I’ve been mulling over returning to my blog to do the requisite “year in review” thing ever since I got my yearly wrap-up email from WordPress.  According to them, this was a very successful blogging year for me, and I was “on fire” because of the 18 new entries I posted.  That’s right–all 18 of them in 365 days.  It’s all about the quality, people.  Those dubious standards aside, I was delighted to discover that those who read this blog are just as cold and black of heart as I–my “Miss Misanthrope” post was the most popular by a long shot.  At any rate, this email prompted me once again to bestow my wittiness and beautifully-crafted prose upon the public.  Naturally, I had to sit on my ass playing Kirby’s Epic Yarn for a few more days before this could happen.  You know.  So the wittiness and the writey-thingies could gestate.

You’re welcome.

I’ve spent the majority of this week sitting around in my pajamas, engaged in some combination of watching television/reading/drinking coffee/practicing/playing Wii.  I have steadfastly avoided any and all errands I had planned for the week as I dig in my heels against returning to school next week.  DON’T WANNA.  In actuality, I am excited about the new semester, but the amount of traveling we did over the holidays made this break feel exceedingly short, and I really just need another week for all the important things I can’t do during the school year, like not bathing regularly and watching HGTV on a continuous loop.

The holidays were lovely and relatively stress-free, minus the hours we spent in the car with the cats.  This year, we opted to take them with us, as Ms. Matilda is still on a fairly intensive daily drug cocktail for her eye issues.  This would ordinarily not be quite the ordeal, except that Olivia gets EXTRAORDINARILY carsick, to the point of vomiting/shitting herself multiple times in a single trip, and becoming very distressed in the process (which in turn causes ME to be very distressed.  I do refrain from pooping myself, though).  Knowing she couldn’t make the 8+ hour trek from Greer back to Bloomington without some sort of aid, we got kitty roofies (i.e. tranquilizers) from our vet.  They…sort of helped.  We discovered immediately that tranquilizers + curvy road + being in the carrier = BARFING CRAPPING MOST SCARED CAT EVER.  There’s something about being in the carrier, with limited vision, that really makes her feel awful.  We found that if we wrapped her up in a blanket and let her sit on my lap, she did much better, only having one accident on our longest trip.  Lesson learned, I guess.  I’m so thankful to (hopefully) never have to travel alone with her again, so that we can make her as comfortable as possible.

Crimmus was lots of fun, and I got lots of neat goodies, including a KIIIIIIIIINDLLLLLLLLE.  So far, I’m kind of in love with it.  I bought four books for $25.  TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS, YOU GUYS.  Never mind the fact that there are tons of public domain books that you can get for free.  I recently finished Persuasion, and am currently working on Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists.  I’m not going to get all douchey and say it’s completely revolutionized the way I read (though it kind of has), but I am hopeful that it will keep me reading for pleasure, at least in some way, during the semester.

Christmas also brought with it an…incident.  It’s worth noting that this was the first Christmas that I had Matilda with me, as I’d never taken her with me while traveling before.  I was excited to have our whole little family together, wary as the cats were of being in yet another new place (we’d visited my family in Tennessee in the days prior).

We woke up Christmas morning and went downstairs for presents, and were having a lovely morning–Olivia was nosing around curiously, everyone was enjoying their gifts, and nothing was amiss.

Until.

Matilda came in the room, and, initially delighted that she’d decided she was no longer too scared to come be social, I called to her.  At that moment, she plopped her butt down and dragged it across the carpet, leaving a gross, long poop streak in her wake.  Mortified, I shrieked, and she ran off, scared.  Offering profuse apologies, Michael and I ran after her upstairs, only to discover she’d had similar issues in our bedroom.  Worried that something was wrong, I tried to cajole her out from under the bed so I could clean her up (ugggggh) and look at her, but no dice.  Michael, sweet Michael, set to the highly unpleasant task of cleaning up.

After an hour or so, we determined nothing was immediately wrong, and we weren’t in danger of a repeat performance, so we went back downstairs to have breakfast.  While we were eating, Matilda came back downstairs and sat a few feet away, bathing herself.  Out of nowhere, Michael began to yell at her, and she ran off again.  He had seen her pulling something out of her butt, and was trying to stop her from eating it.  We followed her, and in our pursuit, the thing worked its way entirely out–a weird, long, small bunch of what looked like blondish hair.  It was nice to discover that she wasn’t just acting out (“I’ll show YOU, assholes.”), but I was worried about there being more to come.  Thankfully, that was all there was, Michael’s parents were amazingly understanding about the whole ordeal, and Matilda was properly chagrined for the rest of the day.

