A file of all the posts I could not/was too lazy to categorize.

December

To celebrate the first day of the last month of the year, I thought I’d write about a 15-year-old song that always seems new to me: Collective Soul’s “December.”

These guys haven't aged a day... in my mind.

I know I’ve posted about my strange ‘90s nostalgia before, but really, I’m not delusional. I know that the ’90s have receded into the mists of time. I am dimly aware that I graduated from high school more than a decade ago and that everything that was new then is old now. And not vintage/retro/awesome old, either. More like passé/outdated/has-been old. And if I ever forget this fact, I teach a roomful of community college students who are more than willing to remind me, on a weekly basis, that I am a geezer.

Nevertheless, there are some things from the mid-’90s that I persist in thinking of as brand new, and one of those things is Collective Soul’s 1995 hit “December.” Why? No idea. Perhaps it didn’t get played to death on the radio stations I was listening to in high school. Or maybe it’s the harmonies, or the violins, or just the fact that the music is so good. Or maybe I didn’t pay too much attention to it 15 years ago and it’s taken this long for me to absorb the song. I don’t know. But every time I hear it, it gives me that quality-new-song feeling, the feeling I’ve almost forgotten, when you turn on the radio, hear a song and think “wow, this song is actually good.”

Every time it comes on the radio, I still feel exactly the way I did the first time I heard it, when I was getting ready for school in the morning, putting on my flannel shirt and clogs, and slipping my Spanish 3 book into my backpack. I thought then, and I always think now, “hey, what a good song.” And I always think the song is newly released.

Well, until recently, when I heard it on the classic rock station. That was jarring. When I complained, my husband, who is 14 years my senior, laughed and welcomed me to my 30s for what seemed the umpteenth time in two years. I hope the classic rock station thing hasn’t ruined the new-song-feeling for me. I’d like to think that “December” is new for all the rest of my Decembers.

For any of you who’d like to see the 15-year-old video from YouTube’s partner site Vevo, I’ve posted it below, in all its 1995 alternative, long-haired, blazer-clad glory. May you also get that good-new-song-vibe from it. Happy December.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6exsatE-DUk]

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Pet owners like that are the only pet owners here.

 

I spent most of yesterday wandering through various veterinary facilities, husband in tow. We sat in waiting rooms and exam rooms, carrier in my lap, or worse, the carrier sitting on the floor, its occupant out, growling, firmly held down on a metal examination table.

It was more than 48 hours since she was able to eat or drink or move freely.

Last week I posted about my cat, Copy, and her vet fears. This week she’s in the veterinary hospital with a mysterious bacterial infection. What happened? No one knows. She was in magnificent form at the vet’s for her vaccinations  Friday. She hissed, she spat, she did her best Linda Blair impersonation. We apologized to the vet techs and murmured sweet nothings to the cat and brought her home for the bath she needed. And then she was bafflingly ill. Read more

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I didn’t go abroad so my parents could watch me on a webcam.

Me, in a borrowed dress, preparing for Sevilla's Feria in 1999.

UPDATE: The webcams appear to no longer be in use at my old study abroad program. At least, the feed from those cameras is no longer posted on the web page. I know that the friends I made in Spain read this blog, so I don’t want to spread misinformation.

Last night, overcome by a fit of nostalgia, I Googled my old study abroad program in Seville, Spain. I was appalled to discover that the program had installed webcams.

There is no explanation on their website for the cameras, but in September, National Public Radio did a segment about colleges installing webcams for parents who want to take a look at their kids eating in the dining hall, getting their mail or whatever. I’m assuming these Spain-cams are the same thing.

This bothers me. When I went to Spain in 1999, I was going abroad to get away.

