Decorating the Nursery: If It Can Go Wrong, It Has (or Probably Will)

After months of working on our babe's nursery, I would have expected to be posting pictures at this point. If not "After" pictures then at least "Pretty Close to After" pictures. 

Were I to climb the dozen or so steps to the room at the top left of the staircase and snap my digital camera a few times, however, all I could show you is this: white walls. 

That's right. No baseboards, even though we nailed them up a month and a half ago. No brown paint on the upper 1/3 of the wall, even though Brad painted three coats in January. No crib. No semi-organized closet. No dresser. No chest of drawers. No hoard of pillows. No stacks of baby clothes. Nothing nothing nothing. 

Why?! 

B/c we had to take it all down/out/apart and paint over it all. B/c all the clothes/pillows/pieces of furniture are sitting variously in my hallway, office, Brad's office, our bedroom.

Why?! 

I could recount this renovation nightmare in its painful entirity a 12th time. I could cry hysterically for a 4th time. I could become infuriated for the who-knows-how-many-eth time. But I won't, b/c I'm sick and my shower's tomorrow and I want to try to sleep for one night this week. 

So instead, I'll give the barest bones acount. In January, I spent nearly 5 hours researching VOC-free paint - the supposedly healthy, low-odor choice. We made our pick, spent a bunch o' money buying the stuff, tons of time painting, and all was well. No smell, looked pretty good. Great. As expected. 

Yeah, it's great - in theory 

Until we got back from my parents' house over spring break (a month ago) and the room reeked. Like, chemical smelling. Like bad. Except VOC-free paint ain't supposed to have those horrible chemicals. And especially not a month and a half after painting. 

Nothing worked to get rid of it - heat, air circulation, Citrus Magic. Nothing. It didn't get better. In fact, the warm weather made it worse. The customer service rep at the company was nice, but he pretty much thought I was nuts. Then the smell started going into the hallway. Then down the stairs. 

This stuff is no joke - and it ain't cheap 

That was it. We couldn't wait any longer. Last weekend Brad and I spent a nightmare day and a half clearing all the stuff out of the room and taking down every board and every batten we'd spent hours nailing up. (I pounded out EIGHTY nails.) Then his dad, my mom, and the two of us spent a nightmarish Sunday covering everything - every wall, every bit of window and door trim, every side of every piece of board and batten - with $40 a gallon Zinsser Bin odor blocking primer. 

And now, with a baby coming in 6 weeks, all the work we've done for the past three months has been undone - and we've got to do it all again. 

Any guesses as to why I got sick? The stress, as you might imagine, has been unreal. When I think about all the time, effort, money, and sheer exhaustion that went into the nursery the first time around - well, I can't really bear to think about it. Which is why I'm going to bed.

Losing the Las Vegas Seat Lottery

See those smiling faces? Those weren't ours Tuesday night 

We're here in Vegas, chillin' out in our executive suite (free upgrade, Vegas-style!) at Harrah's hotel, where the International Conference on Narrative started today. I'm giving a paper on a panel I organized at the conference - and Brad and I are seein' the sights and playin' the slots. Hopefully we'll have better luck in the casinos (after a day of slot play yesterday, we're up $20 - better than nothing!) than we did with our seat assignments for the trip out . . . . 

The second leg of our flight was a nearly 5 hr. ride from Reagan International in D.C. to the main Vegas airport, McCarren. B/c we booked our seats separately for purposes of reimbursement (that is, my university will reimburse my flight if I turn over receipts), Brad and I didn’t get seated together. Which stinks regardless, but really stinks b/c of where we ended up: in the middle seats. 

I lucked out, comparatively speaking, b/c although I got stuck in 18E, only the aisle seat was taken. So I scootched over to the window and spread my quite-a-bit-heavier-and-rounder-than-usual self out a little bit.  

Seated one row back and on the left side of the plane, however, Brad wasn’t so lucky. In 19B, he was stuck between an older guy and a woman in her thirties¾three full-sized people in three seats. The man sitting in front of him, by contrast, had all three seats to himself. My husband, as I have mentioned on a number of occasions, is quite tall, and I imagine it’s not his idea of a good time to sit squished between two people for a 4 hr. and 40 min. flight, especially when there are two perfectly good seats free in front of him. 

And I don’t think he should have to. Am I wrong? 

Well, the gentleman in front of him seemed to think I was.  

This guy started out in the aisle seat (lucky for him), but before take-off, when it was apparent no one else had been assigned the adjacent seats, he moved to the middle seat, leaving a seat open on either side of him. Which is fine and dandy, if no one wants those seats. 

