Bad Citizenryness

There is a short list of things I Should Be Doing, at the top of which is "finish reassembling the rowing machine," but, obviously, I am not doing those things. I left work at 6 today, and must go in early tomorrow (so I can finish this heinous salary allocation task and then leave early to do a smoking-cessation-group guest appearance), so I am vegetating tonight.

Speaking of vegetables, for dinner I had some of the beets that I roasted & froze a few weeks ago, combined with some chopped spinach and thrown over pasta. It was extremely tasty--and the beets turned everything, including the pasta, an incredible ruby color. I could have taken a picture of it, but I still have not obtained the accessories for my camera. Oh, wait--I don't believe I mentioned that I found a camera. It's a purplish-pink color, and Friend's friend was trying to give me crap about that--to which I said, "You know what color my camera is? The color of my camera is 'free.'" Which he had to agree was a good color.

Anyway, I don't have either the charger or the wire-to-dump-the-pix-onto-my-computer piece, and I have yet to track them down. I printed the manual--found online--but it's not entirely clear where I can find the pieces. Until I get the latter, I am hesitant to use the camera, because I don't want to drain the battery, and until I get the former, I can't actually do anything with the photos.

I don't have much to add. If I were more ambitious, I could link you to a bunch of posts I've enjoyed recently, but I am WAY too lazy for that exercise at the moment. If I were more thoughtfulnessy, I could muse about this or that, but, again, too much effort. And the thinking! Do not want. At least not until I'm back at work tomorrow morning. I do wish I could gin up the effort to fix the rowing machine and then get on it--I did most of the hard part last night--but, again, motivational deficiency disorder has struck.

I also remain unenthused about the Thanksgiving pot luck at work, and now plan to skip the whole event. We have to produce a report by Friday for Boss's Boss, for one thing, and I do not have the time or inclination to cook or bake tomorrow night, for another thing, not least because tomorrow is going to be another long day. I feel a little bad-citizeny about my avoidance, but fuck it. I can't imagine that my presence or absence is going to affect staff morale by a jot or a tittle. Also, and I realize this sounds snooty and I don't care, my coworkers eat a lot of highly processed crap--which means I don't particularly trust them to tell the difference between something that I made (and into which I put a fair amount of time and effort and so on) and some random pile of sugary shit. If I weren't so busy I might go ahead and make something anyway (little carrot-cake bites, for example), but eh.

No Chocolate for You!

Apparently the deities do not want me to put chocolate in my beverage (I've been getting a little chocolate syrup in my coffee): I have spilled or splashed it on myself TWICE today--and this morning I dropped off, at the dry cleaner, a sweater that suffered this treatment a few weeks ago. (Yes, I know I should have taken it in right away. I am neglectful about taking things to the dry cleaner, not least because today's trip will cost me $40 and that seems like a lot of money to get four things clean.)

Random Thoughts, Part 75

It is time for my periodic (har-har) bitching about the fact that apparently this menopause thing is taking forfuckingever to actually happen. Yes, I know it's a process rather than an event; yes, I know that it's normal for there to be a lot of irregularity; yes, I know that it will eventually cease--but this has been going on for more than two years, and I am well and truly sick of it. I do not want any more menstrual bleeding. Ever. At all. Among the most annoying things, for me--possible TMI alert--is that I used to be, as I've mentioned, pretty regular, which meant that I could predict when I was going to need to carry menstrual supplies around with me, and I had some idea for how long I would need them. Now, though? Must carry at least minimal supplies with me at all times, because I have no real idea when I'm going to need them, or for how long, or in what quantities/"strengths." Will it be a full-fledged period? Or just spotting? Will it last a week? Or two weeks? Will there be a gap of two months between bleeding/spotting episodes? Or two weeks? Or two days? No way to tell.

It's very tiresome, as you perhaps can imagine. The only real solution is hormones, in the form of oral contraceptives, but that seems to me to be excessive. The spotting/bleeding is annoying, obviously, but it's not threatening anything other than my underwear. I suppose I could try acupuncture and herbs, but that's not cheap.

The thing is, I know it will resolve over time--eventually I'll stop bleeding and spotting and whatever. The intermediate time is annoying, yes, extremely, but not hazardous, which makes me unwilling to completely alter my body chemistry with hormones. I'm not having other symptoms--no hot flashes, for example; sometimes I think I might maybe possibly be having a little one, but it could be that it's the change of seasons and I just have too many blankets on me at the moment. So, yes, it will resolve over time, but I am v. v. tired of it, and NOW would be a good time for it to stop.

I had the beginnings of a political rant, but I'm tired and I don't feel like it; my eyes can't take any more rolling tonight. I did get my rowing machine part back today, but I have not put it back together yet. Over the weekend, though!

And I made some progress today on the budget crap through which I'm wading. What's becoming even more obvious is that Annoying Person 1--the one who was in charge of the money--is an even more dreadful person than I thought. She left these little landmines behind, and she never explained a single fucking thing that needed explanation. Why? Because she thought we'd all be wandering around, whimpering, and we'd look bad, and then everyone would realize just how incredibly wonderful she really is, and how much everyone really needed her, and how the rest of us are clearly incompetent, compared to her. Or something.

What she didn't count on, though, is that I can (a) figure out what I need to figure out from what she left, (b) figure out the rest from other resources, and (c) put it all together in a way that actually empowers other people and shares the knowledge, rather than relying on it all being in one person's hands. I know she must have had an inkling that I'd be able to go toe to toe with her, and that I would be able to figure shit out without her, because I have found out that she tried to convince my boss to get rid of me. No--really; her replacement told me that. (Her replacement and I like each other very much, and we are determined to figure things out and make them work.)

Here's the other thing she didn't take into account: everyone else at the organization truly loathes her. Everyone. My boss is, or at least was, her friend, but even he has seen just how she fucked things up for him and around him, at least at work. What that means is that both I and her replacement are getting way more help and goodwill from people, simply because we are Not Her. It also means that I get some leeway with my boss, some pushback, if you will, simply because I recognize and try to frame issues in terms of (1) how does this help the team, (2) how can the organization better achieve its goals, and (3) how can his management team best help him make his boss happy. Yes, I rant; yes, I complain. The other day I even said, look, dude, I cannot do everything simultaneously. I cannot. I do not care what your boss wants, I cannot produce that in the time frame that YOU agreed to, without consulting me. But I did not say no directly to his boss, and I mused that one of our team's goals has to be making it easier for him to manage his boss, because I recognize that he still has to assuage his boss.

I just wish I could get enthused about making something for the Thanksgiving pot luck.

Random Thoughts, Part 73

Two election tidbits:

1. Obama will be the first President who is . . . younger than I am.

2. I've read that the turnout for this election was greater than for any election since 1908, i.e., a greater percentage of the population exercised their franchise. Except that, in 1908, most blacks couldn't vote, and no women could vote. Thus, if you count women and blacks in the "eligible" pool for 1908, a MUCH larger percentage of the adult population voted in this election than in any other U.S. election.

Work is wearing me down. Some people (especially my boss's boss) seem to think we have a contingent of elves and fairies who will get the work down as quickly as this person wants. BB also doesn't seem to realize that a lot of this mess was created on BB's watch. And, finally, constant criticism and demands do NOT energize me; the opposite, actually. It's not as though I'm going to leave or stop putting forth any effort, but if I know all I'm going to get is crap? I am not motivated.

I think I should get the part to my rowing machine back today . . .

Baking Extravaganza

I made up for yesterday's lack of motivation with a whirlwind of activity today: three loads of laundry; breakfast muffins; ginger chocolate cookies; roasted beets (also sliced, portioned, and frozen); and apple cake. I still need to cook up the kale, or whatever the greens were that I bought last Saturday for a buck, but that's not happening today. Which means I'm running the risk of them turning into a science project, but I wasn't up for dealing with them for dinner.

Yet another change to the breakfast muffins: this time, I substituted some ground flax seed meal for some of the butter, in part because flax seed is supposed to be one of those super foods with lots of omega fatty acids blahblahblah. In general, I like the flavor of the muffins, but now I need to add some leavening. They're a little dense. Also, the best thing ever: powdered buttermilk. I found some at the grocery store a few weeks ago and bought it on impulse, and I've used nearly half the can already. I'm not entirely convinced that I couldn't do without it--substitute applesauce instead, for example, in many things--but it theoretically tenderizes cakes, and the powdered stuff is way more convenient (and less likely to become another science project), so why not.

The cookies are also a work in progress. I had a recipe from epicurious, but I reduced the butter, added some flour, replaced some of the sugar with honey (the recipe called for both, but I increased the honey and decreased the sugar), and added some dark chocolate chunks (70% cacao, no less). I was quite pleased with the result--next time I'll add a little more chocolate, and perhaps some orange peel or lemon peel to brighten the flavor a little.