In other, more pleasant news, Michael and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary!  It’s so hard to believe that a little over a year ago we were just married, and how quickly the time passed.  We began the day by reconfirming our perfectness by unknowingly getting each other almost identical gifts (watches, very similar in style, from the same company), enjoyed a lazy morning, then set off for an afternoon/evening in Indianapolis, going to the art museum and enjoying a lovely (if far too indulgent) meal.  Despite the fact that we were both bloated after dinner, it was a perfect evening with my perfect husband.  I never stop feeling lucky.

Though 2010 was a banner year with regard to my personal life, I am not sorry to see it go.  I want to forget all the veterinary emergencies with Matilda.  I want to forget that I now get migraines.  I want to forget the terrible acid reflux I developed at the end of December that literally made me think I was having a heart attack (the wonders of Prilosec will never cease to amaze me).  I want to forget the miserable summer I spent working in market research.  I want to forget how terrible I felt about myself when I was 30+ pounds heavier.

And though I don’t really do resolutions anymore, there are several things I want to accomplish in 2011.  I want to continue improving my health–I failed at this miserably over the holidays and have felt immensely guilty ever since.  Being back at home and performing my holiday penance–back to tracking everything I eat and exercising every day, at least this week before I have school responsibilities again–has made me feel more in control and back on track.  I want to work harder to make exercise a priority even when I am stressed out and busy.  I want to experiment with new, healthy recipes so I don’t become bored with eating well.  I want to try running again, with the hope to run a 5k sometime within the year.

I want to work better at cultivating my friendships, both old and new.  I want to make more time for catching up with friends I can’t see regularly, and make plans with those I can.

I want to document more of my life.  Michael and I forgot to bring our camera to our anniversary festivities, and other than an iPhone picture, we took no photos, and that breaks my heart.  In the aftermath, I was inspired by my friend Erin’s blog to do the 365 Project.  I started two days after the new year, but whatevs; the intent’s still there.  I will post my daily pictures at some point, either in a monthly installment or a blitz at the end of the year.

I want to make practicing the piano more of a priority, and not just one our home keyboard.  I miss it.  I miss performing.  I want to set musical goals for myself again.

And I want to BLOG MORE, GODDAMMIT.

Where to begin?Well, there’s the new PhD program, which has been the single most simultaneously amazing and ass-kickingly crippling (that’s right, I make up words now.  Or rather, I always did, but now I have authority) thing that’s ever happened to me.  I have never doubted myself so much, had so many panic attacks, genuinely believed I just could not get through the amount of work required of me, and thought myself so unworthy of my professors and peers.  At the same time, I have never been so challenged, so inspired, so determined, and so enamored of music than I am now.  I have also never been so proud of my achievements and my resolve as I was this semester.  I am truly a better, stronger, smarter, more critical person and musician than I was before.

And the semester’s almost over, which is a relief, but there is much to be done before then.  I will finish my seminar paper on the generic implications of Schumann’s Op. 7 (nerdy inquiries encouraged) this week and present it next week.  Hopefully, if I can mold it into something a bit more polished,  I will submit it to some conferences in the near future and get myself into the (slightly terrifying, but CV-building) game.  I will wail and gnash my teeth about my annotated bibliography and accompanying (nearly worthless) paper.  And I will write one more paper for my weekly beatings class.  And then–THEN–well, there will be several hours on the road with yowling/vomiting/explosive diarrhea’ing cats.  But THEN.  THEN there will be rest.

So, I think the GIANT BLOG OF GIANTNESS is going to have to be truncated into BULLETED LIST OF BULLETS because I can’t get my thoughts organized enough to live up my expectations of wit, snark, and sass.  I have STANDARDS, people.  This is why I haven’t blogged for the last, oh, four months.  So, this is my life for the past several months in list form:

