother and I weren’t allowed to eat cereal with marshmallows. Every two weeks, Mom would take us to the store, hand us a stack of coupons, and tell us to find cereal that matched the coupons. Shuffling through the stack, I would always pick out Froot Loops, Trix, and Fruity Pebbles, but my brother, ever the cheapo, would make me take the cereal that had the highest dollar savings on its corresponding coupon.

As a result, boxes and boxes of Life cereal traveled through my childhood. Damn you, Mikey!

After high school, I lived in college dorms and subsisted on cafeteria cereal which only ever seemed to include non-confrontational cereals like Raisin Bran and Corn Flakes. So when I moved into my first apartment during grad school, I purchased a box of Lucky Charms just because I could. It was delicious, but an hour later when I was both hungry and wiped out, I realized just why Mom had forbidden such sugary cereal.

But I think there was another reason for making sure we stayed off the junk cereal. Once when I was over at my cousin Leo’s house, I saw a box of Booberry cereal on the kitchen table. Booberry had blue nuggets and marshmallows that turned the milk blue and was therefore, awesome. I exclaimed, “Your mom lets you eat that?!?” Leo nodded proudly as I sank down in my chair. It just wasn’t fair, I thought.

Then Leo’s mom let him go to a KISS concert when he was 10. He became a skater punk who was harassed out of high school and later became one of our town’s first body piercers. But now, years later, cousin Leo is in prison for selling drugs to a local television personality who almost died.

Was it the Booberry cereal that led to his life of crime?

On the flip side, am I who I am because I didn’t eat Booberry cereal when I was a child?

But seriously, I have been thinking a lot lately about those small choices that seem to dictate destiny, especially when it comes to romance.

Recently, I thought about a man I dated during my first year of college. Our relationship only lasted my freshman year, during which time he proposed. There was no ring and we were both pretty tipsy for the event, so I didn’t take it seriously. Then, a few months later, he moved across the country to finish his degree and that was that. I wondered what had happened to him after he left.

Now, I am not one who keeps up with ex-boyfriends with any kind of regularity. After they dump me, and they usually do, I like to pretend that they’ve gone to Siberia where they have no access to modern technology.

Well I do have access to modern technology, and Google is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I typed in his name and BAM, there he was, the subject of a local newspaper story. He had earned degrees in his chosen field and was working for a terrific firm. But the focus of the news story was on people who had survived cancer. Diagnosed with a brain tumor, he had survived numerous surgeries and treatments only, seven years later, to be diagnosed with testicular cancer. I assume he survived that, too, since he keeps an updated Facebook page. He doesn’t appear to be married, and the article indicated that he had been cared for by family members.

Next, I looked up my high school boyfriend. He never proposed and, in fact, dumped me for someone else, but what if fate had intervened to keep us together? Another Google search revealed that he is also living far, far away, working in his chosen field. I couldn’t find out if he is still single; in fact, I couldn’t find any personal information on him at all, which I found sort of interesting. It’s as though he’s disappeared into the black hole of professional life.

I even Googled a boy whom I’d had a mad crush on in high school. Today, he’s a teacher like I am and is living in our hometown. What would have happened had I only managed to convince him of my very existence?

On the other hand, what would have happened to these young men had I stayed in their lives? As far as I can tell, their professional lives weren’t adversely affected by my absence.

Of course, such speculating assumes that romantic relationships affect life and career trajectories. And I suppose they do, I just haven’t had that experience. As I mentioned in a previous column, I always assumed that I would fold my life into someone else’s by getting married, but that situation never presented itself.

Such speculation also assumes that by changing one thing about my life, the rest of my life would have been dramatically different. If cousin Leo hadn’t eaten Booberry cereal every day of his young life, would he still be in prison? Probably. If I had pursued any of these fellas would I still be an English professor in Montana? Who knows?

Nevertheless, I have decided to tempt fate. I bought a box of Booberry cereal.

It may not lead to a life of crime, but perhaps it will encourage me to keep plugging away at myself, always trying to improve, always re-examining, always moving forward.

Christmas with The Sopranos

Roaringgrrl — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:35:00 GMT

This is the first year that I’m spending the holidays away from my family. As I type this, I’m watching the snow fall while listening to Sirius Radio Hanukkah. My feet are propped up on the couch, and Gracie my cockatiel is preening herself.

We just finished watching my favorite holiday classic, Meet Me In St. Louis. It’s my favorite holiday film not because of Judy Garland’s beautiful version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” but because in the opening scenes of the film, the family is making ketchup. I’ve never made ketchup, but I love the IDEA of making ketchup. I think this movie reminds me that not everything used to be processed and canned the way it is now.

And that’s how I feel about my holiday vacation this year. It’s new and different for me to be away from family. I’m making up traditions as I go along instead of taking part in the usual processed events I’ve participated in for the past 35 years.

Instead buying a tree, I decorated my ficus. Instead of passing up roast beef on Christmas Eve, I tried halibut for the first time (and liked it!). Instead of praying quietly in church on Christmas Eve, Jacek and I took a midnight drive to a empty, snow-covered parking lot where we hit the brakes and did donuts. Today, we’re planning on celebrating Christmas day together by watching the 6^th season of The Sopranos.