Yes, I do get mocked for never following the recipe, even though it's not quite true--I tend to follow the recipes from school pretty closely. But some of the other things, well, I know what I'm trying to get, so I try to get right to it. As you can tell from the tidbits I post, in most of my baking I've been trying to reduce the butter and increase the fiber, and I've been experimenting with replacing some or all of the sugar with honey. I've also been reducing the sweetness of things, in some ways, in part to let other flavors come out. I like honey: I like the depth of flavor, and I've been experimenting with what it does for texture, and, in general, I think it's got a few more healthful properties than does refined sugar. Yes, it's still sugar, no doubt about it, but it's very different from cane (or beet) sugar, not least because it's an invert (i.e., liquid) sugar. And did you know it has antibacterial properties? Seriously; I've read some abstracts from medical journals that show that honey, applied topically, helps heal wounds that aren't otherwise healing.

In the case of the breakfast muffins, I'd say I've nearly succeeded: the muffins are about 165 calories apiece, with 4 grams of fat and 3 grams of fiber. I'd up the fiber even more if I could figure out how to do it, and, as noted, they do need some leavening at this point, but I'm pleased with the flavor. I use dried apricots, dates (which also add sweetness), blueberries (about $73 per berry . . .), and cranberries, as well as some applesauce. You could put nearly any dried fruit in them, of course; I usually use more apricots and less blueberries than I did today, but I was trying to divvy up the fruit I had left so I had even batches left. I have enough fruit for two more batches, so I'll have an opportunity to add leavening next time around and keep everything else more or less the same.

The ironic thing is that I'm not eating the breakfast muffins, for breakfast or for any other meal: I've been foisting them off on Friend, and I've been eating Bob's Red Mill hot cereals (oatmeal, oat bran, 10-grain, and high-fiber-with-flax-seed are the four kinds I've had so far, and I like them all). I had been splitting the batches with him, but I've really been getting into the cereals lately, and he's been too busy to make his banana bread, so everybody wins: He gets breakfast muffins, and I get to work on my recipe.

Meanwhile, cross your fingers that my mom's friend Barry--you know; the one who's running for President?--picks her to win tickets to My Fair City. Apparently he's giving away a trip (or trips?) to here to supporters or volunteers or donors (I'm not clear on how one qualified, other than entering a drawing). Mom sent another donation with her entry, and it sure would be entertaining to see her. I warned her about the likely size of the crowd, but she's willing to deal with that, or, at least, figure out how to work around it. (Mom is claustrophobic, and large crowds are Not Her Thing; she has been known to get physically ill.) A hotel room overlooking the party in the park would be ideal--and she'd get to see me, in any case, which is what she wants. Even if I'm not running for President.

p.s. Lift a beer in memory of Studs Turkel . . .

BlahdeBlah

Did you all enjoy watching my team win the World Series this week? Because I didn't.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I would have enjoyed it tremendously, IF I HAD BEEN ABLE TO WATCH IT.

But nooooooo. I was stuck on late-running trains, to AND from our state capital, both Monday night and Wednesday night, and I did not see a single fucking pitch of the whole fucking game.

Not that I'm upset about this; nope; not at all!

Yeah.

The good news: the WaterRower people called today and left a message that my water tank is fixed and they just need me to pay them and they'll ship it back to me. The entire adventure, including my shipping costs, is going to run about $90 to $100; with the cost of the machine, then, about $625, which is still half the price of a new machine and less than a year's membership at a gym.

Other news, from the nephew front: Younger Nephew's school has been testing him the past few weeks, because everyone else is figuring out what I noticed, oh, two-and-a-half years ago, that he is v. v. v. smart. Not surprisingly, all the testing they've done confirms this, so he'll get 45 minutes twice a week in a group of gifted kids, most of whom are older than he is, I believe. I think the plan is that they'll do some kind of project together or whatever, but, as I said to mom, the important thing, in some ways, is that he'll get to hang with other really smart kids. Smart can be lonely, and lack of people to commune with is limiting.

It's been kind of entertaining discussing this with my mother (I wanted to start a family betting pool on his IQ, but couldn't get any takers--and they ended up not giving a number, per se, anyway). I reminded her just how long ago I had pointed this out, and she had to concede that I totally called this one. Because, hey, as I said at the time (that would have been in May 2006), it is not particularly normal for 6-year-old kids to be designing scientific experiments, with well-thought-out rationales and an experimental design.

The other thing that will help him, perhaps, is that he is also a gifted athlete, or he seems to be, anyway. All of this is going to be hard on my older nephew, because he, too is smart--but not AS smart--and he, too, is athletically talented--but perhaps not AS talented. And he runs more to insecurity as it is, so this could be a challenge to have a younger brother who can do so many things better than he can.

My sister and I had some of this worked out between us, because, even though I was smarter, and we had some other talents as well, her talents and mine were assuredly not the same. She was a gymnast, for example (while I have my father's joint flexibility, which is in the category of "able to bend joints enough to walk and climb stairs"), and a dancer (also not me), and socially adept (definitely not me, at least not in grade school and high school). I was the better writer, and more interested in reading, and more artistically talented. I still remember a conversation she and I had on the subject, back when we were both in high school and working on the school play (she as a featured dancer and I as the stage manager and helping with set construction), where we basically said we were glad our talents were different. I'm sure that we sort of focused on or emphasized some of the personality differences we already had, as well; it made it easier.

And, of course, one of the things I always wonder about is what she would have been doing if she'd lived, how the differences we had 25 years ago would have played out over time. I truly cannot think about that very much, or for very long, because it leads to paths of unutterable longing and loss, and there's nothing to be gained by heading that way. What if. Might have been. Maybe. Possibly. It's too hard, too painful, to think like that, and I have to let go of it, as best I can.

Okay, I must turn away from this--from the previous paragraph, but also from the four or five paragraphs that I have written and deleted. I have promised various things to various people--recipes, dissertation chapters--and I have not been delivering. Perhaps this weekend: I am going to have some stretches of free time, it appears, some of which I will use to bake more things.

It occurred to me the other day--and I am not making this up--that, instead of fussing in my head about how I can get to the bakery, and which day, and what it would entail, I could bake my own bread. Yes! I know! What a concept!

Of course, me being me, I then immediately started thinking about getting some sourdough starter from the bakery. Which adds the travel-to-the-bakery complication right back into the equation.

Given how complicated my work life is becoming, it is not entirely clear to me whether I am complicating simple things (like baking bread) because I do not have enough to do and my brain is whirring out of boredom, or whether it's my own Special form of meditation-by-distraction, or whatthefuck.

Anyway. Baking will occur this weekend, most likely.

And You?

Remember that part about how I was cleaning out everything?

Yeah, well, right now my fridge has so much in it that I'd need a crowbar to wedge anything else in there. This is partly because I have the stockpot in there . . . and beets, kale (I think that's what it is; it's in that neighborhood, and a big bunch was only a buck), more beets, a dozen eggs for the baking, herbs (rosemary and oregano; no basil to be had) for the tomato-roasting, and the veggies (carrots, celery, onions) from the stock, which I've decided I'm going to puree and freeze, because I don't see why it wouldn't be useful for thickening purposes. There're also multiple wads of cheese, because I stocked up at the market (stravecchio, asiago, and Midnight Moon aged goat cheese), and apples from last week's expedition that will be turned into cake tomorrow. I also bought about 22 pounds of tomatos. (No; really; it was more than 20 pounds total.)

I went to the market early this morning, and came back with a full load. While I was there, I also stopped in to the Fedex place to see what size boxes they had and stopped at the bank on the way home. When I came back here, I finished packing up the water tank and measured it, and realized it would, in fact, fit in their largest box, and why not take it down there today. All of the Fedex places required shlepping on some form of public transportation (with a very heavy, awkward, large bundle--more upper-body workout!), and I knew the one near the market actually had the box I needed, plus it's close to the el, so I just went back there, even though it's pretty far (in terms of miles) from my apartment. But? Success! And that's when I got the second batch of tomatos.

I came home and started the chicken stock, then cleaned up a bit and started gathering crap for my trip next week and sorted laundry but made an executive decision to actually do the laundry when I return.

So Sunday will be Oven Day: the tomatos and the apple cake and the beets, and, if I'm sufficiently ambitious, maybe some breakfast muffins or ginger cookies. I'm tired right now and would like to go to sleep, it being midnight and all, but my Phillies are not doing well, in part because an ump missed a major call, which led to runs that would not otherwise have scored. It's after 1:00 am in Philadelphia, and cold, I'm sure, and damp, because it was raining earlier, and the score is tied in the middle of the 8th. Oh--and I want to finish packing and maybe do some needlepoint (!) tomorrow.