• I finally changed my name.  I grappled with this one for a long, long time.  The feminist in me said no, the romantic in me said yes, the lazy asshole in me just wanted somebody else to deal with all the bureaucratic bullshit.  In the end, I realized I was largely clinging to my name for aesthetic values (come on, you can’t tell me that argument doesn’t have merit.  The alliteration, the assonance, the pair of dactyls!  That shit was beautiful) and that I did, when the time comes, want our family to be a cohesive unit.  So, I took the plunge.
• I now get migraines! Huzzah!  I am SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS, YOU GUYS.  Aren’t I SO LUCKY that I am the ONLY person on either side of my family that gets these??!  Ugh.  They started this summer with a bang–waking me up in the middle of the night with unbearable pain and vomity fun-times nausea.  Convinced of a brain tumor, I went to the health clinic where my OMGCANCER fears were assuaged, and got some meds to take whenever I feel a migraine coming on (they’re pretty useless once one has started).  But my migraines, you guys, MY migraines are so NEAT that the warning signs always happen once I’ve gone to sleep, and the next thing I know I’m smacked by blinding pain at 2:30 AM, like the one I got the morning of Thanksgiving that lasted until 5:30AM.  Oh, and then another one that showed up at 7:30AM.  Give thanks, my ass.
• One of my best friends, J., cut me out of his life. Without so much as a word.  There was no exchange of harsh words, but there were clearly grievances on both our sides, but instead of discussing them and working things out, he chose to ignore every phone call, email, and letter I sent essentially begging him to just TALK to me.  To this day, I have no idea what it was that caused this rift, because he didn’t, you know, TELL ME.  If you can’t tell, I’m extremely, extremely bitter.
• I’ve lost 31 pounds! It’s kind of weird.  I know I’m smaller, but sometimes I can’t see it.  It’s been a slow-going process that I began at the end of May, and I’m trying to look at it as a lifestyle change and not just a diet (i.e. I’m going to maintain my new healthy eating habits and regular exercise once I reach my goal).  I feel better, I sleep better, I no longer eat to the point of feeling uncomfortably full, and when I do indulge, I no longer feel guilty.  And surprisingly, the whole thing has been remarkably easy–once I had a plan to be held accountable to, it was kind of smooth sailing from there.

And now, crimmus decorations await.  Until the next irregularly-scheduled entry.

This cat.

I am reticent to recap the events of this week (and really, last nine months), because every time I think our dilemma is over, it’s not, and more than that, some new, worse dilemma pops up in its place.  We’ve been battling a veterinary hydra all week and it’s exhausting and stressful and expensive and I just want to KILL IT WITH FIRE ALREADY.

Let me take you back to November.

Busily in the throes of my first semester back at grad school, one evening I happened to notice that Matilda had some weird spots on her right eye.  They didn’t look painful or uncomfortable–she certainly wasn’t arsed about it–but I was troubled.  Cats are notorious for developing eye problems, which can quickly escalate if left untreated.  We took her to the vet that week, and she hemmed and hawed about it, did a quick stain and determined it wasn’t an ulcer or scratch, said she wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t seem to be a problem, gave us some drops, and sent us on our way.  In addition to the eye drops, the vet mentioned that Matilda might have the herpes virus, which can cause all manner of lovely eye flare-ups.  Our cat the hussy, ladies and gents.*  We treated Matilda with the drops for several weeks and the spots went away, albeit temporarily.

Later in the spring, the spots came back, so back to the vet we went.  Again, we received the same answers: no idea, doesn’t look painful, yada yada.  She suggested that if we were truly curious about what it was, she could refer us to a specialist in Indianapolis, but we’d only need to do that if we just wanted some answers.  She conveyed no urgency to get her checked by someone who might actually have a clue.

A few weeks later, Matilda’s eye looked much worse–much more of her eye was covered by the spots, and they were denser, more opaquely covering her eye.  Not wanting to waste any more time with our vet, I called and asked for the referral for the specialist, and we made an appointment for that Friday.

Naturally, the specialist’s office was on the north side of Indy, so our drive was an hour and a half instead of an hour.  The doctor looked at Matilda for literally two seconds before saying, “Oh yeah, it’s uveitis, and it’s a good thing you brought her in when you did.  The pressure in her eye is almost to the point of causing irreparable damage to the optic nerve.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pushing murderous feelings toward our home vet aside, Matilda was prescribed a different set of drops to be on for several weeks, and we noticed a difference immediately.  Her eye cleared up tremendously, and when we went in for her re-check, the specialist said she looked great.  She wanted to keep her on the drops another four weeks–administering them as we’d done before for the first two, and then weaning her off them for the second two.  No need for another appointment if everything went smoothly!

So naturally, everything went to shit.