When the seat belt light went off, Brad moved out of 19B¾at my urging¾only to find the spot a bunch of rows back that we thought was open had a person laying/sleeping across it. So, again at my urging, Brad asked the man in front of him if he could have one of the empty seats in his row. B/c I was sitting some feet away and the conversation was quiet, I couldn’t hear what exactly was being said; what I could see, though, told me enough: this man wouldn’t let Brad sit in his row. 

Now wait just a minute here. We all paid for our tickets back here in good ol’ coach, didn’t we? And I am nearly certain this guy didn’t pay for the three seats that compose the left half of row 18. Which means my husband has just as much of a right to sit there as he does¾and if not in the aisle seat (which was this man’s assigned seat), then in one of the other two seats. 

Brad, being too-nice as he often is, starts to turn around and move the 2 feet back to his row, when I’m like, “What? What’s the problem?” He’s shooting me the look of death, the one that says, Oh, please don’t! You’re embarrassing me! and I’m ignoring said look, thinking, There is no way we paid more than $300 for a ticket for you to be unnecessarily miserable for the next 5 hours. 

“What’s the problem?” I say again and look at the seat hog gentleman in 18B. And when I say look I mean stare. And he’s staring back at me. And I’m thinking, I’m sorry, buddy, but you obviously don’t know me and how I get when 

1.      I want something, and 

2.      I know I’m right. 

“Sit there,” I say, loud enough to be heard by a specific individual. “Why aren’t you going to sit there? Those seats are empty!” 

Well, Brad and this specific individual discuss a little more, and next thing you know, this guy is moving out, Brad’s moving into the window seat, and this guy’s taking up his original seat along the aisle. 

And now, instead of one 3-person row and one 1-person row, we’ve got two 2-people rows. I just love symmetry, don’t you? It feels so lovely :). 

What can I say? I’m nothing if not my loved ones’ zealous (if mildly embarrassing) advocate. Happily, on the flight back, I’ve got an aisle seat and my hubby is seated next to me. Phew. 

Take that (!), Craigslist

Well, I finally did it: I found my chest of drawers for the nursery! And with no help from Craigslist whatsoever. 

As a matter of fact, I am officially sick of CL b.s. and glad to no longer be relying on it for my secondhand furnishing needs at this moment. (Though I must say I snagged a beautiful second-hand convertible stationary crib - Storkcraft in a sort of honey oak color - for my mom's house this weekend in a snap - and it came with a Sealy mattress, all for $75.) 

After a month and a half of searching for a chest multiple times a day, with approx. 18 e-mails sent and 3 phones calls made, I got a grand total of 5 e-mail responses and 1 return call. One of those e-mails was to say "sold"; another to say "selling as a whole set"; another to repeat what was written on the ad and not answer my questions; another to which I responded with a when-can-I-come-see-it and then never heard back; and another to say he wouldn't send me pictures. 

Wow, great. Thanks so much, everyone. 

So basically, I'm ticked at the Craigslist culture that says it's okay to treat potential buyers like idiots if you feel like it. 

But there's happy news . . . the chest! Found it at the ReStore last Friday (my 6th trip there in a month and a half), tried all the drawers (they work), imagined it with white paint and knobs (looks great in my mind!), paid my $55, and was on my merry way. 

Honestly, I thought the price was a little steep, about $15 too much, but for that measly amount I couldn't pass it up or think twice about it given all the looking I have done and all the hours I have spent on said looking. The principle didn't matter one iota in comparison with the joy I knew I would feel once Brad hauled this baby upstairs. And oh yes, I did feel (and am still feeling) joy. 

This chest meets all the necessary size requirements, required no driving to distant lands (okay, distant towns) to see/pick it up/possibly pass on it, and I was already in the Blazer, allowing for immediate transport. 

Basically it's about chest height and narrow-ish - which is just what we need for the space under the slanting of the ceiling - the style is simple and therefore versatile, and it will clean up nicely with a few coats of paint. SOLD! 

Finding this gal made for a much less stressed-out weekend last week, though this weekend I'm stressing about the need to get it and the dresser painted . . . but first we've got finish the whole board and batten thing. And right quick, too, since the 3rd trimester started Monday! Yikes - where has the time gone?! 

WTF, MLA?

In standard American English, that is, why is there not ONE panel of interest to me at the 2013 Modern Language Association convention?! 

MLA is the "it" conference in literature, and so I've been scouring the calls for papers page for the past month or so, but with next to no success thus far. There have got to be 80 cfps listed, and yet not a single thing I am genuinely interested in. Even more than that, there have got to be 15 on authors I've never even heard of! 

A friend of mine from a school I attended previously applied last year to seven panels. Of course, he hadn't written these papers in advance; he waited to get accepted to something (which he did) and then wrote the paper for that one. But still: seven?! 