Unglued

Unfortunately, that's what's happened to my rowing machine: the seam of the water tank came unglued, which means it leaks. I was going to try to caulk it, but I wasn't sure what kind of caulk might work. So, I called the nice people at the WaterRower company and they told me that (a) my machine is 10 years old (I'd given them the serial number), (b) they've changed the way they glue the tanks, and (c) if I send it back to them in Rhode Island, they'll reglue it and ship it back to me. The total cost will probably be less than $100 (whereas a new tank will run about $250). I've managed to disassemble the whole thing, but I'm going to need a bigger box to pack it all in than I have available. I thought I was going to be able to cobble something together here, but now, upon viewing the whole thing, I think a bigger box would be the best idea. The subsequent problem will be trying to reassemble it with no parts left over, but I'll worry about that later. Despite the hassle, it's still going to be cheaper than a year's membership at a gym. Also, for the two weeks I was able to use it, I really liked it--and it cured my back issues, presumably by increasing my core strength, so yay. (Srsly: a back problem that plagued me for 10 months pretty much went away. I haven't been able to row for about a week, and today I had a twinge again.)

This weekend is going to be an exercise in choredom: I went to Whole Paycheck tonight and lugged 40 pounds of groceries home on the bus and el. I calculated that the whole trip, from work to the store to home, took approximately 2.5 hours, and that that was approximately twice as long as the whole thing would have taken if I'd had a vehicle. On the other hand: upper-body workout. Still, I have this vision of me as an 85-year-old, lugging groceries on the bus, and it depresses me. I know, I know, I could have taken a taxi; it's not even that I couldn't have afforded the $25 for the taxi, it's more that I'd rather spend it on beer, or organic veggies, or good cheese. More to the point, I have a difficult time spending money on a taxi when I have an unlimited-rides public transit pass, i.e., the ride on the bus is already paid for. I am, as you all know, quite capable of spending a handful of cash on all kinds of things, but paying more for transportation that is, in some sense, already paid for is difficult for me. (A side note: not one but TWO people asked me for directions tonight. It's a little eerie just how often I get picked out of a sizable crowd of people for directional questions.)

So: tonight I went grocery shopping and took apart the rowing machine, and the small free-standing freezer is defrosting as I type. I had hoped to mail the water tank tomorrow morning--there's a FedEx/Kinko's in the middle of the farmers' market--but I think that won't happen. I will go to the market, for more tomatos for roasting; cheese; herbs; maybe some more beets (even though I haven't used the other ones yet); maybe some more apples (even though I have a bunch in the fridge); maybe some butternut squash if I want some more upper-body workout; and some greens (like kale or swiss chard); with a possible detour to the other market so I can get some bread from the bakery's stand. I need to make a detour somewhere for a big box, and I might stop at the hardware store for lightbulbs and a humidifier filter, though those last two can wait if need be. Once I get home, I'll start the chicken stock.

The other chores that need to be accomplished some time between Saturday and Sunday: cleaning the bathroom; packing for next week's trip to the state capital for a training session (I leave Monday afternoon and won't get back until late Wednesday night); baking an apple cake for Monday's meeting; laundry; baking some breakfast muffins; trying a ginger cookie recipe, and possibly adding some chocolate chunks to it; roasting whatever tomatos I buy, along with whatever herbs I buy; roasting the beets and freezing them; packaging the water tank; and straining the chicken stock, putting it into one-cup yogurt containers, and freezing it. (I make my stock, then cool it in the sink with cold water and, if I'm feeling ambitious, a bag of ice, then cool it overnight in the fridge so the fat rises and hardens and is easy to skim off. Thus, the broth I eventually get is quite low in fat.) If I'm REALLY ambitious, I could even go back out tomorrow afternoon and drop off the water tank at some kind of mailing location; we'll see how that goes. And, of course, there will be baseball. And an IRL race Saturday night, from Australia, if I manage to stay awake.

Monday my boss and the finance person and my boss's counterpart from the other organization and I are all going to get together at the last person's apartment building (in a conference room) to wade through the budgets. The previous budget person put together this massive workbook with all of the budget information crammed into it. It's a big ball of spaghetti, with formulae, and cross references, and hidden assumptions, and things that aren't connected but should be. The finance person kind of freaked out, because her predecessor didn't want to actually explain anything, and my boss doesn't know the details of any of it (in part because the predecessor LIKED being the only one who knew things), so I realized that I was going to have to be the person to figure it all out. The counterpart already had to pick through his organization's version of this, so I wanted to pick his brain, and we all realized that it would be useful for the four of us to do it together, knowing ahead of time that I'd be the one doing the major picking and rebuilding, but also knowing that the effort would mean that all of us would know at least a little and would be able to build on what we learned. (Enabling can be a good thing.)

Anyway.

I wanted to write about bodily information, but I'm starting to fade. And I have a few things to do this weekend.

Real Ization

Okay, enough.

If you haven't seen The Daily Show from Monday night, then hunt it down on the web and watch it, particularly the opening segment and the closing lines. Basically, TDS goes to Wasilla to interview so-called "real" Americans--you know: those people who live in small towns, because those of us who live in cities, even though we are the majority of the fucking country, aren't REALLY real. And the people being interviewed prattle on about how small towns are where the values really are (because the rest of us eat children for lunch and unwary rural tourists for dinner). When asked how all this realness came about, one interviewee cites 9-11. Well, the interviewer points out, that happened in New York City, to New Yorkers. For which the interviewee doesn't really have any response at all. It's like the politicians who wrap themselves in 9-11, perhaps even going to ground zero, and then leave the city and start warbling about how eeeeevil New Yorkers and all city folk really are, because small towns are where you find, you know, actual values.

And I'm really fucking sick of it. I grew up in a small town: about 18,000 people. It was the largest town in the county, and, at the time, it was surrounded by what was still farmland. There was a Future Farmers of America (all hail blue courderoy!) at my high school, and a county farmers' fair every summer. There was also industry--Ingersoll Rand had a division in town, and there was a big-pipe (like sewer-pipe-size) manufacturer. Since I lived there, the former has removed all the actual manufacturing, although the land isn't being used for anything--too much toxic waste, apparently--and the latter was bought up by a company that was featured in the NY Times a few years ago for its OSHA violations at its plants, including that one. The town is more than hundred years old, and it's tired, and there's not much work, and it's kind of down and out. The farmland has been chewed up by developments: once one farmer sells, everyone else's property values go up, even though the property and the business haven't changed, and suddenly a business that is marginal and hard work but a living becomes an impossibility, all to make way for McMansions. Because, now that a highway is in place, some people who live within 10 or 15 minutes of my hometown commute to New York and back every day.

Yes, New York and Philadelphia were within a two-hour drive, but we never went there, except for the once-a-year outing to see the Phillies and the occasional visit to the Philadelphia Zoo. We also went to the American Museum of Natural History once, I think, when my brother was little, so I must have been 11 or so.

But we didn't go to big cities; not just because some of the highways weren't there yet, but because it just wasn't part of our repertoire, and I don't think we were unusual in that. So I understand those origins, and the prejudices that breed there, as well as both the good and bad parts of a small size. When I first moved to a city, I had spent less than a month in cities ever in my life--i.e., fewer than 30 days total.

I've lived in cities, however, since 1981--i.e., for 28 years, give or take. And you know what? "Real" people live in cities, too. We live and breathe and vote and pay taxes and die here. We pay more taxes than people who live outside of cities, because cities have infrastructures, and suburbanites and rural people who visit or work in the cities use those infrastructures but don't contribute much to their upkeep. And, yes, we tend to vote Democratic, especially in this state: have you ever thought about why that would be?

Well the Republican right-wing has, and what they've concluded, apparently, is that we vote Democratic because we're unamerican.

Now, of course, for a little detour, let me point out that the right wing isn't one group of people; it's several groups:

1. There's the children of privilege--Kristol, Podheretz, Jonah Goldberg, and I'm sure there are a bunch more--whose mommies and/or daddies are right wingers, and the children are following in the footsteps. Most of them, so far as I can tell, have never worked a shit job, or anything other than a wingnut-welfare job, and they are the people I have in mind when I rant about 50-pound sacks of flour, not least because they are also the people who promulgate memes about "real" Americans. If Bill Kristol is more "real" than I am, then I am Marie of Romania.