Last Saturday was her first day of no drops.  Sunday morning we woke up, and I noticed she was squinting her right eye a lot, which I knew from my bountiful internet research meant something was wrong.  Looking at it, I saw something filmy covering her eye.  Hopefully (and naïvely) thinking it was a side effect of weaning off the drops, I called the vet to confer.  The office in Indy was closed, but had their calls forwarded to the emergency clinic.  I spoke to a very nice woman there who told me that we really needed to get her in today.  So, off we went to Indy (again on the north side) to the emergency clinic.  Another three hours in the car with a howling cat, huzzah!!

They told us that she had a huge ulcer on her right eye, which had likely been exacerbated by the steroid drops we’d been using to treat her uveitis, but also would have quashed the symptoms–redness, pain, etc.  The vet had to check with the ophthalmologist on call to see if we could even take her home.  Because it was big but not terribly deep, we were given the okay to take her home, armed with antibiotics, scheduled for a re-check on Tuesday with the specialist, and fitted with an e-collar.

Holy fucking shit fuck SHIT that thing is the most MISERABLE fucking shitty fuck thing known to man.

The e-collar (short for elizabethan collar, which admittedly is kind of funny) is designed to keep cats and dogs from licking places they shouldn’t (like surgical stitches) or pawing at places they shouldn’t (like hurty eyes).  It turns your pet into a walking satellite dish.  The PROBLEM with the e-collar is not only do cats not like it, it fucking TERRIFIES them.  It completely distorts their vision and hearing to the point where they will go fucking batshit spastic crazy at any given moment.  Oh, plus the fact that Matilda’s a fucking HOUDINI and could get the collar off before we knew what was happening.  We had to rig the damn thing to a harness and tie it much tighter than I wanted to keep it on.

The other thing about the collar is that it’s supposed to allow you to leave them unsupervised.  Not so with our cat.  Any time we left her alone, she’d freak out and fly around the apartment, smashing into every piece of furniture and wall, managing to pop off the collar every time.  She could NOT wear the thing without freaking out, and I couldn’t imagine that kind of stress plus the thing smacking her in the face was going to help more than supervised non-coneage.  So, we called the hospital, and the woman who answered scared the bejesus out of us by informing us that we needed to keep that thing on at all costs, because one hit to her eye and she could lose it permanently.

So we slept in shifts, staying up all night with her.  She would remain kind of calm if someone held her, so we took turns lying on the couch cradling her, trying to keep her calm, trying not to fall asleep ourselves.  Though it was miserable, we prevailed, and on Monday, her eye really looked much better.  We took shifts again on Monday night, and then got up and took her to Indy for the second time this week on Tuesday.  The doc said it was a superficial ulcer, to continue giving her the medicine like we had, and that she didn’t need the collar.

THANK YOU TINY INFANT JEBUS IN THE MANGER WITH THE ANIMALS, WISE MEN, AND BLING-ASS SWAG.

Sleep, GLORIOUS sleep.

But then…

We woke up Wednesday morning, and alas!  Matilda was squinting her LEFT EYE.  CHRIST AMIGHTY.  So we called our peeps in Indy (’cause we’re tight now), and they said it was probably a stress-induced herpes ulcer.  GODDAMN YOU AND YOUR WHORING WAYS, CAT.**  They said to start giving her drops in the left eye as well, and phoned in a prescription for lysine, an amino acid supplement for herpelicious felines that is supposed to help keep these sorts of flare-ups at bay.  She squinted all day, but otherwise seemed fine.

But then we woke up this morning, and her eye was ten times worse.  She’d clamped the thing shut, and was producing a lot of tears.  Any time she opened the eye, her nictitating  membrane was halfway across her eyeball (for those of you who have cats, you know this is: a) gross, and b) a sure sign of something being wrong).  In a panic, I called the Indy crew again, who said we should bring her in.  We threw on some clothes and drove to Indy for the THIRD time this week.  The doctor said it did indeed look like a superficial herpes ulcer, and gave her a numbing drop for the pain.  The transformation was miraculous.  Immediately she stopped squinting, she opened her eye, and her nictitating membrane was pulled back in its proper place.  Apparently this ulcer just hurts a hell of a lot more than the other one did.  She prescribed us some pain drops to give her (sadly, the numbing drops can’t be used long-term because they prevent healing) and told us to keep up the lysine/antibiotic regimen.  Unfortunately, the numbing drops have worn off and the pain drops aren’t quite as potent, so she’s back to squinting, but it’s a relief to know it wasn’t something catastrophic (because it certainly looked it…ugh).

