Personal

What I'm listening to, and singing along with, as I alternately pack boxes and knit potholders for my mother :) :

Pat Benatar - We Belong
Daryl Hall and John Oates - Private Eyes
Stevie Nicks - Stand Back
Duran Duran - New Moon On Monday
Madonna - Material Girl
Tears For Fears - Head Over Heels
Taco - Puttin' On The Ritz
Robert Palmer - Addicted To Love
Pat Benatar - Love Is A Battlefield
Hall & Oates - Say It Isn't So
Laura Branigan - Gloria
Daryl Hall & John Oates - Kiss On My List
Duran Duran - The Reflex
Lionel Richie - All Night Long
Daryl Hall & John Oates - Maneater
Madonna - Dress You Up
Europe - The Final Countdown
Scandal - Warrior
Stevie Nicks - If Anyone Falls
Olivia Newton-John - Magic
Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder - Ebony And Ivory

What I'm listening to, and singing along with, as I pack boxes:

Hank Williams Jr - Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound
Hank Williams Jr - All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down
The Judds - One Hundred And Two
Wilson Pickett - In the Midnight Hour
Tanya Tucker - Some Kind Of Trouble
Crystal Gayle - Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue
Doris Day - Shoe Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy
Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle- Just You and I
George Strait - Baby Blue
George Strait - If I Know Me
Janis Joplin - Me And Bobby McGee
Janis Joplin - Piece Of My Heart
Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue
Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton - Islands In The Stream
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama
Marc Cohn - Walking In Memphis
Melanie - Brand New Key
Patsy Cline - Crazy
Patsy Cline - I Fall To Pieces
Patsy Cline - Walking After Midnight
Randy Travis - On the Other Hand
Rosanne Cash - Seven Year Ache
Rosanne Cash - Tennessee Flat Top Box
Van Morrison - Tupelo Honey
Wilson Pickett - I Found A Love
Reba McEntire - Fancy
Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant

Nine more days in this apartment. I've got a lot of my packing done already and should chill out and relax, but I'm restless and can't think about anything else except getting boxes and moving things from one place to another: can't think about prelims, can't think about the course I'm teaching this summer, can't think about the blog collection, can't think about any of the longer posts I want to write here and for Kairosnews. I want to do things like go grocery shopping and wash all my bedding, but not until I'm in the new place, which is driving me nuts too. When I'm moving, I get in this zone; I'm like a machine. I want to show off how freakishly strong I can be. That huge box of books my two friends are struggling to carry up the stairs? Give me that, I say, shaking my head and smiling. And put another one on top of it. I want my arms to look like Linda Hamilton's by the time I'm done :D:

I'm still going to post about GPACW and iLaw, but other things have demanded my attention lately, specifically grading and moving. I've been traipsing all over town requesting boxes, determined not to spend any money on packing materials. I'm completely focused on the new apartment, with all its window light and how great it will look with the accent wall, how good it will smell, the amenities (pool, exercise room), and the general idea of being settled for a couple of years. I don't have a balcony, but I'd still like to buy a couple of plants, probably rosemary and basil. Not many people know this, but I used to be an avid herb gardener when I lived in Tennessee. I grew lavender, lemonbalm, rosemary, dill, thyme, mint, basil, and chives. I was really good at it; I grew some of the plants from seed, and I even kept a garden journal. :) So, although right now I have only about enough intellectual prowess to read articles about the Olsen twins' latest scandalous behavior and to watch movies like Mean Girls (by the way, Krista and Amy, that was fun! Let's do it again sometime.), better blog posts are ahead.

In other news, my tax return was a cool grand, I got a 4.0, and I'm planning on buying a laptop. People are telling me I should get a ThinkPad, but I haven't made a final decision. Recommendations are appreciated.

Edited to add: I also grew sage! How could I forget about my sage? I used to wrap it in bundles using string and hang it up to dry--like the ones you pay $5-7 for in the Wiccan stores. Boy, was I ever crunchy. :)

I'm about to call my mom to wish her a happy Mother's Day. And I'm glad there's a day to honor this axis of her subject, this fraction of all that she is, and there's so much more: She's a breast cancer survivor, a watchdog when it comes to local politics (always getting mad when yet another person embezzles money from the city), a quick thinker, and she does right by everyone she knows. I can't think of anyone who knows her and doesn't respect and love her. But I'd be remiss if I didn't point out today that motherhood is revered in rhetoric and reviled in policy, to paraphrase Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels. The discursive construction of motherhood is damaging to so many women; I'm reminded of one of flea's posts, which sticks with me:

I'm angry that so many of us live our lives with that nagging fear that we could lose our children if we fuck up in front of the wrong person, or even if the wrong person misinterprets what they're seeing. I am angry that baseball players get paid millions of dollars for only doing their job well 33% of the time but mothers don't get paid dick and are vilified for not batting a thousand. I'm angry that I've internalized all this Martha Stewart/Baby Einstein/Perfect Celebrity Mom bullshit, even though I'm fighting it as hard as I can.