2. There's the Rovian rat-fuckers who learned their trade at the knee of the Nixonian rat-fuckers (that was their term of art). They are the people in charge of smearing and sliming and insinuating, of developing and utilizing as many dirty tricks as they can invent or recycle. They've never met a Democratic vote they don't want to suppress or invalidate in some way. It's not entirely clear to me what they get out of it, because they typically don't start out or end up as rich or powerful; they do the dirty work, and it's a good-paying job, but they're not going to get really big bucks, and I think they tend to be held at arms' length by much of the rest of the party.

3. And there are the ideologues, though they seem to fall into a couple of camps: the religious nutjobs who want everyone to live under their version of X-treme fundamentalist patriarchal christianity; the architects of the disaster in the middle east; and the Norquistians and libertarians, who want to destroy government. If that isn't an unholy alliance, I don't know what the fuck is.

4. And there are the profiteers--the Enrons, and the AIGs, and the Halliburtons, and all the rest. Have you ever wondered why those people tend to vote Republican? Do the math.

But here's the thing. They like to prattle about "values" and small towns and plumbers, but which values, exactly, do they want to tout? The insular, racist values? (Well, yes, some of them like to incite those.) Oh, no, wait, they claim they want to tout the values of helping one's neighbor, and so on; those things that big-city folk don't do, because we're all evil unamerican evil people. And we probably have dark skin or are illegal immigrants. Which would explain the lines of people waiting to donate blood after 9-11. Which would explain the cops and firefighters, too. Oh, wait; they were city residents? Hmmm . . .

And they like to prattle about taxes, or, more recently, socialism. Fine; let's NOT bail out the banks. Let's fine the Wall Street executives--every last fucking one of them--and throw them in Riker's Island. Oh, wait, you think regulation might have helped? You think government oversight might have been a good thing? Not if you're a Republican or a libertarian.

And they like to go on about "real" Americans--like the governor who shleps her kids around and bills the government for it while wanting rape victims to pay for the collection of evidence and who likes to give speeches to secessionist groups of which her husband is a member, or the plumber who isn't licensed and can't do math but who thinks he's going to be making more than a quarter-million dollars a year, or the fundamentalists who want to come after you if you don't believe the way they believe, and they sure as hell don't want any women to have any kind of control over their own reproductive capacities.

Fuck that. Or, as Jon Stewart said, fuck all y'all, all the people making those accusations. I vote. I pay taxes. I work every day to help people who are worse off than I am (and worse off than any of the people doing the prattling), and the government pays my salary, and I am fine with having my taxes go to those ends. If that makes me unamerican, then I shudder to think what your definition of American is.

Communique

I've been neglecting you. A couple of weeks ago, Chuck discovered this blog. He said that he wasn't going to comment on or read it to preserve his sanity, and I believe that he wants that to be true, but I don't know if his curiosity will get the better of him, and I've been trying to decide what to do. I still don't know--but send me your email addresses, and if I decide to make the blog private, I'll send you invites.

Quickie

I may be one of the few people in the vicinity who is happy about how My Team(s) performed this weekend. All of Friend's teams lost in the past two days, which will not make him happy. Although DaBears won, which will make Chuck happy (and the Packers lost, which will also please him, as Packers fans and Bears fans are required to loathe the Other Team--seriously, it's like a law or something), and the White Sox managed to avoid being swept, the Cubs, as I'm sure you know, collapsed. Completely. Despite having The Best Record in the League, they lost their series in three straight games. Their offensive effort was pitiful (which is a generous estimation), and the Dodgers lit up the Cubs' pitchers like it was fucking Christmas.

However.

The Phillies won, which is the only thing about which I care. Hard to say how they will do against the Dodgers, who have been surging since July, so I make no predictions.

The American League continues to dick around. (The American League annoys me, not least because the designated hitter should be outlawed by means of a Constitutional amendment.) The White Sox are not out of it yet. The Angels & BoSox are tied in the 9th, as I type, and I'm not even sure where that series stands; I'm torn between those teams, because, although I like the BoSox in principle, if I have to pick an AL team, they have J.D. Drew on the team, and, as a Phillies fan, I am required to dislike Drew. Which I do. Along with fans in EVERY CITY IN WHICH HE HAS PLAYED.

In my world, I have spent the weekend rearranging my stuff, and even getting some new stuff. I threw out a bunch of crap, and I bagged a bunch of clothes to give away, and I switched crap between closets, and I did laundry, and I switched out summer & winter clothes, and I put flannel sheets on the bed. Much of this was motivated by the fact that I bought a rowing machine (!). Seriously: I'd been watching Craigslist off and on, looking for a used one, and I found a top-end machine for $525 (this thing normally retails for $1200). The best part is that the guy who was looking to get rid of it (a) lives on the FAR southwest side, i.e., about 40 miles from my house, and (b) it didn't fit into K's car, and (c) Friend was out of town all weekend, but (d) the guy had to go to his sons' cross-country meet 7 MILES FROM MY HOUSE, in his only visit to the north side of the city all year, so he dropped it off for me.

So I spent lots of time rearranging my crap, and cleaning (except vacuuming my bedroom, because it has a carpet but my vacuum cleaner is Dead, Jim), and a little time editing. And did I mention I have a new rowing machine, which means I don't have to walk to and from work every day? (I put in more than 20 miles this week, and I'm here to tell you that it wears a little thin, plus doesn't really get the heartrate up, plus doesn't work the upper body.) Also: cheaper than a year's membership at the gym, and I don't have to go anywhere to use it.

There's probably more. Okay, there's lots more, but I'm tired and must sleep now.

Did I mention I got a rowing machine? for my apartment?

Thanks for the Memories

As I'm sure you've read by now, Paul Newman died Friday.

I loved Paul Newman, and not just because of those incredible blue eyes. My favorite performances include "Long Hot Summer" (first movie with Woodward, and based on Faulkner short stories) and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (which is the first I realized Liz Taylor could actually act); "Butch Cassidy," of course, and "Cool Hand Luke" (another movie that's full of familiar faces, and the fight scene is impressive for the point it makes about brutality); and the Richard Russo trio of "Nobody's Fool," "Empire Falls," and "Twilight." (The former two are based on Russo novels.)

I always admired his charity work--he basically created some good products and used them to raise money for a good cause. He recognized that he had more than he needed, so he just gave it away, happily and willingly. And, as I have noted, I am addicted to Ginger-Os. And I like that so many of the products are organic.

As an open-wheel racing fan, well, gotta love that part of him, too.

And he was an unabashed liberal--I had realized this until I read it in the NYTimes obit, but he was a delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention.

So go rent a Paul Newman movie tonight--almost any one of them will do--and have some Newman's Own popcorn with it.

Fail 'em

That, frankly, is what I wish the Democrats would do now. Stand up and say, we are only willing to go forward with a plan that limits executive compensation, that gives taxpayers a chance to make back some money if this effort is a success, that puts appropriate regulations back in place, and that keeps people in their homes. The Republican plan will not do that and we will not agree to it. When the Republicans come up with a plan that does that, they're welcome to offer it. We understand they are afraid of "socialism." Fine. Let's let the market work. If these firms fail, it shows the firms should not have made those loans, and they will suffer the penalty any other business would suffer. The failure of businesses that make poor decisions should not be a problem for free-market supporters.

Meanwhile, we are going to develop a bill that re-regulates Wall Street. The Republicans can go ahead and vote against it, and we'll make sure to highlight that in our campaigning in the coming weeks.

Replacementation

Is the Bible absolutely true? Is it truly the word of God?

Well, if it is, I am fucked. And then I'm fucked for saying fuck. And I say it a lot. It's not really a word to me, it's a comma.
--Lewis Black, Me of Little Faith

If you like Lewis Black, and I do, then go grab his book from the library. It's kind of like reading a long stand-up routine of his, and I find it quite entertaining.

My plate is getting extremely very full at work. I don't think my boss is entirely clear just how much he's piling onto it. We're going to discuss it tomorrow, however, although he doesn't know that just yet. The problem is the director of MIS left at the beginning of September, and there has yet to be any kind of replacement. On top of that, it's not clear that anyone else knew how to do any of the things he did, particularly the things that involved mining data from various big datawads around the organization. The upside is that his organizational skills make me look like a slacker, and he was extraordinarily good about documenting things very, very thoroughly. Thus, were I able to get access to the datawads, I might actually be able to extract material from said wads. It would not be easy for me, and it would be slow, but I might could do it.

However, my boss has not the slightest clue about the complexity of this whole thing, so explaining how difficult and time-consuming it is itself becomes difficult and time-consuming.