So, like I said before, I am cautiously optimistic that things are okay now.  The doctor said her right eye was almost entirely healed, and I can only hope her left eye will progress similarly.  At the same time, I’m convinced we’ll have to hop out of bed tomorrow and drive back to Indy for yet another catastrophe.  This week has been incredibly taxing, but at the same time, I’m thankful that all this shit went down this week, and not in two weeks, when Michael and I will both be back in school and our only option would have been to leave her in the hospital.

And now a reminder for myself, after going through all this, and in case we have to go through MORE:

Our babies

How could we not?

* As a PSA to those who won’t know I’m kidding (because I had no clue until all this), cat herpes is not like human herpes at all (well, at least not the gross, Paris Hilton kind).  It’s a virus that, according to a vet tech in Indy, 85-90% of cats can get when they’re young, either before they get their shots or because their shots weren’t administered properly, and it can cause all kinds of fun like respiratory infections and eye ailments.

** No srsly, I know my cat’s not a skank.

Freddy

Hey, Frederic?  Yeah, hi.  How’s that ballade going?  Lots of notes?  Yeah…listen…

We need to talk.

It’s not you, it’s me.  You’re GREAT.  It’s just…well.   My heart’s never fully been in our relationship, and it’s been drifting even more the older I get.  I know, I know,  it sounds harsh, but you deserve the truth.  You deserve a pianist and a scholar who can appreciate you for YOU, not someone who tries to make you into something you’re not.

You know our relationship has been troubled from the start, and I really was primarily attracted to you because of–I’m embarrassed to say–peer pressure.  I was a young, naïve pianist, desperate to prove my worth at the keyboard and willing to play ANYTHING to advance in the ranks, no matter whether or not my heart was in it.  I’m not proud to say this was the reason behind many of my Liszt benders–bouts of time that always left me feeling hollow, dirty, and cheap.  But you, YOU…you were better.  The teachers and friends I so admired put a lot of stock in people who played your music, because YOU were more than flash and trash, more than cheap dazzle and pianistic pyrotechnics.  You had soul, you had beauty, you had nuance.  You were what I needed to impress my peers and grow as a musician.

And so I decided to learn your Fantasie for my junior recital, a piece that was, at the time, way out of my league.  And it is a great piece of music, and I really did like it.  And because everyone else loved it, I kept waiting for the inevitable love that I would surely feel for it and for you.  I worked and worked, learning the piece, listening to more of your works, and waiting.  Eventually, I got sick of practicing all my recital repertoire, and thought, “AHA!  I cannot love this piece until I’m done with it, until I have some distance from these DAMN PARALLEL THIRDS.”  In denial, I pushed down the niggling thoughts of how much I already loved the rest of my recital pieces.  And so, my recital came and went, and I waited to be overcome with love and desire for you.

But that love never came.

I never understood it!  I was a piano student, enamored with my instrument and of 19th century music–I SHOULD have lusted for you.  I should have LIVED and BREATHED for you, rending my garments until my teacher allowed me to play you again.  Everyone else did!  What was WRONG with me?  Please believe me when I say that I TRIED to adore you the way I knew I should have.  Every now and again I’d listen to a recording of a piece that truly moved me–your Barcarolle springs to mind (seriously, kudos on that one)–and I’d think I’d finally found my way in!  But then…there was always piece after piece of truly beautiful music that I certainly appreciated but never actually moved me.  Truthfully, your music has never spoken to me.  And now, I have to come clean…

There’s someone else.

(Rest of the performance here, here, and here.)

There’s always been someone else, really.  Schumann just gets me, and I get him, and well–we’re really very happy together.  And so, it’s with heavy heart that I’ve decided to stop trying to force myself to love you.  It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to you, and besides–there will always be plenty of angsty pre-teen girls to play your E minor Prelude and swoon, plenty of little old blue-haired ladies who only know your E-flat Nocturne (Op. 9, No. 2; I know there’s more than one!), and plenty of dedicated performers and scholars who can truly appreciate your genius and beauty.

I have a feeling you’ll get on just fine without me.

Every day as I dutifully make my calls to chefs and the like–this particular study being about Very Important Things like ranch dressing, cheese sauce, and soft serve ice cream–and am inevitably forced to call these busy people during their lunch hours (you know, one of their busiest, most stressful times of day), I wince ever so slightly, anticipating the following, from Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential:

…The intercom buzzes and I pick up, annoyed.

“Line one for the chef,” says the hostess.