The pretext was that I was going for my education. And I did go to school there, but the classes were a formality. My real education began on my second day, when I had to use my 10 years of in-class Spanish instruction to order a booklet of stamps, and no one was present to help me. I remember the impatient look of the stamp vendor, my own terror when I couldn’t remember the word for stamps (it’s sellos) and my elation when money changed hands and the stamps were in my pocket. I almost did a jig in the street. I had done it. I ordered the stamps myself, with no one to help me. It felt like the first thing I had ever done without help. I was, all of a sudden, capable of anything.

Now I will admit that the webcams’ view of the students is very limited. The cameras are mounted in inoffensive places (the halls, the front door, the courtyard) and are designed to capture students at their most angelic: On their way to class. Not much damaging footage can be captured in the narrow  halls of my old center.

What I’m protesting here is the point.

The four months I spent in Spain were some of the most important weeks of my life. Despite the fact that my room and board was paid for by my parents, I was far away and had to fend more or less for myself. And I learned several important lessons: I had to accept the fact that I didn’t have as much money to travel as some of the other students did. I had to be judicious with what money I did have, and accept the fact that I was simply not going to Ibiza for a weekend. A related lesson, which I learned on a surprisingly cold and rainy night in Madrid, was that money does, in fact, run out.

When I came back from my study abroad, I was 21, and I finally thought of myself as an adult. Whether my parents agreed with that was beside the point. I home a more confident person, knowing that I could exist in another country, speaking a language that is not my own.  I wonder if I would have felt as independent if my parents let me know that they were keeping tabs on my activities, watching me go to class (or not) via webcam.

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The bad cat owner.

She's hell on vets.

Today I broke a promise to the cat.

The promise, which I made about three and a half years ago, went like this: “I vow that unless you get really, really, horribly sick I will never bring you to the vet ever again. You may live out the rest of your life in peace, without a person in a white coat ever approaching you. That is my gift to you.”

That might sounds like irresponsible pet ownership, but give me a second to explain before the finger-wagging begins.

My cat is terrified of the vet. Not scared in the way most animals get when they go to the vet, because I’ve taken other animals to the doctor. My cat is a 12-pound ball of screaming, fighting, clawing, squirming rage. When we were going regularly, they used falconer’s gloves to hold her down. They asked me to drug her before I brought her in.

For a while, because my cat likes to maul her own tail, we were at the vet’s office all the time. The cat spent something like four to six months with her head in and out of a plastic cone. Four months of appointments hadn’t gotten her any more comfortable at the vet’s office, and I hated drugging her. So when we got the tail under control, I decided that I’d give her a break from the vet’s office, a permanent one.

Well. It lasted three years. The cat really needs a check-up and I can’t put it off any longer. This morning I called the vet and made an appointment. I took the guilt trip laid on me by the receptionist and then I looked over at the cat.

I’m out of tranquilizers. I won’t be able to sedate her for them this time. I hope they’re up to it.

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The Drop Sinister

This painting has been haunting me.

"The Drop Sinister - What Shall We Do With it?" by Harry Willson Watrous

We saw it this weekend at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, and I took a picture of it because it struck a chord with me, although I didn’t really stop to consider which chord had been struck. The plaque next to the painting said that it is the first known portrait of an American interracial family, and aside from noticing that the family looked very unhappy, I didn’t give it much thought.

It was only when I was uploading my pictures to my computer and idly mulling over the title of the work that I realized what it was about the painting that had hit me in the museum: The “drop” to which the title referred was blood. In particular, the African blood of the little girl. That chilled me: Watrous was saying that part of the little girl’s genetic make-up was sinister. Was he a racist? Or was he making a point? I dropped everything and started Googling.

Read more

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Happy Halloween.

Our jack-o-lantern has an accidentally cleft palate this year, and lots of unintentional, Mike Tyson-esque facial tattoos.

When I was a kid, my mother told me that there was an age at which children stopped dressing up for Halloween.*

What was this decidedly unmagical age? I don’t know, because lame though some of my costumes have been, I’ve dressed up every year and I’m doing it again this year. My husband and I did have some issues with our dreaded couple costume, but those issues have been resolved and I think we’ve come to a compromise that is neither sickening nor horrific. (Here’s a hint:  Who would win in a fight?)