I submitted a single abstract last year (also for an unwritten paper; it did not get accepted), and I'm not convinced I'll even submit that many this year. I've found only one thing that looks like a semi-maybe-possible possibility. And that's a lot of hedging. 

Arggggggggggggh. This is beyond frustrating. I mean, it's not like getting into MLA is easy - because it definitely is not. At all. But as far as I can tell, it's impossible to get accepted to a conference that you don't apply to . . . .

The Friday 4: Strangest Things People Said to Me About Being Pregnant

Even before getting pregnant, I prepared for a certain amount of bristling and even backlash on the part of the professors in my department. Academia isn't always the most family-friendly place, and I've been at a number of universities where baby-having was looked upon as a major no-no for both students and professors. My current school, however, seems to have quite a different attitude toward the situation, and my professors have mostly been genuinely happy for me. 

(And, as a turn of good luck, even though our dept. apparently hasn't had a pregnant student for quite some time, at the present moment I'm only one of three! There's definitely comfort in numbers.) 

The reactions/responses of my fellow grad students, by contrast, have sometimes been unexpected, sometimes funny, sometimes weird, and sometimes plain bizarre. At least no one's come out and said s/he thinks it's an awful idea to have a baby a year before beginning work on my dissertation. That's not to say no one's thinking it, but . . . I'll give them some credit for keeping their mouths shut :). 

4.  "You're brave," said in a tone of fake-awe. 

Why, thank you! I don't usually think of myself as a particularly courageous individual, but I appreciate your - oh, wait. You mean I'm brave b/c I'm having a baby while in a doctoral program? I see. 

This back-handed compliment really isn't surprising at all, and it's in line with the general thought that most PhD students seem to have about being PhD students: that it's the hardest, most time-consuming, most stressful thing one could possibly be doing with one's life. 

Yeah, this stuff is hard - I'll give you that. And it is time-consuming and stressful and etc. etc. ad naseaum. However, it's no more time-consuming than working as a lawyer (or going to law school for that matter), no more difficult than being a medical doctor, no more stressful than either of these and a host of other careers. And last I checked, lawyers and doctors (and everyone else) have children all the time. I'm not saying it's not gonna be crazy intense - I'm just saying it's not like I'm doing something truly path-breaking here. 

3.  "Um, congratulations? I never know what to say. Like, when someone gets engaged, yeah, but when they're pregnant . . . . " 

Really?! You don't know what to say when someone is expecting a child?! That's not on par with an engagement?! Really?! Really?! 

2.  "Maybe you'll grow fat like a meatball." 

Courtesy of one of our German exchange students, this line was actually just delightful and caused me (and Jo and other people in my feminist theory class) to crack up. He was mildly perplexed that I had not gained a noticeable amount of weight by the end of the first trimester, which actually isn't surprising at all, but I assured him it would come with time. 

Jo's response was equally enjoyable: with a laugh of glee, she said, "Oh, I hope so! Instead of being a bean like you are!" Thanks - so glad to know you're rooting for my meatball-ness :). 

1.  "You're having a kid?" ["Yes." Pause.] "Good - I guess . . . I'm not at that point in my life." 

Oh, well, thanks for sharing, especially since you weren't a part of the conversation. I'm really glad you decided to chime in and assert that my having a "kid" is probably a good thing despite the fact that you, your most fabulous self, are not yet ready for a child. 

Nothing Can Ever Be Simple; or, Displaced Persons

That, I believe, is a fitting motto for Christmas Break 2011 - however, right now I'm only talking about the floor re-finishing project, AKA, the Winter Headache '11. 

The plan was (relatively) simple, especially given all the alternatives we had laboriously considered: 

1.  12-22 - have the floor professionally sanded on 12-22 while we are out of the house for the morning/afternoon; 
2.  12-23 - Brad and my mom apply two coats of stain over the course of the morning and afternoon, while I hang out downstairs and away from staining smells; 
3.  12-24 - Brad and my mom apply polyurethane coat #1, then Brad and I vacate the house for the holiday (to my parents' house) until late on the 26th; 
4.  12-29 - Brad and my mom apply poly coat #2 in the a.m., then Brad and I go to WV for the Christmas celebration with his family and eventually head back to my parents' house through the New Year; 
5.  12-31 - Brad and my mom apply the 3rd and final coat of poly in the a.m. Then it's done! 

Numero uno went great, and it only took the floor guy about 4 and a half hours from start to finish. 

Look at those bare oak beauties! 

But, of course, we didn't even get all the way through #2 without a problem: the stain reeked, and I had to get out of there all afternoon; then after they did the second coat, we packed up in a jiff and went to stay at my parents' house a day early. 