In addition, I fear that they will not be replacing the MIS guy any time soon. I suspect the pay scale is not attracting the quality of person they actually need to fill the position, and I fear they will not realize that, because the people making the decision include my boss, who is nearly computer-illiterate, and his boss, the ED, who is also pretty computer-illiterate. The latter can manage communications and documents and such, as can the former, to some extent, but asking either of them to, for example, put together a complex document and store it properly on the shared drive is like asking them to sprout wings and fly. The latter, for example, insists that, after I submit a proposal, I create a PDF of all of the sub-documents, attachments, and the like, into a single file, and that I include things like the audit. She then either prints this out or asks me to do so. Perhaps, then, you understand why I am skeptical that they will be able to hire an adequate replacement for the position.

Without said replacement, reporting, including reporting to our funding agencies, becomes quite difficult, because there won't be anyone to extract data, unless I can figure it out for myself and get access to the information--and a shitty replacement will be worse, in many ways, than no replacement, because it means I will have to fight with an idiot rather than merely fight to figure out how to do something. Well, whatever--still no sacks of flour involved.

Seriously: I am finding that, despite the APs (both of whom are gone now), and despite various little frustrations, I am not getting wrapped around the axle about these things. This is not particularly in my nature, so I don't know where this detachment is coming from.

I'm also finding that I have seriously blocked out large chunks of the whole Bakery Experience. Every so often I think back to some aspect of it, some task I would have been doing at a given time, or the pure physicality of it, or the noise, or the holiday music, or the constant busyness, or the sense of futility that I had to fight just to get out of bed in the morning, and whatever I am dealing with at the office becomes much less problematic. It's really only since I quit that I've been able to process just how awful the whole thing felt to me and how much energy it took for me to continue doing it. I'm also please that I am rediscovering baking--it feels good again, and I'm glad to have that back.

Anyway, I could probably blather awhile longer, but I am tired tonight; I think my zen shiatsu treatment took a lot out of me this evening. Or put it back in ways that made me realize how much I was holding together with duct tape and Elmer's glue. so, hey, I'm going to finish my wine and my water and get some sleep.

p.s. I have not brought myself to watch any of the Palin interviews, though I've been reading transcripts. Good lord--I'm more prepared to be President than she is, and I haven't held an elected position since college. And the whole suspending his campaign while not suspending it? Yeah, THAT's going to work out well.

Paper

Not only did I buy beets and tomatos at the farmers market, I have roasted the beets and am roasting the tomatos, as I type. I'm thinking I want to julienne the beets and throw them in with some onions and fresh spinach and toss it all with pasta, perhaps with a little tiny bit of cream. Not for tonight, but that's the beauty of having done this tonight--I can make the rest of it without waiting for something to roast first. And the beets are quite beautiful--they're more golden, with some scarlet bits, than they are that deep red we associate with beets. It's going to be beautiful. And the tomatos smell incredible.

At work today I finally (FINALLY!!) sorted through the multiple piles of paper that have accumulated in my office and, especially, on my desk. The thing that was most interesting about the exercise is that coming up with filing categories was quite simple--and I could not possibly have done it six months ago, or even three months ago, I'd say, so my apparent sloth actually worked out well for me.

My boss and I continue to discuss how to rewrite my job description. The challenge is writing it in a way such that it could be filled if I won the lottery. Although I suppose it could benefit me personally, I do not think it benefits the organization to have unwieldy, awkward job descriptions that are written primarily so that a particular person can be compensated "appropriately." What he is realizing is that the actual writing of grants is a relatively small part of the position; what he really needs is someone who is in charge of the infrastructure. Not the finances or the business operations, but the rest of the infrastructure, the part that goes along with providing human services, particularly when said services are funded largely by tax dollars (or contracts, for that matter, if it were like the old substance abuse treatment agency).

That is, we need to report, to various others (including multiple bits of the federal government), how many of what kind of thing we've been doing, or, more likely, how many of what kinds of services we have provided to how many of which kinds of people. On top of that, we need to have a more than nominal notion of "quality," and of how we can assess whether we are providing high-quality services. We also need a body of policies, procedures, rules, etc., to govern what we do, and we need to track whether the appropriate people (another bit of decision-making) have been trained properly on those policies and procedures. Also, we have to bill the appropriate people for the services we provide, using the appropriate diagnostic and other codes (although that falls under the financial side of things).

There are at least three ways to do this. One is to have each program report, more or less haphazardly, in whatever random fashion the reporting people deem appropriate, and, when it comes time to write for a renewal of the funding, the grants manager runs around like a crazy person trying to get actual data. I have been trying that system for seven months, and I have two words: epic fail.

A second way to do this is to have a reporting tsar (or tsaritsa, as the case may be), i.e., someone who controls everything. While the previous business manager did things this way, it, too, was an epic fail in several dimensions (but by no means all of them, as it did allow her to bring some order to an organization that was in chaos). One of the major difficulties with this strategy is that all of the knowledge/power resides in the hands of one person, which is problematic in more than just philosophical ways.

We are going to try a different path, however. I am going to build some infrastructural tools that allow us to track various bits, and thus report them, more openly and more easily, but these will be tools that managers of various programs will be able, and expected, to use. My successor would need to be able to maintain the tools, and continue the reporting and grantwriting--i.e., maintain the structure that I will be building--which requires a certain meta level of understanding and action. But the point of the exercise is to involve everyone in this, in a coordinated fashion, and I am looking forward to this challenge, a lot.

Which gets back to kstyle's comment on my last post.

I think my self-knowledge in this regard is a direct result of having done so many different things in the past 30 years. Especially when I started looking for an office job after the bakery epic fail, I had to think about what unified my experience, other than the fact that I was the person who did it. And I also realized that I have been doing a variation on this kind of thing since I was the stage manager for my high school production of "Guys and Dolls." (The bakery fits in, as well, in that a major part of what attracted me was the idea of running the business, in a particular way. The Tart and two other classmates were going to do more, although by no means all, of the production, but someone has to do the books, and it helps if s/he also knows the business, and can help with the production and selling ends of the business, and that was going to be me. In my fantasy, anyway.) And I like it. I like solving the problems, and I like trying to solve them in ways that bring out the best in everyone, if I can facilitate that. So, we'll see.

Meanwhile, the tomatos are done, and OMG!11!!eleventytwelve!! I can't wait to use those little suckers.

Randomosity

"Best" trumps "good," except for values of "good" that include "convenient." More specifically, I've found a bakery between work and home that makes decent bread. It's not as good as the bread where I used to work, but I mentioned the part about how it's between home and work. As a result, I walked home tonight, despite not really wanting to do so; I committed to walking to the bakery and getting some bread, and then I just-missed a bus, so ended up walking the rest of the way home as well. I didn't get up to my usual pace, however; it was more of a stroll. Still, it's something, and I had bread for dinner (with excellent cheese from the farmers' market). Speaking of the market, I did manage to go on Saturday, and, in addition to the Excellent Cheeses, scored some beets, onions, tomatos (which I'm probably going to roast), broccoli, apples, and honey. I made an apple cake yesterday at Friend's house, but was seriously unhappy with it, despite the ginger in it; it was WAY too sweet, for one thing, and the cake part didn't work at all. Yes, I modified the recipe, but I'm not convinced that the original would have been any better. I found a new one today, though, that will likely work.

Work is getting interesting. AP number two, the more recent one, will no longer be with us after this Friday; her position has been eliminated. Some of her responsibilities will come to me (along with additional dollars in my pay, supposedly, although no actual numbers have been bandied about just yet). One one hand, that's kind of exciting; I am getting the opportunity to do all kinds of work that I really enjoy (more on that in a second). On the other hand, in order to do any of these things well, I need a few days to just wallow in paper--reading it, filing it, making notes on it--and a few more days to figure some things out, and a few more after that to make some plans.

Every time I turn around, however, there's another damned crisis, so I end up lurching from one thing to the next. In addition, now that I'm a Manager, I have to go to all of these goddamned training sessions and meetings--a total of 3.5 days in October will be devoted to this crap, for example. I haven't been to any of them yet, but, based on the chirpy advice-to-managers emails I'm now getting, I seriously doubt that the meetings are going to be worth the 15% or so of my work time next month. It's not entirely clear to me how anyone who has seen "Office Space" can conduct these things with anything resembling a straight face. We'll see if my skepticism is warranted.

On top of it all, after this coming weekend, Friend is basically going to be gone all or most of every weekend between now and Christmas (and, hell, maybe then, too), what with football and hockey games up in Cheeseland, plus his annual two-week deer-hunting-and-Thanksgiving extravaganza. I am not looking forward to this. We'll still see each other, I hope, but there's something nice about waking up on a Saturday or Sunday morning without having to go anywhere, or do anything more strenuous than making breakfast and providing a lap for the cat and planning dinner, and that's basically out of the picture for three months or so.