I love Halloween costumes and I plan to keep dressing up or the rest of my life, even if that means that someday I’ll  have to bribe a nurse to replace my dentures with plastic vampire fangs for an hour, when the little kids come trick or treating at the rest home.

* I don’t know where Mom got that you-grow-out-of-Halloween thing. She dresses up every year too. Maybe she just didn’t want us going door to door as teens and scaring the bejesus out of the neighbors.

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The Halloweeners

This costume creeps me out, and not because of the obvious pun. I can't figure out whether it's the couple's stance or the guy's hair, but looking at this picture for too long makes me feel dirty.

As soon as my writing samples and third semester project were submitted yeserday, I was felled by a migraine headache. I’m just now coming out of it, which is annoying because today was the day I’d planned to figure out a Halloween costume before heading off to work.

I still have time, but we have a dilemma – my husband wants to do a couples costume this year and most of the couples costumes out there are either saccharine (Cinderella and the Prince) stupid (salt and pepper), demeaning (Hef and a Playboy bunny) or kind of vile (see photo.)

We’ve been going back and forth quite a lot on this. We both like mythology, so Odysseus and Penelope? What about Persephone and Hades? Leda and the swan? That last one is a little too gross.

We’re a more than a little little geeky, so I was pushing a reverse-gender Zoe and Wash from Firefly and he was pushing Arthur Dent and the Hitchhiker’s guide. Since my husband’s been Arthur Dent for Halloween for close to 20 years, I shot that one down. Then we thought of being binary code. Now we’re mining Arthurian legend, but we’re unexcited by the concepts we’re coming up with.

Essentially, we did better when we were coming up with our own costumes. Last Halloween, I was Carmen Sandiego and he was Arthur Dent. The year before I was Little Bopeep From Hell and he was Arthur Dent. The year before I wore a goth ballgown and he was Arthur Dent. You get the idea. So this year, unless inspiration strikes, at least one thing is certain: My husband will be Arthur Dent.

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Oh Rocky!

People tend to get annoyed whenever they feel mainstream culture is co-opting a cult phenomenon, but I actually enjoyed Glee's Rocky Horror episode.

Last night Glee took on Rocky Horror show. The reactions have ranged from outrage to, well, glee.

I’ve seen head-shaking of the nothing-is-sacred variety. I’ve seen reactions by people who love both Glee and Rocky Horror and think that combining the two is the best thing since pockets.  I’ve seen opinions from people who are annoyed that Dr. Frank-N-Furter was played by an actress. But one of my favorite drag queens, Pandora Boxx, tweeted this morning that she loved the episode and thought that Mercedes as Frank-N-Furter was an interesting twist.  Read more

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The October deadline SNAFU.

Oh man.

I had all these things I wanted to post about today: Being in touch with my inner monkey, my imaginary all-girl rock band, why I hate Fight Club, my burning desire for a Fulbright, a newfound love of M.I.A., strong verbs vs. modifiers, natural selection, trichotillomania and my unrequited teen crush on Wil Wheaton.

These are all the things sitting in my queue of unfinished posts. Sadly, they won’t see the light of day for a while, because I’m buried under an MLA manual, an essay, my students’ midterm grades and several disorganized pages worth of novel. Blah. No fun.  Adding urgency to this is the fact that I (like Erin) promised myself I would post to this blog once a day (well, once a weekday) for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, that means you all get this snore-inducing post for today. I’m actually not even going to announce this lame-o post on Facebook or Twitter. Sorry about this. I will try to be more interesting tomorrow.

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Attempted confession

Today I got myself all worked up about going to confession, only to get to the church and find that a wedding had spilled over into the confession time slot. Where usually there were a handful of penitents, there were instead bridesmaids, bagpipers and a band of chilly-looking well-wishers. It was like a sacramental take-over (or, as I like to think of it, a sacra-jacking.)

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