Fine. No biggie. Except when Brad and my mom went over on the morning of Christmas Eve (boo! Who wants to do work on Christmas Eve?!), the second coat of stain was not completey dry despite having 17 hours. The first coat was dry after 4 hours, so we figured 4 times that (the can says 4-6 hrs.) was sufficient even in non-ideal conditions (i.e., December in Southwestern PA). Wrong. 

They hung out for two hours with the heat jacked and a fan blowing, but still it would not dry. And putting poly on a not-completely-dried floor is just asking for problems. So they returned, and step #3 got moved to the afternoon of the 26th, when all went well. Thankfully. 

Brad and I went back to our abode about 24 hours later, however - really needing some in-our-own-space time - and this time the house smelled of polyurethane. We opened windows everywhere except for the nursery (despite rain), jacked the heat (again), and went out for a bit. But when we returned: no dice. It wasn't an awful smell, especially in the living room where I was - in fact, I could barely tell there was anything still lingering - but Brad the bloodhound could smell it, so we left for baby safety's sake. 

Thus, just 5 hours after having packed up everything we brought to my parents' house (and we do not travel lightly) and driving 45 minutes home, we turned around, drove back, and unpacked it all. I thought I was going to flip both my lid and Brad's lid and the lid of anyone else within my sight. I was sooooo exhausted, and I felt like a displaced person traveling around with pillows and blankets and Target bags filling the back seat of my car. 

We're not getting the 3 days at of rest and recuperation at home that we had planned on in b/t the holidays, and the sleeping arrangements here are NOT long-term solutions - by the end of this project, we'll have been holed up at my parents' house for TEN DAYS! (Yes, I consider ten days "long-term" in this situation.) Hopefully in about a week, though, this will all have been worth it, and I'll have some lovely fabulous wonderful great pictures of the floor to post. Brad and my mom got coat #2 on successfully this morning, and their plan is to head back Friday morning to finish this dang thing. 

With any luck, we'll be back in our smell-free house by Monday night and my mom can reclaim her living room from our computers/cups/Netflix and her upstairs from our, well, everything else. And, hopefully, the cats won't be too mad at us for our extended absence - we've loved them up during our near-daily visits back to the homestead.

Monkey. Off. Back. Phew

See that horrible guy? His name is Fall Semester 2011. And he's officially off my bid-ness - as of 5 minutes ago when I submitted my grades. 

This was a wonderful semester in one obvious respect: Brad and I found out we're having a baby. Which is just delightful. But otherwise, it's pretty much been a crap show. 

Earlier in the semester, my mom was in the hospital for 5 days with (they finally figured out) a wacky kind of shingles called Ramsey-Hunt shingles. It's awful and rare and has no outward shingles signs and is therefore crazy hard to diagnose, and I've never seen her so miserable in my life.

Then, in late November, my dad was in the hospital b/c of issues with his number of red blood cells b/c of the leukemia he's had for over a decade and a half. 

Top that off with my two experiences with spotting after learning I was pregnant - the first one at 7 weeks, the second at 14.5 weeks - and the hospital is quickly becoming not my favorite place. (I will say, though, that I was relieved to go and have the ultrasounds that showed everything was fine and there was no apparent reason for the spotting.) 

I also spent 5 weeks with morning sickness that felt like a stomach virus, then 4 weeks with some of the worst headaches of my life. There were nights I was in bed at 8:30 p.m. b/c I couldn't bear it. (And, of course, pregnancy-approved Tylenol doesn't do jack sh*t.) 

Then my parents' long-time neighbor (who I lived next door to for more than 15 years and with whose kids I grew up) died after being in the hospital for almost 4 months. 

Add to this perhaps the most apathetic class of freshman composition I've ever taught (they weren't even bad - they just couldn't have cared less) and 15 weeks worth of a horrible medieval literature course that made me feel like I couldn't sit in class for one more second, and what you've got is a whopper of a craptastic time. 

And so, I pressed the "submit" button on my grades - and voila! it's. officially. done. thank. goodness. 

Now break is upon me and then a busy, busy semester and then - baby! So for now I'm going to relish a bit of relaxation, get my house organized, buy some presents, open some presents, hang out with my family, play board games with Brad, listen to Jim Brickman's Christmas cd, enjoy the tree, get prepared for next semester, read a few magazines, maybe rip off some wallpaper, and, with any luck, find out if our little baby is a boy or a girl. 

And then the grind will start up again in January - though the monkey can kindly keep his distance.

When It Snows, It Blizzards (sic)

Yeah, I know blizzards isn't a verb - hence the (sic) - but this situation fits the form of the cliche too well not to use it. And I do love me a cliche (except when it's in a student's paper - then, watch out). 