On top of that, one of his hockey-playing mates has organized outings to eleven Hawks games--and they are (a) on nights or to games that Friend and I might have attended, and (b) organized specifically as "boy's nights," which, okay, whatever, those guys all play hockey together. They're spread throughout the whole season, though, rather than in the next three months. Still, given that Friend has committed to spending the time/money on those games, I fear it will cut into his willingness to attend additional games with me, which kinda sucks; I really enjoyed going to the games last season and was looking forward to this season. I may just go by myself, which isn't as much fun, and turns into a later night, what with public transportation and all. On top of that, Friend is also playing hockey once or twice a week or so. Yes, I did in fact notice that there's not a lot of room in that for me.

In an effort to make lemonade out of that, if I don't get any more editing work (I haven't heard a peep from anyone in nearly two months, and I haven't been offered anything in nearly three) it will give me an opportunity to work my way through my List of Big Chores. There are two closets that need to be excavated, seeing as how, when I moved in here, I basically crammed stuff into them and shut the doors, and my kitchen cabinets are in serious need of organization. One of them is now operating under the organizing principle of "open door; cram or toss something on top of the pile; close door quickly and hope nothing falls out." No, I am not exaggerating. And there's the needlepoint I wanted to start nearly two years ago--that could use some work, seeing as how I have completed approximately one square inch of it.

Still, chores, no matter how necessary or how satisfying when completed, aren't nearly as much fun. Also, among the other functions that Friend serves, he gets to be my cooking and baking guinea pig, which is important. I'm simply not getting enough exercise to eat much by way of baked goods--or anything else, it seems sometimes--and he's bigger than I am, as well, so leftovers that would go to waste at my house get consumed at his. Well, whatever. It would be nice to get this place organized, two-and-a-half years after moving in, and I do want to work on the needlepoint.

In good news, I paid off my pastry school loan last week, 17 or 18 years early. I have to focus on the fact that it is paid off, rather than the fact that it feels like I took nearly $20k and set fire to it, but I'm also happy to not have any debt right now. Of course, if I had a LOT of debt, maybe Congress would bail me out.

As for the "work I like" part (no, I didn't forget), I've realized that the kind of work I like to do is building structures or infrastructures; providing people with the tools they need to do their jobs; creating tools that make everyone's job easier, or that make reporting open and obvious; finding and solving new problems. (What I do not like, so much, is doing the same thing over and over.) My current organization needs infrastructure--oh, my, yes, it does; it would be difficult to overestimate how much it needs it. In addition, my current boss recognizes this need, and has hired me specifically because he thought I'd be able to build it. Thus, despite the anxieties and frustrations, this is the kind of work I like to do; now we'll see whether I can be any good at doing it in this organization and environment.

This opportunity differs significantly from others in my past, because I'll be working with many more people, more directly, than in other jobs. At the substance abuse treatment agency, for example, I worked closely with my boss; the only infrastructure work I did was building a contracts management database (the core of which I believe they still use, 10 years later), and I did that on a whim, not as part of my official job. I worked closely with the two people who would use it, to make sure I got it right, but I didn't supervise anyone, or even work closely with anyone other than my boss, and any infrastructure building I did was sub rosa rather than an explicit part of my responsibilities. So, we'll see. I admit to some nervousness about the whole thing, but sometimes you gotta say what the fuck.

Tools

The book that I didn't like much was "Girl Cook" by Hannah Mccouch; I thought I would like it, for obvious reasons, and there were bits--some of the cooking bits, in particular--that I liked well enough, but the whole thing was chicklit at its worst. I was musing about why I don't like that genre, and, no surprise here, it's because the stories always seem to be a version of "how I found my prince, even though I didn't think I would." Okay, that's not exactly a novel observation, I suppose, and occasionally there are stories that are well-written, so I don't mean to dismiss them all. (I'd also add that not everything that's written by a young(ish) woman falls into the category, despite the marketing that tells us otherwise.) But it got me thinking about how marriage, at least in its novelistic incarnations, has been transformed.

If you read Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope (or, for all I know, a bunch of other writers from more than a century ago), one of the central plotlines of many of the novels is the urgent need for young women without independent means to find a husband. In all of the stories I can think of, the gentlewomen of no or little means know that if they do not find husbands, they will be relegated to a very poor existence. The only work available (for a gentlewoman, anyway) is as a governess or a companion. In both cases, the women live with another family. In the former, she tutors and raises their children, and in the latter, she provides companionship and, in some cases ("The Eustace Diamonds," for example) she provides a veneer of respectability, because no woman, no matter how wealthy, can live alone, and, of course, household help does not count. Thus, poor women provide the veneer, in exchange for a roof over their heads and food to eat.

One of the other things that's interesting is that women who have an income (Austen's Emma; Lizzy Eustace; Glendora Palliser; an assortment of other Trollope characters) still face tremendous pressure to marry. They are on the market, and they must find someone to marry them before their sell-by dates, else they come to be regarded as old goods.

In all cases, no matter their finances, women are regarded as lucky if they marry for, or with, love and affection. This is particularly true for the poorer women, who literally cannot afford to marry only for love. In the case of wealthy women, the love of a good man makes them better people somehow (as in "Emma," particularly, although that novel has always creeped me out a little). Thus, it becomes advantageous for wealthy women to find wealthy husbands--not because either of them needs the other's money, but because the woman will never believe that he married her for her wealth. Take the Pallisers, for example: Glendora has huge wads of money, much more than Planty, but he has so much of his own that her money is irrelevant to him.

What does this have to do with chicklit?

Well, women now can earn their own way in the world, it turns out. Money confers advantages--that is always going to be the case, I imagine, until we live in a propertyless anarchist paradise--and I bet I was not the only person here who was informed that it was as easy to fall in love with a rich man as with a poor one (probably not true for me, but that's a different story), but I have never depended on a man for my bread. I thought I was going to do that, at least until the bakery was a wild success, but we remember how that turned out. It's also true that the trajectory of my life has different significantly from that of the majority of women, and it's also true that I don't have children. (On the other hand, I'm not the only woman my age I know personally who has lived alone so much of her life, and another friend my age decided to have a child by herself and has done so. It may be that we all "attract" each other, precisely because of our deviation from the mainstream, but it may also be the case that there are simply more women out there who have, in one way or another, for some amount of time, made major life decisions without a partner being involved in the decision and have not been destituted by that. Yes, I know that it DOES impoverish many women.)

That is, despite the pay iniquities and the financial and other burdens that raising children add to the mix, it is more possible--though, of course, not easy--for a woman to get by without a man. (Of course this is all heteronormative, but it's an aspect of heteronormativity, not an aspect of being a woman, per se, about which I am writing.)

The point--and I do have one here--is that patriarchy, as a system, increasingly must make marriage attractive to women for reasons other than the monetary ones about which Trollope and Austen wrote so perceptively. This is made easier by heterosexual attraction--many women like having sex with men, and vice versa, and at least some of that attraction is every bit as inborn as the attraction that some women feel for women and some men feel for men. And, really, humans are, by and large, social creatures (that's a whole other Wittgensteinian argument that I'll leave unexplicated for now), so forging bonds of various sorts isn't exactly an unusual thing to do. But neither the sexual attraction nor the sociability necessitates marriage as we understand it.

I could also argue, and not just for the sake of argument, that there are all kinds of arrangements that would suit women better: imagine if we had adequate childcare available, or imagine if women were paid equitably. Those two things alone would put more cards in women's hands, and would enable them to tell men who were being assholes to fuck off. Adequate childcare--and the lack of penalties for caring for children--would also enable more men to be better parents, as well. It's hard to be an involved parent when you have to work 80 hours a week, and it's hard to forego that, if you know that foregoing it means you will not be regarded as eligible for any number of career paths that you might desire for your own reasons. That conundrum affects men and women differently in our current society, but it does affect both men and women. (I also know an unusual number of men who have been the primary caregiver for significant stints of their children's lives, and all of them had job or career situations that did not fit the current norm in some important way.)

In the chicklit genre, at least the bits of it that have crossed my path, the men end up fulfilling the same function they did with Trollope and Austen--providing an escape from a situation that was socially, and possibly financially, undesirable, while at the same time providing True Love. "Girl Cook" is a stellar example of it, in fact, because the woman in question is broke, wants to be a chef, leaves the job she has (for very good reasons), and Just Happens to meet a man who is smitten with her and Very Very Rich, plus he owns (wait for it) a food-oriented television network. In addition to her cooking abilities, she was raised in an environment of sufficient wealth & privilege that she can hang with the rich people and not embarrass him.