Now there’s a family steeped in tradition. Granted, it’s a bloody and violent tradition that is oftentimes misogynistic and racist, but nobody sticks to tradition like Tony Soprano. Shoot his nephew Christopher and find yourself capped in the back of the head. Beat up his sister Janice and find yourself with a broken nose. Retribution and retaliation figure largely in this world where men must commit acts of violence to garner respect.

Unfortunately, violence is a part of many traditions, both secular and religious. Though this time of year generally brings cease fires between warring factions, we cannot but be reminded of the religious zealotry and/or absolute steadfastness to tradition that has often led to these violent disputes.

Maybe it’s a little simplistic of me to think this, especially given that my words come from a place of privilege and ease, but wouldn’t it be great if we could throw out some of the old traditions to make way for different ways of doing things?

So instead of sticking with processed and canned traditions, I think I’ll make my own ketchup this year.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday and a happy new year.

Pep Rallies and Other Places I Don't Belong

Roaringgrrl — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:57:00 GMT

A friend once told me that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. According to this definition, then, I’m insane.

This may not come as a surprise to some of my readers.

To me, though, I’m constantly surprised at the activities I repeatedly put myself through in the vain hope that maybe this time, things will be different.

In my high school days, I eschewed team sports. Before high school, I had played soccer as was required by law (isn’t it?) until 8th grade when the boys on the opposing team got too rough and grabby around the area between my neck and belly. I swam for the local swim team every summer and was generally pretty fit, but since I didn’t play sports for school, I wasn’t seen as particularly athletic.

Actually, I had tried out for the junior high soccer team. Title IX required the coach to allow girls to try out. None of us girls made the team, go figure. Instead, I was made a manager along with a pretty cheerleader, Mandy. I kept the team’s stats while Mandy generally smiled at the boys and twirled a pencil. One day while the boys were warming up for a game, I overheard a boy say to the team, “We have the prettiest managers of all the other teams.” My 13-year-old ears perked up at this until another boy said, “Yeah. And then there’s Bethany.”

Ouch.

But I kept my mouth shut and continued to take down stats. Needless to say, I didn’t try out for the team again, and the year following, I stopped playing soccer. After that, I was typically picked last for teams during gym class, and I lost any interest in sporting events.

My senior year in high school, though, I decided to turn over a new leaf. Instead of pooh poohing high school sports, I decided to support them.

As Principal McGee from Grease says: “If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.”

So I decided to show my school spirit at our first pep rally. I took a bottle of bubbles and blew them into the crowd. The crowd had a great time and demanded I pass around the bubbles so that we could blow them in time with the marching band. It was all going great until the principal called me down in front of everyone and yelled at me for ruining the gym floor.

With soap bubbles? Really?

I left the rally dejected and didn’t support another athletic event until I arrived at college. During my undergrad and grad school days, I attended a few large-scale university football games and even saw the Atlanta Braves play. For the most part, though, I attended these games with the same mentality with which I attend outdoor concerts and festivals: to people watch and eat junk food on a pretty day.

Until recently, I hadn’t attended any sporting events at the university where I teach. When my students perform in plays or concerts, I generally attend to support them, but until lately, I haven’t felt the urge to see the university’s athletes in action.

I decided that choice was hypocritical. Why not support all my students in whatever university events they choose to take part in?

So with a smile on my face and a cheer in my heart, I decided to attend a football game. I wore a university jersey to show my support and was promised by another faculty member that both beer and nachos would be on the menu.

The day was beautiful, sunny and warm without being sweltering, and the crowd was buoyant and loud. However, my good mood was put on hold when I found that the snack bar held only meat products in the way of burgers and hotdogs. No nachos? What would I do without that lovely, liquid processed cheese?

With a sigh, I proceeded to the beer garden only to be told that I couldn’t take my purchased can of Coors Light into the stands. I quickly tucked the unopened can into my jacket and proceeded to drink it like a hobo surreptitiously out of my pocket. I quickly abandoned that project when I remembered that high school pep rally. I had visions of the university Chancellor singling me out from the crowd to yell at me.

Without food or drink, I was without distraction and was therefore forced to watch the game.

While I appreciate the physical challenges and the various strategies involved, I just don’t like watching sports. Maybe it’s psychological, and I’m still carrying around that 13-year-old girl who was called ugly during a sporting event. Maybe it’s sociological, and I can’t help but analyze rather than appreciate men chasing after balls.

Whatever it is that causes my aversion to sports, I left the game feeling very much like the teenager who was called out of the stands by her principal.

So am I insane for thinking that this time would be different? Maybe. But sometimes, I guess it’s good for me to put something new into my routine.

I’ll always support my students, no matter what events they participate in, but I think I’ll do it by wishing them well. Oh, and I’ll wear the school colors (red and black) on Fridays. When in doubt, say it with fashion.