Cars: utterly essential, but I hate dealing with them and I hate thinking about them. And I especially especially hate spending money on them. And especially right before Christmas. And especially when it's to the tune of $1000. 

That's right. Between this past Monday and Chrismas, Brad and I will have spent a thousand dollars on not simply our cars, but on tires for our cars. Tires! I could scream or cry or break something, but instead I'm just writing a blog post. 

The Accord needs snow tires b/c, well, it just does. It's not a particularly big or heavy car, and it definitely doesn't have 4 wheel drive. We've gone without snow tires, for better or worse, for a bunch of years now, and it's time to buck up and drop the $400 for safety's sake. Maybe we're growing up a little bit with a baby on the way? One can always hope :). 

While we knew that expense was coming, we were not expecting to dish out $570 on four new tires for the piece of crap Blazer. But, as (un)luck would have it, while Brad, Shannon, and I were in the city to see a play (for a class) last week, the Blazer got a flat tire. And when I say "flat," I mean flat. Like, it looked like someone had just slashed the thing, even though there was no slash. 

The poor guy changed it in the ice cold, in work clothes, on the wet ground, by himself (while Shannon and I made various trips into the nearby convenience store to keep my feet from freezing off). We were 25 minutes late to the play and he had wet pants and dirty hands to show for himself. 

Unfortunately, the guy at Walmart said all of the tires were in bad shape - and he legally couldn't just sell us two for the front or back. We rely on that (idiotic) car for our bad weather travel, so good tires are obviously key. Plus the thing probably wouldn't pass inspection b/c of the tires come spring or whenever it's up. 

In the end, we went to the tire place nearby, sucked it up, and got 4 new tires - but of course SUV tires are expensive and Brad wanted not-the-cheapest-ones for safety. Almost $600 later, our wonderful (bah) Blazer - which I think we have never actually washed - has beautiful new Goodyear tires. Now, if only the driver's side window would roll down and the door would open from the inside every time instead of just sometimes. 

Quickest Rejection Ever

Scholarly journals are notorious for holding onto your submissions for way too long, keeping you in a sort of torturous limbo about whether or not you've got the "right stuff." (Sometimes I just need to throw in a little NKOTB to keep my spirits up). My most recent submission, however, was rejected at lightning speed: 8 days after I sent the manuscript off via e-mail, I received an e-mail back saying, "Thanks, but no no no thanks." In so many words. 

It could've been worse - they could've taken 2 or 3 or 4 or more months to let me know they'd rather pass. But it also could've been better, and not just b/c getting accepted (obviously!) would have been ideal. The comments that I received from the editor both seemed to miss the point of contributing new scholarship to the field and the topic of my article, which made yesterday not only disappointing but also totally frustrating and mildly infuriating. 

Let me illustrate with a produce example: 

I wrote my paper, we'll say, on the wilting of romaine lettuce. First, the editor of said journal responded that wilting is a "theme" only "fitfully" under discussion in the criticism about romaine lettuce. To which I would respond (were I able to respond), "Yes, and not even 'fitfully.' No one's talking about it, and it's useful. That's why I brought it up." The point of scholarly commentary, as I understand it, is to further the conversation about and understanding of the topic at hand by developing already existing avenues of discussion and introducing and exploring new ones. 

The other majorly dumb comment was that editor had hoped to read an in-depth discussion of why there are so few varieties of greens available in produce section. Um, yes, well, great - but that's not even remotely my topic! And, as Butcher so eloquently put it: "There are a ton of greens in the produce section." Indeed there are. (Iceberg, spring mix, field greens, raddichio, just to name a few.) 

He might as well have said he was hoping to read a piece on Sense and Sensibility rather than something about a contemporary American novel. 

Everyone's always talking about how helpful reviewer's comments can be in the writing process. But what about when they're not? All this did was tick me off. The only legitimate comments he made were that 1.  he doesn't think the topic is impt. enough to sustain article-length treatment - an opinion he's entitled to, but that I and the professor with whom I worked on the paper disagree (in fact, she keeps encouraging me to make the paper longer) and 2.  that I offer only a "pat" discussion of people's responses to wilted lettuce. 

The first I will have to simply ignore, and the second, well, I don't actually disagree with him. I had about 4 more pages of stuff on the topic, which my prof. said to cut - so I did. Who's right and who's wrong? Only time will tell: I'm going to take the advice a former professor gave me years ago and send the thing out again ASAP (though the places I'm looking at have slooooooow response times, and many of them require snail mail submission - boo, get into the 21st century!). 

The very first time I played this game, back in late 2008/early 2009, it took the journal I submitted to 3 months to tell me that they didn't even send my article to reviewers. It was like the hugest slap in the face, and I believe there were tears (and probably many). I was ready to chuck the thing in a drawer and forget about it. 