I push the blinking green light.  It’s a salesman, wanting to sell me smoked fish.  I answer all sweetness and light, lulling him into the bear trap in the Bigfoot style: “So let me get this straight,” I say, after he’s jabbered away about his full line of delicacies, me trying to sound a little slow and confused, “you want to sell me food, right?”  ”Yes!” comes the reply, the salesman sounding encouraged by my interest and apparent stupidity.  ”And in general, you’d say,” I continue, “you have, like, a lot of restaurant accounts–in fact, you’d probably say that, like, you are in the business of servicing restaurants…and chefs in particular?”  ”Oh yes!” says the witless salesman, beginning a litany of the usual prestigious accounts, the names of other chefs who buy his fine smoked sturgeon, salmon, trout and fish eggs.  I have had enough and cut him off cold.  ”So…WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING CALLING ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING LUNCH RUSH?!” I scream into the phone, smashing it abruptly into the cradle.

Sigh.  Here’s to you, hapless salesman–may your drinks be plentiful and your belittlings be fewer.  I feel your pain.  *fist bump*

And if that doesn’t entice you to keep reading, well, I just don’t know what will.

To start, Michael and I got part-time jobs in market resear–zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  Seriously. dull. stuff.  We sit in areas that aren’t quite proper cubicles–cubiclettes, more like–with headsets on, calling people all day for various surveys.  Te.di.ous.  Maybe one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had?  It’s hard to say–I’ve been in customer service positions that have sucked my (cold, black, facsimile of a) soul dry, but this job anesthetizes my brain.  I come home every day exhausted–even though I’ve barely moved–and all I want to do is be a blob and not talk, move, or think.  I can’t imagine being one of the people there for whom this is their job.  Like, for the foreseeable future.  No end in sight.  You’re such a faceless drone there, and even though they keep telling me I’m doing a great job (um, thanks?), what kind of solace is there to be found in doing a menial job well?  The only solace I find is knowing that ONE DAY I will have a job where I no longer have to resort to this kind of debasement.

A little over a week ago, Michael and I were out on a food run and got rear-ended by a dumbass teenager.  Fun!  Michael’s car was demolished in the back, though neither one of us were hurt (though I did have my iPhone in hand and smashed it into my face–it left a lovely goose-egg on my forehead for awhile).  We took it to the body shop yesterday, and I have to say, though this experience has been a pain in the ass, I’ve been delightfully surprised how painless dealing with this girl’s insurance (Statefarm; I’ll pimp ‘em out) has been.  Once they got in touch with her and realized that, yep, it was entirely her fault, they told us where we could go that does direct billing (because, uhh, we can’t afford to pay for it and then be reimbursed), we went in for the estimate, got in touch with Statefarm again, and they hooked us up with a rental while it gets fixed.  For as much of a headache as these things can be, Statefarm really alleviated all the extra headaches that could have popped up.  If their rates weren’t prohibitively expensive compared to Geico, I’d totes switch.

Other than that, there’s not much else to report, except for two other things that happened to me–one was the KFC Double Down, and the other was the Sex and the City sequel, and believe me when I say they “happened” to me, because after both, I felt like my person had been run right the fuck over with a car.  My rants for the SatC sequel belong in the other blog, and I may write about them later, but suffice it to say that it’s really terrible (no surprise, given the many reviews to that end), and I continue to be saddened by the cheapening and caricaturizing of characters once beloved.  As for the Double Down…I’ve recently adopted a slightly healthier way of eating–namely, eating better foods, not eating when I’m not hungry (i.e. continually grazing), etc.  As a result, I hadn’t had fried food in about three weeks.  Megan, Michael, and I embarked on the Double Down challenge after SatC, and I can honestly say it has been my greatest regret in memory.  My body, so used to greens and whole grains, BITCH SLAPPED THE HELL OUT OF ME.  To add insult to injury, the thing wasn’t even that good.  The chicken was kind of dry, the cheese really doesn’t taste like anything (and only added a vague “cheese”-like texture), and it could have done with a more substantial piece of bacon and some more sauce.  To sum up: barf.

And now, to pre-heat the oven for a frozen pizza.  My life, as always, remains riveting.

Madame Croche antidilettante: For All Your Lowbrow Polemic Needs

Life-related rants will be kept in BB, and I make no promises to clean up my mouth or my act, but peripheral gripes will be filed accordingly.