But the question that always occurs to me is why the women in these novels spend so much time worrying about finding the right man. They certainly do not need to do that in the same way that Austen's and Trollope's gentlewomen needed to do that. However, it does serve the patriarchy, as a system, for women to be worrying about this, so I do, indeed, blame the patriarchy for chicklit, and I have come to regard chicklit as a tool of the patriarchy.

ETA: I posted this, then meandered over to flea's place and found HER critique of chicklit, in terms of a specific book. Go read it.

In Which Narya Actually Goes to a Movie Theatre

I finally got around to seeing "The Dark Knight"--in Imax, no less--on Friday night; Friend had wanted to see it because much of it was filmed in and around the building in which he works (the Lamborghini was parked outside his building for a couple of days), and I thought it might be interesting. I hated it, however, to put it bluntly, for many of the same reasons that others have noted. In no particular order (and there are spoilers all over the place, if you haven't seen it and care about that):

It was way, way, too full of gratuitous violence. I cannot watch graphic violence because it gives me bad dreams (that's a whole other post), and gratuitous violence really puts me over the edge. I close my eyes when I sense it's coming (which means I pay a buttload of money to listen to a movie), but this movie really started to annoy the fuck out of me. There are people being blown up FOR REAL every goddamned day, so watching it happen for "entertainment" seems wrong in some important way. I tend not to mind violence that is part of a story quite as much (though I may still close my eyes), because then it is not gratuitous. Nearly every bit of violence in this movie was for the sake of watching things or people blow up or get hurt. Also, there were some seriously gross bits, like showing formerly-crusading-DA-what'shisname's half of a face. People, I hate to break the news for you, but that kind of damage, untreated, would lead to a staph or other infection that would kill you, in hours, possibly days. Also, the dehydration that would occur from a wound like that? Would also kill you. And, I'm sorry, the pain would also prevent any of the crap he was doing. So he should have been dead, thrice, instead of running around being psycho with half his face burned off. It was too unbelievable, as well as gross for the sake of gross. I didn't watch those bits, either.

Second, there were no real women in it. It did not pass the Alison Bechdel/"Dykes to Watch Out For" test--i.e., it did not (a) have at least two women in it, (b) who talk to each other, (c) about something other than a man. The women who had speaking roles were (a) Batman's ex-girlfriend--now boinking the new DA--who wore major cleavage to her work as an assistant DA or something like that and who of course had to die, in order to provide a Plot Point (i.e., half-face-DA-guy was going to marry her but heard her get blown up and went psycho) and (b) a cop, who merely provided another plot point (she betrayed the commissioner because the Joker bribed her because her mom's medical bills were piling up) and who actually didn't say very much at all, and (c) the ballerina Batman was dating for a couple of scenes and whose main purpose was as eye candy and/or a minor plot point. None of the women was actually driving the action in any way whatsoever; they provided some ostensible excuse for the men to act. And the women did not talk to each other at any point. Annoyed the everloving shit out of me.

Third, the movie is basically a defense of the political/philosophical stance of the current administration, particularly the "theorists" behind it. There's a bunch of blather in the movie, especially at the end, about whether Batman is a hero, and about whether the half-faced-now-dead-but-previously-reformer-DA is a hero, and the conclusion is that Batman and the commissioner decide that they won't tell anyone that the DA went nuts and killed a bunch of people, that they'll say that Batman did it, so the DA can still be a Hero, because the People need Heros, and on and on. The point was that The People were simple-minded sheep who couldn't handle the complicated truth, so the Elites would make the decisions for the good of the People. I cannot begin to tell you how much this annoyed me, and, though I cannot point you to other reviews, I know I saw more than a few who mentioned this (although perhaps not in exactly these quasi-Platonic terms).

Also, the movie was way too fucking long. It was (and I hadn't realized this) two-and-a-half hours long. And did I mention I hated it? After awhile it felt like I'd been there for a couple of days.

But, hey, now I've seen it.

The rest of the weekend was spent cooking some yummy (improvised) food, bailing out Friend's basement, and watching sports on television (F1 race in Italy and a bunch of football games), plus providing some lap time for the cat. We had a bunch of rain (the northern effects of Ike, basically), which resulted in flooding throughout parts of the city (there were people rowing down the street only a mile or two from Friend's house). Friend's basement drains were spewing water for a little while, which isn't really desireable, but it receded pretty quickly, and we were able to get it to drain pretty well. Plus, Friend had scored a couple of industrial-strength air conditioners/dehumidifiers (suitable for a server room; his company wanted to get rid of them so he snagged them), which turned out to work quite well in dehumidifying his basement. The whole thing made my trip to work this morning an adventure, too--a bus trip that normally takes about 45 minutes took nearly two hours, because all of the streets north of the bus street were blocked off from flooding--but I got off easy, so I am not really complaining at all.

As for the food, Saturday we made the last of Friend's wild turkey breast, along with wild and brown rice with a little onion, plus some cranberries and apple, and roasted green beans from Friend's garden. Sunday Friend had a pork tenderloin that he cooked on top of the stove, along with mashed potatos (from the family farm), and cabbage (also family farm) and a little broccoli (Friend's garden) that I sauteed with a little butter, plus salt and pepper. I also made a sauce for the pork from the fond from the pork, plus onion (garden), red wine, rosemary, and cherries. Earlier I'd made a cake from flour, butter, toasted oat bran, honey, cherries, a couple of eggs, and some chopped bittersweet chocolate. I had some frozen cherries I'd wanted to use up, and the cake and the sauce turned out to be excellent ways to do that. It was also kind of fun to just invent a cake. It was, as one of my chefs would say, "rustic," in that it didn't have a fine crumb and was heartier than one would normally think of a cake as being, but the flavor was quite nice, and it is sufficiently Healthy that it's a fine substitute for my breakfast muffins until I get around to making some. (That was supposed to happen tonight, but didn't.) I could have tarted it up for presentation with, say, some whipped cream, and/or a chocolate drizzle, or some kind of ice cream (perhaps even a savory ice cream, like rosemary), but it was just us and Friend has a physical next week, so adding fat would not have been a helpful idea.

You will notice that I have made no mention of the farmers' market. Despite the intentions stated in the last post, when Friend and I woke up Saturday morning and heard the pouring rain (which I had been hearing off and on for several hours), i decided to bag that idea, figuring many vendors might not even show up. The trip would have been complicated as it was (public transportation is going through infrastructure-rebuilding gyrations that occur mostly on weekends these days), and I had no intention of making the slog only to not get what I wanted. Once we got downstairs and discovered the flooding basement, it became even more unlikely, as helping Friend seemed like a better use of my time. I still want to get those items, however; maybe next Saturday? We'll see.

Also: remind me to tell you why I hated a book I read recently.

Rantational Goodness with a Side of Beets

My Fair City has, in many of its neighborhoods, including mine, parking regulations such that, if one is a resident, one must have a windshield sticker for one's vehicle or, if one does not have a vehicle but has friends with vehicles, one must have temporary stickers, good for one 24-hour period. Said temporary stickers can (theoretically) be purchased in the form of 20 for $10. All in all, not that big a hassle. Theoretically.

The first year, I stood in line downtown and got stickers. Last year I mailed in a form and got them in the mail. (Both years I had leftovers, and I expect to have leftovers this year, too, as Friend is pretty much the only person who uses the stickers, and we tend to go to his house because of the cat, and because it's less inconvenient for me than it would be for him, and because he shlepped for the two years I was at the bakery so I didn't have to get up even earlier to get to the bakery from his house.) This year, I tried to do it online but was thwarted repeatedly, so I called the office. Oh, we shut down the online ordering because it had too many problems, I was told, so you can mail a check. Which I did, dutifully, on or about August 15. I got it back today, with a form letter noting that my request had been refused because I had already purchased the allotted two packs of 10 for the month and was therefore ineligible for purchasing more. Well, no. And, may I add, by the time you got around to answering this, it was A DIFFERENT MONTH.

Someone will get a testy phone call from Yours Truly tomorrow, not least because I have had enough stupid this week to take a bath in it, were I to want to bathe in stupid, which I don't.

I've had to deal with both Annoying People this week, in abundance. The one who supposedly left back in April but who has been "consulting" for months (the end of September, they say, will really, truly, cross your fingers this time, be the end of her consulting tenure here) is such a queen bee. I need some budget manipulations from her. I spelled them out, in detail, in writing, on Monday, and I sat with her at some length on Tuesday (and listened while she lectured me), and she knows I need to get this back to the project officer on Friday (that would be tomorrow) and I would like some time to pretty up what she does. Has she done this yet? No she has not. People, I am here to tell you that the things she needs to do are quite small. I could do them in a couple of hours, if I had access to the rest of the budgets, which I don't particularly want, mind you. (The time of some people is spread across a couple of grants, so one cannot change salary allocations on one grant willy-nilly, as it will affect all of the other grants. Seeing as how I have been working with grants for, oh, nearly 30 fucking years, I know this, and therefore did not start moving money around. Nevertheless, I had to endure a lecture from her about how one cannot do this.)