But my professor told me not to do it; he found a journal I could submit to via e-mail, making the process almost painless, and said to just send the thing out without making even one change. So I did it. And five days later, that journal wrote back - and they wanted my piece just as it was. Just goes to show: it's possible to get accepted even faster than you get rejected.

Boo on you, Shape magazine

In the days before I fell in love with This Old House, Shape was my favorite magazine. I've read it for years, had a subscription a handful of times, and generally enjoyed the content (however repetitive it may - and ultimately, must - be). 

Recently, however, magazines like TOH and Better Homes & Gardens and the Woman's Day issues that my mom has finished up with have tended to grab my attention whenever I have a (rare) 15 minutes to sit and enjoy a dozen or so pages. But today I took up the August 2011 issue of Shape (yes, I'm a little behind), and after feeling, well, only vaguely engaged for the first 70 or so pages, I then found myself more than vaguely enraged. Here's why: 

I turned to a multi-page article entitled "Look Good for a Lifetime" and immediately recognized the format: it charts changes/issues decade by decade (20s, 30s, etc.) and makes suggestions based on those age-specific issues. This particular article, I quickly learned, took up the subject of skin and how to keep it beautiful through the aging process. 

Fair enough. 

I was a bit shocked to learn, on the first page, that 20-somethings whose skin is "less radiant" than in previous years (due to decreasing fat stores in the skin) ought to invest in a $100-$300 chemical peel - monthly, no less - but it's a relatively painless and non-invasive procedure and I turned the page to the next decade, expecting something about creams and ointments and maybe an Rx for a product with Retin-a. 

Imagine my surprise: women in their 30s are encouraged to have their faces injected with muscle relaxers (e.g., Botox) or "fillers," the second of which requires a painful procedure costing (the first time) upwards of $1000. I flipped the page again, thinking, Surely when I hit the big 3-0 next year, my only options for skincare and improvement are not medical procedures?! 

What greeted me for the 40s and 50s were no less ridiculous. For you women in your 40s - hit up the lasers and the "tightening devices" (that sounds to me a little too much like a medieval torture device); those of you in your 50s, I hope you've been saving your dough: Shape magazine suggests you go under the knife (for more than $2500) to have an eye lift or, at the very least, using Latisse to thicken your eyelashes. Forget buying a $12 tube of Max Factor - get a prescription! 

Silly me! I thought this was a good
way to enhance your lashes! 

Basically, I'm calling bullsh*t. 

Hey, I'm all for looking good as you age, and before the attack of rosacea took over my cheeks at age 23 (one of my sisters also has it and it's nearly impossible to get rid of), I had great skin, which I miss on a daily basis. But if looking good and being "confident" (this is the article's word) comes at the cost of, well, a ton of money and a whole lot of pricking and injecting and lasering, I have to wonder what exactly it means to be "confident." 

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I believe in hard work and its benefits. When I work our hard and look good, I feel good and proud and confident. Would I look good if a got lipo? Sure, who wouldn't? But would I feel good about myself? I know I wouldn't, and I don't think that our culture - especially our women and girls - need to be hearing that it's okay to strive to "look good" no matter how you have to fake it, buy it, or suffer physical pain for it. 

You've let me down, Shape. You really let me down. 

It's coming down

I'm talking about the wallpaper. The hideous, hideous wallpaper in the upstairs hall and along the stairs. 

But there's more to this: 

Brad and I are the black sheep of, well, not exactly the neighborhood (that title goes to a lot of other people before it goes to us - like the family with the giant camper parked in the driveway in front of their house 6 months out of the year), but we are definitely the black sheep of the 3 or 4 houses on either side and across the street. 

Meaning: Brad hasn't cut the grass (or dealt with the accummulated leaves) in three weeks; we haven't trimmed a shrub since, um, May; the weeds have been growing unfettered since early August; etc. etc. etc. So, we're slackers. I don't deny it. But it's not that bad and our next door neighbors (who we love) aren't too many steps behind us. 

One of our neighbors, Dale, however, has an uncanny knack for repeatedly asking if Brad's going to cut the grass "today." And he asks this almost every time we see him. To be fair, he's a wonderful, helpful neighbor, and he and his dad are very generous with us, but when I'm sprinting into my house from the car to avoid him asking me for the fourth time in a week if Brad's going to cut the grass today, it's a problem. 

And then yesterday happens. He'd already accosted me on my way in from the chiropractor around 11:30. Then, circa 2:00, the doorbell rings. I answer it. And he says, "Hi, I just wanted to see if you wanted me to help Brad with the leaves." My head nearly exploded. I nicely said, "No, he's going to take care of it tomorrow. Thanks though," and that was that. 