My Montana Summer

Roaringgrrl — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:32:00 GMT

This was my summer to discover Montana. This state is chock-full of geological marvels like Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and what are known to me only as “the pretty mountains one passes on the way to shop in Bozeman.” These places attract tourists from the far reaches of the world who hike, bike, and camp through Montana’s natural wonders.

I am not one of these people.

(If you doubt this statement, see my column, “The Roaringgrrl Goes Camping.”)

I prefer to see the world from the driver’s seat of my car or from the balcony of a hotel. I can look at the scenery and breathe in the fresh air while keeping away from mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies.

So I hopped into Martha, my MINI Cooper, and set my compass to north. Five hours later, we landed in Havre, a town so far north in Montana it should be guarded by Canadian Mounties rather than Montana state police. I was a little nervous. I’d heard people say about Havre, “It’s not hell. But you can see it from there.”

I disagree with this assessment. I think people who live in my part of Montana with its big mountain ranges are geological snobs. Havre isn’t flat; it’s nestled in rolling hills that appear to undulate endlessly in a sea of grass and shrubs. The town is charming with its long main street filled with western clothing shops, small eateries, and bars. There’s even a preserved, historical underground city where Havre residents a hundred years ago kept their shops safe and warm from the howling wind that blows all winter long.

But the best part of Havre, along with its local college, Montana State University—Northern and its Amtrak railway station that leads directly west through Glacier National Park, is the Orange Julius. In my estimation, no town that is home to an Orange Julius can be completely dismissed. The OJ is the stamp of capitalist culture, indicating (to me, anyway), that Havre is a town that is moving forward and growing. I defy you to show me a town that died that also had an Orange Julius.

After returning from Havre, I headed east to Virginia City, one of my favorite tourist destinations. It’s a restored mining town with a fabulous boardwalk lining original clapboard buildings filled with all manner of shopping.

I’d visited Virginia City several times and had seen all the old buildings, drunk a beer at the Bale of Hay Saloon, and main-lined Lemonheads at Cousins candy store, but this time, I was there for a high-class Virginia City tradition, the Brewery Follies.

The Follies take place in the old brewery and feature four actors who have clearly spent a lot of time devising rhymes for the word “Nantucket.” Crowded into the brewing room around a stage the size of a placemat, we gave our drink orders to waiters who were also the actors in that evening’s performance.

Borne out of improv, the show was hilariously irreverent, occasionally suggestive, sometimes downright dirty, but always intelligent and thoughtful. Well…except for the sketch when two actors jammed small, pen flashlights up their noses and lit up their nostrils to the tune of “Dueling Banjos.”

Next, I headed northwest to Browning, a town on the Blackfeet Reservation. As I crossed into the rez, I was surrounded by fields of purple lupine, faced with a dramatic backdrop of the steep Rocky Mountains, and looking at a cow…ON the highway. As I read from a sign about a mile later, “Open Range Grazing” means cows, and, as I saw a few moments later, horses, cross two-lane highways at will. Kids ride ponies across the middle school campus lawn, and dogs roam the streets. I like the idea of this animal-human communal living. It encourages respect. And slow driving.

After Browning, I stayed a few days in East Glacier, a town that boasts itself to be the home of the “World’s Largest Purple Spoon.” I did see the celebrated spoon, but I wonder at its practicality as the only creature I can imagine using it is the Jolly Green Giant.

From there, I drove west across Glacier National Park on the “Going to the Sun Road.” This 50-mile two-lane road spans the width of the park and takes visitors across Logan Pass (6,464 ft) and by Lake McDonald. Martha the MINI and I comfortably toodled through those thin mountain passes while the RVs and SUVs we passed quaked nervously around hairpin turns. Let’s hear it for compact cars!

My last trip had me traveling south, both of Dillon and the United States. I drove to Salt Lake City and caught a plane to visit family in Virginia, catch up with old friends, and mostly check in on my dad who had returned to work following open heart surgery (see my column “Have a Heart”).

Dad is doing great. He’s dropped a lot of weight and is eating very consciously. He works out four to five times a week at a health club that gave him a reduced membership rate because of his heart attack (how’s that for an incentive to join a health club?). He has, according to his doctors, many healthy years ahead of him.

But it was a harder trip than I thought. Facing my parents’ mortality has forced me to face my own, and I worked through this notion quite messily and with lots of tears. My friend Laurie says this emotional work has made me a much softer person, and I can only assume she means that the amount of salt water leaking from my eyeballs has somehow exfoliated my skin.

I never thought I’d be afraid of death, but such is the folly of youth, I guess. Now as I watch my laugh lines deepen and my butt widen, I think about the future all the time and wonder, “Will I die alone?”; “Will I die without family?”; “Will I die with lipstick on my teeth?”

Returning from Virginia, these questions dominated my thoughts as I drove north from the airport at Salt Lake through Utah, Idaho, and finally into Montana. From the flat, dry plains of southern Idaho into the luscious Targhee National Forest, crossing into Montana from Idaho is truly spectacular.

And while the questions I face about my family’s and my mortality are still present, they seem small compared to Montana’s huge mountains. Here in Big Sky country, I can cast my questions to the wind and let them blow in all directions of the compass because the mountains in Montana are everywhere.