The another Annoying Person is just . . . I don't know. Dyslexic? Not terribly bright? I can't tell what the issue is, but she wears me out. And she's got a passive-aggressive streak that is tiresome. The boss told her, directly and repeatedly, that he wanted me to sit in on a site visit yesterday (some people with the funding agency were visiting us). When the funding agency person showed up, AP shepherded her into the conference room without even going by my office, much less letting me know that she was here. I had the boss interrupt and introduce me and so on, but it was aggravating.

On the other hand? Another paycheck tomorrow! And still no sacks of flour.

Which brings me to a point other than bitching about random life stuff (and, truly, the RLS is just kind of eye-rollingly annoying, and I forget it; it's not that big a deal, and I know it).

As I detailed here endlessly, my two years at the bakery were grueling. I worked long, hard hours at repetitive, physical labor, for low pay, and there was no real future for me in that business once my husband started on the path of becoming my ex-husband. I am grateful every fucking day that I managed to get out of that whole thing--the job, the career change, the marriage--relatively unscathed. Yes, there are lingering pains; yes, I had to incinerate another dream; yes, I have been paying back a substantial student loan. But it could have been so much worse, in so many ways that I can't even count, and, did I mention, I got out, relatively unscathed. I did not open a bakery (though I still look at storefronts with a tinge of longing sometimes, and evaluate the neighborhood in terms of foot traffic and customer base). I am not still married. I am out a bunch of money. But I am not still lugging 50-pound sacks of flour up a flight of stairs. I am not working 10-hour days for shitty pay. I get a comma in every paycheck. And I appreciate all of those things way more than I might otherwise have done, simply because the experience of the grueling labor was so recent, not merely a memory from high school or college.

That's all kind of beside the point. The real point is that I have always had a bias that everyone should have to do a shit job--something tedious, or grueling, or whatever, but definitely low-paying, for at least a year. Further, they have to do this job in order to survive, not just as a little hobby. (A new coworker and I were discussing this point--she went to, and then worked at, one of the high-end universities in the city, and she learned, she said, to ask what work people had done in high school, and she learned to hire people who needed the money to live on, not just wanted to work long enough to, as she put it, buy another Gucci purse.) Interning in mom's/dad's friend's law office for the summer does not count. Without the shit-job experience, I think it is nearly impossible to truly understand what the fuck hard work is, because it's not just the work itself, it's that on top of knowing that one cannot afford to quit, one actually needs the fucking job, and that one better hope and pray to whatever deities seem relevant and helpful that an injury doesn't occur, because no work means no pay. I'm sure there are some people out there who were born rich and whose parents didn't let them get away with crap, but so many of the privileged people I have met do not have a fucking clue how precarious one's existence can really be. Shit, some days I don't think I really know, either; my parents would not have let me starve, and they have the means for preventing it from happening, and many, many, many people don't have that, so I don't want to get too high on my horse here. But I did, in fact, lug the fucking flour, the same way other people stand behind a counter, or answer phones, or make copies, or do whatever needs to be done to put food on the table and pay the rent and put gas in the car or money on the bus pass or pay for health insurance (and clothes and doctors and stuff) for their kids. Shit, kids; that's a whole other thing I can't even fathom. I only had to bail out me, not me a kid or three.

Anyway, that's my rantyness for tonight. I've been slowly making my way through the mess at my apartment--these long weekends away have allowed the crap to pile up. I've been chipping away at chores--doing something each night, but usually not everything I planned; oh well. I may even go on a massive cleaning spree this weekend; we'll see. My main goal is to get tomatos, possibly sweet corn, beets, onions, and cheese at the farmers market.

Get the Razor

Occam's razor, that is.

What are the possible reasons that the Republicans chose Sarah Palin?

1. McCain (or his handlers, which I think is more likely) want to make sure the rightwing nutcase base comes out to vote. That group is ambivalent about McCain, at best--mostly on the forced-pregnancy issues--because he has not always toed the line as thoroughly as they want him to. Palin doesn't believe in evolution; doesn't believe in sex education (except abstinence only); and doesn't believe women really should have choices about when or whether to bear children. She is, in other words, a rightwing nutcase herself. It also means, if there were ties in Senate votes, she could be relied upon to vote their way (in her role as president pro tem of the Senate). It's also worth pointing out that Lieberman and Casey (the other two names that were tossed around) would lose this vote, because of their positions on these issues.

2. McCain/his handlers believed their own rhetoric, i.e., believed that (a) there are a whole big bunch of Bitter Old Women who supported Clinton and who not only will not vote for Obama but might vote for McCain and (b) these women are only interested in voting for someone else with a vagina, i.e., they would not care about the head that is attached. (I have never believed that the so-called "puma" vote is anything except a bunch of rightwing nutcases trying to get face time on Faux news by ginning up this story; most--perhaps all--of the women they've profiled have a certain amount of republican-ness in their backgrounds, which makes it difficult for me to believe they were truly Clinton supporters to begin with; the hatred for anyone named Clinton is too overwhelming for that.)

3. McCain truly believed that Palin is the best person for the job of Vice President--her extensive experience in government, particularly her experience in some aspect of governance in which McCain is seen as weak, makes her the perfect complement to McCain, and makes her an ideal choice as a potential president.

4. They knew it would be a controversial choice--possibly even because of the family mess, especially insofar as the republicans have actually been the ones to do most of the publicizing of it, and they've been making things up, while they're at it--and figured it would be a way to distract everyone from her actual lack of qualifications, suck attention away from Obama, and, perhaps most important, suck attention away from the actual issues.

I think we can safely rule out 3. There's no possible way that anyone is going to claim that Palin is the most qualified Republican in the country. We can argue about whether Biden is the "most" qualified--because we can have different definitions of "most"--but we would be unlikely to say that he is UNqualified. Despite my carping, I would not regard Biden as unqualified. Palin is unqualified.

I think we can rule out 2, as well. While they may have hoped to pick up a few votes from vagina-Americans, I don't believe they really believe their own rhetoric on this matter. If that were their intent, there are plenty of other Republican women out there with more experience than Palin.

What's going on, then, is mostly 1, with a possible dash of 4 thrown in for excitement. Basically, Palin is a dogwhistle to the far-right, which is the group of voters that McCain absolutely must get to go vote but that was least enthusiastic about him. The dash of 4 is mostly an attempt to make lemonade, because it's clear that (a) the vetters did not do their job at all, or (b) the vetters were from the far-right, or (c) the vetters decided to listen to the far right. I find it difficult to believe that they looked specifically for an anti-choice candidate with very little governing experience AND a family Situation.

As for whether Palin's daughter is fair game, well, no, mostly not. I think it is relevant to point out that Palin reduced funding for a program that provided pregnant unmarried teens with a place to live; if that isn't an example of punishing women for having sex, even when they want to actually bear the child, then I don't know what the fuck is.

On another note, however, the weekend provided great barrels of fun. Friend and I had dinner last Thursday night. I bought a NYTimes and took myself out to breakfast Friday morning. Friday afternoon we went to the baseball game; Saturday morning we rose at the crack of dawn to drive to his friends' house, climb in their vehicle, and then tailgate and then go to see Bucky's season opener. We killed some time at the tailgate location after the game before going to the tex-mex place at which Friend and I ate a few weeks ago. After that, back to the friends' house for some beer and euchre, and some stargazing (it was clear, and their house is way out in the middle of nowhere, so there were many stars to be seen--and no sound at all, pretty much, except crickets). Sunday we hung out, then got in the pool, and eventually wandered to a local establishment for burgers and beer, then home for more beer and euchre. (We hadn't originally planned on staying Sunday night, I don't think, but once more alcohol came into play, driving two hours back here seemed unwise.) We left early Monday morning and were back here before noon; we also made a spectacular dinner Monday night that included grilled boar steaks and grilled vegetables, the latter tossed with pasta, and some cabbage and broccoli.

This weekend we do another set of excursions. Friday night we drive to the friends' house again, then go out for dinner and bowling (!), and, who knows, maybe more euchre. Saturday we go to a crafts fair/wine tasting, at which Friend purchased much good wine last year and probably will again this year (and I'll probably get some as well). Sunday we get up at the crack of dawn and drive to Joliet for the IRL race (from his friends' house), which means we have to pack for several different events this weekend. I had intended to do some laundry this week, but the weather has gotten cooler, and I've decided that with careful underwear management, I can make it through the weekend with clean underwear and without having to do laundry.