Except then I shut the door and started ripping off the wall paper with my fingernails (the ugly crap's got to go!) to expel my frustration. Brad was very apologetic that he hadn't done the grass sooner which made this whole situation possible, but my irritation is not at him; neighbors need to mind their own damn business. I don't go across the street and say, "I find your siding to be rather an ugly color. Are you changing that today?" do I? 

Anyway, it's obvious I'm irked - especially since today was already designated "Get the Yard Looking Presentable and Ready for Winter Day" - and now I've started this wallpaper project that's going to take forever to finish. But, hey, maybe when the walls are bare, the horrible green and pink is gone, and we're about to start painting a lovely color, I can go over to Dale and say, Thanks. 

The Friday 4: Tacky Trends

Okay, so they're not really trends in the usual sense, but I really liked the alliteration. Whether I'm witnessing these things or just hearing about them, I find them to be unacceptably ick and surely I'm not just being a prude (?). 

4.  Leaving up outdoor Christmas decorations year-round 

I will admit it:  I've got a thing for interior Christmas decorations, namely the tree. In fact, I just asked Brad the other day if we could put up the tree. His response? "It's a little early." He's probably right - especially since we'll likely have it up from after Thanksgiving till March. 

Your house should not look like this in March. 

That said, my family and friends are the only ones who have to suffer my out-of-season indoor Christmas decorations, whereas leaving up your blinking lights and icicles 365 days a year affects not only your neighbors but all passersby. It's jarring and confusing to those innocent bystanders, and it's just plain laziness on the part of the offenders. Take the darn decorations down, you tacksters; take them down. 

3.  Having a "sprinkle" 

That is, a smaller baby shower for a second (or third, or fourth) child. 

I never even heard of such a ludicrous thing until Amanda got invited to one (and then another and another and . . . ). I'm sorry, but you had your shower for your first child - and if you didn't, sorry, but the time has passed. Suck it up and buy what you need yourself. Your good friends and close family members will likely shower you and your little one with presents when the big day arrives anyway. Why should people, many of whom dropped $50+ on you the first time around, be expected to do so again? 

Nope. Sorry. It's tack-ay. 

2.  Parking on your lawn 

Veto. Veto. Veto. 

Really? Is your driveway so short, your garage so crowded, your street so narrow, that the only place you could feasibly park was in the grass? Cars, however nice or small or shiny or whatever they may be, are not lawn decorations. They are means of transportation, and last I checked, the appropriate repository for means of transportation not currently in use is not the front yard. 

Unless you're living out in the wilderness (Shannon, this means you), you've got neighbors who have to look at that car on your lawn. So get the keys, turn the thing on, and move it somewhere else - preferably to a paved surface. 

1.  Wedding shower without the wedding 

No, I'm not referring to when someone has a shower and then the wedding doesn't happen. I'm talking about when a couple has a wedding in an exotic location, or maybe even a courthouse ceremony, and no one is invited - but the bride-to-be also has a shower to which everyone is invited. 

Look: most people, myself included, hate going to weddings and hate going to showers, too. They're tedious, eat the entire day, and after about the second one, start to seem inane and identical to one another. 

If you're not having this, 
don't have a shower. 

But we nevertheless attend, when we can't come up with a good excuse to get out of them, b/c, well, we have to. The wedding deal is "I give you $/a present and you feed me and provide me with terrible music for 4 or so hours." The wedding shower deal is "I give you more $/another present and you feed me probably really bad food and we play dumb games for 2+ hours in anticipation of my giving you $/a present and you feeding me and providing me with terrible music for 4 or so hours." The wedding, as you see, is crucial to the shower logic. 

Everybody likes presents. It's as natural to human beings as breathing air and criticizing others. But if you're not wasting your money throwing a big bash for other people to not really enjoy (I do so love mocking the wedding industry), then it's not right to ask them to come on over and give you some stuff. To do so takes the tacky cake.

"Partner"?

Butcher and I were just commenting on this today, so I know it's not just me, but I find the word "partner," when used as a replacement for "husband," "wife," "spouse," "boyfriend," or "girlfriend," to be simply unnecessary and annoying. As Butcher put it, it's pretentious. Am I off-base here? 

Why does it bother me? Well, I can only sort of articulate it, but it bugs me when married people use it b/c they seem (in my mind, at least) to be saying, "Sophisticated me has contempt for this man-made system of union, and I refuse to buy into the arbitrary concepts of 'husband' and 'wife' which are limiting and socially constructed and, therefore, only for you dummies who are not so enlightened." 

But I want to be like, Hey, you're married, meaning despite whatever contempt you profess for the institution, you're a part of it. If you were so advanced, why did you GET married in the first place? 