All disgruntled, potty-mouthed bitches are encouraged to follow me!  :D

Every week was a blur of tests, papers, presentations, and dealing with the paranoid, misogynistic Neanderthal in my Renaissance class .  This was truly a semester of never-ending work, no respites, no moments to breathe, no nothing.  Within the last two weeks or so, I lost almost ALL my steam, especially with regard to teaching, which I’m not proud to admit.  There’s something about teaching aural skills, and ONLY aural skills, to a bunch of kids who hate it (and I can’t say I blame them) that really wears you down and makes you cynical about teaching.  Though I’m sure I will miss it next year, I’m really looking forward to having some time off from teaching, time to focus solely on being a student for the first time in, what, five years?  What a novel idea…

Most of my grades are up, and As all around!  I’m slightly nervous about my theory grade, because the final exam was loads more intensive than I expected and I wasn’t too happy with my overall performance.  But, as stated above, morale and motivation were at an all-time low: I was doing well to just get through the damn thing.

Papers were…there.  I felt strangely about both my papers, which was entirely my fault, so it was almost guaranteed I wasn’t going to be pleased with the final result.  Next year I’m going to force myself to be diligent about developing focused research goals.

On the personal side, like I mentioned, Michael graduated on Friday!  His family came up on Thursday and stayed through the weekend, and we had a lovely visit.  IU graduations are needlessly long, just like every other graduation, but going to the graduate commencement seemed pointless–they only read out names of doctoral students.  You’d think at a school as big as IU that they’d do individual school graduations, à la UNCG, but no.  Pain in the ass as it was, you’d better believe I’m walking that stage when I finish my PhD, bitches.

On a wompier note, I recently finally admitted to myself that a friendship that I had thought was merely temporarily suspended due to stubborn silence on both our ends after an unspoken falling out is apparently actually over.  Done.  Finished.  At least, that’s the only conclusion I can draw after countless attempts at communication on my side have gone unanswered.  It’s incredibly surreal, and though I know I should, I haven’t entirely accepted it, even though with each day that goes by that I still hear nothing, I know even more that I should.  If I think too much about it, I get physically ill–it’s a visceral, gnawing feeling in my stomach that actually pains me.  This is a person that, through our ups and downs, I never questioned whether or not they would always be in my life–we had a bond that I genuinely thought could never be broken.  And I know that sounds very after-school special of me, but I don’t say something like that lightly–I can count the people that I consider true, close friends on one hand, and this person was one of them.  I fluctuate between being overwhelmingly sad that it’s over and overwhelmingly mad that this person would give up on us so easily, without ever telling me why.  At any rate, I know it’s time to move on, face the inevitable Facebook deletion, etc., but I just can’t do it yet.  It truly and utterly breaks my heart.

Ummm, so onto less wrist-slitty things.  I got a job for the summer, which was a Herculean feat in this town.  You would think that since everyone flees campus once school is over (no joke: Michael and I had to run by school today and it was a freaking ghost town), there would be jobs a-plenty, but no: Bloomington just shuts down during the summer instead.  I was surprisingly able to snag three jobs, which I credit to my indefatigable following up to every application (read: Naggy McNaggerson).  I was hired at the IU Telefund, IU Catering (as a bartender, whoo!), and at a market research company.  Though the bartending gig sounded super fun, the shifts were really long (ten hours on my feet?  no thanks…), and the supervisor couldn’t tell me on average how many days I could work.  The Telefund looked promising, but their only hours M-F are 5-10PM, which is a drag for both scheduling and accruing hours.  I went with the market research company, which may or may not be miserable, but I was told I’d have the option to work 9-5, which is what I was really hoping for, so hopefully I can make it work at least through the summer.

And since I have absolutely nothing else of interest, it’s time to make a martini and settle in for one of many lazy, lazy summertime evenings.

I have exactly two memories of being completely humiliated–cruelly so–by one of my teachers.  I have to say that I hope I am the exception to whatever perverse rule this is, but I am not hopeful that this is the case.  I was a good kid, and a great student–I loved going to school and learning, and honestly thought (at least until I got to middle school) that each and every one of my teachers hung the moon.  I paid attention, I asked questions, I never got into trouble–these hurtful instances were not the results of a teacher finally snapping because of a rotten brat (which, I should mention, is no more defensible but perhaps more understandable).