I wish it were different. I wish we could detail our fuckups without fear, because God knows we're all in the same leaky boat. But as long as the burden of parenthood falls 90% on the mother, 10% on the father (regardless of how often he co-parents) and 0% on the government, we're going to have to keep whispering our failures to each other while pasting on the "we're all fine here!" smiles.

Douglas writes:

We mothers have no paid maternity leave, no universal healthcare so that all our kids are covered, no comprehensive after-school programs, no genuine, truly revolutionary new support of our public schools that would revive them (No Child Left Behind already has become a massive joke). Too many workplaces have no onsite or nearby daycare, no flexible time, no job sharing. The right to control our own reproductive lives is under total siege.



Mothers feel they have been sold a bill of goods: We're supposed to be eternally nurturing, supportive and ecstatic about child rearing 24/7. We are never supposed to get angry, because the words "mom" and "angry" aren't supposed to go together. But if mothers in this country never got angry about how they and the nation's children were being treated, we'd still have child labor and laws discriminating against married women in the labor force. Mothers' voices have not been heard, especially during this presidential campaign season. It's about time they were. Check out two Web sites, www.mothersandmore.org and www.mothersmovement.org. And remember: Motherhood remains the unfinished business of the women's movement.

I know some of that isn't true for some women; sure, many do have paid maternity leave, comprehensive after-school programs. Some even have on-site daycare at work. That's great, but these women are the exceptions, and as long as that's the case, I consider it a problem.

Feministe inspired me to create the soundtrack of my life. I guess this is the next big meme. I purposefully sat out of the page 23/fifth sentence one, so I'd better get on task.

Edited to add: Oops, I forgot to include the criteria set forth by Green Fairy: "These aren't necessarily your favourite songs, or even ones you like, just ones that you associate with a particular time, incident or memory." Lest anyone think these are my favorite songs, heh. Others haven't put them in any particular order, but I've done mine chronologically: two from childhood, two from junior high/early high school, two from high school, two from college, and one from my master's program. It was hard to think of some recent ones; I don't have the perspective yet.

Celebration - Kool & the Gang

This is the first song I remember. My parents had the 45, and my mom showed me how to arrange the little arm on the record player above the needle so that I could make the 45 play over and over again. The exuberance of the song stuck with me, and to this day I love it.

Many of you have followed my recent adventures in tenancy, so in the interest of following up, I'll report that I have put a deposit down on a new apartment: a studio in a blissfully un-trendy industrial park neighborhood. This will be the third time in 12 months that I've moved; the last time, after the roof caved in, was in -4 degree weather, on ice. After living in two trendy neighborhoods, I've found that the landlords there can charge far too much for rundown slums, and treat you poorly on top of it all. I was going to move into a new apartment in my current, post-roof-cavein building (my roommate is getting married), but I was hesitant, as our sleazy landlord has entered our apartment unannounced just as I was getting out of the shower, causing me to panic because I realized someone was in the house, plus he smokes in our apartment. Do you want to elicit pure rage in me? Smoke in my apartment. But I looked at an apartment in this building anyway; there is something to be said for hauling your stuff down the stairs and not having to bother with renting a van. I'll call the apartment the fallout shelter. It was in the basement, it stank of smoke and cat urine, and there was one small window level with the ground, which any shady person could kick in and shimmy into, not to mention that the lack of light would have made me quite depressed.

Then I looked at an apartment in the un-trendy neigborhood (said studio), which has a whole wall of windows, new appliances including a dishwasher and microwave, tons of storage space so that my living area can be nice and sparse, and the lease-incentive option of two accent walls, to be painted before I move in on 1 June, in my choice of about 10 colors. I have already chosen red (my color exactly) and "expressive plum." I think I'll have the red wall in the main room and the plum wall in the bathroom. I hope this is the last apartment I'll have in Minnesota.

Just for kicks, I've changed my picture again. This is what I look like right after I work out. Speaking of which, I'm disturbed by how weak my chest muscles are compared to the rest of my body. I did the chest press and could only lift two of the plates, and when I did the fly, I could only lift one. :o

Edited to add, as I wind down for the night...I am feeling the strain from the lateral pulldowns. I need a massage.