A former professor of mine seemed to use "partner" in front of certain audiences - like large groups of people whose marital/partner (haha) status and political positions are not know - but in front of others - like me, who's married and calls Brad "my husband" - he would refer to the mother of his children as his "wife." If you're going to go the partner route, then, I say, you gotta go all the way. Waffling makes no sense whatsoever. 

As for why it irritates me as a "boy/girlfriend replacement," that's mainly b/c 
1.  Half the time people are trying to make their boy/girlfriend seem more significant than simply a boy/girlfriend. As in, I am mature and this is a serious relationhip - thus he is my partner. 

2.  The other half of the time, it's used to designate marriage replacement, as in, I actually do not buy into this man-made system of union, etc. etc. Which is all well and good, and I certainly understand the position. 

But seeing as I think that non-easily dissolvable unions are essential to the stability not just of the family (we see how well that's going these days) but of the society, I believe the answer is not in rejecting marriage but in rejecting the way it currently works and oppresses by being the change you want to see within this problematic institution. 

(All the feminist theory in the world isn't going to convince me that we need to go back to group partnering and communal child-rearing of the your-baby-is-my-baby-is-her-baby sort). 

I'm pretty sure gay people
couldn't marry in his day
either 

When gay people use the term, it should be noted, I do not bristle. Since most of our country has neanderthal laws, gay men and lesbians who are in committed relationships are only allowed to be partners. As for using the term for a boy/girlfriend, it also makes sense to me given so many people's reactions to a man saying, "My boyfriend and I went to dinner the other night." Why should someone subject himself (or herself) to immediate judgment at the hands of ignorant oafs? 

Basically, I hate snootiness, and I've really never encountered a non-snooty heterosexual use of the term "partner" to designate a significant other. Climbing down off of soapbox . . . now-ish. :)

When It's Okay to Complain

Everybody has ordered dinner from a grouchy server, dealt with a rude sales clerk, and talked to any number of snarly and unhelpful medical office personnel over the telephone. (Would someone please tell me why people - always women - who work in doctors' offices are so awful?) Unpleasant people in each and every form of customer service are, if not the norm, at least an ever-present reality in daily life. 

Terrible customer service: is it
the norm? 

When someone mistreats me, I inevitably go to the land of "This person is probably supporting a family, and while her behavior has been bad, I do not feel it merits putting her job in jeopardy." And I say nothing and go on my way, however unmerrily. 


But when is it just to complain about the poor service or treatment you have received at the hands of an employee? 

I believe that when this treatment surpasses inconvenience and unhelpfulness and moves into the realm of meanness, hurtfulness, or dishonesty, an individual is more than justified in complaining. 

An example: Yesterday, I participated in a mandatory Blackboard re-certification training on campus from 1:00-4:00 p.m. I arrived exactly 15 minutes late, quietly apologizing as I came in, explaining that I had gone to the wrong building. In front of 11 other participants, the "teacher" for this workshop (can I say "imbecile running the show"?) said, in all seriousness, "Glad you finally decided to show up." 

WHAT?! 

Listen, I wanted to say to him, I'm an adult, I'm apologetic, and I'm not all that late given the fact that this workshop is three hours long. I'm here now, so let's not have a fit and act like we're five years old. Of course, what I did instead was bow my head and shuffle to the open computer. 

Further, this teacher never gave me the materials he'd already handed out - not even during the break - and when my computer wasn't working b/c the internet was crashing left and right for everyone all afternoon, he did not even make a gesture to help me even though I was 4 feet from him. In short, the environment he created in his classroom was neither welcoming nor comfortable. 

(As a teacher, I can tell you that students are late, people go to the wrong building, they forget things, they don't do what you want them to do. Stuff happens. And if you can't deal with this sort of business on a pretty much daily basis, you shouldn't be teaching people.) 

This instructor's behavior is something that I cannot overlook. Why? B/c it goes beyond simple rudeness to belittling. B/c it seeks to embarrass and succeeds in doing so. B/c it is not an acceptable way to treat a colleague. In short, b/c it is neither how a teacher nor how a professional conducts himself. 

And this guy's just an awful representative of his department and my university.

Look, I waited tables for many summers - I know how annoying, demanding, and downright rude people can be. But I also know that when you're at work, you need to turn off the personal crap and do the job you're there to do - if not with a smile, then at least minus the smirk. I did this many, many times each summer (and still got a lot of lousy tips).

The point is, not every crappy waitress is having a bad day. But even if she is, she doesn't have the right to turn her bad day into your bad day. Which is precisely what this guy did yesterday - and why, when I fill out his evaluation, my comments will be honest, no matter how unflattering.