The first memory is from third-grade music class, in my first year at a new school after moving away from Oklahoma.  I loved music, I loved the class, and even though Mrs. Akin, the teacher, wasn’t exactly the warmest teacher I’d ever had and didn’t seem to particularly like teaching, she was nice enough, and again, I was an eager, bright-eyed equal-opportunity teacher idolizer.  One day in class, Mrs. Akin announced we would be learning some sign language to go along with some of the songs we had learned.  I remember vividly my nine-year-old self being flooded from head-to-toe with joy–my class in Oklahoma had learned and performed sign language to a song the year before, and I had loved it (to the extent that some of my classmates had made fun of me for being so enthusiastic).  On a similar note, my friend Laura had taught me some signs a couple of days before–I think one was for “candy” and one for “soda pop.”  Being the only ASL I currently remembered, I turned to Laura, grinning, and quickly signed these to her.

Mrs. Akin SCREECHED at me, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING??”

“Uhhh I was just–it was just,” I stammered, feeling nauseous, turning red, knowing I must have done something wrong but not understanding what.

“I DO NOT ALLOW SECRET SIGNS IN MY CLASS!”

“Oh!” I said, feeling slightly relieved.  Surely she would let me explain myself, and see that I had done nothing wrong.  ”Those were just the signs for candy and soda p–”

“I DO NOT CARE WHAT THEY WERE!  IF YOU DO THEM AGAIN, YOU WILL BE SENT TO THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE!!  DO YOU UNDERSTAND??!”

I didn’t answer, completely panicked and confused.

“I SAID–DO YOU UNDERSTAND??!”

Tears stinging my eyes, hurt welling up in my throat, head drooping, I quietly answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

My enthusiasm for sign language dwindled quickly after that.

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My other experience came the following year, in the fourth grade.  I was in Mrs. Payne’s class, and though most of the students disliked her, I had been her one staunch defender, explaining that if you were good in class, paying attention and not misbehaving, then Mrs. Payne was really actually quite nice.  I prided myself on being one of the only students who liked her, and was in turn liked back.

One day in class, we were taking a vocabulary quiz.  Our wordbank was on the board–as Mrs. Payne read aloud definitions, we were to write down which word we thought matched.  As we came around to a particular word, I noticed it was misspelled on the board.  Hoping to be helpful (and yes, with a touch of Hermione Granger know-it-all-ness), I raised my hand and offered this information.  For a moment, all was silent, as Mrs. Payne fixed me with a steely gaze I had yet to be on the receiving end of.

“Well, thank you VERY MUCH, Carolyn,” she sneered.

I said nothing, confused, but sensing her sarcasm.

“Well now you’ve told everyone what the answer is, HAVEN’T YOU?  Because you had to be such a know-it-all, now EVERYONE KNOWS.  Everyone, scratch Number 5 off your test.  You won’t get points for that one because CAROLYN DIDN’T THINK before she opened her mouth.  Everyone make sure to THANK CAROLYN after the test.”

I finished the rest of my test in silent shame, and very rarely did I raise my hand again in Mrs. Payne’s class.

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Even thinking about these moments now–far removed at the ripe old age of 27–I still get slightly queasy.  And all this is not to say that I didn’t experience other demoralizing behavior from other teachers.  I had a couple of “teachers” (and I use that term very loosely) in middle school–a football and a soccer coach, to be exact–who perpetually looked for ways to subtly embarrass, undermine, and generally degrade me in front of my peers.  This was of little consequence (at least in the long run; it certainly bothered me when I was 13-14 years old), because these were never men that I had respected or admired–even in middle school I knew I was better than those cretins.  Their treatment of me is simply a blur of embarrassment and dislike.  Mrs. Akin and Mrs. Payne stay with me–and stay with me vividly–because theycrushed my soul.  I can think of no greater injustice done to me than what these women did–they used their positions of power to humiliate and belittle me, and worst of all, they did it with malice.  When I was a child.  When they were supposed to be the very people that I should have been able to trust.  And these women were teachers–presumably they went into this profession because they wanted to be positive, influential, trust-worthy people in children’s lives.  To be in that position and break that trust willfully and malevolently is just about one of the most despicable things I can think of.

These experiences have held great power in shaping the way I interact with students.  I’m a genuinely nice person, even though it’s packaged in ample amounts of bitch and snark, and I like to think that I would and will avoid doing something similar to one of my students even if the above hadn’t happened to be, but they do make me think more actively about the ways I act.  Regular!Carolyn is sarcastic and snarky to a fault, and even though I deal primarily with older, presumably less fragile students, I try very hard to keep R!C in check, gauging who is more open to my acerbic sense of humor and who is not.  I know that even as a very lowly AI, I potentially have the power to do to someone else what those women did to me–and I could not live with myself if I ever did.